InBroadcast
This was the year in which sports moved to the centre of major streaming content provider strategies. We asked executives at leading vendors to identify the key trends in live sports in the last 12 months and to look to 2023 and share the business issues or innovation to watch in this fast moving space.
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Olly Parker, Chief Commercial Officer, Blackbird“In the past year we’ve seen a steady increase in the use of data to partially automate or speed up video creation workflows. This helps augment workflows around the higher-quality content that humans are still needed to create as opposed to fully automated, rules-based systems. Better use of data can also permeate beyond the creation process and is helping organisations to address multiple delivery end-points in a more streamlined and consistent way. It’s commonplace to see multiple teams creating video for multiple platforms, especially around live events. What businesses have been driving through better metadata support are workflows with as much shared resource - technical and human - as possible.
2023 is going to see a renewed focus on technical and infrastructural efficiencies, particularly in relation to use of the cloud and how to manage a multi-vendor space. We are all well past doubting the benefits that can come from both public and private cloud infrastructure and services, but there are many situations where an ‘all-in’ approach to any platform isn’t the most efficient, cost-effective or sustainable. Hybrid deployments that can take advantage of the best available technology and adding new cloud workflows on top of existing on-premise tech stacks can bring major benefits to media companies.”
Ian Godfrey, President of TSL Inc. and Head of Control Systems
“We continue to see international monetisation of live sports content as a significant business driver for our customers in this segment. Like all businesses, live sports content providers are looking to grow their revenue. One method to do so, is to grow viewership outside of the traditional regions for any given sporting event.
Recent examples include the NFL expanding their international footprint by playing games in three countries outside the US, including Germany for the first time, and the NBA continuing their Global Games after a pause during the pandemic. With this large geographical expansion, we have seen increased complexity to the live production workflow. Not just because the event is occurring outside the traditional region, but because content providers want to make the event relevant to broadcast viewers in that emerging market, whilst still maintaining broadcast viewership in the traditional region.
Into 2023, centralised processing with distributed operations. Whether it be live media processing centralised in the cloud, in a VPC, or in a designated media processing centre. We expect to see more live sports productions happening with remote operations and centralised processing (away from the venue). Of course, there are events that justify the costs associated with producing live sports from the venue, but there are so many live sports events to produce and broadcast (all of which deserve the highest quality production money can buy) it just makes sense to centralise the media processing wherever possible. Enabling operators to work more efficiently. We know this is possible today for some live broadcasts, but how far can we push the scale and complexity?”
Kerry Freeman, Head of Sales for IMES - UK & Ireland, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
“Streaming video services have been at the forefront of everyone’s mind this past year. This focus has largely been a result of the Covid-19 pandemic forcing many to stay at home. Whilst this led to a boom in streaming services there was little new content being produced causing providers to look to their archives when creating content to attract and retain viewers.
One of the biggest gaps in the market was the live sport sector, and so many broadcasters opted to utilise old tournaments, races and matches showcasing some of the industries greatest sporting highlights. These included ITV in the UK replaying the Euro 96 football championship and RTBF in Belgium offering cycling races from the 1990’s.
We predict that archiving and restoration will continue to be of massive importance for 2023 as we unlock the vast potential of the content currently residing in store rooms around the world.
This is at the forefront of broadcasters such as Canal+ Group who are looking to their tape archives to add value for their viewers, with IMES in the process of digitising up to 110,000 hours of tape archives from sports content to digital assets for streaming services.”
Paddy Taylor, Head of Broadcast, Mark Roberts Motion Control
“The key requirement in sports is sustainability and in particular the desire to be carbon neutral. This trend started about three years ago and has been gaining momentum. As we recovered from the effects of the pandemic, we have seen broadcasters looking to protect themselves from the impacts of a new variant or a similar situation whilst balancing the desire to reduce the environmental impact of their productions.
