SVG EUROPE SPONSOR UPDATE

2022 SPONSOR UPDATE

As a packed year of sport draws to a close, Michael Burns talks to SVG Europe’s Platinum, Gold and Bronze sponsors about their recent projects, industry trends – including cloud, IP, remote production and sustainability – and their plans for the future.

Aerial Camera Systems (ACS)

MATT COYDE

SALES DIRECTOR “Over two years in the planning, ACS successfully supplied a wide range of specialist cameras for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 on behalf of host broadcaster Sunset+Vine,” says Matt Coyde, sales director, Aerial Camera Systems. “Services included the provision and co-ordination of three live filming helicopters and a 2D wirecam for the main stadium including UHD HDR coverage of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, railcam systems with stabilised gimbals for athletics, swimming and gymnastics, and vertical track systems for athletics and hockey. ACS SmartHead robotic camera channels also featured widely with over 20 systems deployed across multiple venues along with a range of specialist minicam systems from Polecam to HFR systems. ACS was also supported in the aquatics by NEP Australia with the supply of the Mobycam U/W rail system, U/W remotes and Starting Block minicams.

“Finally, in conjunction with the event organisers, extensive efforts were made to reduce carbon footprints through measures such as the use of public transport, sustainable diesel fuel, carbon offsetting for the helicopter operation, and more.”

ACS was also the exclusive specialist camera provider to ETP/EMG for the 150th Open at St Andrews.

“The biggest golf event in the calendar, ACS was proud to be involved in this widely acclaimed live coverage, which included the Celebration of Champions held before the tournament — even the weather was kind!” says Coyde. “New innovations included a wirecam covering multiple holes, a 75m railcam on the 17th green and a HFR bunker minicam. This was in addition to the pre-event helicopter and UAV aerials, a wide range of robotic systems (SmartHead), behind the tee railcams and HD minicams. All facilities were installed, maintained and operated by a 20+ experienced technical crew.”

Some of ACS’ other highlights this year include Beijing 2022, UK football, ITV Racing, Wimbledon, the Women’s Euros and the Munich European Championships.

“We have recently secured and renewed a number of sporting contracts both externally and through [EMG],” says Coyde. “Our focus will very much be on the successful delivery of these, as well as a continued focus on expanding our UHD/HDR capability and growing our team with 2024 major events in mind.”

AE Live

STUART COLES

CCO “The past 12 months have thankfully brought back a sense of normality to the sporting calendar, allowing us to press ahead with a number of exciting business opportunities that had to be temporarily put on hold during the pandemic,” says Stuart Coles, CCO, AE Live. past year was the opening of a new subsidiary office in the US, further expanding AE Live’s global footprint.

“We have an exciting pipeline of opportunities that we are working towards and have also made some key hires in the region with Paul Jamieson [VP, creative] and Matt Celli [GM, North America] leading our endeavours and building out a local team,” says Coles. “We have also expanded the size of our in-house creative agency Ignite, with the appointment of Andrew Olley as creative director for the newly formed Ignite UK office. With offices now located in the US, UK and New Zealand, we can better service clients from a geographical perspective, while at the same time being able to harness the expertise from our global pool of creative talent.” 2022 also marks AE Live’s 30th anniversary within the broadcast industry. “We are grateful to have been able to recently take time to celebrate this landmark by hosting an event during this year’s IBC, which saw a number of our long-standing clients, technology partners and staff in attendance,” notes Coles.

“In terms of major contract wins we were delighted to secure the Premier League Productions contract from the start of the 2022/2023 season,” he continues. “This sees us deliver a range of broadcast and virtual studio solutions for its coverage of all 380 Premier League matches per season and magazine programming for rights holders outside of the UK. We have also retained the BBC Sport Football contract where we will again provide studio as well as OB graphic services for its Premier League, FA Cup and international football coverage.”

Currently gearing up to an extremely busy period at the end of this year, AE Live will undertake its biggest project to date with a huge presence of over 50 staff in Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, providing a broad range of host broadcast and unilateral graphic services for multiple clients.

AJA Video Systems/Phosphor

BRYCE BUTTON

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MARKETING Since September 2021, leading broadcast technology company Quidich, live event production company BC Live Productions, Korean Broadcasting System and Fox Sports have showcased AJA technology applications in live sport environments.

