Gearhouse Broadcast and associate company AV Tech were awarded the contract to upgrade the technical infrastructure at four football stadia in Doha, Qatar – Al Gharaffa, Al Rayyan, Al Sadd Sports Club and the Qatar Sports Club.

As the preferred supplier to the Qatar National Olympic Committee, Gearhouse Broadcast and AV Tech have previously completed a number of broadcast cabling and audio visual contracts at various sports arenas including; the Aspire Tower and Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence, Khalifa Tennis and Squash Centre, Qatar Sports Club, Al Arabi Sports Club, Al Khor Sports Club and the Al Wakrah Sports Club.

The stadia were all being upgraded from SD to HD and the new installation consisted of installing new cabling, wall boxes and technical equipment.  The installation was spread across four stadia and the upgrade consisted of 115 wall boxes, SMPTE hybrid fibre, HD video and audio and network cable.

The equipment racks used for the upgrade were assembled in the UK prior to the installation phase and shipped to site pre-wired to all the local termination panels. This meant that only the wall box connectivity will need to be terminated on-site thus speeding up the installation process.  Harris distribution and conversion equipment was used, along with Tektronix video test equipment, Bel audio test equipment and Belden and Draka audio and network cable. 

To complete the installation Gearhouse Broadcast provided a supervisory management team of 12 Wireman, 16 riggers, a Project Engineer and a Project Manager.   Each venue had a dedicated installation team headed up by a Site Supervisor, who oversaw the pulling in of all cables from the TV Rooms to the correct locations.   The HD upgrade took two months to complete and was ready for the start of the Asian Football Cup which Qatar hosted in January 2011.