Behind the Scenes: Esports World Cup

IBC

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A last minute pivot to Paris brought its own set of challenges as ESL FACEIT assembles the world’s largest esports event

When the Esports Foundation announced that the third edition of the Esports World Cup (EWC) would shift from Riyadh to Paris, it marked a dramatic pivot in the event’s short history. Already scheduled to move from its Saudi home to international venues at some point in future, disruption in the Middle East bumped up that timeline giving the team just eight weeks to relocate the world’s largest esports event.

“It has always been our long‑term intention to take the EWC to other locations around the world,” says COO Mike McCabe, reflecting on the decision. “This year simply accelerated that plan. Next time, I would love to have more than eight weeks to design, build, and prepare.”

The move was prompted after the conflict with the US and Iran escalated earlier in the year.

“We picked a drop‑dead date for a decision,” McCabe explains. “If we’d waited until the last minute, it would have only been a broadcast event. We could have maintained competitive integrity, but not created a true spectacle.”

Starting July 06 and running over seven weeks, more than 2000 players from 200 clubs, and over 100 countries will compete in 24 games from Valorant and Rocket League to Chess and Counter-Strike 2 for a record $75 million dollars in prize money. More than one hundred thousand audience tickets have been sold in the last few weeks in a country where 11.8 million citizens identify as esports practitioners and where President Macron has announced a national esports strategy beginning this autumn from schools level up to grow the game.

Paris wasn’t the only fallback option though. “Finding a venue of the scale we operate in, for the duration we need, is extremely difficult,” McCabe says. “There were very few options that could give us that. The combination of the venue (Paris Expo Porte de Versailles), the government helping us accelerate everything, and the transport infrastructure allowing players and fans to arrive without disruption.”

The city’s cultural weight didn’t hurt either. “Some of the big French artists were excited to be part of it because they’re passionate about the industry,” McCabe says of the opening ceremony, which took place at La Seine Musical headlined by DJ Snake and Aya Nakamura. 

Media strategy and co-streamers

The event has grown its global media presence with more than 100 media partners broadcasting the EWC2026 in more than 160 countries, in 40 languages globally.

The Foundation’s strategy is two‑pronged, explains Chief Commercial Officer Mohammed Al Nimer, “To reach endemic esports audiences while simultaneously breaking into mainstream media,” he says. In France, that means daily segments on France Télévisions and partnerships with L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio station. In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia, Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China, meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyu, Bilibili, and Kuaishou. DAZN, Eurosport and TNT Sports are covering in different countries in Europe.

“Since mainstream media is a big part of this now we have to deliver enough content — and the right kind of content — so people who aren’t core gamers can still understand what’s going on,” McCabe says. “And you have to celebrate the athletes more. It’s not just about the game; it’s about the players.”

“We’re always working on finding the right balance between what’s interesting for people who really know the games, and creating a story that someone who’s never seen the game before can follow. We want to make sure we get even more eyes on the product in the future.”

To that end, the most radical expansion is happening online.

“We just launched Creator League, where we’re investing $2 million to support small and medium‑sized streamers,” Al Nimer explains. “We had more than five thousand people apply, so we’re going to have more than five thousand co‑streamers who will stream the Esports World Cup in 2026.”

Some will broadcast from Paris; most will stream from home. “We have extremely good facilities in the arenas where they can be present and commentate live,” he says. “But obviously, we cannot accommodate all five thousand on the ground.”

The Foundation sees co‑streamers as essential to global reach. Al Nimer says, “They allow us to expand into many more languages and give fans a more personal experience.”

The first two weeks of EWC compete for attention with the FIFA World Cup. Al Nimer is unfazed.

“Their matches are happening at different times than ours,” he says. “Our broadcast times are earlier in Europe, and their matches come later. So we don’t see any overlap for now.”

In fact, viewership is rising. “Our group stages and our last‑chance qualifiers have recorded historic viewership for us in terms of peak numbers,” he says. “We haven’t seen any negative impact.”

The 2026 edition will feature the same number of games — Fortnite is in, StarCraft is out — but the infrastructure is evolving. ESL FACEIT’s modular production system allowed the Foundation to reverse equipment shipments within hours. “It was literally an eleven‑hour decision,” McCabe says. “These systems are modular they’re always moving around the world.”

Diving into technical production

The Foundation hopes to maintain around 7,000 hours of content during the tournament and surpass last year’s 750 million audience reach.

The production occupies a vast temporary broadcast compound inside the Expo Porte de Versailles, built almost entirely from flypacks. Four main broadcast stages, three smaller group‑play stages, and a public gameplay zone feeds into a central engineering hub.

“We don’t have a fixed control room building,” says Sebastian Fjellström, Technical Manager at esports production company ESL FACEIT Group (EFG). “A lot of our equipment is purpose built for us, but it lives in flight cases because we need to be flexible.”

The sudden move limited some of the innovation planned for Riyadh. “We focused on delivering the best content we could rather than pushing innovation further. But we still improved game capture, graphical elements, and API integration.”

Paris’s RF‑dense environment added another layer of complexity. “We’re squeezing hundreds of RF devices into a limited spectrum while avoiding interference with cameras, wireless mics, and game related RF systems.”

Stage designs were rebuilt to suit the venue’s height and weight limits, with each stage using a different camera configuration. ARRI Alexa 35 Live systems headline Stage 1, while Sony system cameras and handheld RF units cover Stage 4. “We use long shots to get good close ups without disturbing the players. Player integrity is really important. We don’t want to affect the game by getting too close with camera angles, but we still want to capture all the emotion.”

