For the first time in 12 years and for only the third time ever, the UAE hosted the 18th Arabian Gulf Cup, where the best players from a footballing zone came together and battle it out. Lighting designer Paul Collison used two grandMA and 11 NSP’s to light the opening ceremony in Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Stadium.

Collison explains his choice of the MA technology: “I always use MA Technology. In my opinion it is the most reliable and flexible control system available. The support from MA is second to none. At no point do I feel alone when building a control system with MA. Yet again MA proved that controlling over 20 DMX streams to 400+ moving lights is easy. I was able to build the show on the console and create a 3D model with ease. This was giving me the opportunity to pre-program parts of the show and set myself up for programming,” he explains. “Expansion via the NSP nodes was just so easy. I can’t express how simply the whole system goes together. I am very, very happy with the MA control system. This show was confirmed 44 days before execution—an amazing effort by all involved to produce a world-class ceremony in such a short time. “

The lighting equipment consisted amongst others of 280x Mac 2000 Wash, 88x Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200, 48x VL3000 Spot, and 14x BigLite 4.5 among others. Eight towers outside the stadium supported a 20m-diameter truss circle. On the leading edge of the stadium roof were 16x 12m trusses were attached, each contained 8x Mac 2000 Wash and 3x VL3000 Spot. Placed around the field were 32x boxes in an 80m diameter circle, each contained 2x Mac 2000 Wash and 2x Alpha Spot 1200.

Andrew Walsh was creative director and Nick Eltis was technical director for the event. Philby Lewis worked as the lighting production manager Matthias Rau as the production manager, Procon as the crew chief for Procon. All lighting was supplied by Procon, the truss circle was done by E.S.S and Stage One.

A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive North American distributor for the grandMA.