How Telycam Vision+ 4KN Powered Mexico's Premier Charrería Championship
Capturing Precision in Dust and Dirt
Dust in the air. Hooves on the ground. And every moment live. At the XXIX Campeonato Millonario "Don Félix Bañuelos Jiménez" in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, three Telycam Vision+ 4KN cameras were tasked with keeping pace with one of Mexico's fastest, dustiest, and most demanding live sports broadcasts.
01 / The Event
A Showcase of High-Level Charrería
Since 1998, the Bañuelos organization has run the Campeonato Millonario "Don Félix Bañuelos Jiménez," a major showcase of high-level charrería, Mexico's traditional equestrian sport. The event brings together experienced charro teams and escaramuzas, women's teams that compete in precision riding, at the Lienzo Charro Rancho Santa María in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco.
Across the championship's eleven days, spectators watch AA- and AAA-level charreadas, along with some of the sport's signature events — the Coleadero Millonario, the Pialadero de las Estrellas, and the Caladeros Millonarios, including the well-known Caladero Futurity.
Charrería is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and is built around speed and precision. In disciplines such as the caladero, a horse and rider can cover the full length of the lienzo, or arena, in a matter of seconds, with a run often decided by a single, split-second maneuver.
02 / The Challenge
Wide-Area Coverage Meets Outdoor Durability
That combination of speed, distance, and continuous outdoor operation created four distinct challenges for the broadcast team.
Speed and Unpredictable Movement
Unlike a scripted studio segment, nothing about a charreada run follows a fixed path. A horse can accelerate, cut, or change direction with no warning, and a PTZ camera that lags in tracking or drifts out of focus for even a moment can lose the exact instant a run is won or lost.
Distance and Detail Across a Long, Open Arena
The lienzo is wide and outdoors, and the moments that matter most — the position of the reins, the footwork of the horse, the rider's technique — often happen far from any single fixed camera position. Capturing that detail meant reaching across real distance without the image breaking down as the lens zoomed in.
Coverage for Action and Scoring
Beyond following the horses themselves, the broadcast also needed steady, reliable shots of judges' panels and other fixed points around the arena — angles used for scoring review and instant replay rather than continuous action tracking. The camera system therefore needed to handle two very different production requirements: fast-moving action and stable, repeatable coverage.
Eleven Days of Dust, Heat, and Continuous Operation
With thousands of horses and riders competing across more than a week of back-to-back events, the arena's dirt surface stays in constant motion. Camera equipment left in position all day has to keep working through fine airborne dust, direct sun, and hours of continuous PTZ movement without a break in coverage.
03 / The Solution
Engineered for Dynamic Outdoor Arena Coverage
Three Telycam Vision+ 4KN PTZ cameras were deployed across the lienzo, giving the production a broadcast-grade footprint without a broadcast-scale crew.
Wide-Area Framing & Smooth Tracking
With a 12x optical zoom and native 4K60 output, the Vision+ 4KN gave operators the range to work both ends of a shot — pulling back to frame the full sweep of a horse and rider crossing the lienzo, or zooming in on a specific detail, without losing image sharpness across the full optical range.
The pan/tilt head is driven by precision motors, giving operators fluid tracking during a run and accurate, repeatable return to preset positions between them — useful for cutting quickly back to a judges' panel or a fixed reference shot once the action moved on. Paired with an autofocus system tuned for fast-changing scenes, the cameras held sharp focus through the sudden shifts in trajectory and distance that define a charreada run.
Single-Cable NDI Ecosystem & Replay Workflow
Each camera ran over a single CAT6 cable via NDI®, carrying 4K video, PoE+ power, and PTZ control together. That meant no separate SDI runs across an arena with heavy foot traffic — cutting down on both the cabling itself and the time needed to lay and protect it.
All three feeds were routed via NDI directly into a Vizrt 3Play production system, giving the team a single point to switch between cameras and pull up instant replays of key moments. That replay capability served two purposes at once: production value for the live broadcast, and a second look for judges' scoring reviews in disciplines where a call comes down to a detail worth confirming from more than one angle.
Field-Tested Reliability
Across eleven consecutive days of competition — and eleven days of airborne dust and direct outdoor exposure — all three Vision+ 4KN units stayed in position and in operation for the full run of the championship, without a break in coverage.
The Impact
By the end of the championship, the Vision+ 4KN cameras had delivered the crisp, broadcast-grade 4K detail that premium sports coverage depends on. This level of visual reliability is critical for monetized streaming platforms and paid subscriber models, where motion jitter, focus hunting, or a missed action directly impact viewer experience and subscription value.
Redefining Outdoor Sports Broadcast
From horse racing and equestrian competitions to rodeos, polo matches, motocross, and other fast-moving outdoor sports, the same combination of demands shows up again and again: long distances, unpredictable movement, and punishing field conditions that don't let up for the length of an event. The Campeonato Millonario put the Vision+ 4KN through exactly that combination for eleven straight days — and it's the kind of proving ground that makes the case for where the camera belongs next.
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