SVG Europe
After the great
lengths the industry went to to keep sports on air during the pandemic it was a
time for reflection, commendation and assessment of what comes next as the
European sports broadcasting and production community convened at SVG Europe’s
Sport Production & Technology Summit 2021.
It wasn’t lost on
those attending the summit at Stamford Bridge, home to Chelsea FC, that this
was a welcome occasion to get back in the room with friends and colleagues.
Hosted by sports
reporter and TV presenter Natalie Quirk and sponsored by Panasonic,
the conference and networking event was capped by the Sports TV Awards,
sponsored by Canon, honouring the outstanding companies, teams and individuals
that pushed sports broadcasting and production forward under perhaps the most
challenging conditions ever.
Attendees had a
chance to hear first-hand from thought leaders from Sky Sports, F1, NEP and
Mediapro in extended round table conversations. Many shared similar experiences
of guts and innovation in getting live sports back to air and now face the task
of cementing the technologies and workflows that will continue to deliver
remote and hybrid productions.
The sheer speed of
change enforced by the pandemic has driven the adoption of IP and cloud
workflows and tools, but this has also left a gap in skills that needs
addressing.
Delegates also had
a chance to hear the thoughts of SVG Europe sponsors about how their product
and solutions strategies are responding to the ongoing evolution of sports
broadcasting and production workflows.
Chris Clarke, CEO
and co-founder, Cerberus Tech, said that his company had perfected the idea of
self-service (or self-provisioning) where tools and services are accessed over
IP and in the cloud.
“Many of the core
functions like IP distribution and transcoding is a commodity function. We
should be able to open that up to button pushers anywhere. That’s how we think
IP and cloud will scale.”
M2A Media, another
cloud native company, noted that more premium sports brands have adopted cloud
workflows over the past year and this trend was only set to grow.
Marc Risby,
managing director and CTO, Digibox, made the point that vendors and users now
face decisions on keeping, pruning and prioritising the technologies that were
adopted in haste at the beginning of lockdown.
“Companies,
including ourselves, need to harden their systems and decide what to keep. It’s
clear to us that SRT is going mainstream for delivery over the public internet,
that NDI has taken a big leap and IP has suddenly been pushed forward much quicker,”
he said.
Hawk-Eye deploys
both hardware and specialist operators at venues and has had to reappraise its
approach. “We were forced to think about doing so in completely different
ways,” said Rasmus Larsson, product director, Sony Sports (Hawk-Eye Innovations
and Pulselive). “When we move to IP and cloud we are minimising the space
between linear and digital, and that enables us to do things we couldn’t do
before using more automation and combinations of AI/ML and tracking
technology.”
Per Lindgren, CTO,
Net Insight, said: “In the move to cloud we need reliability, quality and
security as well as better synchronisation of data, video and audio, but I
think the bigger shift is not one of technology but one more related to
business models. Vendors have to offer more flexibility on price and move
towards software as a service business models because that is what customers
want.”
Telstra’s head of
global sales Anna Lockwood talked about the company’s rapid transformation to
meet customer requirements. “We knew cloud and internet was something customers
were asking for. We acquired MediaCloud in June this year that gave us a suite
of significant software-defined and cloud-based capabilities, more than 70
cloud experts and a new MCR in London Docklands that is equipped with the
capability to support major global companies and events.”
When the pandemic
hit it wasn’t just broadcasters that were cut off. The fanbase was locked out
of venues too. “We worked with a lot of broadcasters to make their broadcast
more engaging by bringing the audience in and making them feel part of a
community,” said Karl Kathuria, customer solutions director, Never.no. “It’s
created a shift to an interesting format that gives people a chance to make
their voice heard.”
Super Cup
BT Media &
Broadcast showcased the connectivity it designed, installed and managed for BT
Sport’s host production of the UEFA Super Cup on 11 August from Windsor Park,
Belfast. Matters were complicated by the lack of native connectivity at the
venue and the short timeframe in which to turn this around.
Laura Tressler,
head of sales and client management, explained: “We needed to deliver 22 Gigs
of bandwidth to carry 46 visions and data feeds in under 30 days from a venue
that was not fibred. Typically, it takes 45 days to design, transport, install
and test links for an event of this scale.”
