Live Sports Are Driving Streaming Video Innovation

Streaming Media Global

The desire to keep sports relevant to the younger audience and connect with mobile media consumption habits is driving innovation online.

A not-so-bold prediction: This year’s Olympic Games will be the most streamed live event in history. I’ll take a bet too that Super Bowl 50 will be the most streamed NFL event ... until the next year’s Super Bowl. In turn, these will be surpassed by the Winter Olympics in 2018 and by matches from the FIFA World Cup later that summer. And so on.

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The leapfrogging of live streaming records is a trend across all programming, but reaches its peak around major sports events. The value of the game for rightsholders in attracting audiences, subscriptions, or ad dollars holds as true today as it has since Olympic telecasts began with the 1936 Berlin Games. The unique appeal of drama shared in the moment is now driving the live experience online, forcing broadcast rightsholders to adapt.

“There is a huge paradigm shift in the way sports goes to market,” says Stewart Mison, strategic director of sports business development for Microsoft. “The last great transformation 20 years ago was the introduction of multichannel TV. That gave deeper insight into sport for armchair fans, but not personalized insight. Now we have the opportunity to do just that.”

One could argue that online coverage does not yet match the quality of service or communal experience that viewer’s receive on their TV—figures borne out by TV audiences for events which are far in excess of online views. (Super Bowl XLIX racked up a record 1.3 million concurrent streamers for NBC Sports, but 112 million TV viewers.) On the other hand, what was Felix Baumgartner’s October 2012 Red Bull Stratos space jump other than a digital-only global extreme sports experience with 8 million concurrent live streams?

The sport itself matters. Super Bowls are single-event primetime U.S. TV viewing. By contrast, an Olympics typically takes place in different time zones, lasts 2 weeks, and includes multiple sports. Both, however, lend themselves to digital viewing in different ways.

Perhaps the primary one is that rightsholders and sports franchises are highly conscious of retaining Millennials, a demographic in danger of being priced out of live events, whether in person or on pay TV, and who prefer—at anytime, on any device—access to content that speaks a less studio-formal, more fan-driven language.

It is no coincidence that the sport showing highest audience growth is professional video gaming. A predominantly online and youth phenomenon, part of the esports appeal is the (largely) free viewing of live events such as “League of Legends” (27 million watched the final online while 25 million tuned into watch the final round of The Masters on TV) and the lack of territorial rights. Fans are as likely to view a game in South Korea from the U.S. as they are in Japan—geoblocking esports would probably stunt further growth.

To reach Digital Natives, broadcasters are demanding more value from sports organizations to whom they already pay billions of dollars. The collective value of TV rights for FIFA World Cups in 2018 and 2022 is more than $2.5 billion, of which Fox paid $450 million, five times more than ESPN paid for the previous two tournaments. In the U.K., BT and Sky collectively paid $7.8 billion for Premier League soccer matches from 2016–19, an increase of 70 percent over the last bundle. BT paid an additional $1.3 billion for three seasons of UEFA Champions League football. NBCU paid the IOC $7.75 billion to air a decade of Olympic Games from 2022–2032.

To maximize the value of rights, broadcasters and rightsholders must bring something complementary to viewing in the living room (or sports bar) while they protect their main TV revenue. Fresh research from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reveals the U.K. consumer still choosing their TV offer based on premium sports. In the quarter ending Sept. 30, Sky, BT, and Virgin Media all gained a share in overall market sales thanks to their strong sports offers. Notably, all three also increased the length or strength of their broadband discounts in the last quarter.

The tipping point is clear when examining the Olympics. The 2014 Sochi games marked the first time the amount of digital coverage worldwide (60,000 hours on 230 dedicated digital channels, including 155 websites and 75 apps) exceeded that of linear broadcasts (48,000 on 464 channels).

A record 10.8 million hours of video were consumed on NBC Olympics’ digital platforms, more than three times what was streamed for Vancouver 2010. Approximately 80 percent of the video was viewed via TV Everywhere-authenticated live streams on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra app.

“Sochi showed that the consumption of an Olympic Games on mobile and tablets is now as intense as that of traditional TV,” says Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS). “Digital is no longer marginal. It is the heart of future innovation for broadcasting.”

The IOC are billing Rio as the first real multiscreen games, where OBS will provide broadcasters with additional material—such as real-time statistic feeds, different angles, and super slow-motion sets—which can be packaged as a second screen experience.

