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Dantoto Racing Live: The best in horse racing via GigaContent

Dantoto Racing Live - a subsidiary of Danske Spil - is one of Denmark's biggest producers of live television. Every day Dantoto produces five to six hours of live broadcasting from thoroughbred and harness racing events all over the country. Every Wednesday 90 minutes of live coverage of the weeks V5 races is delivered to main broadcaster TV2 Sport in full HD quality via the GigaContent network.

The management of Dantoto Racing Live in Brøndby are not in doubt: Live, high quality footage is a critical part of the overall experience when betting on horses. GigaContent has been instrumental in delivering a solution allowing Dantoto and TV2 Sport HD to work together to deliver live broadcasts from the most attractive events in harness and thoroughbred racing.

DantotoHeste

All systems go

Dantoto is very satisfied with the stable and secure GigaContent solution.

- We have been very happy about GigaContent's services in connection with our partnership with TV2 Sport and TV2 Sport HD. GigaContent have kept their promises to the letter, and we have never had any problems, says Rolf Lau Laugesen, marketing coordinator for Dantoto Racing Live.

Dantoto also delivers 10-12 minutes of daily, fully produced coverage of the V5 races of the day to TV2 Sport via the GigaContent network. The short programme, which covers the racing highlights of the day, is broadcast in the evenings on the SD-channel of TV2 Sports. This amounts to as much as 260 programmes a year, Mr Lau Laugesen says.

GigaAccess in one direction

Dantoto has acquired a flexible and cost-efficient one-way GigaAccess connection, which connects the headquarters of Dantoto in Brøndby to the GigaContent's national grid. Usually Dantoto employs this connection to send footage and sound in high quality to TV2 Sport's main broadcast facility in Jenagade, Amager, south of Copenhagen.

Technically the solution consists of an encoder for coding and compression of video- and audio signals, and an intercom system for internal communications. The connection has a bandwidth of 1G bit, which makes it possible for Dantoto to send one relatively lightly compressed HD channel and one SD channel to any destination on the GigaContent grid.

The technical solution from GigaContent replaces a more traditional connection, which previously was supplied by TDC. TDC no longer supplies connections of this type.

The future: More international horse racing

Dantoto's management would also like to see the idea behind GigaContent expanded to include services and live feeds from other Nordic countries, including Sweden, Norway, and Finland. This would provide Dantoto with the opportunity to expand their programming and to offer more race coverage to Danish horse racing fans both via TV and the Web.

- It would clearly make betting on horse racing more attractive if we for example via the GigaContent network could get access to live TV from the race courses in the Nordic capitals. Today it's already possible to bet on Nordic races but without TV coverage. Live TV always generates a lot more interest, says Mr Laugesen.

GigaContent's technical experts are now looking into the possibilities of connecting the Danish GigaContent network to equivalent Swedish and Norwegian networks, and expect to have resolved the issue this year.

Dantoto Racing Live broadcasts live horse racing on their own TV channel, which is transmitted to Danish viewers on the Canal Digital network every day from 12 noon to 1.30 p.m. and again from 6.00 to 10.00 pm. According to Dantoto Racing horse racing in Denmark has an approximate fixed audience of around 6.000 viewers. The organisation is 80% owned by the Danish government, and betting on horses represents approximately 5.5% of the organisations total turnover.

Read more about Danske Spil and Dantoto on www.danskespil.dk.