The European Football Championship that will be held in Austria and Switzerland next summer will also be offered to rights holders in HDTV quality. FIFA will sell the rights for HDTV broadcasts separately to market parties. The complete infrastructure for transmitting signals from the various football stadiums to the International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Vienna, which will form the stronghold for transmitting television, audio and data signals worldwide, will be fully capable of transmitting of images in HDTV quality. The responsible companies Telekom-Austria and Swisscom announced this today.

From the football stadiums in Austria, Telekom-Austria will transport the images in HD quality to the IBC Vienna via fiber optic connections. From the Swiss football stadiums in Zurich, Basel, Bern and Geneva, Swisscom will transport the images to Vienna via fiber optic cable. As a backup, a data connection via satellite will be available at every football match. The images are transported as a data stream via the satellite to a central point.

Before the HD images are released to UEFA, a quality check will first take place at the IBC in Vienna. UEFA will then release the images to the rights holders for HDTV broadcasts of the European Football Championship in 2008. This process will take place before the start of each match so that the HD television channels can also show the matches live in high image quality.