New Production Techniques

Sports producers have consistently pioneered techniques designed to bring the experience of the game closer to home, whether by graphical analysis, wireless minicams, or live 3D. The current innovation around data, customizable coverage, and wearable cameras is ushering in a fundamental change in the way sport is presented and consumed. This media strategy is driven by the demand to reach audiences online.

The central idea is to exploit more of the content already captured from a live event and make it available over digital channels. For example, a typical UEFA Champions League match would be recorded by 15 cameras, while a final would more than double the camera options. A decade ago, only content produced as the main multilateral “world” feed would be available live, with additional shots—such as replay angles or slow-motion—only available postevent as a highlights reel.

Storage was a prohibitive issue. The number of hours produced by FIFA’s media producer HBS has risen over successive tournaments from 2,200 in 2006 to 5,000 in 2014 as the cost of storage has gone down and it’s become easier to manipulate files in fast-turnaround workflows. HBS designs a central storage system based on up to 20 EVS servers into which every feed from every game, plus rushes from ENG crews, is recorded. Similar systems are in place at every large sports event for rightsholders to exploit across digital platforms and postproduction broadcast.

UEFA has done just that for the 2015–2016 Champions League season, supplementing it with enhanced data feeds, on-air graphics, and infographics service. The intention is to gather more content from the venue and enable broadcasters to offer an enhanced digital experience. UEFA is also experimenting with an embedded audio watermark in the audio track of the world feed, enabling broadcasters to experiment with marketing strategies across second screens.

“A Lionel Messi goal would be watermarked linking the match action to a series of relevant additional content available on the viewer’s second screen,” says UEFA digital media solutions manager Olivier Gaches. “For example, further information about the player, an opportunity to view a selection of his previous Champions League goals, or an Adidas ecommerce promotion.”

To 4K and Beyond

The technology to produce 4K live has moved from workarounds to a fully fleshed-out equipment chain. A significant development has been the introduction by all the major manufacturers of systems cameras carrying two-thirds-inch chips rather than large format single sensors more suited for cinema. The two-thirds-inch cameras allow outside broadcasters to continue to use their existing inventory of zoomable lenses to maintain the characteristic depth of field of sports action.

New 4K wireless camcorders for touchline camera work are emerging, although it will take some time before the units are of a size and latency to be useful for minicams. Other missing elements include super slow-motion tools capable of generating 4K resolutions. The issue here is that the frame rate needs to be exceptionally high to offset light loss.

It is no coincidence that the first significant 4K live channels are sports channels distributed to the home over broadband. BT Sport was able to beat pay TV rival Sky to a 4K launch in August because its connection to customer homes is capable of download speeds up to 300Mbps, provided customers upgrade their package and add a YouView+ set-top box.

To achieve first-mover status, the telco compromised on production by launching with a 3G-SDI (serial digital interface) workflow, a workaround solution using conventional infrastructure. Although branded BT Sport Ultra HD, pedants could say the channel does not meet full fat UHD since it lacks high dynamic range.

“IP live is not yet ready,” BT Sport COO Jamie Hindhaugh said shortly after launch. “We are looking at IP and attributes like HDR, and how that integrates into 4K. Our focus is on being trailblazers and staying out in front.”

In North America, Canadian telco Rogers Communications has committed to broadcasting in 4K by the end of 2016. It will connect its cable footprint of 4 million homes to the internet at 1Gbps, branding the service Rogers Ignite and requiring customers to buy a new STB if they want to watch Toronto Blue Jays’ home games in the highest resolution. Rogers is in a perfect position to do this since it owns the Blue Jays and also has a stake (with CTV and Liberty Media) in sports network Sportsnet. Being later to market than BT, it is able to add HDR to the UHD mix.

The next big development, and one which is ripping out the fabric of broadcast production worldwide, is the migration from SDI to IP video transport. We discussed this movement in the article “Resistance is Futile” in the November issue (go2sm.com/resistance), but it’s worth highlighting the implications for sports.

The first is that IP will slash the cost of sending OB trucks and crew to mix a live directed feed at a venue. NBC Sports and other broadcasters have already made templates for large-scale remote production workflows for the Olympics, NASCAR, and NHL. Doing so, using technologies such as Avid’s online collaborative workspace, is said to have increased production output by more than 30 percent. Around Super Bowl XLIX, NBC crew in Phoenix were able to collaborate on programming with teams in Stamford, Conn., over Avid’s cloud-based MediaCentral.