“Quidich demonstrated how it’s using AJA’s FS-HDR real-time universal converter and frame synchroniser as a colour correction solution for matching its BuggyQam camera output with broadcast system cameras to ensure a consistent look for cricket match productions,” says Bryce Button, director of product marketing, AJA Video Systems. “BC Live showcased the versatility of tools like AJA Fido converters, Kumo SDI routers and Ki Pro Ultra Plus recorders in esports productions. To bolster monitoring and return signal configuration for the transmission of live sporting events, KBS established a workflow comprising a Bridge Live, while Fox Sports leveraged the FS-HDR to recreate the colour, warmth, and feel of Field of Dreams for a special MLB broadcast.

“In the pursuit of richer, more interactive fan experiences, broadcasters and sports leagues have rapidly embraced 8K, 4K, HDR, AR and VR, and real-time data-driven tools in live sports production,” continues Button. “While these technologies are driving innovation, they’re also introducing production complexities as professionals juggle a larger volume of formats, protocols and technologies than ever before. To help alleviate the associated bottlenecks, AJA released several products and updates in 2022 that make it simpler and more cost-efficient to capture and deliver compelling content to fans in and outside of the stadium.”

Most recently, AJA and its European representative Phosphor launched ColorBox — a portable, low-latency in-line HDR/SDR algorithmic and LUT colour transform device — at IBC2022.

“ColorBox supports a wide range of look management and HDR/SDR/WCG conversion needs in live sports production, with 12G-SDI and HDMI 2.0 for single wire 4K/UltraHD HDR up to 4:2:2 10-bit 60p or 4:4:4 12-bit 30p with a unique low-latency colour processing pipeline,” says Button. “The device’s clean and predictable round tripping between HDR and SDR for various pipelines, including slow motion and other workflows, elicited very positive reactions at the show.”

Earlier this year, AJA debuted Helo Plus. “With dual encoders and built-in graphics capabilities, the compact H.264 streaming and recording device arrived as more professional and recreational leagues and high schools and universities are building out their streaming and recording workflows — whether to stream live matches to fans off-site or to capture match footage for post-game performance analysis,” observes Button.

Alibaba Cloud

RAYMOND MA

GENERAL MANAGER OF EUROPE “In an effort to bolster the International Olympic Committee’s digitalisation efforts, Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 migrated its core games technology services to Alibaba Cloud. The migration occurred against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic, in order to create a safer, more efficient, sustainable and inclusive experience for participants and audiences from around the world,” says Raymond Ma, general manager of Europe, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “In collaboration with Olympic Broadcasting Services, Alibaba’s cloud technologies were utilised further during Beijing 2022, to increase broadcasting efficiency while bolstering the coverage of the Games through more innovative and inclusive viewing experiences for global sports fans. For the first time during the Olympic Winter Games, rights-holding broadcasters [RHBs] could receive live footage through the public cloud infrastructure — a more agile option with only a fraction of the cost compared to other transmission methods.”

OBS also leveraged multi-camera replay videos with Alibaba. “[This provided] replays of competition highlights for curling and speed skating within seconds, bringing engaging and dynamic viewing experiences to audiences around the world via RHBs on the cloud,” says Ma. “Beijing 2022 also showcased a series of technological innovations developed to bring more inclusive experiences for fans in multiple locations. For example, Alibaba introduced Cloud ME, a cloud-powered realistic projection that facilitates remote social interactions. The technology defies distances by enabling people to meet and converse with each other’s lifesized, true-to-life persona projections.”

In addition, Alibaba unveiled Dong Dong, a 22-year-old virtual influencer. “Originating from Beijing, Dong Dong was created to interact with fans globally, sharing fun and informative Olympic-related facts,” Ma adds. “Speaking in a natural-sounding human voice, she can convey a range of emotions. This has proven to be particularly efficient for engaging with the younger audience. From 4-20 February, Dong Dong’s livestreaming was viewed by more than 2 million viewers, with a fan base of more than 100,000.”

Alibaba Cloud also announced the introduction of new video solutions ApsaraVideo Live and ApsaraVideo VOD to support customers, including sports broadcasters in Europe, with live broadcast services and holistic video production and management tasks.

Appear

THOMAS BOSTRØM JØRGENSEN

CEO “On 26 March, BT Sport, working with Appear for the provision of 8K contribution encoders and decoders, successfully delivered the UK’s first live 8K broadcast of a top-tier sporting event into the home,” says Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO, Appear. “The Saracens vs Bristol Bears Gallagher Premiership rugby match was produced entirely remotely and without a significant on-site presence, proving the durability and sustainability credentials of BT Sport’s approach to technical innovation. Appear is redefining video contribution with the X Platform; the compact, robust and powerefficient solution empowered BT Sport with the ultimate in flexible technology.”

“In September we also revealed our latencybusting OTT collaboration with Deutsche Telekom,” he adds. “After three years of implementation, product development and consultation, Deutsche Telekom has a fully functioning OTT value chain already in production using a channel from a well-known German broadcaster bouquet for validation and testing.

