Typing this on my last day in the US after almost a month of prepping the RLCS Winter Major and some other things. Being in the US with the time differences made it easier to get those last things in. First in Dallas to scout the now announced Dickies Arena in Dallas where we will produce the RLCS World Championship, making sure everything was packed in our warehouse for LA, and also a quick visit to the convention center for DreamHack Dallas where we will produce the CRL. Dickies will be amazing and working on getting those plans ready with the team to create a whole new experience around one of the better esports. Check out the announcement trailer here.

I mainly was in the US with the team to return RLCS back to LAN in the YouTube Theatre. With the broadcast tech team we started on March 19th with setting up the production for the A stream and B stream at the FaceIT studio. Funny enough also the building that was used for the first season of US version of The Office. For the A stream, we mostly used the already existing infrastructure and equipment of FaceIT and their production room. Mostly bringing in an ATEM Constellation to do the main production as we heavily use that and other devices for making macros in Companion for timings in the broadcast. For the B stream I shipped one of our event production racks that we have been using before the pandemic at almost all US DreamHack Festivals. We were trying to get the same effect with both streams as that we had during the Fall Major only now adding also the playercams to the B stream and having that locally produced.

On the first day of the groupstages at the FaceIT Studio most of the crew moved to YouTube Theatre to start setting up a full production line. Using multiple ATEMs in the line for different purposes and to get the same functionality as that we have in our Stockholm studio. Graphics were played out from our custom system (rendered by CasparCG to output fill & key on a Decklink) and the HUD we use is made by SilentEcho who developed this for the start of the season.

For video we used part of the in-house fiber infrastructure to get the feeds from the Plaza to our production which was located on the stage behind the players. Audio setup was full Dante between all locations (production, plaza and FOH) so all locations could mix the sound for a better experience on that location. More bass for instance in the Theater itself on some sources, but not pushing that to the broadcast.

The camera position we had in YouTube Theater were:

Inside:

• Beauty cam on the balcony
• Overview/Zoom at FOH
• Jib
• Roaming Left
• Roaming Right
• Playercams

Outside Plaza Studio:

• Jib
• Studio Right
• Studio Left

On top of our regular setup we had two feeds going back to the FaceIT studio to create the altered feed for RLive (a creative map in Fortnite where people can watch the broadcast) and have encoders there as an extra redundancy in case something would happen to our encoders in YouTube Theater.

Have to thank the team that came along for a stellar job setting everything up on a tight schedule and especially it was the first time since DreamHack Anaheim 2020 for most of us doing a LAN with an audience that is not just in a studio (as the Fall Major was in our comfy Stockholm studio. Thank you all for tuning in and will take some time off before getting back to the regionals.