A spectacular opening ceremony wowed the crowds (photo: Steve Sroka)
UK - Adlib supplied full technical production to the 2019 Vitality Netball World Cup staged at the 11,000 capacity M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool.
Adlib’s rental departments implemented a fully integrated video, lighting and audio package linking in with broadcast elements for BBC and Sky. The spectacle took place over 10 glorious days of top sporting action which delivered world class netball to an international TV audience and many thousands packing into the court-side seats which were sold out for the duration.
This quadrennial event featured two distinctive criteria. First, a spectacular opening ceremony which wowed the crowds and got everyone in the mood for the sports to follow.
Adlib’s technical team worked closely with curators of the ceremony Culture Liverpool and Iluminos. Adlib provided six Panasonic RZ21K 20,000 lumen laser projectors mounted vertically to project the visuals created by Iluminos onto the courts below. Lighting and video effects combined to produce the spectacle enjoyed by the live audience and TV viewers alike.
On-court drama followed, produced by Sport Presentation specialists Red Sky at Night Events Ltd, this saw 16 nations compete for the coveted Vitality Netball World Cup 2019 trophy.
Adlib’s overall project manager was Dave Eldridge. He worked with a highly talented and experienced crew onsite, and closely with host broadcasters Televideo and several other contractors to ensure seamlessly delivery of a world class sporting event to a hugely enthusiastic audience worldwide.
Working with Red Sky at Night Events, the on-site team implemented a complex video playback system, controlling a large ‘gondola’ style LED cube, plus a court side LED branding system and many break-out areas around the arena.
Adlib’s crew worked closely with the house riggers from UK Rigging on this and all the other aspects of the event which required flying, roof access and working at height.
Around 200 Martin MAC Viper Wash DX and Viper Profile intelligent moving lights were used to cover the opening ceremony and the dual court configuration, later morphing into a one court setup.
To assist with the diversity of demands of the overall event lighting, with a particular focus on the sporting action, Adlib worked alongside Dominic Main to create a production lighting design.
Adlib supplied a pair of ChamSys MQ500 consoles for complete and redundant lighting show control.
Adlib co-ordinated and designed the audio system for this event which included multiple flown speaker arrays, together with a control package to cater for various audio sources during the event along with Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
A Coda Audio system - ViRAY and AiRAY - was chosen to fill the arena with crisp, clear high-clarity sound.
Two hangs of eight AiRAY were at the ‘D’ end of the arena along with one more six x AiRAY hang at the ‘stage’ end. Four further hangs of ViRAY covered the long sides of the arena, with two hangs of nine speakers each side.
This system was then zoned so that audio could be played in either half of the arena if needed (to coincide with the 2-court setup), and then both halves when the configuration moved to one court
Four Coda SCV-F subs made up each of the two sub hangs flown centrally in the arena.
FOH control was a DiGiCo SD11 located at the back of one of the long end seating areas, and the show was run from there. The backup audio console - for full redundancy - was set up in video world backstage, along with the I/O racks and RF distribution.
Kenny Perrin and David Grimes looked after the audio for the 11-day event run, joined by Fabrizio Colucci for the opening ceremony, with Max Taylor assisting on the two-day load-in and set up.
(Jim Evans)

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