Kingdom come: Alamiya Media on bringing the Supercoppa Italiana and Supercopa de España to Saudi Arabia

SVG Europe

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Among the myriad of international sports events staged in Saudi Arabia the annual Italian and Spanish Super Cups played out over successive weeks in January.

What was a single match between the league champion and domestic cup winner in each country was reformatted in 2023 so that each competition now features the top four teams from the previous season’s domestic tournaments.

In return, Saudi Arabia is paying €138 million for the Supercoppa Italiana from 2023 to 2029 and it is paying the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) around €40m for each Supercopa de España tournament until 2029.

Venue cities tend to rotate between Jeddah and Riyadh but the common denominator is local production services supplier Alamiya Media.

Since Telefonica holds the rights in Spain to the Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup, the telco contracts Alamiya as service supplier in a continuation of an arrangement that began in 2022.

Telefonica flies in key personnel including technical producer, director, vision mixer and VT coordinator but the rest of the crew is staffed by Alamiya crew who regularly work on the Saudi Pro League (SPL).

Arrangements for the Supercoppa Italiana (technically the EA SPORTS FC Supercup) differs slightly in that Lega Serie A which organises Italy’s domestic cup competitions, contracts Alamiya Media directly to produce the games while also providing an editorial layer.

In more detail: Spanish Super Cup

The two Copa del Rey finalists and top two finishers in LaLiga fought the 2025 Spanish Super Cup beginning January 8. Real Madrid and Barcelona duly beat Mallorca and Athletic Bilbao to set up El Clásico on 12 January in front of nearly 60,000 spectators at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah.

Despite opening the scoring through Mbappe, Barca saw off their rivals 5-2 thanks to wunderkind Lamine Yamal and a brace from Raphinha.

All three matches were played at Jeddah’s stadia which is naturally a benefit in terms of not having to change logistics between games.

They were each covered with a 29 camera plan including Sony 3500 super slow motion and 6500 Ultra slow motion cameras in HD 1080i/50. A notable camera addition this year was a FPV drone that flew inside the stadium and not just for pre- and post-match activities and celebrations but during the game itself flying over the spectators.

“Production and transmission format depends on the rights holder,” says Miguel Caso, Chief Broadcast Officer, for Riyadh based Alamiya Media. “All of our larger trucks are UHD ready.” 

All production is performed on site except occasionally for graphics. “This would usually be for international or English language graphics. We always have a backup on site to do graphics but whether remote or on-prem the Leagues prefer to handle graphics themselves, bringing in their own operator. They know the graphics package and workflow better and sometimes they bring their own hardware.”

In more detail: Italian Super Cup

The first semifinal of the EA SPORTS FC Supercup on January 2 was between Inter (winners of the 2023/2024 Serie A championship) and Atalanta (finalists of the 2023/2024 Coppa Italia). The team coached by Simone Inzaghi won 2-0 against Atalanta, earning a place in the final.

On January 3, Juventus (winners of the 2023/2024 Coppa Italia) and Milan (second-place finishers in the 2023/2024 Serie A) engaged in a thrilling match, which ended with Milan’s 2-1 victory.
The Milan derby final on January 6 was won by Milan 3-2 with a Tammy Abrahams winner in stoppage time winner.

The broadcast model is almost identical to the Spanish Super Cup although Caso describes the Italian  setup as “creatively more aggressive.”

This year included a first use of a AGITO modular dolly system which roamed along one of the touchlines during the Final. This buggy carried a stabilised Shotover head and wireless Sony HDC-P50 camera with Canon CN10 lens.

“This was a proof of concept and provided some really nice shots during the match, like a Steadicam, but under remote control,” he says.

“We were also using a Sony Venice positioned on a jimmy jib behind the goal fitted with a PL lens for nice replays with that cinematic touch.”

Camera ops with gimbals carrying Sony A7s with PL lenses offered shots of players in the tunnel and during the match for crowd reactions.

Both competitions used drones, one operating outside the stadia offering beauty shots and fireworks at the final, as well as an FPV in the stadia.

“Both camera plans are very similar but I would say that the Italian one was maybe a little bit more aggressive with new technologies and tweaked for the Italian taste,” Caso says.

The Italian production wears innovation on its sleeve to the extent that displayed a special graphic on screen to introduce a new technology or camera angle during coverage.

The FPV drone was briefed to fly around the grandstands during the game but during the second semi-final, after a goal, the operator (or director) disregarded this and had it enter the field of play to fly in on top and over of the players as they were gathering to celebrate.