RF Steadicams are used selectively. “Depending on the game, we can have them walking on stage during play, but a little bit away so they don’t disturb the players. As soon as players come on stage or during walk ins, you really want to be there to capture better footage. Player entries, celebrations — that’s where the RF and long lens combo is perfect.”

Other toys include a technocrane, a four‑point wire-cam to capture the audience on the main stage, a rail cam and PTZ units on each gamer’s PC from Chinese firm Obsbot.

Across all stages, the production team is constantly refining how esports is presented. “We have a lot of creative ideas about how we want to present play and how we want to present events.”

“We always produce broadcast first,” Fjellström says. “The big screens in the arena get additional stage integration elements, but the primary output is the broadcast feed. We create wild feeds for media rights holders so they can put their own coverage on top for local markets.”

EVS VIA servers power replays across all stages, including expanded use of XtraMotion which delivers AI-derived slo-mos. “Last year it was on one stage; this year it’s on every stage,” he says. “It lets us do super slow mo on player reactions without needing high speed cameras.”

Real‑time game data is central to the production. “We work much more with computer sources and real time game data. We can grab stats directly from the game server and integrate them into graphics packages, stage elements, and triggers.” Keeping servers local is essential: “The challenge is balancing innovation with the real time sensitivity of esports. The game servers must be local to minimise delay for players.”

The team’s deep game knowledge helps smooth transitions. “We have a people internally who have a lot of knowledge about every game so the transition of adding or removing games has been super smooth. Our team of games specialists are able to work really close with both the publisher and players to make sure that we have the best coverage.

“It's amazing project to work on because there's so many challenges that you would normally not see in traditional sports and to be able to push what we can do is always interesting,” Fjellström says.

I ask him which game is the most difficult or complex to produce[ap1] . “I think you can see it from two different angles,” he replies. “We have the complexity of Battle Royale titles (like Fortnite) because it’s a very big game with a lot of teams to follow. But we also have complexity with certain games where they’re restricted by the publisher in terms of what we’re allowed to show.

“For some games, you can’t show red blood in certain countries. So you have to duplicate sources — one version without red, one with — and make sure they look the same, have the same cohesive style, and the production works the same. That means two different game clients, two different pipelines. That’s a different kind of challenge.

“But for me on this event, the biggest challenge is just the massive scale of everything. When you do one stage, it’s usually fine. When you do two stages the complexity multiplies fast.

“We’re changing the stage design because the venue is different. We need to change cameras, rethink where we’re placing 125 Micron nodes, and adjust depending on what type of camera system each stage uses.”

Riedel’s MediorNet Micron is the high-density signal interface that is the baseband network for this production. Last year’s event in Riyadh used a full SMPTE 2110 core.

There are 110 physical encoders processing around 280 streams concurrently for distribution to different platforms and media partners and also for monitoring and remote production.

“We’re producing almost 10–12 live hours per stage, four to five days a week,” he says. “On top of that, we produce in multiple languages and there are dedicated Chinese, French and English studios on site.

“In our facility in Stockholm, we have a team working with different remote tools to control, either the gear here, or do stuff on their own and send it to here. So we can, for example, have graphic editors working remote and sending the packages to us, and we can have operators sitting in one of our facilities and physically controlling devices here.”

Setup began on June 1 with remote testing beforehand, some of it in Poland.

Building a Nation‑based esports ecosystem

Beyond the logistics and broadcast strategy, McCabe is focused on the long‑term evolution of esports and particularly the debut of the Esports Nations Cup (ENC) this December in Saudi.

“ENC is a different property,” he says. “The reason we created these national competitions is to lean into the national fandom — the celebration of fans who may not follow endemic esports, but who support their nation.”

He compares it to football’s global appeal. “A lot of people who don’t necessarily follow football tune in to support their country. So ENC is a unique opportunity for us.”

The format brings players from different clubs together to represent their country — a deliberate contrast to the club‑based EWC. “We didn’t want it to be duplicative of the club championship,” McCabe says. “Bringing together players from different teams creates new dynamics and, hopefully, aligns fans to support together.

“A lot of clubs and players rely on this event. It helps them with long‑term operational sustainability. If we can help stabilise the club ecosystem and also help create a nation‑based ecosystem for esports, that would be our ultimate goal.”

As for  whether ENC will still locate in Riyadh given continuing instability in the Gulf, the Foundation is monitoring the situation. “Travel and transport safety in Saudi Arabia are stable,” McCabe says. “We absolutely hope ENC will take place there. It’s important to us.”

 

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Gladius debut punches in new driven era of sports

Streaming Media

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When British boxer Harlem Eubank walks into London’s Copper Box Arena on 18 July, the welterweight bout against French challenger David Papot will be the first globally broadcast fight in which every punch, feint, collision, and moment of fatigue is captured, analysed, and visualised by a new AI‑powered broadcast layer.

Gladius is a platform that fuses AI, wearable sensors, volumetric video, spatial audio, and real‑time analytics into a single broadcast‑ready system.

DAZN will use the tech in its broadcast presentation though fans in the arena will see even more of the resulting data overlays.

“We set out to make live sports more engaging, more interactive, and more intelligible to audiences who increasingly expect data‑rich, personalised viewing experiences,” explains Dr Alastair Moore a computer scientist and UCL lecturer who has been working on Gladius for three years working alongside CEO Oliver Hickey.

Moore is also co‑founder of Satalia (acquired by WPP for $100 million) and founder of DeepFlow, and  sits on the board of the UK’s largest deep tech accelerator, ConceptionX. 