The logistics of
travelling trucks across the channel was another consideration but one that
might be ameliorated with future advances in software defined networking (SDN).
“In the future we see a time where we can reduce trucks on site by introducing
flight case solutions and SDN which will allow us to preconfigure kit and
optimise bandwidth in a better way,” said Tressler.
America’s Cup
Telstra Broadcast
Services spotlighted its delivery of the America’s Cup, originally planned to
be raced in Europe then diverted to Auckland when COVID hit.
“We had to
reinvent,” said Steven Dargham, head of major events at the company. “We put in
a remote production capable network that allowed us to ingest 44 video sources
(including two on chase boats, two on helis and 10 on each boat) and deliver to
150 counties and 50 broadcasters as well as live streaming for Facebook,
YouTube and the America’s Cup website.
“We took a
multilayer multiservice approach, deploying a high-speed, high-bandwidth media
fibre network and on top of this a remote operation from Sydney. We also
deployed media edge kit to do H.264 and H.265 and devices capable of Zixi, RIST
and RTMP.
Telstra said it was
the world’s most watched event in 2020 with 941 million viewers across all
screens (a record for the America’s Cup) representing a 3.2% increase in
dedicated viewers compared to the previous race in 2017.
Roadmaps
Executives also
cast forward to 2022. On Sky Sports’ roadmap, virtual production is the next
big area of investment; Mediapro plans to expand its HDR experience to other
sports, increase the number of AR graphics in live production and “to change
the mentality of SDI fans about discovering the magic of the IP world”,
according to CTO and operations manager Emili Planas Quintana.
HDR is also on the
cards at F1 and it’s at an advanced stage, with its most recent test during the
United States GP in Austin, Texas. “There is still some work to do around
making sure our SDR product looks great,” said Trevor Turner, F1’s head of new
technologies for broadcast & media. “We have a huge variety of camera
sources from cars to helicams [needing to co-opt into the workflow] to achieve
an HDR and SDR quality product while controlling it all from the UK.”
“It’s close,” he
hinted.
SVG Europe Sports TV Awards
The level of
innovation and ingenuity demonstrated by the entries to the Sports TV Awards
2021 illustrated the capacity for innovation within Europe’s sports television
industry.
Chair of judges and
SVG Europe advisory board member Peter Angell said: “The quality of work and
entries were incredibly high in-spite, or probably because of, the challenges
of the past 18 months. All of the judges were looking to award those that have
led by example, experimented, taken risks and ultimately achieved results that
contribute to the forward momentum of our industry as a whole.”
Following an
introduction by Ryan Kamata of awards sponsor Canon, the winners were
revealed.
These included Sky
Sports, StudioCoast, SimplyLive, Grass Valley and LiveU for the Outstanding
Production Achievement – Innovation of the Sky Virtual Production Suite.
“We took something
that nobody had seen before and went on air with it,” said Kevin Ramsey,
director of Sky Studios who commended Sky’s operations people for the speed of
deployment and ingenuity in getting the channel back on air during COVID.
The One Planet
Award for Sustainability was won by IMG Studios’ Green to Screen initiative
which targets net carbon zero by 2030.
“The biggest lesson
we’ve learned is that we are not in competition [with other companies in the
industry],” said Sarita Neto, Premier League Productions, production executive,
and chair of IMG Productions & Studios Green to Screen. “If we can’t work
together we can’t achieve anything.”
Winner in the
Outstanding Production Achievement – Event category was Sky Sports’ remote
football production achieved with partner NEP; while Salsa Sound and Manchester
City FC took home the award for Outstanding Audio Innovation with its vCrowd
Virtual Crowd sound solution.
WSC Sports beat out
Sky Sports, LFC, Deltatre and BT Sport to the Outstanding OTT Experience honour
for creating the automagical highlights behind the NBA Playoffs.
“Rarely does a
game-changing product come along that immediately delivers on its promise, but
this entry has managed exactly that,” raved the judges.
BT Sport’s United
Initiative was justly praised for its commitment to diversity, especially
women, and is a joint effort with RISE and Newham College.
“It’s important to
change the face of the industry which is otherwise ageing and has a particular
[white, male] face,” said Fatou Jeng, BT Sport, principal, broadcast
regulation. “A lot of people are leaving because the pathways aren’t open to
them. We need to encourage more women to come into the industry.”
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