“We felt that was maybe too much, it was provocative, and we made sure not to repeat it for the Final - but it was a very nice shot indeed,” Caso says

Alamiya has previously innovated with drones including during the much hyped Lionel Messi Vs Cristiano Ronaldo clash in February 2024 when Inter Miami played Al Nassr. Messi spent most of the game on the bench and his team lost 6.0.

“Because that was a preseason friendly we had more flexibility and had previously agreed with both teams that the FPV would go pretty much up everywhere in the game.”

VAR for both competitions relied on the Hawk-eye infrastructure in regular use for the Saudi Pro League. While there is a VAR centre in Riyadh the system tends to be a hybrid remote-on-site model in the country.

 “Where the stadium has good connectivity VAR is remoted but where that’s not the case VAR is conducted in the OB compound.”

All transmission and feeds are contributed by satellite from the venue back to broadcast centres in Spain (Telefonica’s facilities) and Italy (to IE Towers in Lissone, north of Milan) for regional versioning, virtual advertising insertion and onward distribution.

EI Towers managed the satellite signal distribution system between the Al-Awwal Park Stadium and its MCRs in Italy using four transmission antennas provided by Alamiya Media. The transmission antennas, positioned at the stadium’s TV compound and supervised by EI Towers’ broadcast and external connection technical team, ensured the transmission of 8 distinct signals, totalling over 150 hours of redundant international connections. To coordinate the activities, the company also set up a VoIP conferencing system between the venue and its operational centres.

 

 

Alamiya Media at 50: Preparing for rapid change, an international broadcast centre and the FIFA World Cup

SVG Europe

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This year is the 50th anniversary of Alamiya Media and Advertising, a company which arguably pioneered media production in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has had to rapidly adapt to the sweeping internationalisation initiated by the state since 2016.

“There's no small production in Saudi,” says Chief Broadcast Officer, Miguel Caso. “Even for a press conference which you’d think is going to be 3-4 camera is going to be 14. Even our smallest trucks are 20 cameras.”

Alamiya recently signed a three year agreement with DAZN to be its production facilities partner on Riyadh Season boxing events.

Sultan Al Muheisen, Chairman & CEO, Alamiya Media, said: “In a short time the Middle East, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has leaped to the forefront of becoming the house of some of the biggest and renowned sporting events globally. The combination of Alamiya’s production facilities with DAZN’s host broadcasting capabilities and expertise, will ensure exciting sports content for existing fans and new audiences.”

IMG also signed the Riyadh-based outfit in a new five year deal starting from the 2024-25 season to provide facilities and infrastructure for its host broadcast of the Saudi Pro League (SPL) on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF).

It runs a fleet consisting of 26 mobile facilities, almost all capable of 4K and at least mid-sized productions.  Caso explains, “Our older trucks are HD 1080i/50 but we keep investing and integrating new facilities and pretty much all the trucks in both in the football league and major competitions regardless of the match being in HD or 4K are switchable to UHD with standardised technology.

Recent investment has migrated Alamiya toward Sony cameras with EVS servers and away from Grass Valley.

“Our aim is to meet international broadcasting standard tech that is being used in World Cup or World Championships,” he says.

For transmission it has a fleet of 17 SNGs mostly 4K capable encrypted with ATEME solutions. It also runs a special cameras department which houses kit like a Skycam aerial cable system, cinematic style cameras, drones and the AGITO buggy.

“They come up with ideas which we then present to clients,” Caso says. “The Spanish and Italian Federations are very flexible and come back to us every year to stage the Super Cups and ask what’s new that we can implement that we haven’t used before. We keep up-to-date on the latest technologies by attending NAB or IBC.”

Alamiya also has studios that mainly cater to local broadcaster MBC and the Saudi Sports Company (SSC) which owns broadcast rights to the Saudi Pro League, King’s Cup and the Saudi Super Cup.

It is in the process of expanding these facilities into an International Broadcast Centre. In part this is to implement a remote production model, not only for the Saudi Pro League, but for a range of other sports and entertainment clients in the country, and also to prepare for hosting larger scale international events.

“We aim to build a international broadcast centre from where we run distribution, contribution and remote graphic operation for domestic and international events,” Caso says. “Saudi Arabia is a very big country, so it does make a lot of sense to move to a remote model instead of running trucks out.”

IMG will also help SPL and SAFF to implement advanced remote production technologies, allowing producers to oversee matches across multiple cities on the same day, ensuring that the highest production standards are maintained regardless of location.

“Little by little investments are being made and we're on that road but connectivity is the biggest issue. It is patchy and is a wider strategy of the country to improve. While the main venues in Jeddah and Riyadh are already connected with dark fibre that’s not yet the case all over the country.”

Alamiya employs about 400 people, 300 of whom are production and technical crew and many of those are Saudi nationals.