He compares the Gladius experience to cricket’s Hawk‑Eye and Snicko systems (Hawk-Eye is also used to help officiate line calls in tennis, VAR in soccer among numerous other sports). “The original idea was just having a lot more feedback as to what’s actually happening… certainly for a novice viewer, but increasingly for a professional viewer as well.”

That feedback begins with six wearable sensors on each fighter — one on each glove, boot, the rear waistband, and the gumshield. These sensors capture accelerometry, momentum transfer, and micro‑movements that computer vision alone cannot reliably detect.

“If I threw a punch and pulled all the momentum out at the last minute, it would look very similar on camera,” Moore explains. “For that reason, you need the sensor on the glove.”

The sensors are paired with two computer‑vision systems: one for punch classification (jab, hook, uppercut), and one for volumetric capture. Spatial audio adds a third modality, giving the system a different fidelity on contact events.

“Any one of these modalities can fail,” Moore says. “So what we’re doing is combining these different technologies together to have a single gold‑standard ground truth about what actually happened in the fight.”

Gladius reports 95% accuracy across analytics validated on more than 100 fighters.

Volumetric replays

A striking features is a volumetric replay system comprised of a 23‑camera array mounted above the jumbotron. It captures a point cloud of the ring, allowing the production team to reconstruct any viewpoint after the fact.

“From that point cloud, you can reconstruct any trajectory through the light field,” Moore says. “You’re not tethered to the cameraman on the corner post or the boom. Once you know what action has happened, you can re‑render any viewpoint you want.”

Today, those replays are not fully real‑time. “You can produce certain renderings within a minute, and pretty much any rendering within three minutes,” Moore says. “So you’re looking at between rounds.”

But he expects real‑time volumetric replays within a year, driven by faster GPUs and engineering optimisations that avoid rendering the entire scene.

“Instead of rendering the entire scene, you render only the changes in the scene where the fighters are. That’s how you make the processing dramatically faster.”

Hickey calls the effect ‘Matrix‑style,’ and says it will fundamentally change how fans understand combat sports.

The next wave of biometrics

Beyond punches, Gladius is testing lactic‑acid sensors and pulse‑oximeter monitors — tools that could quantify fatigue, recovery, and tactical pacing.

“You can start to understand fatigue in a way you can’t really at the moment,” Moore says. “Is a fighter in round five taking a rest, or are they coasting as a tactic?”

The challenge is more regulatory than technical. “It’s a long negotiating process with the Board of Boxing Control about deciding what information is available, to whom, and when,” he says.

Still, the potential is enormous. Heart‑rate variability, recovery curves, and metabolic load could become part of the broadcast experience (as well as part of coaching, judging, or athlete welfare systems).

Why combat sports came first

Moore says boxing was the ideal launchpad for Gladius because it avoids the multi‑year commercial cycles of leagues like football or tennis.

“Combat sports can be taken on a fight‑by‑fight basis,” he says. “If we wanted to put on the world championship, we could bid for it and hold it in our back garden if we want.”

The geometry also helps: two fighters, a constrained space, and predictable movement patterns.

Kickboxing, MMA, and even Power Slap are already being tested. Racket sports are next. Football will come later, once volumetric capture scales to larger fields of play.

“The rate of change in computer vision is so dramatic that things technically challenging now probably aren’t challenging in 24 months,” Moore says.

The streaming backbone

Gladius is part of a three‑way partnership with Eluvio and Satalia/WPP, announced last year and initially targeted to work with events in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Eluvio’s Content Fabric Protocol dramatically reduces streaming latency and distribution costs, Moore claims.

“Your normal broadcast stream has a latency of 15–30 seconds. Eluvio, in principle, has this down below two seconds, possibly below one second globally. If you can watch sports in real time lots and lots of new things become possible.”

For sports streaming, that opens up greater potential for viewer engagement as well as prediction (gaming) markets to multi‑angle user‑selected feeds.

“Rather than being given the one camera feed,” Moore says, “you can choose what streams you want to look at… follow this player, follow this car.

“Some of this stuff is possible on the current broadcast CDN backbone, but it's quite difficult and quite expensive. With Eluvio, lots and lots of user or viewer-led permutations become possible.”

The volumetric replays, in particular, become far more powerful when paired with Eluvio’s low‑latency infrastructure.

Satalia’s involvement focuses on audience modelling and advertising optimisation.

“Lots of advertising and user‑targeting models aren’t really focused on a sporting audience,” Moore says. “Sports viewers have a whole lot of interesting characteristics in their own right.”

As Gladius generates new forms of engagement data (punch analytics, fatigue curves, volumetric interactions) Satalia aims to help rights‑holders understand who their viewers are, what they watch, and why.

“We’re trying to target sports as a viewership. If you look at most advertising and user‑targeting models, none of them are really focused on a sporting audience. And a sporting audience has a whole set of interesting characteristics in its own right.

“The broad idea is that as these new sets of data, new engagement techniques, and new forms of choice for the end consumer become possible, you open up many more ways for brands and advertisers to engage. It’s the beginning of a much more nuanced relationship with the sports viewer. Social media has also disaggregated a lot of rights‑owners’ understanding of who watches their content and why.

“Business 101 is know your customer,” Moore adds. “Ultimately lots of sports just have no idea who their customer is at the moment.”

Gladius is being framed as a solution to a structural problem within the sports industry.  Younger audiences are disengaging from traditional sports broadcasts, and rights‑holders need new ways to justify rising media‑rights costs.

