The 2026 FIFA World Cup is not just bigger on the pitch. For Host Broadcast Services, FIFA’s appointed host broadcaster, it is also a much larger test of centralised live sports production.
The tournament will cover 104 matches across 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Instead of treating each venue as a mostly self-contained broadcast island, HBS is routing major parts of the operation back to the International Broadcast Centre in Dallas, housed at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
FIFA has said the Dallas IBC spans about 45,000 square metres and will support around 2,000 broadcast media representatives during the tournament. It will act as the central hub for television, radio and digital media operations, with HBS, FIFA media partners and FIFA production teams working from the site.
According to RedShark News, HBS plans to use 45 cameras per match across all fixtures, including conventional broadcast cameras alongside polecams, cablecams, RefCams, cine-style cameras, 360-degree systems and other digital-first devices. That camera count is the headline, but the more interesting part is what happens after the pictures leave the stadium.
TVBEurope reports that HBS is using an IP-based production network built around SMPTE ST 2110, the broadcast standard used to move video, audio and data as separate streams over managed networks. The setup also uses JPEG XS, a low-latency compression format designed for professional video where delay matters. In plain English: this is the plumbing that lets a central facility handle live pictures from far-flung venues without making the match feel like a video call from 2007.
RedShark reports that Verizon’s broadcast distribution network will carry venue feeds back to Dallas with a stated capacity of 7 Tb/s. Verizon is also said to have upgraded stadium connectivity, with expected match-day data usage above 50 TB at some venues. Those figures should be treated as reported technical claims, but they give a sense of the scale HBS is preparing for.
The Dallas hub is expected to handle work including replay, graphics, camera shading, data processing, Video Assistant Referee operations and stadium IPTV. Some replay operators will still be stationed on-site as a safeguard, which is the sensible bit. Centralisation may reduce travel, improve consistency and concentrate specialist staff, but live sport remains wonderfully intolerant of theory.
The operational signal is clear enough. Premium sports production is not abandoning venues, trucks or people on the ground. It is redistributing where the specialist work happens. For broadcasters, production companies and vendors, World Cup 2026 is another high-profile example of live production becoming less about one fully loaded stadium compound and more about a managed network of venues, central hubs and remote specialists.
That does not make centralised production easy, cheap or risk-free. It moves the pressure onto connectivity, redundancy, monitoring and clear fallback plans. When 104 matches are being fed to the world, the most important piece of kit may not be the flashiest camera. It may be the unglamorous network path that keeps the pictures arriving in Dallas.