“It’s challenging because media is such a new industry but we have some very, very good local engineers. Our talent pool is international. We have EVS operators, floor managers, VT coordinators, camera crew and even TV directors from Egypt, Spain, Portugal, UK, Romania, South Africa and Saudi nationals.”

Casco himself has been with the organisation for nine years, long enough to have witnessed substantial change in the country.

“It was a totally different landscape in 2016 for sure. Alamiya were doing the SFL and many other local events but the market was very domestic such as with camel racing competitions.

Then, as the Kingdom opened, the company had to grow in terms of skills, personnel, technology and investment. A few years ago, entertainment was not a thing. There was no entertainment. In the region, the centre of entertainment was Dubai. Now everything has shifted. All the big concerts and sports competitions in the Middle East are being staged in Saudi Arabia.

“So we had to switch strategy. Whereas previously, we had to branch out to gain more business, now, on the contrary, most of the eggs are in the basket of Saudi Arabia and we’re trying to cater for that.”

Caso, who is Spanish, has a background in economics and an MBA in business administration. “Little by little I built the production technology knowledge to run the company,” he says.

Last December, Alamiya was involved in providing coverage of the announcement of Saudi as the host country for the 2034 FIFA World Cup.

“It is a key project for this country and something that really excites soccer fans here,” Caso says. “There is a genuine passion for football here unlike in some other parts of the region. The passion is like being in Spain.

“Everybody understands that it’s very strategic for the country in terms of opening to the world, but there is genuine excitement to have the world’s best football team competing on home soil.”

In terms of investment, venue infrastructure is being developed, new stadiums have been announced and some projects are finished. Production remains challenge because of the big disparities in terms of existing stadium facilities.  

“The objective for the World Cup is that it will be played in 11 newly built stadiums or entirely refurbished stadiums,” Caso says. “It will be top-notch technology. The designs for the one in Neom is mind blowing.”

The proposed 46,000-capacity stadium in the Neom megadevelopment will have a pitch situated more than 350 meters above ground and, like the rest of the city, will be run on renewable energy, wind and solar power.

“You can imagine the budgets that are going there. In terms of the technology the biggest investment has to be in connectivity. Satellite is good but events like this require a lot of connectivity for all the different broadcasters to be able to perform their duties.

“As a company we are gearing up for it and hope to be part of it. In our technical investment plan we also take into consideration the needs of previous World Cups, mapping that, but without losing sight that technology will change. That’s the tricky part. Knowing something is coming to you, but learning to make the investments in the right time.

“I'm not a prophet but I'm sure something different in terms of camera or workflow will appear between now and 2034. A World Cup always sets the bar for football production. We are mindful of that ambition in the build of our IBC that can connect not only our clients, but the country to other productions and the world.

“I can’t give you exact numbers but you can imagine the [cost] for this ecosystem to be created.”

 

Broadcast news splinters and paywalls in last ditch bid to save “high quality, fair-minded, trustworthy sources”

Streaming Media

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For most broadcasters TV news is a loss leading operation but in today’s climate it is liberal news channels which are suffering more than right leaning rivals. Sweeping changes are afoot in the broadcast journalism landscape on both sides of the pond, although this is hardly headline news.

Cost cutting combined with transition to streaming and attempts to diversify business models are part of an ongoing response by news organizations, traditional print and TV, to irreversible shifts in the way audiences everywhere consume news.

The objective is a simple one: to shift the gravity of traditional TV news distribution towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, attempt to secure the future not just of any particular organization, but as certain news brands would have it, to save the future of sane political judgement.

That’s the background to a number of incremental and sweeping changes reshaping broadcast news.

Among them is the pending shake-up at European broadcaster Sky News which includes plans to create a paid model for some content and services.

The ‘Sky News 2030′ strategy will have a digital-focus over the next five years to attract new audiences willing to pay for news, reported the FT.

Sky News executive chair David Rhodes, told staff this week that news revenues were “largely stagnant” given a reliance on advertising and sponsorship. The new model seems centered on subject hubs that will offer paid products from podcasts to events and live shows.

This is expected to include some subscription-based services where premium content is held back for paying customers. While its traditional 24-hour linear TV channel will continue, Rhodes said priorities and resources would be shifted to these premium content tiers.

Rhodes warned that this would mean spending less time and fewer resources on making “breaking and live” TV news in a reorganisation of the newsroom, and cuts to duplicative processes by using AI.

Rumours about the future of Sky News have been circling. “With viewership dwindling and financial woes mounting, the channel slashed its freelance budget [in August 2024],” observed media commentator Guido Fawkes last Fall.

Figures from UK regulator Ofcom last September revealed what Fawkes called “a troubling trend”: the percentage of people who say they watch Sky News dropped from 21% in 2023 to just 19% in 2024.