“This is the beginning of a new era of combat sports,” Hickey says. “Gladius creates a single, trustworthy source of truth… insights that turn raw action into compelling understanding.”

The Copper Box Arena debut will be the first time it all gets glued together. “We’ve done test events piece by piece, but this is the first full deployment,” Moore says.

The company is already in discussions with major promoters including Queensberry and Matchroom. MF Pro, which holds the DAZN deal for the Eubank–Papot fight, is expected to continue working with the company.

Saudi Arabia remains a strategic market, though geopolitical events have slowed progress. “We have spent a lot of time in Saudi,” Moore says. “Ultimately at the moment slightly unproductively, but we will get there.”

Media over QUIC: M&E's transport revolution has arrived

IBC

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For media companies preparing for the next decade of streaming, MoQ may be the most important standard they haven’t yet deployed.

For too long, the streaming industry has been pushing the limits of internet technologies never designed for the scale, interactivity, and immediacy of modern video. As live events grow larger and audiences more demanding, the cracks are showing. Enter Media over QUIC (MoQ), a transport protocol that promises to enhance both quality and latency without the need for specialised infrastructure. 

“Why MoQ, and why now?” asks Will Law, Chief Architect of the Edge Technology group at CDN provider Akamai. “Well, the answer to ‘Why now?’ is that we have a convergence of technologies, market pressures, and new expectations for real‑time digital experiences.” 

That convergence is around two protocols. The first is QUIC, originally developed in 2012 by Google, adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as the basis for HTTP/3, the next version of the hypertext transfer protocol, which is the foundation for data communication on the net. 

Then there’s WebTransport, which, as the name suggests, is a new transport layer for the web that is now supported across all major browsers. 

“It offers several advantages over traditional TCP [transmission control protocol] – the biggest being parallel streams of data,” Law outlines. “With a single connection, you can have 10, 20, or even 100 parallel streams, and they don’t interfere with one another. If one stream gets blocked, the others continue flowing. This lets us deliver media more efficiently than TCP ever could.” 

The IETF is baking QUIC and WebTransport into a new open standard. While MoQ is the name that has stuck, as Law emphasises, “it doesn’t have to be media… it’s payload agnostic.”

Non-media use cases that can take advantage of the technology run the gamut – ranging from gambling and betting to financial feeds, autonomous driving telemetry, and IoT sensors, all of which demand low latency, control, and reliability.

Akamai’s Law highlights AI as a major emerging use case. He says: “Imagine we want to use edge inference to translate what we’re saying in real time… MoQ is perfect for doing this. This was not a market opportunity we saw two years ago.” 

However, for the media industry, MoQ represents an opportunity to rethink how live video, interactivity, VR immersivity, and AI‑driven experiences flow across the internet. 

What problem does MoQ solve?  

The industry is still relying on HTTP, a protocol first published in 1997. Adaptive request–response patterns – such as HTTP live streaming (HLS), dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH), and common media application format (CMAF) – built on HTTP are undoubtedly improvements. However, they are rigid and slow to adapt. They are also fundamentally pull-based, which makes low-latency interactivity difficult.

WebRTC is excellent for real-time latency, but it can’t stretch to one-second latency, according to Law. “While HLS and DASH are very good at two or three seconds, they can’t reliably go lower and certainly can’t reach real-time performance.”

MoQ is designed to fill that gap. It offers what Law calls “tunable latency” transport that can operate anywhere from real time to a few seconds, while enabling bidirectional data flows.

“Today, quality of experience is a problem for live events for a lot of people,” says Damien Sterkers, Vice President (VP) of Product Marketing at streaming technology provider Broadpeak. “You get these big peaks of traffic, and most networks are not really sized for that. There must be some evolution at some point. MoQ not only promises lower latency but fewer rebuffering events and more efficient bandwidth usage, which are all essential for large-scale live delivery.”

For Gwendal Simon, Senior Director of Technology at Synamedia, the real breakthrough is the tech’s flexibility. 

“With MOQ, a player isn’t just a subscriber; it’s a publisher too,” he explains. “Any player that’s connected to a network can also publish data. That bidirectional communication unlocks a new class of experiences that HTTP simply can’t support.”

MoQ’s multi‑track publish/subscribe model means a publisher can expose multiple video, audio, and metadata tracks independently and for receivers to subscribe only to what they want. 

“This lets you create a personalised feed,” Simon says. “If you want to get rid of the broadcast concept where everyone gets the same flow, then MoQ is the answer.” 

Personalisation at scale 

Sports rights holders could be early beneficiaries. Today, a match might have one or two commentary feeds. MoQ could enable dozens. 

“In the US you already see ‘home’ and ‘away’ commentary,” Simon says. “In the future you’ll have tactical commentary for hardcore fans, casual commentary for newcomers, commentary in multiple languages and styles. You could easily end up with 8–10 English audio tracks alone.” 

Doing this today at scale is complex and expensive. “With MoQ, it’s part of the protocol,” he illustrates. 

Sterkers imagines similar possibilities: picture‑in‑picture commentary from a favourite YouTuber, or long‑promised but hard‑to‑deliver watch‑together experiences. 

Law predicts MoQ would enable real‑time fan interactivity such as instant voting and betting. “Even in-game micro-bets like ‘Who takes the free kick?’ can double or triple revenue for rights holders.” 

Rich, synchronised data feeds presenting biometrics, GPS, or player stats become possible. Multi‑camera, personalised feeds like Amazon’s X-Ray‑style Thursday Night Football experience would become accessible to anyone with MoQ. “You won’t have to use proprietary solutions,” says Law. 