“Combining the established benefits of OTT with the live performance of cable and satellite will be crucial in the coming years. Latency is vital to consumer enjoyment of sports content. If you’re watching a live match, the last thing you want is to hear your neighbour celebrating a goal seconds before you get to see the action!”

The move to IP and cloud for media processing and transport has always been an area of investment for the company.

“We are focused on improving our products and services to meet this need,” says Bostrøm Jørgensen. “However, despite the move to more cloud- and software-based technologies, there is still a strong demand for agile, efficient, high-density, high-performance, on-premise solutions like the X Platform and we intend to maintain our position as a world-leading provider of media delivery solutions for contribution solutions and sports applications.

“Environmental impact and sustainability practices are starting to play a much larger role in the consideration of sports production workflows as we face the current energy crisis and the global threat of climate change. At Appear, we have taken a leadership position in offering energy-efficient solutions that address the need for greener credentials, but also keep the total cost of ownership at the lowest possible levels.”

Arista

ED CHAPMAN

VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT/ALLIANCES/WI-FI/MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT carrying important events from around the world — from the Super Bowl, the Masters and even Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral,” says Arista vice president, business development/alliances/ wi-fi/media & entertainment, Ed Chapman. “Broadcast partners have entrusted Arista so much with their switching fabric needs that Arista is the reference switch fabric at broadcast industry interoperability events. “Over 85 Arista switches and 10 WiFi APs are being used by Game Creek Video during the 2022/2023 NFL Thursday Night Football season,” Chapman continues. “Also, by using Arista CloudVision’s ZTPaaS [Zero Touch Provisioning as a Service], Game Creek was able to ‘hands-off deploy’ this large network given the accelerated time schedules.”

As well as ZTPaaS, product highlights for the year include the company’s Arista MCS (Media Control Service) software control and abstraction framework which interfaces between any vendor’s broadcast control software and an Arista switching fabric. Meanwhile, true native 400G Ethernet (400Gbps x 1) interfaces have allowed for more efficient infrastructure builds, better throughput utilisation, increasing capacity for the densest of 4K/8K workflows and beyond.

“PTP is a requirement in SMPTE 2110 and Arista has led the way in PTP and IP multicast scale after our early success over a decade ago in the high frequency trading and financial markets,” says Chapman. “Many broadcast engineers are looking for more automation, more visibility, more telemetry and more security,” he continues. “In addition to the wealth of information already available in our switch fabric operating system and Arista CloudVision, we look forward to further developing across all these value propositions with further enhancements to CloudVision (and NMOS integrations), our DANZ monitoring fabric, and our AI-based Arista Network Detection & Response portfolio.

“In addition, we’ve identified a need with many of our event productions customers to allow for daily — or even hourly — variability in deployment of assets as a live production dictates. Imagine a set of gear needing to be moved from one end of a golf course to another side of the golf course for a post-production show. How cool would it be to move your switch fabric around, constantly rewiring it, without the need for a broadcast engineer to make a single configuration change? We are working on implementing some of these features using open standard IEEE and IETF networking protocols.”

Ateme

RÉMI BEAUDOUIN

CSO “We have had an extremely busy 12 months with regards to both testing and deploying new technologies in sports,” says Rémi Beaudouin, CSO, Ateme. “For example, at the French Open, we were involved — alongside other select companies and broadcaster France Télévisions — in exploring the potential of new 5G-enabled broadcast and multicast distribution modes.

“For the broadcast mode of 5G, the aim was to assess the ability to broadcast France Télévisions’ channels live with good geographical coverage and a ‘quality guarantee’ — regardless of the number of users connected at the same time on the same coverage area of the transmitter. Then, for the multicast mode of 5G that would allow an optimised broadcast of the live channels, we tested several key elements, including the new VVC codec — which can significantly reduce the required bitrate without affecting quality — and low latency DASH streaming.

“Another major highlight was our involvement in the live streaming of the UEFA Champions League Final on 28 May. OTT platform Tivify utilised Ateme’s Titan transcoding solutions, using the CMAF features within Titan to live-stream a football match at a latency matching broadcast levels.”

In product terms, Ateme’s most important development of the past 12 months was the launch of its 5G streaming solution in June; it has already been used in several high-profile events, including the Eurovision Song Contest.

Specified by the 5G Vista consortium for an in-stadium project in the UK, it allows for enhanced experiences, such as viewing the

game live in multiple angles and re-viewing the most important moments on near-live channels.