Fawkes claimed Sky News’ annual budget exceeds £100 million ($120m) but “racks up losses in the tens of millions” concluding that Sky News “is far from a money maker” despite making 1000 staff redundant last year. 

One reason the plans are being kicked into gear now is because Comcast’s funding commitments to Sky News, made as part of its $39bn takeover of Sky in 2018, end in 2028. At the time Comcast said it would safeguard the editorial independence of Sky News for the ten-year period.

Felicity Hurley, writing at The Financial Analyst, said the plan represents “a bold gamble that could reshape the UK media landscape”. Her reasoning was that investors would appreciate the potential for stable revenue streams and brand loyalty, but the risks associated with consumer acceptance – particularly older demos not used to paying for news - and market volatility cannot be overlooked.

She also suggested the outcomes of this strategic overhaul will be closely watched, not just for Sky News, but for the broader implications on the UK media economy.

Nearly all major news networks in Europe and North America are dealing with drops in viewership and revenue as they face increasing headwinds from an audience moving to other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.

Talking to the Financial Times, Rhodes said, “Linear TV audiences and linear monetization are in a structural decline. We are not the first to recognise that premium experiences, where engaged audiences are willing to pay, are where we need to be,” he said. “Premium is about things that people will pay for. It’s about putting engagement over reach.”

Comcast’s divesture of its cable networks into a division called SpinCo permanently divorces news channels CNBC and MSNBC from NBC News which stays within Comcast alongside Peacock.

NBC News itself is shedding around 50 jobs while CNN is slashing around 200 or 6% of its workforce as parent Warner Bros. Discovery readies a new news streaming service (alongside CNN Max), a redesigned digital footprint and new subscriber services for CNN as well as a new show line up. WBD is investing $70 million into CNN’s digital plans, CNN chief Mark Thompson said.

Last summer, CNN cut 100 people, about 3% of its workforce, as it reorganized its newsgathering operation. CNN since launched a paid subscription service at $3.99 per month, for which readers are asked to pay after they consume a certain number of free articles, and select stories are placed behind a paywall. Thompson announced there will be further subscriber products, including CNN’s first lifestyle-oriented digital product.

The BBC’s international news service BBC World Service has also announced around 130 job losses to cut costs. Changes include reshaping some World Service Language teams to enhance the focus on digital output. That followed 155 front line job cuts at BBC News last year as part of £24m cost saving, at the same time as BBC director general Tim Davie warned the UK is struggling to counter a rise in “pure propaganda” from countries like Russia and China because of cuts to the service.

As former BBC Director General now CNN CEO Mark Thompson put it when prefacing a digital future based on fewer journalists last week, “America and the world need high quality, fair-minded, trustworthy sources of news more than ever. This difficult and sometimes painful process of change is the only way to make sure we can still provide it.”

New look Sky NOW

In related news Sky’s streaming platform NOW has begun to migrate on to NBCU’s Global Streaming Platform technology platform. The phased update will begin in the UK next month then rollout to Sky NOW subscribers in Italy and Sky WOW members in Germany. NBCU’s Streaming Platform powers Peacock and already supports SkyShowtime the European JV between Comcast and Paramount Global covering markets where Sky does not operate satellite and cable services.

The principal change is to the UI, explained Carli Kerr, Managing Director of NOW & Sky Content, “Migrating to NBCU Global Streaming Platform means NOW members will benefit from the ongoing delivery of customer features that enhance the viewing experience and leverage the latest technologies and innovations across the platform.”

Arriving with the new look will be new rails, including top 10s and “smoother search options”. Sports streams will be refined, with Sky Sports+ programming to be available in curated collections.

 

New tricks: Scriptwriters embrace AI to turn the tables

IBC

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The studio model is being upended by seismic business pressures and the disruptive potency of AI. For seasoned scriptwriters and producers partnered as Talk Boys Studio, the answer was to create a short film that could be the bellwether for a new wave narrative Generative AI content.

Ian McLees and Daniel Bonventre have written or produced a range of scripted comedy and unscripted shows for network TV in the U.S over the last decade. As a partnership since 2016 they had a number of scripts and pilots either sold pending development or pitched into studios with good prospects, or so they thought. Then Covid happened followed by the Writer’s Strike and the existential threat of AI.

“We were at the top of our game, ready to go, but suddenly no-one was commissioning. There was no money anywhere for anything,” says McLees (who wrote sitcoms Drama Club and Commanders and feature mockumentary Like, Earth). “There was sheer frustration with the studio system which is collapsing in front of our eyes.”

Their story has been replicated hundreds of times among below the line talent but rather than waiting for the industry to pick up they decided to DIY their existing scripts using AI.