Arguing that bandwidth constraints have held back innovation for years, Sterkers imagines that MoQ could finally unlock new fan experiences. 

“4K is very nice, but it’s pretty much impossible to have the capacity to do a big live event in 4K,” he says. “Until capacity and efficiency improve, innovations like multi‑angle viewing or HDR remain out of reach.” 

Boosting video calls 

Another intriguing possibility is the unification of streaming and video conferencing – two worlds that today operate on entirely separate stacks. 

“It’s possible to host a relay on the CDN side,” Simon explains. “So, WebEx, Zoom, and Teams could use it. Today, video conferencing and streaming are completely separate, but MOQ could unify them.” 

This could enable conferencing platforms to leverage global CDN infrastructure, improving scale and reliability. 

Standardisation and open-source momentum  

The IETF published draft 18 of the MOQ Transport spec in May and is “aggressively” pushing for the final spec to be formally published by September, Law says. 

“But stability is what matters, not publication,” he insists. “There are 12 independent relay implementations tracked by the IETF, all aiming for interoperability. When the spec stabilises, these relays will start working with each other… then we have reliability.” 

Synamedia expects MoQ to land first in primary distribution (broadcasters sending feeds to affiliates) around 2027. 

Consumer‑facing adoption is projected to come later, though some streaming solutions providers like Vindral and Nanocosmos are already deploying it. 

“They’ve built the player, the publisher and the network,” Law says. “They can just pick a draft and go with it, and they have gone to production already.” 

Law is also behind the recent launch of OpenMOQ, a consortium building MoQ open-source software that can be commercially deployed. The membership includes Cisco, Oracle, and YouTube, encoding vendors like Ateme, player companies like Bitmovin as well as Synamedia and Akamai. 

“Many people were sceptical in the beginning, but now there’s consensus that the benefits of MoQ are bigger than the constraints,” enthuses Simon. “Those who didn’t follow from the beginning are trying to catch up.” 

Sterkers believes major platforms will ultimately determine the pace. “Big actors have a lot to say,” he observes. “Google drove HTTP/2 adoption simply by enabling it on YouTube. If Google or Oracle deploy MoQ at scale, it’s going to change everything.” 

Likewise, expect MOQ to be a dominant technical theme at IBC in September with at least 30 booths demoing the tech – triple the number from IBC2025. 

At NAB, Broadpeak showcased a working MoQ relay interoperating with Shaka Player and Oracle OCI. “We showed less rebuffering, better latency and higher resolutions,” Sterkers says. 

It also introduced a “half‑relay” that accepts HTTP input and outputs MoQ, enabling gradual migration. 

“Migration needs to be step by step,” Sterkers says. “We’ve been working for so long with HTTP that it can seem impossible to switch to something else.” 

To be clear, MoQ isn’t proposed as a replacement for HLS/DASH – at least not immediately. Synamedia, for instance, has demonstrated a MoQ receiver that outputs MPEG‑TS. 

“That got attention,” says Simon, who expects a beta MoQ gateway and publisher ready for IBC. “It’s a bridge between old and new worlds.” 

He adds: “We can’t just wipe the infrastructure and deploy a new one based on MoQ. Backward compatibility, device support, and the need to transport existing formats (ie CMAF, MPEG-TS, SCTE‑35, DRM) mean the transition must be gradual.” 

Nonetheless, Sterkers expresses confidence. He says: “We’re not going to remain stuck in the technology of ’99 forever.” 

IBC2025’s Accelerator cohort delivered some of the most ambitious demonstrations yet, featuring AI-driven production workflows, a radical rethinking of ultra-low latency streaming, and even live private 5G networks flying in an ultralight aircraft. IBC365 hears from a handful of projects to learn about life after the show.

 

IBC Accelerator Bringing Order to the Studio‑Selection Process

IBC 

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A new project, kickstarted and nurtured as an IBC Accelerator, aims to deploy digital twin technology to streamline discoverability of the UK’s studio space and help producers make smarter, more sustainable choices.

The IBC Accelerator project will look to solve a problem that almost everyone in modern production silently acknowledges: the studio landscape, especially around virtual production (VP), is fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate. For commissioners, producers, and line producers, simply understanding what exists, what’s possible, and what’s sustainable often requires weeks of calls, recces, guesswork, and duplicated effort. 

Robin Cramp, Head of Advanced Media Production Studios at Digital Catapult, says the challenge became clear the moment his team began mapping the UK’s rapidly expanding studio ecosystem.

“Anything new and evolving needs an element of understanding,” Cramp explains. “Virtual production, motion capture, volumetric capture - these technologies have accelerated so fast that everyone has built their own baseline of what they think the landscape looks like. The result is fragmentation. Producers don’t have a clear way to compare studios, understand capability, or assess feasibility early enough in the process.”

Voopla—named with a playful nod to Zoopla—aims to change that.

Fragmentation, uncertainty and sustainability blind spots

Cramp describes three core pain points:

• Fragmented knowledge Studios range from commercial VP facilities to university R&D labs to traditional broadcast spaces. Capabilities vary wildly. Information is inconsistent. Producers rely on word‑of‑mouth, Google searches or outdated lists.
• Inefficient early‑stage decision‑making Before a project is greenlit, teams need to know whether a studio can support the creative, technical and operational demands of a production. Today, that often means multiple physical recces, travel, and manual comparisons.
• Sustainability is bolted on, not built in Most productions rely on Bafta Albert accreditation, but as Cramp notes, “it’s like marking your own homework.” There’s no standardised way to understand the environmental footprint of a studio and the footprint of the specific technologies a production brings into it.