“From an events perspective, I would also pinpoint our involvement in a series of lowlatency deployments, including the Tivify project and the use by Canal+ of our Just-InTime packager to launch one of the world’s first deployments of OTT low-latency streaming on AppleTV 4K, iPhone and iPad devices,” says Beaudouin.

One of the areas Ateme is focused on is audience-aware streaming, which can increase QoE while simultaneously reducing the carbon emission of streaming; it works by dynamically connecting the CDN data with the encoder.

“In one of our labs’ use case examples, it was possible to achieve a 43% total bitrate reduction. This paves the way for a lower total cost of ownership, a greener service, and an optimised viewing experience,” says Beaudouin.

Audio-Technica

ROD THOMAZ

PROJECT MANAGER MOTOGP “Audio-Technica has again been closely involved with the broadcast audio of MotoGP, the Grand Prix motorcycle racing championship, as the official microphone services solution provider to Dorna Sport, the commercial rights holder of the series,” says Rod Thomaz, project manager MotoGP at AudioTechnica Europe. “It’s been another incredibly exciting, sometimes challenging season that has seen several developments in terms of the way we help to deliver an immersive, involving experience to a global audience.”

“Audio is increasingly important to sports broadcasters, who are fully aware of the role that great sound plays in placing viewers at the heart of the action,” Thomas continues. “So you’ll now find microphones covering everything from the intimacy of the riders’ boxes — full of technicians and mechanics — to onboard the bikes and in the pitlane. We’re looking to deliver every part of the story, not just the sound of motorcycles going past cameras.

“Dorna is constantly looking to improve and refine the audio content of the MotoGP broadcasts, so it’s a case of constantly pushing ourselves and the technology during the season — sometimes even making changes on race days themselves. It’s a wonderful sport to be part of.” Thomaz feels one of the most significant developments in sports broadcasting in general is the emergence of immersive audio as a key component in the broadcast package. “As with live events, concerts and fixed installation audio, audiences are demanding more than simple stereo or even 5.1 audio these days,” he adds. “We’ve been working with Dorna on the development of our new 8.0 microphone for three seasons and it’s now being employed at the podium, parc fermé, pit lane and key positions around the racetrack. As audiences expect and demand a more encompassing audio experience in their listening environments the need for real-time live immersive mixing is only going to increase — so it’s been great to have the opportunity to develop the 8.0 mic in the heat of the action, in demanding real-world situations.”

Blackbird

ADRIAN LAMBERT

CMO “Blackbird is now being used by even more top-tier sports organisations, including FIFA, NCSA and Eurovision Sport, for hyper-efficient cloud-native video production,” says chief marketing officer, Adrian Lambert.

“As well as winning new sports clients, we’ve also hired top new talent to rapidly evolve Blackbird for the creator economy. They include appointing Sumit Rai as chief product officer, Mo Volans as SVP product marketing, and Morgan Henry as VP of engineering.

“Blackbird has also won a number of top awards including the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and the SportsPro Best Tech Company of the Year and the NAB Show Product of the Year.”

In the summer, Blackbird released a sustainability study entitled Decarbonizing Video Production, produced in collaboration with environmental consultancy Green Element.

It highlighted that while considerable gains have been made across the media industry due to the rise of remote production and the adoption of cloud-based solutions, broadcasters can go much further and faster by integrating authentically sustainable, native technologies specifically optimised for cloud workflows. Key findings from the paper include that in 2020, 480 billion hours of live video streaming led to sea ice loss the size of Scotland. And, while 90% of editors are using the cloud, 65% are inefficiently and needlessly moving large files around.

In September, Blackbird released Speed Testing Video Editing Platforms, a study that invited a select group of independent professional sports video editors to compare the speeds of its browser-based pro editing platform with traditional on-premise non-linear editors (NLEs). Completing three popular workflows of varying complexity for the creation and distribution of live and file-based content, the results found that Blackbird was between 1.8 and 4 times faster than the NLEs tested.

Blackmagic Design

SIMON WESTLAND

CHANNEL MARKETING DIRECTOR “Earlier this year, we launched DaVinci Resolve 18, which included a major new cloud collaboration update allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on the same project, at the same timeline, anywhere in the world,” says Blackmagic Design EMEA channel marketing director Simon Westland. “DaVinci Resolve 18 supports the Blackmagic Cloud for hosting and sharing projects, as well as a new DaVinci proxy workflow.”

“We also launched a new family of ATEM Constellation HD production switchers giving existing ATEM Mini users a professional

upgrade path,” he continues. “We’ve seen tremendous demand for our small HDMI-based switchers, particularly within the broadcast and sports production community. More recently, we introduced the ATEM SDI, retaining all the ATEM Mini’s portability but adding more professional connectivity in the form of SDI.”