“Let's take these projects that we loved and nobody can afford and just see if we can make them,” says Bonventre (who helped produce Alec Baldwin hosted panel show Match Game and Funny You Should Ask and Apple+ reality series Kendra Sells Hollywood).

“More and more of our peers are turning to AI as an outlet as a way to break down the barriers of the traditional Hollywood model.”

With no prior knowledge, they researched and learned AI tools themselves. “We went to school,” says Bonventre. “We read everything we could to stay on top of how to actually use this. It feels like we got a master's degree in AI. Make no mistake these programmes are very difficult. You have to sit in front of a screen for 20 hours a week and treat it like a job to learn the editing software, learn the animation software and the prompting language.”

They applied their new skills to a script about a canine police officer interrogating a rodent suspected of arson and created short film Roadkill.

“It was an idea we wanted to do as a feature animation in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. We were obsessed with making this movie. And we couldn't get any traction with it so when we found these AI tools we truncated the story and took it from there.”

The result might betray its AI origins but is remarkable for having been made at all.  Creating watchable two-minute videos in AI is impressive but at 12 minutes McLees and Bonventre have made a narrative with professional rhythm, pace, comedy and pathos.

“Nothing that we do is AI assisted from a writing standpoint,” McLees insists. “The only thing we're using AI for is the image creation to help bring those ideas to life in a way that we couldn’t without raising a ton of money to shoot.”

The subject matter of the film doesn't pertain to AI. Nor does it overreach to try and dazzle the eye with CGI. It's a simple, intriguing two-hander that would have made a laudable stage play. The film is an attempt to normalise the medium and show that the incorporation of AI doesn't call for the negation of all that came before.

Bonventre explains they treated production like it was a real film. “We made a shot list from the script and a mood board then drew up a storyboard. We went through our timeline and if we needed an insert shot of a cup of coffee or a wide shot of a desk then we plugged that shot into Midjourney, created from image references in the style we wanted, and dropped that back into the timeline.

“It was a lesson in how to direct and in cinematography because you have to be so so specific about exactly what you want to see. When framing a shot your intent doesn't always communicate to the program. Nor is the technology that advanced for animation of creatures. We use programs that animated animal faces and then had to edit the mouth movement in fine detail to match lip sync. It required a lot of its trial and error because sometimes it spits out garbage. You need to iterate many times over in Runway or Midjourney even simple things like a dog’s paw pouring some whiskey into a coffee so it translates properly on screen. It is extremely tedious and can easily look janky.”

McLees adds, “Some people will ask ‘What prompt did you put in ChatGPT?’ but there is so much more that has to go into putting these films together. Sure, you can type in ‘Show me a bird flying over a volcano’ and it'll spit out the image. But if there's no story, you’re going nowhere.”

They used a variety of AI software including Runway, Hedra, Sunomusic, Based Labs, Hailuo, Nim and even provided the voice acting using AI program ElevenLabs after laying in a radio play under the images.

“What would normally have cost us tens of thousands of dollars just to make a concept trailer, or a short film to help sell the idea to the studio or even just to get a meeting, we can do now for a fraction of the cost using AI,” says McLees. “This is all human conceived, human written, human directed and edited so we still have that power as the creatives.

“The storytellers who can figure out how to use the tech are the ones that are going to cut through right now. None of our friends are willing to go to school the way have. The workflow with AI is really the wild west right now. AI is a difficult barrier of entry but eventually it's going to get so much easier.”

Studios and writers have an uneasy alliance before the current agreements on limited use of AI expire in 2026. Under the contract signed between the Writers Guild and studios in 2023, production companies have disclose to writers if any material given to them has been generated by AI partially or in full. AI cannot be a credited writer nor can AI write or rewrite ‘literary material.’ And AI-generated writing cannot be source material.

“AI can't write. Full stop,” says McLees. “ChatGPT and others just recycle language. There's no human emotion. It’s purely formulaic. In eighteen months, with the tech moving so fast, who knows? I'm sure Disney, Apple and Netflix are having their AI incubators spit out romantic comedy or action thriller on ChatGPT believing that that can become a future script, but I don't think we're there yet.”

Roadkill has been well received online and played at the AI International Film Festival. Talk Boys Studio has also created an ad for the brand Sour Patch Kids candy brand; comedy shorts featuring dinosaurs in an office and one called Birdwatchers which went viral on Instagram and TikTok on weekend of release with over 400K views across socials.

“It took us a month to do 12 minutes so would it take six to nine months to make a feature?” poses Bonventre.  “AI is still so new. No-one's really got it figured out. Aside from a few top tier filmmakers everybody else is throwing stuff against the wall hoping something will stick. That's exciting for us. Can we be on the forefront of making a series? Can we do the first sitcom that's fully AI?  We're testing the boundaries of what we can accomplish because if nobody wants to give us money to make the full thing conventionally we still want our projects to be realised.”