“This results in uncertainty and inefficiency, and missed opportunities to make smarter, more cost-efficient and greener decisions earlier,” Cramp says.

A production‑accurate digital twin workflow

Voopla will prototype, test and validate a decision‑ready digital twin workflow that allows producers to explore, compare and pre‑produce inside studio spaces before stepping foot in them.

The innovation lies in combining technologies that are rarely used this early in the commissioning process. These range from photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning to Gaussian Splatting, Real‑time simulation, use of IoT data layers and even optional VR access for immersive scouting.

These elements form a shared decision‑making layer that integrates creative, technical, operational and sustainability insight into one workflow.

“If you can scout a studio digitally you can also block shots and check door widths for example or test whether that giant tree in the script actually fits, before you’ve travelled anywhere. You reduce risk. You reduce cost and time and increase confidence,” Cramp says. “And you embed sustainability intelligence from the very start.”

How Voopla works

The prototype, debuting at IBC2026, will walk visitors through three studio journeys—each representing a different type of facility:

• A Digital Catapult advanced media production studio
• An ITV daytime broadcast studio
• A third partner studio (traditional, non‑VP)

The workflow begins with a directory‑style overview of the UK studio landscape. Producers can filter by location, capability, or production requirements. But the directory is only the entry point.

Once a shortlist is created, Voopla generates production‑specific sustainability and capability reports, similar to an EPC rating for homes. These reports reflect not only the studio’s footprint but also the impact of the equipment and technologies a production intends to bring.

From there, users can enter the digital twin (via web or VR) to scout, plan and pre‑produce.

“We’re not building a finished product,” Cramp emphasises. “This is year one. The goal is to tell a compelling story, demonstrate the workflow, and gather industry feedback. The aim is to scale Voopla across the UK’s studio ecosystem but the conversations at IBC will shape what comes next.”

Industry collaboration and global relevance

Voopla is built in collaboration with broadcasters, studio owners and technology partners. Digital Catapult’s National Digital Twin Centre in Belfast contributes expertise in data modelling and energy visualisation. Partners such as Shure bring insight into studio‑specific technologies like line‑array microphones. Virtual production specialists contribute workflows around Gaussian Splatting and real‑time simulation.

The aim is to create a repeatable, internationally scalable blueprint for more confident and sustainable studio commissioning—across broadcast, film, commercials, games and immersive media.

“Whether you’re making daytime TV, episodic drama, commercials or games, you’d be remiss not to understand virtual production,” Cramp says. “But everyone’s journey has been different. Voopla brings order to that.”

Where Voopla goes next

Voopla’s first year is intentionally focused: prototype the workflow, demonstrate it live, and gather industry input. But the long‑term potential is far larger.

Cramp notes that scaling Voopla would require industry‑wide participation—and careful handling of studio privacy and proprietary data. Some studios may initially resist scanning or sustainability disclosure. But as he points out, the industry is racing toward 2030 carbon‑neutral pledges.

“Broadcasters will start dialling up sustainability requirements. The pound they spend will need to go to the right places. Voopla could become a validation mechanism—a badge of best practice.”

Temporary spaces, warehouse conversions, pop‑up VP stages and hybrid facilities could all be included in future iterations. So could talent rosters, VP supervisors, and other human‑expertise layers that often define a studio’s real capability.

First comes IBC2026.

Cramp says, “If we can land the concept, take people on the journey, and leave them wanting more. That’s success for year one.”

There are a number of champions and partners to the project.

Hemini Metha, Senior Sustainability Lead, EBU, says “Sustainability is not optional for Public Service Media; it is a core operational requirement. Having one dedicated Studio Hub, VooPla, to locate all the relevant information will reduce our time and make our day-to-day lives easier.”

Ian Nock, Chair IET Media Technical Network says, “The Institution of Engineering Technology has as its primary aim to be engineering a better world, and nowhere is this more key than championing innovation as presented by Voopla. It is focused on creating and applying a Digital Twin to make more effective the key decision making for virtual production, taking into account sustainability right from the start. This is an important step in ensuring that sustainability is embedded in all decisions for the production of content.”

 

Spider-Noir: Returning to hard lights for a radical dual-look design

RedShark News

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Spider-Noir, Amazon's Nicolas Cage vehicle, comes in two distinct varieties: moody noir and lush color. The key to pulling off the show's distinctive looks was using dual LUTS and returning to the pre-LED era of lighting tools.

How do you make a show is both exquisite homage to classic 1940s noir simultaneously with one that feels as visually lush in classic Hollywood colour? The cinematographers behind Amazon Prime series Spider-Noir have managed it by leaning into old-fashioned lighting designs and vintage tools.

“Spider-Noir was about completely embracing the look and technology, frankly, of film noir when it was created,” explains Peter Deming, the veteran DP who lensed David Lynch’s neo-noirs Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

 “A lot of the lighting units we're using were very traditional lighting that I started my career with in the business that have now sort of taken a back seat to LED lights.”

Rather than relying heavily on modern fixtures, the cinematographers dusted off older equipment, including Mole-Richardson units, Fresnels and other vintage hard-light sources. The result is a dramatic visual black and white style built on deep contrast and sculpted shadows.

“Lost Highway is noir‑ish, but it’s modern. It’s not a hard‑light film,” says Deming, who shot episodes 5 & 6 of Spider-Noir. “Here we’re using hard light, and lighting faces with hard light with a precision and edge that only those sources can produce.

