Counting several areas of presence, they are especially involved in video production and broadcast. The company is Swiss and the name is “Wire Team”, owners of several ob-vans completely devoted to sports tv production.
9th May 2012
These vehicles are well equipped with a lot of suitable equipments for global services, actually they comprise proper means of broadcasting including mobile and fixed uplinks.
The company is definitely “sports oriented” since they are all sports specialized and do not own any other traditional tv facility like theaters and fixed control rooms.
So, sports programs are their main revenue, actually around 80% of income derives from this kind of programming.
We spoke to Severino Albertoni, CEO, of this very dynamic team which headquarter is is in Switzerland, not far from the Italian border.
With some twenty years background and a previous history with a couple of other company denominations, they reached their present style, “Wire Team S.A”, a few years ago and settled for Montagnola, as main branch office, at the suburbs of Lugano.
The areas covered are the whole world, actually their productions span globally, from the Moto Mondiale, to the UEFA Cup, and many, many other international competitions.
They never operate own productions, since their profile is being a service for world main broadcasters, a part from few rare production for Switzerland like the Gran Premio (cycling) of Lugano Town.
They boast a great parade of ob-vans mostly engineered "in the house" both mechanically and technically, due to their internal technical skills.
Besides, in 2009 the company acquired a part of a well known Italian firm, Valerio Maioli of Ravenna, and a part of their ob-vans fleet.
These vehicles had been built by the previous owner, but, since acquisition, all necessary implementations on these and other vans have been carried out internally, including cabling, new equipments supplying and the rest.
On board
It is easy to foresee that all vehicles are equipped with the latest breakthroughs, and at the same time it seems no “general” common choices have been made, that is there is no standard equipments on board; and a long list of equipments of the most renowned manufacturers can be seen on board, including makes like Sony and Grass Valley both for video mixers and tv cameras.
Mr. Albertoni points out: "In 2009, after incorporating part of Valerio Maioli, we could finally tackle a new market, since we previously owned only small and medium vehicles, and from that date on we could finally be engaged in larger operations with bigger ob-vans, even in the form on host broadcaster, for some events. Today we own and operate some twenty ob-vans of different dimensions and features, including tenders and electricity generators vehicles."
The team and the market
Present production team iso composed of some fixed 25 employees, including managing, accounting and production personnel, plus freelancers which have an important role too.
Wire Team main market is mostly concentrated on Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.
They are completely absorbed by sports events and their ob-vans are engaged every Sunday in events like "Campionato di Calcio" Italy, Serie A, Moto Mondiale, Moto GP, Formula Uno, Champions Leauge and Euroliga.
Wire Team function is often of important integration of video contents for foreign markets, and besides, they follow the Swiss Soccer Championship, Basketball, hockey, and many other disciplines. In Italy they tare also care of many other "minor" sports and events like Italian Basketball, and every Sunday, in the proper season, they are on the field for Italian younger soccer talents “Giovani speranze”.
