[SatNews] For the first time in its history, World Cup football is preparing to take place in Africa, with four satellites operated by Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) at the heart of a state-of-the-art broadcast infrastructure that will enable channels around the world to deliver matches, commentary, interviews and reports to TV viewers. With high-power capacity focused over Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Eutelsat’s W2A, W3A, W4 and W7 satellites will support the exceptional resources deployed by rights-holding organisations and television channels to offer worldwide coverage of the 30 days of sport in South Africa.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will reinforce its existing permanent capacity on Eutelsat satellites with two extra 72 MHz transponders booked on the W2A satellite. This satellite will enable the games, summary reports and highlights of the championship to be broadcast live from the EBU's international broadcast centre, located for the event in Soweto, to its headquarters in Geneva. Images will then be delivered by the EBU to its 75 broadcast members and other clients in extended Europe, using W2A for Europe and W3A for Africa and the Middle East. In addition to carrying live broadcasts of matches by rights holders, Eutelsat will provide customers operating in South Africa with satellite links so that journalists working in the field can be directly connected to studios in their respective countries. Clients including GlobeCast, APTN, Arqiva, Telenor and TVI, who all already lease permanent capacity on Eutelsat, will reinforce their resources on W2A, W7 and W3A for these transmissions.