“It was terrifying at first to light faces with hard light again, but then you get the hang of it.”

Darran Tiernan, the Irish DoP who established the grungy look of Gotham for HBO’s The Penguin, was lead cinematographer on Spider-Noir and shot the pilot plus episodes 2-4, 7 & 8.

“LED technology certainly gives you a lot of control and has become the mainstay of modern production but it also sort of pushes you towards softer light,” he says. “It was clear to me that we needed to go back to using older fixtures and rewire my brain accordingly.”

The series was originally conceived to be shot and streamed solely in black-and-white, but on the first day that Tiernan joined pre-production he and the rest of the creative team were asked whether a full colour version was also possible.

“There was a request for a colour version,” recalls Tiernan of a meeting with showrunner Oren Uzeil. “It had to be one that we were really happy with and that meant one that could exist without compromising the noir foundation.”

This triggered an extensive period of testing with colourist Pankaj Bajpai, who developed two LUTs (one monochrome, one colour) applied to the RAW Venice 2 negative.  

Dozens of stills from BW classics like Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Sunset Boulevard, The Killing and The Night of the Hunter were pinned to production office walls alongside early noir themed colour films like Niagara.

“Once we discovered the recipe, everyone was moving in the same direction,” Tiernan says. “We would monitor in black and white, except for focus pullers who required colour. Even before we'd do a take, I'd be flicking between them to see. Within a few days, you get very used to that because this is the way we are creating this world."

Extensive testing became crucial. To ensure consistency, they built a miniature studio where departments could preview fabrics, textures and set elements under the exact lighting and LUTs used on set. FX‑series cameras were supplied to other HoDs for test shoots because, says Tiernan, they have the same colour science as Venice.

Tiernan describes the process as “a constant collaboration, where colour had to be exciting but could never infringe on how good the black‑and‑white looked. We never went into a day of shooting not understanding what something could look like.”

The show’s graphic‑novel origins were equally influential. Spider-Man: Noir first appeared in 2009, as part of the Marvel Noir universe. Tieran studied the original issues and cites executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Spider‑Verse animated film series as a major touchstone. “The angles they chose and the energy in the action sequences were really inspiring,” he said.

He also looked to the stark framing of Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter a 2009 graphic novel based on the fiction by Donald Westlake about a professional thief which John Boorman translated to screen in 1967 as Point Blank.

Working with storyboard artist Jay Martin, they translated these influences into compositions and lighting designs which Tiernan describes as a hybrid between film noir, comic-book and pulp fiction.

The colour version itself evolved into “a heightened, Technicolor-inspired” interpretation of the noir world. Influences ranged from early colour photography books such as ‘The Colours of Life’ (a book of colourised BW early 20th century stills) and noir cinematographer John Alton’s ‘Painting with Light’ from 1948 to the bold psychological palette of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Rather than competing with the gritty monochrome presentation, the saturated colour grade was designed to complement it.

Beginning to grade his episodes, Deming was surprised to learn that Bajpai had barely touched the first pass. “That’s a testament to Kevin Britton, our DIT, who kept such a great eye on the look and would re‑time things within the day so they matched.”

Neither cinematographer altered their creative approach, regardless of which version would ultimately be viewed. “You’re lighting based on the content of the scene,” says Deming. “You’re going for a noir look, and those aspects are in the colour version as well. You’re just shooting the best way to tell the story.”

Yet audiences consistently report different emotional responses. “People say the black‑and‑white feels darker, more dramatic and they’re probably right, despite both editions using identical performances and compositions,” Tiernan remarks.

“Film noir cinematography is really about the psychology of what’s going on, telling the story in a visual and graphic sense. Being allowed to do that is exciting for any cinematographer.”

When AI and virtual reality converge

IEC E-tech

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling extended reality environments (XR) to push boundaries even further. While standards for XR exist, more will be required to foster interoperability between both worlds.

 

Over the last ten years, technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have all advanced at a remarkable speed. At the same time, innovations in optics, display engineering, microprocessors and rendering algorithms have helped to create increasingly sophisticated immersive environments. Today, people can explore a wide range of virtual spaces, whether they use a headset or not, from videogames and virtual tours to social platforms and educational tools.

While VR and AR technologies (usually bracketed under XR for extended reality) have developed independently of AI/ML, they are increasingly converging.

“AI can enhance XR in numerous ways,” says Dr Takeshi Kurata, Director, Research Institute on Human and Societal Augmentation, AIST in Japan, and the Acting Chair of the joint technical committee between ISO and IEC,  ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 24, responsible for work on computer graphics, image processing and environmental data representation. “AI helps create, maintain and update virtual content at a far lower cost than manual methods,” he adds.

For example, when re-creating real‑world environments, human appearances, or objects, generative AI can deliver hyper realistic results at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods. The caveat is that unless checked by human expertise, this can sometimes lead to hallucinations.

How AI can elevate XR

A growing field is augmented intelligence - using AI to enhance human capability rather than replace it. When paired with VR or AR, augmented intelligence could transform creative and industrial workflows.

Nearly every XR application requires onboarding or instructions. Instead of delivering training outside the immersive environment, XR can embed it directly into the experience, much like videogames that teach players through interactive play rather than manuals.

“People learn better when practice is interactive, contextual, safe, and supported by intelligent guidance,” says Donggil Song, Associate Professor of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University. “One of the clearest examples is the creation of virtual assistants capable of understanding natural speech and offering personalized guidance.” This approach can be extended far beyond application tutorials. When combined with AI techniques such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis and pathfinding, VR becomes a powerful platform for education and skills development.

