Event Control Center (ECC) is a Netherlands-based technology company focused on enhancing safety, communication, and situational awareness at large-scale events. The company was founded through a strategic collaboration between three leading players in the Dutch event industry: Crowd Care, specialists in crowd management and event safety; GIGTECH, specialists in event connectivity, CCTV, and IT solutions; and FE Telecom, specialists in radio communication, CCTV, and mobile command units.
By combining their expertise, Event Control Center developed the Showcase: an advanced, multifunctional workstation housed in a robust flight case. Designed specifically for the dynamics of live events and productions, the Showcase enables a fully operational, professional Event Control Center to be deployed within a very short time, virtually anywhere in the world.
The Challenge
Ahead of an exceptionally busy summer festival season in 2025, covering more than twenty large-scale events across almost every weekend, Event Control Center identified the need for a major upgrade to its crowd control infrastructure. The requirements were clear: maximum reliability, seamless interoperability across different venues and emergency service partners, and an intuitive system that could be operated effortlessly by users with varying technical skill levels.
To meet these demands, Event Control Center partnered with PlexusAV. Together with video technology partner Creative Technology, they developed a next-generation solution based on open standards, using the PlexusAV Platform and IPMX as the foundation. The ambition was clear: to set a new benchmark for modern Event Control Centers.
Why PlexusAV
According to Ruud van Buren, Event Safety Manager at Crowd Care, conventional solutions no longer met the operational demands of contemporary events.
“We initially considered two paths: a traditional SDI or copper-based solution, or a more common AV-over-IP approach such as NDI. However, because our control center needs to operate seamlessly across multiple venues and with a wide range of emergency service partners, neither option fully met our needs. Traditional SDI solutions lacked flexibility, while typical AV-over-IP systems often struggle with interoperability,” Van Buren explains.
“We needed a solution that was reliable, intuitive, and fast to deploy. Operators must have instant access to critical video feeds—monitoring entrance queues, identifying safety issues near the stage, or receiving mobile camera streams. During a hectic summer season, quick setup and easy relocation are essential. The system reduces stress for operators and event organizers, and ultimately helps keep people safe.”
After seeing the PlexusAV Platform in action at ISE 2025, Event Control Center immediately recognized its potential.
The Power of the Showcase
While an Event Control Center itself is not new, the real innovation lies in how it is organized, deployed, and experienced by its users. This is where the Showcase truly stands out.
The temporary nature of events has long been one of the sector’s biggest challenges. Every production is unique, and every location is temporary. The Showcase addresses this by creating an organized, ergonomic, and calm working environment in a matter of minutes—one that feels like a permanent control room. This enables dispatchers and operators to work comfortably, efficiently, and healthily for extended periods.
At any event, the Event Control Center acts as the operational nerve center. Security, first aid, traffic management, production, technical teams, and local authorities work side by side. By consolidating camera feeds, communication channels, crowd data, and external inputs such as weather information into a single, shared real-time overview, decision-making becomes faster and more effective, especially when every second counts.
A further distinguishing feature of the Showcase is its location independence. Leveraging modern connectivity and the PlexusAV Platform, the Event Control Center can operate partially or entirely remotely. Stakeholders can monitor, communicate, or even manage entire disciplines from anywhere in the world, ensuring continuity of operations even when physical presence is not possible.
After the busy 2025 season “the word was out” and new projects knocked on Event Control Center’s door. Because of these new projects, Event Control Center had to expand their fleet of Showcases and therefore invested in 29 P-AVN-2 Encoders/Decoders, 2 additional PlexusAV Visual Array (P-AVN-VA) and 2 additional PlexusAV Stream Conversion Gateway (P-AVN-SCG). All these were delivered in Q1-2026 and built into the Showcases in order to be ready for another busy summer season.
One of our highlights for 2026 was in Seoul, Korea. On March 21, the world watched as BTS made their comeback with ARIRANG, a groundbreaking live event held at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. With over 100,000 attendees, a historic city center, and a global Netflix broadcast. It was a production in which operational control and situational awareness were of critical importance.
The PlexusAV Solution
2025 – Starting up
At the heart of the upgraded system is the PlexusAV Stream Conversion Gateway (P-AVN-SCG). This powerful gateway translates multiple AV-over-IP formats into a native IPMX network, effectively bridging technologies such as NDI, SRT, and RTSP. As a result, feeds from fixed venue cameras, mobile units, emergency services, and remote locations can interoperate seamlessly, including secure WAN-based video transport.