Remote Production

Remote production over IP for onward distribution to sportscasters and team websites or YouTube is set to open up second- and third-tier leagues and sports to coverage. A key reference is Pac-12 Networks’ remote coverage of 850 annual sports events. It uses T-VIPS and Nevion links to transmit talkback and telemetry to and from venues up to 2,500 kilometers away. Doing so saves an estimated $15,000 per game, or $13 million a year.

A single 4K camera (or pair of them picture-stitched to provide a panoramic view) can be controlled remotely from a central production hub, making more games economical to produce. However, broadcasters will still send significant mobile setups to flagship events such as a Super Bowl or Ryder Cup, in order to command a more complex multicamera arrangement and generate wider coverage from talent on the ground.

Many broadcasters are looking to time their adoption of video over IP with a move to 4K/UHD. The economic argument is simple: A 10Gbps Ethernet cable can transmit much more efficiently and cost effectively than quad-link HD SDI cabling.

Experiments in this area require unprecedented collaboration among the notoriously proprietary broadcast equipment makers. One proof of concept has been demonstrated by integrator Gearhouse Broadcast in which an EVS IT-based DYVI switcher was shown cutting together 4K signals over 10Gbps fiber from Hitachi cameras. Sports producers need to be convinced that the signals can be encoded/decoded as necessary and cut together in synch with audio without latency—critical for any live broadcast.

It’s worth noting that experiments into 8K continue to concentrate on sports. Japanese broadcaster NHK, which plans to introduce 8K domestic transmissions ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, tested the format at the FIFA Women’s World Cup and at a New York Yankees game, and plans to do the same at Super Bowl 50—even while the NFL has announced no plans to broadcast games in 4K.

NHK has an agreement with FIFA to offer Super Hi-Vision—which combines 8K with a 22.2 surround sound system and 60 frames per second—transmission of the 2018 World Cup. Just as 4K capture is used by broadcasters such as Fox Sports to zoom into and resize pictures for HD output, so 8K cameras could soon be used for similar purpose for 4K output.

Aside from high spatial resolution, the Ultra HD road map passing through standards bodies SMPTE, DVB, and ATSC includes HDR, wider color gamut, frame rates up to 120p, 10-bit sampling, and immersive audio. With each new enhancement, the amount of data the network must transport increases demands on the entire live IP production infrastructure.

“There’s lots of work to be done on the delivery side before 4K is widely viable,” says Bill Wheaton, executive vice president and general manager of media products at Akamai. “We’re going to have to change the fundamental technologies of the internet. Ninety percent uptime [reliability] isn’t good enough. If consumers miss that one goal, they’re going to be frustrated.”

Akamai forecasts that 500 million viewers will soon be watching prime-time live sports online. “With 500 million online viewers, we need 1500Tbps. Today we do 32Tbps, so you can see the huge gap we have to bridge,” says Akamai’s director of product enablement and marketing, Ian Munford.

Akamai’s solution involves using HTTP/UDP to prevent packet loss and reduce latency, to speed the transit of content, and make it easier to handle unpredictable peaks within the CDN. It will also use multicasting, pre-positioning of content at the edge to bypass unpredictable events, and peer-assisted delivery using WebRTC.

Akamai is focusing these efforts around live workflows built especially for sports. “You will see a transition from broadcast toward IP because, unlike broadcast, the internet is not a limited platform but one that allows editorial to be creative with the experience,” Munford says. “And people will pay for that better experience.”

3D Audio

The unlocking of audio from the broadcast picture is likely to be the first creative iteration of object-based broadcasting, a potentially seismic shift in broadcast presentation predicated on the move to IP. Object-based broadcasting conceives of a program “like a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle,” according to BBCR&D, that is sent in pieces and can be reconstructed on-the-fly in a variety of ways just before the program is presented to the viewer.

Two proposals to update the audio delivery of UHD delivery are being considered by the Advanced Television Systems Committee as standard ATSC 3.0. Dolby’s AC-4 competes with MPEG-H, developed by an alliance of Fraunhofer IIS, Technicolor, and Qualcomm.

Both technologies promise greater interactivity by letting viewers adjust the presence of various audio objects in the broadcast signal. The user could choose a language, bring an announcer’s voice out of the background for enhanced clarity, listen to a specific race car driver communicating with his pit crew, or have the option of listening to either the home team or the visitor’s native broadcast mix depending on fan preference.

BBC R&D’s web application Venue Explorer, tested at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, is an example of how a broadcaster might provide viewers with separate audio mixes corresponding to the part of the scene that they wish to look at.

“When viewing a wide shot, the audio will convey the ambience of the stadium, similar to what would be heard by someone in the audience,” a BBC R&D blog reads. “As the viewer zooms in to an area, the audio is remixed to a broadcast feed corresponding to what is being seen.”