Blackmagic has also revealed the Ultimatte 12 real-time compositing processor range. “This was exciting news for anyone involved in mixed reality or virtual set production,” says Westland. “We’ve made Ultimatte technology accessible to more customers with our HD, UltraHD and 8K models.”

Westland says remote and virtual production are two of the biggest trends the company is currently observing. “Both are impacting the industry significantly,” he adds. “Having a production team in one region or country while filming in another is changing how sports production companies do business and enabling much more flexibility while reducing their environmental impact.

“Similarly, advances in LED panels and greenscreen technology, including our industry-leading Ultimatte hardware, enable those involved in sports production to deliver broadcast-quality content.”

“We haven’t seen the growth in all-IP environments that many companies have predicted, which is understandable to some extent,” Westland continues. “Many organisations refreshed their studios and server rooms during the pandemic, and the impact of ripping out and replacing them yet again for marginal gains is simply not feasible. Similarly, the industry also suffers from a lack of agreed standards in this area. Until common standards are ratified, studios will not take the risk with a very significant and expensive infrastructure change that could change in a matter of weeks or months.”

Broadcast Solutions

RAINER KAMPE

CTO For the coverage of the African Cup of Nations, hosted by Cameroon in February 2022, German systems integrator Broadcast Solutions helped successfully deploy two VAR video operations room systems to service referees and their assistants. These were commissioned in partnership with the Confederation of African Football authorities in Germany.

In August, the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan became a FIFAcertified VAR system user, recently gaining the approval with VAR systems delivered by Broadcast Solutions.

There have also been major product developments at the company, such as meshLink wireless video transmission.

“meshLink represents the latest developments in RF technology on the one hand and breakthroughs in ultra-low latency UHD HEVC encoding on the other, now combined in one product,” says Rainer Kampe, CTO at Broadcast Solutions. “This is a true duplex IP-based wireless system allowing a wide range of functions during live broadcasts, like RCP and telemetry integration. Furthermore, intercom, return video, prompter and other functions can be integrated like in any other IP-based application.”

“Adding additional radios — we call them Nodes — the system creates a Mesh, a singlefrequency, highly scalable, self-forming, selfhealing wireless network,” continues Kampe. “Placing Nodes ‘on the fly’ allows ad-hoc transmissions from virtually any position. Signal routing is automatically and dynamically selected for optimal performance to deliver the best quality without compromising signal stability.”

Another new development is the hi human interface for OB vans and studios. “The first real intuitive control software for broadcasting and media technology, this serves as the perfect man-machine link, an assistant, that leads users to the complex process of workflow design and signal management in broadcast and media installations,” says Kampe. “Hi human interface is a vendor-independent system that integrates easily with many different devices. With thought through functionalities and ‘if-this-then-that’ logic it guides the users through the full process and gives advice with the best possible way to develop workflows and trigger actions.”

Kampe reveals the company is working on some large OB trucks for international broadcasters. “Additionally, we built an OB van for DMC, a new company on the map of sports production companies in the Nordic countries,” he adds. “A Sports Production Hub jointly used by DMC and Norwegian broadcast TV2 will be ready for the FIFA World Cup in December.”

Brightcove

to stream and monetise content more reliably. This year has seen the company’s Brightcove Marketplace, which formalises and evolves its technology partnership programme, thrive after its launch in late 2021.

According to Rajan Shah, VP of technology partners & integrations at Brightcove: “With the Brightcove Marketplace we are addressing the ever-evolving needs of our customers in their video execution journey. We are marrying the rich value of our platform with other leading technologies in the video ecosystem and facilitating a more meaningful engagement.”

Members include Magnifi, 3Play, VideoElephant Sport, StreamHub and many more. 2022 has been a busy year for the company with a whole host of new hires. Marc DeBevoise was named chief executive officer and board director having spent time at ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal and more; Trisha Styles was named chief people officer; and Dan Fruend joined from Oracle as chief revenue officer. In addition, former AMC exec David Beck took up the newly created position of chief strategy and corporate development officer.

Broadpeak

XAVIER LECLERCQ

VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

According to Broadpeak’s vice president of business development Xavier Leclercq, OTT streamers today are leveraging smart

networks in the ISP to scale their video delivery.

“For example, TIM in Italy is using Broadpeak’s nanoCDN technology to scale its TIM Vision video service, which includes streaming of the Summer and Winter Olympics in 4K,” he explains. “Today, this infrastructure is also used by OTT services such as DAZN, enabling streaming distribution at scale through the same infrastructure. The advantage of this approach is an improved quality of experience [QoE] with higher bitrates and resolutions, reduced latency and a drastic reduction in streaming issues such as freezing. nanoCDN enables millions of football fans to access DAZN’s Serie A streams with a superior QoE.”