We believe these two things can be interdependent, the use of remote acquisition tools with a smart automation system means that not all camera operators need to get on a plane or drive to a venue, they can control cameras or multiple cameras from any suitably fast IP connected location, and potentially cover multiple games in a day. This will bring significant advantages both in terms of cost savings (no more expensive taxi bills or hotels at peak times) as well as reducing the carbon footprint of the production and, crucially, opening the door to more creative innovation.
We regularly talk to producers who want more angles, more motion, and more cameras but the logistics and cost are usually prohibitive. By using automation tools such as Polymotion Player One, a single operator can manage multiple cameras from a simple pan bar, so as the operator follows the action, all the cameras are looking at the same point with different framing, angles etc. As a really simple example, the same operator could be running two cameras side by side, one in 16:9 and the other in 9:16 for OTT, but the possibilities are immense.”
Thomas Lind, Director of Product Management, Appear TV
“The trend towards remote production of live contribution triggered by COVID have continued in 2022. For primary events, it is still typically a hybrid combination of on-site and remote production, while secondary events are moving towards full remote production. Mostly, remote production is done from site into a central location. Remote production into a public cloud like AWS, Google etc. is being evaluated and tests are being conducted. It is still not clear what the balance between private cloud and public cloud production will be – this will be driven by which can provide the best business case. For live 24/7/365 we now see a trend that some operators are moving away from public cloud back to on-prem private cloud to reduce operational cost.
From a technology point of view, we have seen a large up-take of both JPEG XS and NMOS in remote production. We see JPEG XS becoming the standard for contribution when dedicated fibre connections with guaranteed bandwidth are available. When bandwidth capacity is limited or for contribution into public cloud, ultra-low latency AVC/HEVC are used. Since contribution is all about fitting the video into available bandwidth and not pushing the coder technology to its limit, we see little interest for newer codecs in the contribution space. NMOS is becoming the standard used in orchestration of contribution networks.
Into 2023, and work continues on evolving the NMOS standard, especially with the work being done to add transport stream support that will help standardising the orchestration of contribution networks. Going forward it will be interesting to follow how much remote production will remain in a private cloud/facility and how much will move into public cloud. This will largely come down to the individual operational requirements and corresponding business case.
So far, we’ve seen JPEG XS being more frequently used in US contribution than in the rest of the world. We believe that the deployment in remote production using JPEG XS will start to escalate in Europe in 2023.”
Igor Vitiorets, CTO, SLOMO.TV
“For quite a bit of 2022, many countries still had in place Covid-19 restrictions. That supported the growth of the remote production market. The expansion of DWDM/LAMBDA (λ) data transmission networks, their increased accessibility, both financially and physically, and the use of JPEG-XS hardware codecs have given broadcasters more opportunities to expand their Remote Production. The ability to receive in a remote Video Control Room the superior quality video signal with minimal delay, the savings on travel, and reduced staffing requirements have resulted in an increase in remote production.
Currently two global factors are having a very big impact on our industry. First, the global electronic component shortage which affects the production of equipment, is increasing. Some manufacturers claim delivery times of six months or more; some equipment becomes more expensive. All this leads to an increase of CapEx, the equipment is depreciated over a longer period of time. The second important factor is the global economic crisis, which is cutting investment in long-term television projects.
For these reasons, the market behaviour of equipment purchasers changes: they change the range of purchased equipment, refuse to launch new expensive projects and to implement expensive technologies. On the other hand, they discover new brands, solutions and workflows. For many, it turns out to be a surprise that solutions they had not paid attention to before are efficient and well suited to their tasks.
As a result, the way the industry deals with equipment and finances are changing, and small and medium-sized manufacturers are getting a chance to enter the major market.
As an example: the use of IP video/mixer for IP broadcasts using mobile phones (with a specially installed application) as cameras. This solution is from an absolutely non-broadcast-grade market, but nevertheless it provides quite a high-quality video, which can be used by top TV companies as well. There is no secret that mobile phone manufacturers are making amazing progress in improving the quality of their cameras.
