LiveU has announced a landmark deployment with the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) that has brought Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) to the Pacific Islands for the first time – closing a gap that had existed since VAR was first introduced to the game.

For years, the OFC had been the only FIFA confederation operating without VAR – a gap raised directly with FIFA, only to conclude that traditional deployment was effectively impossible for Pacific football. Standard broadcast equipment freighted across the region faced repeated customs delays and damage at island ports, and high-capacity fiber doesn’t exist across island nations like Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tahiti.

Any fixed-infrastructure approach was unworkable before a ball was even kicked. When VAR was mandated for the OFC’s newly launched Pro League – spanning eight teams from six nations – LiveU made remote VAR possible for the first time.

“We were the only confederation in the world without VAR – and we knew, with traditional models, it would never happen for us,” says Kevin Stoltenkamp, OFC head of refereeing. “When I saw it working for the first time, I realised – this can work. Now, we can take the system as baggage on a plane and deliver VAR anywhere. For us, accessibility is everything. It’s not just about technology – it’s about people solving problems together.”

Working closely with the OFC’s refereeing and technology teams, LiveU designed and built a complete end-to-end remote integration system to support the Hawk-Eye VAR platform – two portable transmission kits and a centralised receiving server in the Auckland hub – supporting up to 12 simultaneous camera feeds with four return feeds carrying integrated two-way referee communications back to the field.

The entire system achieves approximately one second of round-trip latency between remote Pacific venues and the Auckland hub, meeting FIFA’s professional standards at a fraction of the cost of any comparable fixed-infrastructure deployment.

Each LiveU transmission kit was engineered specifically for travel – designed to pass through check-in as standard baggage, with every component individually weight-checked to stay within airline limits. Deployable by a single operator over managed internet connections, the kits require no freight, no permanent infrastructure, and no specialist engineers on the ground.

“We needed something lightweight, portable, and capable of delivering multiple camera feeds with audio – without relying on freight,” explains Kelvin Lewis, OFC Referee technology lead. “Within a very short time, we realised we could transmit broadcast-quality signals across even the most challenging networks. What we’ve built is a low-cost, high-quality VAR solution that’s unique in world football. We went from manually editing clips on a hill to delivering full VAR capability – that’s the scale of change.”

The deployment was built so that local Pacific Island technicians could own and operate it independently. “The system is simple to use – you don’t need to be highly technical to operate it,” adds Mihaly Fabian, OFC VAR project manager. “LiveU is the heart of the system… the technology is essential to making this work.”

The OFC evaluated several technology suppliers before selecting LiveU – ultimately choosing it because the solution was built on LiveU’s existing platform rather than a custom build. The system achieved a 100% success rate across all proof-of-concept deployments, with issues diagnosed and resolved remotely from Auckland without the need for engineers on the ground at Pacific Island venues.

The deployment has already expanded beyond the OFC Pro League – deployed for the New Zealand Football FIFA Series and OFC’s Women’s World Cup qualifying semifinals in Hamilton and final in Auckland, a FIFA-sanctioned competition. The next deployment takes the system to Tahiti.

“What the OFC has achieved here is a working blueprint – broadcast-quality remote VAR, deployable anywhere, with no freight, no fixed infrastructure, and no specialist engineers on the ground,” says LiveU’s Chris Dredge. “The attention this has already drawn from beyond Oceania tells you everything, changing the conversation for sports organisations everywhere.”

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