“Earlier this year Broadpeak launched broadpeak.io, a SaaS-based platform that offers content providers and rights owners an easy, fast and reliable way to deliver advanced streaming experiences to subscribers,” Leclercq continues. “[The platform] adapts streaming to the context of the situation — such as the content rights, network, location, device, category of customers — in real time. When it comes to live content and sports, broadpeak. io enables stream personalisation, including targeted advertising and content replacement typically for compliance purposes, for example, emergency alerts or blackouts.”

The collaboration between ISPs and OTT service providers is a trend Broadpeak is seeing repeated. “It started with Disney driving the Open Caching initiative to use the CDNs of ISPs,” explains Leclercq. “This helps large OTT streamers avoid building out additional capacity. Now with live sports content moving to OTT, a new set of OTT service providers need to scale the delivery of their services.

“At Broadpeak we engineer and deploy open infrastructure inside the ISP networks to facilitate video delivery. This can be based on traditional unicast or multicast, such as nanoCDN. In the case of live sports, being able to leverage multicast inside the ISP is simply the most efficient way to deliver live OTT content at scale. Multicast technology drastically reduces the bandwidth consumed throughout the ISP networks and guarantees an exceptional QoE.”

BT Media & Broadcast

JOHN ELLERTON

HEAD OF MEDIA FUTURES “As well as providing the OB connectivity, BT designed and built a non-public 5G network [NPN] for Saracens’ StoneX Stadium to provide robust, broadcast-grade infrastructure at the club’s Premiership match against Northampton Saints,” says John Ellerton, head of media futures, BT Media & Broadcast. “The 5G NPN connected untethered, low-latency match-day cameras. BT’s solution built the capability further than traditional RF networks, by converging all the wireless technology onto a single platform providing a true bidirectional communication path, opening up possibilities for wireless microphones, return vision, comms and camera control.”

The transmission was distributed over the 5G network to BT’s OB truck on-site, and then backhauled over Media & Broadcast’s Vena network, enabling complete remote control from a remote operation centre in High Wycombe. Another output of the game was also distributed through the Vena network into AWS.

“A high-performance network with a ‘brain’, Vena intelligently routes high-demand video and data traffic,” says Ellerton. “It supports all content transmission, including broadcast, live and streaming. It connects studios with production facilities, playout and broadcast infrastructure — delivering video streams and files between them.”

The company’s second trial of a bespoke 5G NPN came during the BBC’s coverage of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. “This marked the first time the technology had been deployed at this scale in Europe, with 300 million viewers globally watching their favourite teams and athletes,” says Ellerton. “Using the 5G NPN, the BBC harnessed multiple, synchronised cameras to create live coverage of the games for The One Show. Deploying the network at Victoria Square in Birmingham, the trial was a perfect example of how wireless cameras can be used wherever, including congested areas full of people using their mobile devices. The 5G cell used was originally built and designed for the Emergency Services Network.”

As well as continuing with its sustainability drive to become a net zero carbon business by 2045, the next six months will see BT Media & Broadcast continue building its capabilities with 5G private networks and eventually 6G, build on Vena’s foundations to deliver managed media services in private and public clouds, build on its partnership with satellite provider OneWeb to trial connecting 5G NPNs to low earth orbit satellites, and collaborate with Supponor to empower sports broadcasters to virtually insert adverts into live content.

Calrec

DAVE LETSON

VP OF SALES “After the last few years of sporadic sports events, we’ve been very pleased to be able to support our customers across a range of events, and we’ve been very excited to work on some fabulous esports projects too,” says Dave Letson, VP of sales, Calrec. “The Wimbledon Championships was back with a large Calrec network of Summa consoles connected via Hydra2, and the US Open used eight networked Artemis consoles with a Hydra2 router split between locations. ESPN built eight control rooms next to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center alongside several Amazon and NEP outside broadcast trucks.

“We were also proud to be involved in more remote workflows, such as the Extreme E competition which utilised a Calrec Artemis console on an Impulse IP core at NEP’s Gray’s Inn Road, with an RP1 remote production unit located in remote locations,” adds Letson. “This is a unique set-up which has been well used this year.”

Calrec also worked with Riot Games EU on events covering the League of Legends, Valorant and Wild Rift esports with multiple Calrec consoles.