Event Control Center also implemented the PlexusAV Visual Array (P-AVN-VA) as its central management platform. This provides unified configuration and control of all PlexusAV and IPMX-enabled devices, rapid device discovery, and an intuitive browser-based interface with full support for open standards such as IPMX and NMOS.
For encoding and decoding, twenty PlexusAV P-AVN-4 transceivers were deployed. These were selected for their high performance, support for JPEG XS, H.264, and H.265, ultra-low latency, robust scaling, and future-proof IPMX integration.
2026 – The word is out!
After the busy 2025 season “the word was out” and new projects knocked on Event Control Center’s door. Because of these new projects, Event Control Center had to expand their fleet of Showcases and therefore invested in 29 P-AVN-2 Encoders/Decoders, 2 additional PlexusAV Visual Array (P-AVN-VA) and 2 additional PlexusAV Stream Conversion Gateway (P-AVN-SCG). All these were delivered in Q1-2026 and built into the Showcases in order to be ready for another busy summer season.
One of our highlights for 2026 was in Seoul, Korea. On March 21, the world watched as BTS made their comeback with ARIRANG, a groundbreaking live event held at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. With over 100,000 attendees, a historic city center, and a global Netflix broadcast. It was a production in which operational control and situational awareness were of critical importance.
For this event, Event Control Center deployed multiple Showcases for the Joint Agency Control Center (JACC), enabling all stakeholders to operate from a single shared operational picture. Within a few hours, the JACC was fully operational and integrated:
- Live and recorded CCTV camera feeds (events, city, traffic, and security)
- Incident management and operational dashboards
- weather and traffic information
- broadcast and program feeds
The result: a single, integrated, real-time operational overview of the entire 1.4-kilometer-long event area and the surrounding streets. All information is immediately accessible. All decisions are data driven.
In April/May Event Control Center had several high-profile events like Kingsday in Dokkum, where the King and his family visited the village, live broadcasted on TV. Event Control Center deployed 24 Showcases for the production company, with a separate batch for the police. A few days later 6 Showcases were deployed for the city of Leeuwarden for a championship celebration of football club Cambuur and Liberation Day Festival.
Event Control Center ended May with a large Pentecost festival in The Netherlands which brings together tens of thousands of campers and day guests for a weekend full of worship, deepening and meeting. Event Control Center delivered their largest setup with 24 Showcases, 12 LED Screens and over 40 Plexus AVN devices to help the organization of this festival for a smooth operation.
For the following weeks & months Showcase will be used at various events & festivals around the world.
The Results
The impact of the new system exceeded expectations. Operations became simpler, more robust, and significantly more interoperable than with previous solutions.
“By selecting PlexusAV’s IPMX-centric technology, our control center is easier to operate, far more interoperable across formats and partners, more bandwidth-efficient, and more robust than many other systems we’ve used,” says Ruud van Buren. “New users can be operational within minutes of arriving on site, and system updates can be completed in seconds. Even moderately technical personnel can securely plug in and instantly access all on-site and mobile camera feeds.”
True interoperability proved to be a key strength, successfully integrating legacy systems, mixed-format sources, emergency service feeds, and WAN connections using SRT and RTSP. Bandwidth efficiency was another decisive factor. Support for H.264 and H.265 significantly reduced network load without compromising image quality—critical for temporary venues with limited infrastructure.
Throughout the demanding 2025 summer festival season and the first part of 2026, the system performed flawlessly, achieving 100% reliability and remaining fully operational for future deployments.
Industry Perspective
Bastian Stolk, Product Manager at PlexusAV, sees the project as a clear reflection of where the industry is heading:
“Event Control Center’s requirements perfectly reflect the direction of the market: systems that are not only powerful, but also flexible, interoperable, and easy to deploy in demanding real-world environments. This project demonstrates how open standards and IPMX remove traditional barriers, enabling diverse technologies, partners, and venues to connect seamlessly while maintaining reliability and ease of use. Seeing the solution perform consistently across such a busy festival season has been incredibly rewarding for our team.”
Schlussfolgerung
The Showcase is the result of collaboration and the fusion of expertise. It demonstrates how cooperation between leading event companies leads to practical, scalable innovation. In essence, the Showcase transforms a temporary event into a professionally organized operation: flexible, scalable, and future-ready. Not a collection of individual components, but one cohesive, well-designed solution for modern event management.