The industry-wide fear of AI replacing jobs remains but McLees and Bonventre insist that AI storytelling requires humans at the core to execute. However, where it might once have taken a team of people to animate Roadkill, it needed just the two of them. Surely jobs are going to be lost?

“Look what happened when Pixar released Toy Story in 1995,” Bonventre says. “There was this huge fear that computers would replace the jobs of traditional pencil animators. To an extent that happened, but there are still lots of CG animators on a Pixar movie and just as importantly Pixar movies are held up as the high water mark of animated storytelling because they have incredible human artistic involvement.

“AI gets a bad rap because it feels scary but in reality it’s a development of the industry. The old studio system broke down when people started their own production companies. Artists have always adopted consumer tech to create content from camcorders to the iPhone. It is all about taking power away from those people that were closing the gates on us. That's kind of what we faced in 2022 and it’s why more and more people from our industry are going to start doing this on their own once the tech becomes more even more accessible.”

 

Live volumetric streaming: “Volumetric video is better than conventional video”

IBC 

Volumetric video holds the potential to re-invent the live-streaming experience, with UK tech outfit Condense emerging as a pioneer.

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Channel 4’s launch of an app for the Apple Vision Pro is the latest indication that broadcasters see a future in streaming augmented and virtual reality experiences. However, like many such apps C4’s Taskmaster hardly scratches the surface of spatial computing’s potential. The viewer may be in a virtual world but the show itself is the same 2D passive broadcast experience.

As displays such as Vision Pro and Meta’s pending Orion AR glasses dial up the comfort and fidelity of content in virtual worlds content experiences will be three dimensional and if they are live the audience will be able to interact with the show’s talent.

The key to this is to generate and transmit not just three dimensional video but video that is volumetric. Calling it holographic conjures up Princess Leia from 1977’s Star Wars but volumetric is more or less the same thing and the race is on to crack the code to deliver content at scale.

“Shared live experiences in social 3D spaces is the future,” says Nick Fellingham, CEO and co-founder at Bristol-based tech developer Condense. “We want to take reality and condense it down and put it in front of you. That's going to be a really compelling.”

Founded in 2019, Condense was part of a consortium including BT Sport which won the IBC 2022 Innovation Award in the Content Everywhere category.  It raised $4.5 million (£3.7m) in seed funding led by  Deeptech Labs and has a share of a £1.2m government backed fund to refine and develop volumetric live-streaming technology. Earlier this year BBC Ventures bought a £500,000 stake in the company. It is the BBC investment arm’s first investment since it was set up two years ago.

“By partnering, we can rapidly explore new ways to engage younger audiences who don't regularly come to the BBC,” explained Jeremy Walker, Head of Ventures, BBC. “We can pioneer and shape the next evolution of content creation, and by investing in this Bristol-based startup, the BBC is backing British creativity, innovation, and technology.”

The Condense team have found a way of streaming live volumetric content for playback within interactive 3D engines like Unity or Unreal for viewing on AR/VR/XR headsets.

“Volumetric content means video where the user can choose the viewpoint, they can move around and watch from any angle,” Fellingham says. “We're really focused on handing the control of where you view the content from over to the user. We're the only ones streaming live events in this way.”

There are around 600 million active users of virtual environments who primarily spend time inside applications like Fortnite Roblox, Rec.Room and VRChat. As more and more people gravitate towards interactive 3D environments the market is building for content.

“The problem is that it's difficult for producers to get high quality video content into those places,” says Fellingham. “The data needs optimising.”

Condense has built an end-to-end system from capture to transmission that trumps rival solutions using proprietary compression algorithms.

“We believe neural representations are a step-change in the fields of computer vision and graphics. Unlike traditional methods that rely on explicit geometric models and high-complexity data formats, neural representations use implicit neural networks to encode 3D models and 2D videos,” says the company’s chief scientific officer and co-founder Ollie Feroze.

“This new approach offers significant advantages, including more efficient data representations, enhanced visual quality, superior scalability, and reduced computational complexity.” 

The Condense system is portable and doesn’t require a dedicated studio. Its rig uses just ten cameras while other systems require dozens or even hundreds.

The stream is compressed realtime at variable bit rate according to the capability of the device and the end user’s bandwidth. A bespoke plugin that sits inside the interactive 3D engines plays the content back. Its architecture is a hybrid of cloud and local compute power.  

“The combination of these things mean that content creators now can actually start producing content,” says Fellingham.

Its focus is on live streaming for sports and music and also has an eye on corporate conferences, education and more.