“Redundant multi-console Impulse cores served two Artemis surfaces, with two modular Type R IP mixing consoles as backup and submixers,” Letson says. These events are often hosted at remote venues and so sent feeds over IP back to a data centre. Both sets of Impulse and Type R cores are based in the data centre, which have a backhaul link to Riot Games’ remote broadcast centre where all four surfaces are located.

The company launched two Argo audio control surfaces at IBC2022.

“Argo is a new approach to audio mixing which has the ability to position any panel, anywhere,” explains Letson. “This enables it to adapt to changing production requirements. It is a flexible, IP-native surface with a supercharged DSP core, interchangeable panels and fully configurable layouts. Argo also fits into distributed ways of working. It is IP centric which makes it versatile for all aspects of remote production, and distributed DSP and control.”

“[Over the next six months], we’re working with customers to help them adapt their systems with regards to live sports production, but mainly we are getting ready to ship Argo,” he adds.

Camera Corps

BARRY PARKER

COMMERCIAL MANAGER “With the Tokyo Summer Games postponed until the summer of 2021, the World Short Course swimming in Abu Dhabi, followed quickly by the Beijing Winter Games, the ongoing football season and an e-gaming event all in close succession, Camera Corps equipment and crew was in high demand this past year,” says Barry Parker, commercial manager at the company. in favourable use in Abu Dhabi, leading to a successful bid to supply cameras for the FINA World Aquatics Championships in Hungary this summer, producing great footage for the host broadcaster and rights holders,” continues Parker. “PTZF cameras and intelligent robotic heads are the mainstay of the work carried out by Camera Corps in many of the sporting events we covered.

“The majority of our recent product development has been in signal transportation. The unique development by Camera Corps of the SMPTE Max 3-Box system allows the connection of these UHD cameras and remote heads over a long distance using a single camera fibre. The use of this during both the Summer and Winter Games over multiple sites enabled the host broadcaster to deliver a large number of live signals from multiple camera positions over large distances in an efficient and robust way.”

Parker continues: “While managing shortterm requests, we must also look to the future with our clients and their longer-term requirements in order to manage our resources and development investment accordingly. For example, where for large events broadcasters need to optimise and compromise their acquisition formats. Broadcasters will always try to optimise or acquire in the highest possible format they can, for example in UHD HDR, while still producing multiple formats for other broadcasters in HD HDR or SDR. The compromise comes about due to the available equipment, budgets and what rights holders request or can manage.”

Parker says remote production is here to stay. “However, events will continue to need high-quality, specialist camera installation with technical support on site, all of which can be delivered by Camera Corps,” he adds. “Live capture within the field of play is what we are good at, and we continually ask directors to challenge us to develop new ideas or improve what is currently available; sometimes new ideas may be looking at new positions for cameras, not necessarily always new cameras.”

Canon Europe

JACK ADAIR

PRODUCT MARKETING SPECIALIST, PRO VIDEO

“This year — in July and August — Canon was the title sponsor for the Commonwealth Games. For this, we supplied a host of equipment to ensure a high standard of coverage at this event, from photojournalism equipment up to video lenses and cameras,” says Canon Europe product marketing specialist, pro video Jack Adair. “Since last year we have introduced two key products to the industry, the first being an adaptation of our flagship model the UHD Digisuper 122.

“[For the UHD Digisuper 122 AF], we kept all the features that have made this such a powerful lens. This is not to replace the existing model or the skillset of the operator, but as 4K is becoming the standard in many regions, we added the auto focus function to assist in any fast-paced moments where the subject may be travelling at speed towards or away from the lens.

“At IBC we launched two key products,” he continues. “The CN8x15 wide angle Cine Servo lens is a perfect blend of our ENG lens technology with cinema lens optical quality. With the 1.5x extender this lens offers coverage for super 35mm and full frame cameras and is perfectly suited to give live productions the cinematic edge that is now being demanded by broadcasters. IBC also saw the introduction of the CR-N700, our high-end PTZ camera, equipped with a 4K UHD 1.0 Type CMOS sensor, 15x optical zoom and a host of broadcast standard features such as 4K/60p over the 12GSDI, and HDMI or IP outputs which support the SRT protocol among many more.”

“There has been a steady increase in cloudbased solutions required for sporting events, especially those in a tournament format where you may have multiple matches happening each day,” he says. “There is powerful technology out there that enables broadcasters to playout multiple events simultaneously so the viewer at home can decide which event they would like to watch and jump between them if they wish. This means that more lenses and cameras are required to be on the ground for each event — we work hard to ensure that this increased demand is met for our customers.”