Computational photography algorithms make it possible to achieve very high-quality video. The idea to use the mobile phones as a video source has a couple of disadvantages: the absence of SDI output which is solved by transmitting H.264 compressed video with up to Hi422P profile (10-bit 4:2:2) via WiFi and the absence of Zoom optics, which is also not a problem for some types of TV broadcasts. But the whole solution providing a decent quality video becomes very inexpensive and compact.
Dave Gill, Chief Technology Officer, AE Live
“’It’s all about choice’ best describes the state of sports and live production heading into 2023. Broadcasters and rights-holders need creative ways to hyper-target and super-serve their changing audience demographics. Consumers with different viewing habits have more content options than ever, making their valuable eyeballs harder to attract and retain.
Audiences expect immersive, interactive, and graphics-driven experiences, with Extended Reality (XR) or Mixed Reality (MR) as the physical and digital worlds converge.
Virtual Studio environments are at the heart of this convergence, expanding what's possible for delivering a brilliant, photo-realistic home viewing experience. While the technology can be expensive, many costs are up-front as broadcasters don’t have to invest in building multiple studios to cover different topics. Going virtual provides nearly unlimited creative and editorial freedom.
The increasing use of gaming engines is enhancing virtual production technologies. Unreal Engine, for example, works with existing graphics workflows to create impressive effects from a real-time render engine. As these engines’ toolsets continue to improve and deliver real-time services and applications, we’ll see them move beyond virtual studios, AR, and VR to become a key element of all graphics production.
Audiences prefer to drive their own personalised graphic journey. For service providers that means re-evaluating our offerings, from 9:16 video content delivery to accommodate users’ scrolling vertically on their phones or tighter graphics integrations with their social media platforms. Our industry’s focus has to be on finding new ways to keep audiences engaged, while also giving them plenty of choice.”
Jon Raidel, Global Lead, Live Production in the Cloud, Vizrt
“It’s clear that customers are rethinking workflows and looking for ways to improve their efficiency. They want to produce more content with less complexity – for instance by aiming for a smaller carbon footprint or working without the need to roll out a production truck.
Considering how important quality sports content has become, and not just for big broadcasters covering top tier sports, it’s crucial that the right technology considers the need to cover all levels of sports. To deliver this demand for simple and efficient production workflows, solution providers are looking at the possibilities of cloud production.
Cloud makes workflows simpler, remote production possible, and the carbon footprints lower. Take BT Sports, for example, that joined with UEFA to produce the UEFA Youth League tournament fully in the cloud, using Viz Vectar Plus. Since mobile trucks were not needed, cameras were sent to the cloud, and the game was covered smoothly – with a 25% reduction in the carbon footprint.
The efficiency provided by cloud live production points to this solution being a major choice of broadcasters and content creators in the future. Making workflows simple and easily adaptable, not to mention lower in overall cost, is a win-win for any type of coverage.
This past year, when speaking to broadcasters and integrators alike, I noticed recurring concerns – like the expanding control room footprints and the lead time it takes for the infrastructure to be put in place. A key trend we’re going to see is a search for a production set-up and workflow that addresses all these concerns but is also cost-effective and scalable – and the solution is live production in the cloud.”
Phil Myers, CTO, Lawo
A welcome trend for Lawo is that SMPTE ST2110-based IP infrastructures are now going mainstream. In Germany, Belgium and across many other countries, stadiums are connected to permanent ST2110-based networks that link them to the production hub, or even hubs (plural) as well as to other stakeholders, using bi-directional essence transportation. Temporary or long-term bandwidth issues for video essences are increasingly addressed via lossless and efficient compression strategies.
The ultimate goal is to make more efficient use of both processing resources and crews as well as to drastically reduce carbon emissions and travel times, whether for planetary events or routine production scenarios that increasingly involve a variety of locations.
