Held at 14 venues in 13 cities, the 2017 Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) Gold Cup is the confederation’s premier event for national soccer teams. The Dallas metro area hosted two match days during the Group Stage: one at Toyota Stadium in Frisco and another at AT&T Stadium in Arlington with Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) on location to supply overall frequency coordination.
Nine other cities hosted Group Stage matches, including Cleveland, Denver, Harrison, Houston, Nashville, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa. The knock-out rounds of the tournament were held in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, with the final hosted at Levis’ Stadium in Santa Clara.
Preparation for the frequency coordination of Gold Cup began about a month prior to the tournament via a website hosted by PWS. This served as a platform for all vendors of Gold Cup to identify what frequencies they planned to use. PWS coordinated the compiled frequency lists with the local Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) and submitted all of the SBE-approved frequencies to the FCC for final confirmation.
‘Coordinating a single location was fairly easy, but coordinating all of the cities and parties wanting to use the spectrum was the biggest challenge for us on this project,’ says Professional Wireless Systems Project Manager, Kasey Gchachu. ‘At each venue, we conducted a sweep of the area to ensure that the frequencies allocated were available. Once complete, we set up camp for the media and to handle any last-minute requests before moving on to the next venue. In addition, we had to make sure we stayed clear of all public safety frequencies, which differed depending on what city we were in.’
One of the unexpected challenges the PWS team faced was dealing with the affiliates, mostly from South America, who came in with unlicensed and unprotected equipment. The RF team also had to ensure all the foreign media’s equipment was legal for use in the US.
‘We were working under the direction of Broadcast Service Group (BSG), the production company who hired us to handle the frequency coordination portion of these events and who managed the various vendors involved,’ Gchachu explains. ‘This was a huge undertaking on our part and something that would not have gone as smoothly as it did without the help and guidance from BSG Production Manager Linnie Morgan and her team of technical directors. They did a great job, as did the entire PWS team, which included Jason LoGrande and Ryan Stotts.’
The tournament has reached exceptional levels of popularity, routinely drawing capacity crowds and millions of TV viewers around the world.
