Graphics & Production Upgrade @ St. Jakob-Park, FC Basel
FC Basel 1893 AG is one of the most traditional and successful football clubs in Switzerland. Its home ground, St. Jakob-Park, is the country’s largest stadium with a capacity of over 38,000, and regularly hosts league matches, international fixtures, and major events.
The Project
To kick off the new season, FC Basel decided to expand and modernize the stadium’s technical infrastructure. In addition to integrating new high-resolution LED displays for the scoreboard, the in-house production control room was also partially renewed and upgraded to meet increasing demands. The objective was to offer spectators an even more impressive, state-of-the-art stadium experience.
AVC-Systems AG was commissioned to analyze the existing setup, develop a technical concept, and implement the solution in time for the start of the season.
The Implementation
Back in 2016, AVC-Systems AG had already designed and implemented the complete in-house TV infrastructure at St. Jakob-Park – including Grass Valley camera chains, AJA Video players and recorders, Ross Video production switchers, editing suites, measurement equipment, and a hybrid routing platform for signal distribution. At the core of the setup was the Ross Video XPression graphics system.
The newly installed LED displays above the goal areas – spanning more than 35 meters in width and featuring a unique shape and placement – introduced new technical requirements. Standard 16:9 signals are unsuitable here. With XPression Tessera, content in a resolution of 2× Full HD can be mapped precisely, pixel by pixel, and handed off perfectly to the LED controllers.
The displays were fully connected with redundancy to ensure uninterrupted scoreboard operation. In addition, the control room technology was upgraded to 3G (1080p50) to deliver higher image quality, while still maintaining compatibility with the 1080i50 signals currently produced by SRG. This is achieved through high-quality de-interlacers (greenMachine) from Lynx Technik.