DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—At Badger & Combes, we specialize in delivering high-quality live production for sports and broadcast, focusing on scalable, remote workflows that support complex, multilocation events. Our team regularly works on fast-paced productions where reliability, flexibility and efficiency are critical to success.
One example of that is the Dubai Rugby Sevens, an international tournament featuring top men’s and women’s teams from around the world. During the 2025 event (Nov. 28-30), 664 competitive matches were played across a large multisport venue. Every game was captured and streamed live on YouTube, the Dubai Sevens official website and the official event app.
Remotely producing a live global sporting event on the scale of the Dubai Rugby Sevens is no small feat. With hundreds of matches played across multiple locations, a production hub thousands of miles from the venue and zero tolerance for downtime, delivering uninterrupted live coverage to a global audience is a major challenge.
Livestreaming Every Match
For the 2025 tournament, we took on the challenge of livestreaming every single match using a fully remote production workflow built for seamless worldwide distribution.
A Haivision-powered workflow, designed for high scalability, efficiency and rock-solid reliability, formed the backbone of our production. With Haivision’s contribution solutions and the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol, we delivered a resilient, continent-spanning broadcast network built to meet the intense demands of live, fast-paced sports.
Rather than deploying a large-scale broadcast setup at the venue, we relied on a flexible and lightweight contribution model using Haivision live video contribution solutions powered by SRT, a protocol developed by Haivision for low-latency, secure and reliable videostreaming over unpredictable networks, enabled the live production to be driven from a central hub in Manchester, England, while postproduction infrastructure operated live in Dubai.
On-site in Dubai, we deployed 12 cameras connected to a range of Haivision mobile video transmitters across eight pitch locations. The main stadium was supported by a Haivision Pro460 mobile transmitter, handling multiple camera feeds through its multiview feature. A second Pro460 was positioned at the engineering station, ingesting feeds from additional pitches alongside an RF camera, enabling real-time bidirectional communication between teams in Dubai and Manchester.
Across the remaining pitches, we deployed seven Haivision Air mobile transmitters and a Falkon X2 transmitter at individual camera positions, providing reliable, low-latency live video contribution from each game, along with return feeds so engineers could monitor activity across all pitches.
A Haivision Air unit was also used to support audio communications and file transfer. Our team in Manchester communicated directly with the on-site team in Dubai through the Air, allowing roaming crew members to coordinate production from over 3,000 miles away. This same infrastructure supported file transfer, consolidating workflows into a unified Haivision ecosystem.
All camera feeds were sent over the internet using SRT with latency as low as 1.5 seconds, arriving at Haivision StreamHub receivers in Manchester. From there, feeds were sent to EVS for replay, graphics, and postproduction before delivery to digital platforms.
The system proved highly reliable. Every incoming feed was recorded as it arrived, creating a backup archive of all camera footage for post-event use. The flexibility of the Haivision solutions allowed full visibility of the entire production across both locations.
Really Remote Workflows
Despite the distance between Dubai and Manchester, the camera-to-production workflow enabled effective live switching, replay and real-time communication across continents.
What would once have required large crews and significant on-site infrastructure was achieved through a centralized workflow built on Haivision technology and SRT. By the end of the weekend, we successfully delivered live coverage of all 664 matches with no major technical issues, using a production footprint small enough to fit into just three cases.
The equipment was lightweight, easy to deploy and highly cost-effective, enabling us to deliver full-scale production with a minimal on-site footprint and significantly reduced operational costs.
More information is available on Haivision’s website.