“Live is where we think there's a lot of value,” he says. “Multiplayer games are real-time applications and so real-time content fits into them well. It also makes the production process simpler. If you can get volumetric content out in real time, you don't have to wait for it to process overnight.”

Fellingham claims, “Our algorithms are extremely fast and among the most optimised in the world which is how we can do this in real time.”

An algorithm called Volumetric Fusion stiches - or fuses - the video from the multiple cameras. “It also fuses data over time,” he says. “We build up a probabilistic model of the surface of an object and then we morph it over time by adding more data from the cameras.”

Its rig is fitted with ten Time-of-flight cameras which provide a depth value of each pixel, from which the 3D structure of the scene can be estimated. Each camera has a 4K RGB sensor but Fellingham takes issue with the concept of measuring output by resolution.

“When you're talking about 4K, 8K or 16K you're talking about a pixel count in a [conventional rectangular 2D] frame but volumetric pixels sit in 3D space. You can move closer to them and the resolution will decrease or you can move further away from them and the resolution will increase because the viewer has perspective.

“It also depends on surface area. We can measure how many pixels are mapped on average from the cameras to a centimetre of surface area on the model. But there aren’t many good standard metrics commonly used across all providers.”

Condense uses another of its own metrics called ‘structural similarity’ for measuring how close its volumetric rendering is to the original camera viewpoint.

“We can add extra cameras into the rig and then measure how good a job we're doing of estimating novel viewpoints but this hasn't yet caught on across the industry.”

Where there’s occlusion, as will happen when there is more than one artist, the system applies predictive techniques to fill in the blanks using data from previous frames.

The rig circling a performer measures three meters by three meters by two meters. This is good enough to capture details of a performer’s nose and eyes in a live stream. The size of the volume and the whole capability of the system will increase along with compute power.

“The size of the volume is tied to GPU memory and compute and to bandwidth as well as how well we can optimise our algorithms,” he says.

A screen in front of the performer shows them the inside of the virtual venue to encourage interaction with the virtual audience.

“We often find that when a performer comes in they aren’t really prepared for what to expect. The performer is peering out into a sea of avatars. But within about five minutes they are focused in on the virtual crowd and interacting with them. As soon as they make a ‘shout out’ to the crowd and the crowd does what they say it totally changes how it feels in that space.  There's something special because it is your avatar and the performer both sharing the same 3D space.

“This is critical and what's been missing from so many of these virtual events that you see inside online gaming platforms to date. I would call them ‘showings’ rather than concerts. They are replays that feel clinical. If you don't feel like you're sharing the moment then you don't feel like you're connecting and that's what's different about live. You feel like you're part of the moment.”

BBC partnership

Its partnership with the BBC has been going ten months with an initial focus on music and generating content for social consumption.

Condense has built a platform for avatar-based music consumption which is white labelled to the BBC Radio 1 as The New Music Portal. A Condense array is set up at Maida Vale Studios where artists including Gardna, Charlotte Plank, Sam Tompkins and Confidence Man have already performed live streamed gigs

“The ambition is to be running these events much more regularly,” says Fellingham. “I think we've got a bi-weekly cadence now.”

The company has also signed a deal with a major record label with an announcement pending.

Condense previously worked with BT Sport to explore how combat sports could be captured and live streamed volumetrically. One use case was to stream a boxing match from Wembley for users to view via AR glasses in their living room.

“We learned that there are some operational complexities in doing this kind of capture. You need to work with the existing camera crew to set this kind of tech up in a stadium and with a crowd.

“I am still convinced that boxing and UFC are prime candidates for upgrading the content experience with this volumetric video.”

Having built partnerships with content companies to prove the value of volumetric the next step is to scale the business and the technology.

“It’s difficult with a nascent tech since you're having to educate the market as you build. Getting solid content partnerships is a first step to the scale. We believe that volumetric video is better than conventional video. Users feel closer to the content. You feel like you're more involved. It gives you a sense of presence. People talk a lot about VR but you really feel presence when you're consuming volumetric video. It doesn't matter how you if it's inside a game, or inside a headset, it makes you feel closer.”

He adds, “It is inevitability that this kind of video will become more and more prevalent.”

Fellingham studied physics and taught himself AI. In 2012 he joined startup SecondSync which was acquired by Twitter in 2014. SecondSync CEO Andy Littledale and CTO Dan Fairs joining Fellingham in setting up Condense, as director of operations and CTO respectively. Feroze, the fourth cofounder, has expertise in applied machine learning, AI, and a PhD in computer vision.

