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Malaysian Football – Back on the Pitch with Ideal Live AS THE COUNTRY’S MOVEMENT CONTROL ORDERS and other restrictions begin to ease, the Malaysian Football League is back, in a truncated form, without crowds, but back all the same. Mainly broadcast via Telekom Malaysia with selected matches shown on other regional OTT and free-to-air operators, coverage of the MFL, since 2018, has been in the hands of Ideal Systems’ content and production division, Ideal Live. According to Updesh Singh, Director of Technology, South East Asia, with the Ideal Systems Group, a “normal”, non-pandemic year would have seen Ideal Live covering around 200300 matches across all the Malaysian football competitions. “We act as a technology partner to the Malaysian Football League, rather than a supplier,” he says. “The first thing is we do on-rotation production, which means we have camera crews, vision mixer interviewers, on field staff. The second thing we do is the contain distribution and processing. We run sort of a production control room for the Malaysian Football League. It’s a central hub where there are Malaysian Football League people who are able to instantly access the content, edit it and publish to social media. We also distribute the content to any affiliates. All the content processing and distribution, 100 per cent is done by us, but on field production we do a majority of it. Some of it they do outsource
technology, this technology that can make the content, the same content, more simply.” Could you talk me through the production process now, as opposed to pre-COVID? Sofiyant Neo: “We have three teams. Their details are given to MFL, the organiser of the League. Every stadium, before we go, we have to provide the list of the crew that is coming. And we start with the crew coming here to our office. We know the crews who’s coming. They have to come in. They have to do their temperature. They have to log in. They come into the building. After that, they pick up their gear. They go to the venue. Upon arriving at the venue, same process. You have to register yourself. And the official will basically check each name. If they see changes, they will verify with MFL, any basic changes. “We don’t use an OB truck, we use flyaway kits so we used to have slightly smaller room, but it’s become slightly bigger. Because, even sitting, we have to have a big gap. Like a metre at least apart. And same goes with the players. The players come from the bus. They come, basically, one by one. Scan. Register. Go inside. And even when they come up from the tunnels. Same thing. They’re not really close until they start playing. There is no handshake. There’s no national anthem. There’s no club anthem anymore. Because then you’d have to queue up and you can’t have a long queue now, and so on.
Sofiyant Neo, Director of Media and Creative Content with Ideal Systems, and Head of Ideal Live.
Updesh Singh, Director of Technology, South East Asia, with the Ideal Systems Group.
when we sit down and do our meetings, again we highlight that, okay, this is something that went wrong, this should not go wrong again. We need to rectify this. Or this we need to improve. It can be a production work. It can be SOP. It can be anything.”
The Ideal Live MFL master control room.
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to a couple of third parties because of rights issues, but we cover the majority of the League.”
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According to Sofiyant Neo, Director of Media and Creative Content with Ideal Systems, and head of Ideal Live, “Our setup is totally different than a traditional setup. Our setup is a very versatile. I’ve been a content guy for my entire life. And when I joined IDL, when I start learning and getting exposed to all this technology, I find myself in position that I have this crazy
“They used to go on air about 8.15pm. Now they’re going on air by 8.45. The pre-show is already filled in so 9 o’clock is the kick-off. Personally, I go to most of the stadiums to ensure that SOP (standard operating protocol) is being followed. And before the match starts, and after the match ends, we always have a briefing session. Again, we will highlight the key protocols, there’s a critical one which involves the crew getting involved with the players, or going to grounds. We just keep on reminding them, these are the protocols. After the show, again
Updesh Singh: “And some other operational issues. For example, some very interesting ones like in the past when they do interviews there would be mic sharing, so you move the mics. Now you are not allowed to share mics. Everyone gets their own mic. With talkback intercom, it’s difficult to talk when you have a mask on because the noise gets in and tries to cancel your voice out. We have many smart, innovative ways to work around some of those issues. And even our flyaway kit, we can build in 90 minutes. We can break in one hour or less. Every system or solution in the kit must be able to be built within 90 minutes. Anything that cannot fit the time will not be put into the system. 90-minute build, including cable, everything. 90 minutes build. One-hour break. The on-location infrastructure is built with that type of mindset”. At the venues are there certain no go zones for the crew? Sofiyant Neo: “It’s pretty standard what basically we do. When the players arrive. We still have the shots. We shoot them how they arrive. How they register themself. How they follow the SOP. And