BMO Field is a recently built soccer stadium located at Exhibition Place in Toronto. Owned by the City of Toronto and operated by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE), BMO Field is home to Toronto’s newly formed Major League Soccer club, Toronto FC, as well as Canada’s national soccer team. The 20,500-seat stadium celebrated its official opening in May.

To complement the entertainment on the soccer pitch, BMO Field has in-stadium displays to play back action on the field, capture fan reaction and run contests and promotions. Footage for the displays is provided by a pair of cameras which feed into the stadium’s control room.

When it came time to select the cameras and equip the control room, MLSE decided to team up with Sony of Canada.

"Sony had all the latest and greatest technology, and their package fit within our budget," says Dwayne Brown, Technical Producer for MLSE. "We’ve worked with them in the past and have always been impressed by the quality of their work."

Sony won the project on December 23, 2006. Since the stadium was still under construction, Sony began putting the control room together off-site in February. By the beginning of March, Sony had access to BMO Field and installation was completed in the first week of April, well before the stadium’s inaugural soccer game on April 28.

Two Sony DSR-450W DVCAM Camcorders - one located high in the stadium and the other at field level - record the action on the pitch. Both cameras have SDI output board options and Fujinon ENG-style lenses - one telephoto and the other super-telephoto. Each camcorder has a Vinten two-stage aluminum pozi-loc tripod.

The camera operators communicate with the control room via headset intercoms. The cameras feed into a DFS-800 Switcher in the control room. A DSR-DR1000 disk recorder, attached to the switcher, allows the control room operators to show slow-motion replays on the in-stadium displays. The DSR-DR1000 is able to play back video while continuing to record action on the field, so not a minute of footage is missed.

An Avid Xpress Pro system and Avid Mojo SDI enable operators to play commercial content and create lower-screen graphics to highlight players or events on-screen.

MLSE employees are impressed with the performance of BMO Field’s Sony equipment, and enjoyed working with Sony of Canada.

"The Sony guys were great and fit in well with our group," says Curt Emerson, Manager, Video and Scoreboard Production for MLSE. "They’re very good at their job. They worked collaboratively with our team and were flexible in accommodating our needs."

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