What is certainly needed are a relentless focus on the user experience and a clear vision of where the broadcast industry is headed. Operators rightfully expect plug-and-play connectivity for their IP systems; they furthermore need almost instant scalability; they appreciate the ability to set any and all devices from a single location with just the right amount of parameter complexity; and they wish to protect their network and content from intruders. This is being addressed with Lawo’s HOME management platform for IP infrastructures.
Due to shrinking budgets, and with a view to serving broadcasters even more efficiently, the software-defined approach for video and audio hardware is bound to evolve beyond the current horizon. Finally, staying on top of looming paradigm shifts and shaping them as they materialise will be more important than ever before.
James Ransome, Business Development Manager - Sports & Live Events EMEA, Ross Video
“2022 was an exciting year in Sports Broadcast. With real-time information increasingly available to sports fans through digital and social media platforms, fans now expect to have a fully engaging experience from their own homes. This includes real-time data on screens. That means showing people at home and in the stadium, with compelling visuals, how far players have run, how many passes they’ve made, and the speed at which the ball hits the net. We are seeing this with the ongoing World Cup in Qatar with various in-venue and app-based technologies.
We expect this to continue into the future as fans demand further expert analysis of key moments in real-time across sports. With technology like Ross Video’s XPression & Piero, presenters can explain these complex topics quickly and in an engaging way.
In 2023 it’s all about maximising investment, and essentially doing more with less. There’s increased competition for sports rights, and with this in mind, I expect to see broadcasters making decisions based on flexible technology, and the ability to scale up and down. Cloud technologies like Graphite CPC and Hyperconverged Platforms like the Ultrix Acuity and Ultrix Carbonite are going to be at the forefront of live video production in Sports.
It will also be exciting to see the continued adoption of cable camera systems that provide stunning aerial visuals in stadiums across Europe like Spidercam. Events such as the World Cup and the NFL London Series have used Spidercam immensely to give viewers a different perspective.”
Robert Szabo-Rowe, SVP Engineering and Product Management, The Switch
“The media industry is continuing to understand the capabilities of IP-based transmission, and that it can be reliable if the service design is optimised. This has challenged the transmission market in 2022 in areas where broadcasters historically used satellite-based transmission. Although IP-based transmission has a higher latency than fibre, there are certain types of use cases where this is appropriate.”
All of the major streaming platforms now have live content offerings or investments as a way to make customers stick. The streaming giants – from Apple to Amazon to Netflix – are all eyeing and buying up live event rights and this will certainly continue into 2023. This, in turn, has an impact on the production services market as these platforms don’t have their own broadcast capabilities, despite pitching for top tier sports rights. So, they’re securing their production capabilities from third parties.
This also has a consequence for broadcasters and TV networks, which now need content to replace their lost sports assets. Live programming that perhaps was not previously regarded as right for core content on premium-level channels is now being shown – with the upshot being that new sports and other areas of content are being opened up to and being introduced to mainstream audiences.”
Julien Signes, SVP and GM of Video Network & Simon Brydon, Snr Director of Security Business Development at Synamedia
“2022 was all about how the future of live sports streaming would play out. We’ve been keeping an eye on the likes of Apple and Amazon Prime Video as they experiment with strategic rights buys in certain markets, while Netflix has also gone on record warming to the idea of offering live sports. But this learning phase has to be quick, so in 2023 we’ll see whether these streaming giants decide to go big or go home.
Sports streaming at scale is not for the faint hearted, and achieving profitability is no mean feat given the cost of sports rights. Although on paper it sounds like a challenge suited for big streamers with deep pockets, they really don’t like its territory-by-territory model.
Whether you are watching a live event on a big screen outside the stadium or in a bar with others, you expect a premium experience and pin sharp quality. Fan zones are not just limited to popular sports - think Eurovision Song Contest and Last Night at the Proms with all those sequins and pomp in glorious detail.
