History was made when the first-ever heavyweight title fight took place in Saudi Arabia’s custom-built 15,000 seater arena in Riyadh on the 7th December 2019. The tense rematch saw Anthony Joshua become a two-time world heavyweight champion with a unanimous victory over Andy Ruiz Jr.
CT was called upon by our client Blink Experience and the General Sports Authority of Saudi Arabia to deliver over 750 sqm of LED for the groundbreaking event.
The impressive over-ring design consisted of 4 x 63 sqm outdoor LED screens and was designed to ensure all spectators never missed a second of the action as it created a 360 visual spectacular that was seen from anywhere within the arena.
To further enhance the spectator experience, 336 sqm of LED was used to wrap around the truss tower legs, with each tower leg making up of 84 sqm outdoor LED. The content interacted with the over-ring LED and displayed sponsorship logos, rounds, and point scores.
All front row and VIP attendees had the luxury of seeing 4 x 36 sqm led screens that were situated inside the over-ring LED, showing live content and score updates throughout the event.
CT also supplied 13 sqm of LED and 4 x 84inch Samsung TVs for the media centre as well as an astonishing 43 x 43inch TVs for the premium hospitality area.
For content management and playback, we used 2 x active Hippo Boreal media servers with 2 x backup. Control was managed from a linked Barco E2 and S3 system. Dhyaan Parikh, CT’s Project Manager, advises “Barco E2, and S3 were used due to the reliable screen management interface. The whole workflow was in 4K, which consisted of our Lightware UBEX 4K fibre, Lightware 2.0 matrix, Novastar 4K LED processors, and 2.1km of quad core fibre.”
The on-site Technical Manager comments, “CT did a fantastic job and should be exceptionally proud of their efforts. There was never an issue with the changing scope, and last minutes additions/requirements and CT were always on hand to assist and get stuck in, even if it wasn’t within your remit. Again you all proved why Creative Technology is a leader in the field of large scale technical production.”