 

 

Plateauing subscriptions push streamers to freemium and consumers like it

Streaming Media

Almost all major streamers have launched ad-supported services (Apple being the main exception) as they look to diversify their revenue streams in markets which are already saturated with SVOD. These ad models are succeeding in converting existing subscribers and growing overall subs numbers, as is evidenced in Germany.

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GroupM's Consumer Evolution Detector study for the fourth quarter of 2024 found the proportion of  German subscribers to low-priced streaming platforms with advertising had grown by 33 percent to a total of 32 percent year on year.

Despite their continued top position, higher-priced streaming subscriptions without ads are experiencing a downward trend. The advertising group also found that, compared to the previous year, the use of ad-free offers has fallen by almost 13 percent to 54 percent.

Looking ahead, the willingness to take out a high-priced streaming service will be rather low among previous non-users (15 percent), said the report. Ad-financed offers show significantly more development potential in comparison: Around a quarter of Germans who have not yet done so want to use a free streaming provider with advertising in the future, and around a fifth want a low-priced ad-financed streaming subscription.

While all majors markets in Europe are experiencing this trend, Germany is particularly competitive when it comes to TV services.

“Freemium represents a way for premium services to compete,” says Annabel Yeomans, Research Manager, Ampere Analysis. “For example, DAZN is offering a free tier which is likely a way to encourage subscriptions while it's in competition with broadcasters like ARD and ZDF and premium providers like Sky. Local services like Joyn are likely to have a similar strategy in order to compete with global giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.”

Germany also sees relatively high levels of price sensitivity, so free tiers are a way to encourage consumers to ‘try before they buy’. Ampere data shows that the average revenue per subscription (ARPU) for subscription video services in Germany is lower than it is for the other Big 5 markets, suggesting that providers are finding the need to operate at a lower pricing strategy.

DAZN Germany represents a test case as to whether this is likely to see uptake in other markets. “Whether it will be replicated in other markets will depend on how successful it is as a trial and if providers feel that the market conditions are similar to those in Germany,” says Yeomans.

In Germany, Amazon Prime Video’s ad-supported tier remains the market leader, with a 20% share, but Netflix’s basic ad-supported plan is closing the gap, growing its reach to 17%. Other platforms such as RTL+ (14%), Joyn free (11%), and Disney+ with ads (11%) are also competing for market share.

“Cheaper streaming offers with advertising have their finger on the pulse. With attractive tariffs, they have become a serious alternative to ad-free streaming subscriptions,” says Nicole Ferguson, MD at GroupM. “For advertisers, this opens up new potential for reaching potential customers through targeted advertising.”

Cost-conscious consumers are not unique to Germany. A PwC report, ‘Global Entertainment & Media (E&M) Outlook 2024-2028’, highlights the role of ad-supported tiers as well as password sharing crackdowns, the introduction of live sports, and industry consolidation as streamers look for other sources of income in the years ahead.

The outlook, which covers 53 countries and territories, projects that global Entertainment and Media revenues will hit $3.4 trillion in 2028, growing at a 3.9% CAGR.

Most notably, advertising revenue is set to hit $1 trillion in 2026 and to account for more than half (55%) of total E&M industry revenue growth over the next five years. By 2028, advertising will account for about 28% of OTT global streaming revenues, up from 20% in 2023.

In the UK for instance, PwC forecasts that ads will account for 30 percent of UK streaming revenues by 2028, up from 24 percent in 2024.

Looking beyond streaming, the UK’s wider entertainment and media (E&M) market (including film, TV, gaming etc) is due to expand by 4 percent CAGR over the next four years, per the PwC reports. Total revenues are forecast to overtaking Germany in 2025 to become the largest E&M market in Europe. UK E&M revenues are expected to reach £121 ($150 billion) by 2028.

In the UK, advertising makes up 39 percent of the E&M market, compared to 29 percent across Western Europe. And the UK ad market is the most digitally mature in the region, according to PwC; internet advertising represents 80 percent of total ad revenues, compared to 66 percent across Western Europe.

Meanwhile, Netflix’ recent Q4 figures reveal significant growth to its with-ads plan with over 55% of signups in ad-supported countries (including Western Europe) and ad revenue doubling year over year. It added 19 million globally in the last quarter

Netflix Co-CEO Gregory Peters highlighted that Netflix's ad-supported plan had engagement levels similar to non-ad plans, that the focus is on improving the offering for advertisers to increase monetization and that the streamer plans to double ad revenue again this year.

As yet, Netflix has not announced similar price hikes in Europe to those introduced in the US, which may yet put a dent in ad-tier take up. On the earnings call Peters said the streamer still had “considerable work” to do in maximising ad monetisation. “We are confident we can continue to grow revenue at a solid pace and earn a growing piece of that over USD25 billion (global) in CTV ad spend.”