That’s why we believe fan zones will drive the adoption of 8K for their big screens. We first demonstrated live sports streaming in 8K with BT in early 2022 and, through our discussions with operators, we all have high expectations for the next 12-24 months.
The fan event experience is about to get an overhaul too. Imagine a £100 match ticket has a QR code with an offer to download an app to use in-stadium with a bunch of fun features such as watching the game from a different part of the stadium, replaying a tackle, keeping an eye on a rivals’ match, or placing a bet. Meanwhile, F1 fans could view the track from a drone or drop into a car for the driver’s view.
The infrastructure needed includes 5G, WiFi, CDN with WebRTC support, and support for multiple latencies within a streaming service. The augmented fan viewing experience and 8K will also underpin the metaverse as sports brands start experimenting there.”
Grigory Mindlin, General Manager of Broadcast at disguise
“In the past year, extended reality and real-time graphics have become increasingly important for our TV experience, as major broadcasters such as Eurosport, iTV and NBC have started to adopt these new innovative techniques to deliver engaging sports broadcast productions, with disguise as the heart of their workflow.
Earlier this year, we were proud to enhance our production toolkit with the introduction of our Porta cloud-native control system for broadcast graphics and our px high-performance render hardware. Together they will allow broadcasters to start using Unreal Engine in all aspects of graphics generation, whether it’s a ticker, AR graphic or a high-fidelity immersive environment and easily control them from the disguise workflow.
Over the next few years I would expect to see all graphics rendered in the cloud and on demand. With the increasing use of AR graphics and more broadcast platforms emerging, they will also be customised for each viewer based on the viewer's preferences.”
Peter Abecassis, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Grass Valley
“As the cost of premier sporting event broadcast rights increases, media companies are looking to maximise the use of these rights to reach as many audiences as possible. This involves versioning the event for multiple audiences, whether that’s distribution in different languages and regions or by reaching out to different demographics through different commentators, or different platforms. A primary example of this is by introducing sports to audiences in different geographies: American football broadcast in Europe, or European football in the US.
In addition, creating extra content using highlight reels and fan reactions for social media is key to extending the reach beyond just the live event itself. Many demographics are only consuming live events in shortened formats or on social platforms and getting these packages prepared in real-time keeps engagement high.
GV Playout X allows rights holders to quickly spin up new channels. This gives them the flexibility to try out new markets and do special broadcasts without a huge upfront investment. Based on AMPP, this cloud-based solution doesn’t only mean it can be spun up quickly and operated from anywhere. When working with other AMPP solutions like Elastic Recorder X for ingest, LiveTouch X for replay, and Framelight X for editing and asset management, automated workflows can easily be built to create highlight reels and share them on social media while the event is still taking place. Innovative solutions to repurposing live content for multiple audiences will help the media industry increase the return they get on today’s broadcast rights.”
Gabriel Baños, CEO of Flowics, part of the Vizrt Group
“To keep up with the frenetic pace of live sports production and control costs at the same time, more and more sports broadcasters and production companies have been turning to SaaS-based solutions for their graphics. Cloud-native graphics creation simplifies the overall production workflow and reduces equipment and travel costs. Through a platform like Flowics, broadcasters can streamline live productions and engage fans with interactive experiences for venues, live streams, broadcasts, and digital properties.
We expect the use of cloud-based graphics production to intensify in 2023. Not only is it the perfect complement to the cloud-based workflows that are becoming more common in broadcast facilities today, but it simplifies the process and makes it more efficient. Among the many benefits, SaaS-based graphics tools offer flexibility, easy collaboration, and easy graphics versioning. Because everything happens in the cloud, there’s no need to ship or rent equipment. And broadcasters get access to a larger talent pool while lowering travel expenses.
Speaking of talent, working in the cloud creates better work-life balance for production crews, who are on the road nonstop throughout a typical sports season. Being able to create and operate graphics in the cloud means they can stay home and work remotely instead.”