“XR already gives us immersive learning or training experiences, but AI gives us intelligence inside that experience,” says Song, whose work at EinBrain Lab focuses on combining AI with XR and data‑driven feedback to improve learning and human performance. EinBrain’s flagship project is AlgeVerse, a fully VR, gamified college algebra platform that uses AI-based peer mentors to give the learner guidance, feedback, and suggestions. The project, which is in year one of a three‑year cycle, supports natural communication and is expanding into a multi‑user environment. “Users might not be able to differentiate which avatars are real students and which are AI peer mentors,” Song explains.

The lab has also created a playful VR environment called Prehistoric Protocols to make learning about computer networking more engaging. “Students travel to a [virtual] prehistoric world with cavemen and dinosaurs. Students must teach them using foundational IT concepts,” Song describes.

AI-powered characters in video games

The video-game sector is one of the earliest fields to adopt practical AI in real products. Modern games use AI for world generation, pathfinding, data analysis and player‑experience modelling. One of the most intriguing recent developments is the population of virtual environments with non‑player characters (NPCs) and AI agents. “As it becomes more difficult to distinguish whether entities are controlled by humans or AI, it may eventually become unclear whether a human society actually exists inside the environment at all,” notes Kurata. “From this perspective, I believe AI-driven NPC control is one of the most impactful developments in this field.”

In rural areas of Japan facing depopulation, there are places where large numbers of scarecrows are placed outdoors to ease the loneliness of declining communities. “In a sense, NPCs can be viewed as a virtual counterpart of such scarecrows,” he suggests. “However, NPCs are controlled by AI in the backend, making them far more realistic and interactive, even though their existence is virtual compared with physical scarecrows.”

Challenges include computational resources

Increased adoption of 5G connectivity will accelerate AI-driven XR applications. With high bandwidth, low latency and the ability to connect vast numbers of devices, 5G enables new forms of edge and cloud computing. This could offload heavy processing from headsets, allowing them to become lighter, cooler and more power‑efficient while still delivering richer experiences.

However, integrating AI into VR and AR is not without constraints. AI workloads often demand substantial computational resources, which increases power draw and heat, potentially making headset devices heavier or less comfortable. Research is underway to create more efficient AI‑specific chips and to run AI on low‑power processors, but as AI applications grow more complex, the tension between capability and efficiency is likely to persist.

Kurata says, “Often we see evaluation indicators like accuracy or precision. However, there are often no metrics for energy effectiveness. If we successfully standardize such metrics for industry, competing companies in this space may try to reduce energy consumption as much as possible.”

Other challenges are social rather than technical. Bias is one of the most serious. Any AI system can reflect the biases present in its training data. Speech recognition, for instance, often performs best for accents similar to those of the engineers who built the system—typically male, English‑speaking developers with American, Indian or Chinese accents. Consequently, it is essential to evaluate AI systems to avoid unintended harm or discrimination.

The need for interoperability standards

In addition to metrics and standards relating to the energy efficiency of these converging systems, the field urgently needs national and international standards for interoperability purposes, according to many practitioners in the field, including Song. “Developing for multiple headsets is easier than before, but still requires significant work,” he says. “Standards reduce friction and improve interoperability, safety, reliability and quality assurance.  If we have strong standards between AI and XR, compatibility and interoperability can be solved. Then more research and more products become possible.”

A foundational step is to agree on XR-related terminology without which, Kurata argues, there will be no standards and no future.

Terminology is where it all starts

Kurata’s argument, outlined in an IEEE paper, is that when concepts span multiple domains, such as AI, XR and the Metaverse, ambiguity in terminology often leads to misunderstanding and hinders effective collaboration.  “Much like technical interoperability in software and systems, the clarification of terminology facilitates semantic interoperability, which serves as a foundation for cooperation among diverse stakeholders,” he states.

The term XR is currently widely used as an expression encompassing VR, AR, and MR. However, there is no clear consensus regarding its origin or meaning.  “XR is sometimes explained as an abbreviation for Extended Reality, but multiple interpretations exist regarding its etymology and formation process,” Kurata writes in the paper XR is XR: Rethinking MR and XR as Neutral Umbrella Terms published earlier this year.

He suggests that XR functions as a “neutral symbolic label” by encompassing multiple “reality”-related terms. Stable usage of such terminology requires governance through collaboration among academia, industry, and standardisation organisations, he insists.

What standards are in the pipeline?

Kurata points to two XR-related standards currently under development that have a strong relevance to AI. The first, ISO/IEC AWI 26073, covers spatio-temporal mixed and augmented reality experience description (MAR-ED) for interactive playback

“MAR-ED is highly compatible with AI because it represents experiences semantically through meaningful events, interactions, and narrative structures rather than only raw spatial or visual data. This enables AI agents or AI avatars to understand, adapt, and dynamically interact with immersive experiences, including adaptive playback and real-time branching. In this sense, MAR-ED can also serve as a semantic experiential framework for AI-driven XR and metaverse applications.”

Related work categorized under document ISO/IEC CD 25767 specifically focuses on avatar face representation for XR communication. It aims to standardize the human-to-3D avatar face modelling process, tailored for users of XR glasses. Kurata says this work is highly relevant to AI because realistic avatar face generation and real-time facial animation rely heavily on AI-based face tracking, expression recognition, and generative modelling technologies.

As both technologies increasingly merge, more standards will be required. IEC and ISO are on the case.