The implications are exercising minds today. As digital competes with—and in some cases exceeds—linear coverage, it brings a tension that producers have yet to resolve.

“Broadcasters have been very keen to control the production, but today everybody can curate the live event from multiple angles,” Exarchos says. “This most important challenge for broadcast is how to integrate more democratic storytelling into coverage of a sport event?”

Live sports are so compelling because they deliver those water cooler moments of drama that resonate around the world in an instant. “I don’t believe that with all the infinite choices that are offered to experience a sport there is not a need for a narrator,” Exarchos says. “The question is how we make the traditional directed narrative a more shareable experience?”

The answer is surely a closely marriage of broadcast-produced live pictures and commentary with social media reaction supplemented by greater user choice of content and data which will be played out over a giant and second screens as fans seek ever-closer immersion in the experience at the game.

Data Acquisition and Visualization

Wearable cameras and sensors are feeding the demand for an information-rich sports experience to mobile. In its report “Football’s Digital Transformation,” PwC predicts that a completely personalized user experience will become a natural expectation among fans.

MLB Advanced Media has been able to lead in this field, in part because of its control of media production for all 30 teams. Like the NFL (and unlike soccer), baseball’s regular in-game pauses provide a window to disseminate stats to fans who cannot get enough data.

Virtual Reality Live Streams 

The NBA’s Sacramento Kings became one of the first teams in professional sports to employ digital headgear when it broadcast to Google Glass augmented with graphical overlays live during home games in 2014. The technology allowed fans to witness the courtside experience through the eyes of the team mascot, cheerleaders, and sideline reporters, who streamed their first-person views. While Google has benched Glass, new streaming experiences have retrained on the anticipated mass market for smartphone-adapted virtual reality gear. Leading the charge is NextVR, with a system of stitching and encoding multicamera streams based on R&D for 3D TV transmission. The producer has its own rig of RED cameras and tested the service with many sports organizations including NASCAR, NHL, and NBA games which will look to monetize a pay-per-view experience this year.

Social Media Fuels Ignition

The Formula E motorsport series enters its second season. The 10-race series, which is marketed to Millennials, is organized by the FIA using more environmentally friendly electric powered vehicles. It races on street circuits (in Paris, Beijing, Malaysia, and Long Beach) and allows fans to potentially influence the outcome of the race, perhaps making it unique in major professional sports.

FanBoost gives three drivers with the most votes on social media prior to each race a 5-second power boost per car, per driver, temporarily increasing their car’s power from 150kw (202.5bhp) to 180kw (243bhp).

“Viewers don’t just passively watch. They influence the outcome from second screens,” says Ali Russell, CMO of Formula E Holdings.

Drivers are encouraged to interact with fans too. One of the most active, China Racing’s Nelson Piquet, Jr., won the inaugural championship.

“Fan boost is hugely successful in the Far East because fans don’t have any of the preconceptions that fans in Europe might have,” says Russell.

FIFA World Cup Streaming

Internet traffic during successive FIFA World Cups has grown tenfold to 222 petabytes between 2010 and 2014. For the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament, HBS delivered 2,799,360 minutes of live video streams to multiscreen viewers via tech provider EVS and processed through the Elemental Cloud.

The Brazil World Cup was the first where viewers were able to use second screens to watch games from multiple camera angles and play back clips on-demand during a live match. Rightsholders could use turnkey apps and video players to deliver customized multiscreen services with this functionality.

EVS used C-Cast, the distribution platform connecting HBS’ live production to a central cloud-based platform, to supply rightsholders with six live mixed ABR video streams from 14 camera angles per game. The service also provisioned 17 unilateral video streams plus four audio commentaries. Using Elemental Cloud, EVS was able to process and deliver multiangle live coverage to 24 million mobile and web viewers worldwide.

EVS delivered live ingests to Elemental Cloud using Aspera FASP. According to Elemental, the efficiency and speed of the workflow meant that streams were delivered from source to viewer screens at latency levels comparable to satellite broadcasts. Over the course of the monthlong 64-match tournament, Elemental Cloud estimates it ingested and streamed 35,280 hours of video.

According to EVS, on-demand multiangle replays are the most consumed additional content distributed by sportscasters as part of a digital package. “It’s a staple feature of PVRs, but having the ability to do this from a smartphone or tablet is the perfect example of being able to consume the broadcast experience on the go,” says Nicolas Bourdon, senior vice president of marketing for EVS.