LiveU has announced a deployment with the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) that has brought Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) to the Pacific Islands for the first time. The OFC had been the only FIFA confederation operating without VAR, with traditional deployment deemed impractical due to customs delays, lack of fiber infrastructure, and freight logistics across island nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Tahiti.<\/p>\n
LiveU designed and built a complete end-to-end remote integration system supporting the Hawk-Eye VAR platform. The system consists of two portable transmission kits and a centralized receiving server in an Auckland hub, supporting up to 12 simultaneous camera feeds with four return feeds carrying two-way referee communications. Round-trip latency between remote Pacific venues and Auckland is approximately one second. Each kit was engineered to pass through airline check-in as standard baggage, deployable by a single operator over managed internet connections.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the only confederation in the world without VAR \u2013 and we knew, with traditional models, it would never happen for us,\u201d says Kevin Stoltenkamp, Head of Refereeing, OFC. \u201cWhen I saw it working for the first time, I realized \u2013 this can work. Now, we can take the system as baggage on a plane and deliver VAR anywhere. For us, accessibility is everything. It\u2019s not just about technology \u2013 it\u2019s about people solving problems together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed something lightweight, portable, and capable of delivering multiple camera feeds with audio \u2013 without relying on freight. Within a very short time, we realized we could transmit broadcast-quality signals across even the most challenging networks. What we\u2019ve built is a low-cost, high-quality VAR solution that\u2019s unique in world football. We went from manually editing clips on a hill to delivering full VAR capability \u2013 that\u2019s the scale of change,\u201d says Kelvin Lewis, Referee Technology Lead, OFC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe system is simple to use \u2013 you don\u2019t need to be highly technical to operate it. LiveU is the heart of the system\u2026 the technology is essential to making this work,\u201d says Mihaly Fabian, VAR Project Manager, OFC.<\/p>\n
The system achieved a 100% success rate across all proof-of-concept deployments, with issues diagnosed and resolved remotely from Auckland. The deployment has expanded beyond the OFC Pro League to the New Zealand Football FIFA Series and OFC Women\u2019s World Cup qualifying matches. The next deployment is in Tahiti.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the OFC has achieved here is a working blueprint \u2013 broadcast-quality remote VAR, deployable anywhere, with no freight, no fixed infrastructure, and no specialist engineers on the ground. The attention this has already drawn from beyond Oceania tells you everything, changing the conversation for sports organizations everywhere,\u201d says Chris Dredge, Country and Sales Manager, Oceania, LiveU Pacific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LiveU has announced a deployment with the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) that has brought Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-725592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}