Caton

GERALD WONG

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL OPERATIONS

“Our development work on our proprietary transport protocol that is aptly called Caton Transport Protocols (CTP) is now widely recognised and adopted for use in live sporting events to ensure broadcasters achieve the ultralow latency that is required,” says Caton senior vice president, global operations Gerald Wong. “At IBC2022, we introduced enhancements to CTP with multi-pathing to enable a new way of IP transmission. By using AI and machine learning, automatic traffic rebalancing on every path ensures that even the most challenged internet connectivity becomes highly reliable. Unlike a simple network bonding designed to increase bandwidth, CTP Multi-pathing Core reacts to all possible traffic reshaping to derive the best performance. With this new multipathing feature, live sporting events can be contributed and distributed in a more efficient, reliable and economical way.”

Last December, Caton worked with Relevent Sports Group to provide coverage of the Women’s International Champions Cup (WICC) to audiences throughout China.

“With 100% successful transmission, coverage of the WICC 2021 final was efficiently transported from BT Tower in London to Sina Weibo, the leading Chinese social media platform, quickly and securely,” says Wong. “In utilising Caton Technology, the content was delivered in the lowest latency, resulting in exceptional coverage across the Sina Weibo platform, exceeding viewers’ expectations.

During the Tokyo Olympics, Caton and China Unicom jointly designed an integrated solution to securely and reliably transmit live HD video from Tokyo to Beijing. Caton was selected by Momenta as the solution and service partner to deliver high-quality, low-latency content to live video platforms such as Migu, Tencent Video, Kuai Shou and more. Caton mobile encoders (Live Cast Pro) were deployed in Tokyo to provide real-time HD video transmission through multiple 4G networks, while journalists were able to use Caton’s Cydex platform to transport large files during the event.

More recently, Caton has been transmitting NBA and MLB to TV operators and OTT from the US to Asian countries. Caton was awarded a five-year contract to deliver Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) live coverage from Japan to Taiwan, using Caton’s CTP, CVP and Network Monitoring System (NMS) to allow Eleven Sports Taiwan to deliver high-value content with ultra-low latency.

Cerberus Tech

CHRIS CLARKE

CEO “Cerberus Tech develops and leverages the very latest in technology to securely deliver content anywhere in the world,” says Chris Clarke, CEO, Cerberus Tech. “Our Livelink Service Network plays an important role in this. Over the next six months we will expand our interoperable, global network for sports and live events, with our best-in-class technical and strategic partners. We have some exciting projects in the pipeline and are currently focusing on a new on-demand file transcoding service, in collaboration with our long-term partner Ateme, as well as building our teleport footprint, to help facilitate seamless content delivery services.”

This year has seen Celtic FC adopting Cerberus for an alternative delivery method for its domestic and European away matches. “Celtic TV had previously been receiving coverage using a combination of SNG and satellite contribution from the venue, directly to the home ground — Celtic Park in Glasgow,” recalls Clarke. “Factors including weather conditions and inadequate satellite bandwidth at source and destination had an impact on the delivery of content to its viewers. By using Livelink, Celtic TV was able to deliver feeds to its audience quickly, efficiently, and subsequently only paid for the duration of the contribution of the match. Since the initial requirement, Celtic TV has continued to use Livelink for the delivery of both domestic and European and Champions League fixtures.”

Racecourse Media Group (RMG) opted to work alongside Cerberus Tech’s IP expertise to transport feeds to Australia. “The required hardware was shipped directly to RMG and arrived pre-configured,” says Clarke. “The support team was then able to remote in and talk RMG through a straightforward set up, which meant the technical set-up with the affiliate could take place simultaneously.”

Other developments include a collaboration with TAG Video Systems. “This offers Livelink customers software-based monitoring of linear video workflows and cost-effective IP delivery for live sports,” says Clarke. “The use of realtime visualisation and monitoring capabilities has already led to cost-savings and greater confidence in signal integrity for Cerberus Tech customers, who can now monitor all signals on a mosaic configuration as opposed to individual feeds, resulting in reduced transport costs and bandwidth requirements.”

Cisco

KEN MARTIN

GENERAL MANAGER AND DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL SALES IN THE SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP (SESG)

According to Cisco’s Ken Martin, general manager and director of global sales in the sports and entertainment solutions group, a big highlight this year was the Cisco converged network infrastructure at SoFi Stadium that played a critical role in the success of Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles. “SoFi Stadium is the most technologically advanced sporting venue in the world, and the Cisco converged network touches every aspect of stadium operations, from broadcast, show production, concessions and merchandise sales, to fan experiences and building operations,” says Martin.

“During Super Bowl LVI, the broadcast network alone was processing 24 terabits per second, possible because of the Cisco IP Media Fabric in SoFi Stadium. When you look at IPTV specifically, driving 2,500 screens and 300 outdoor signs across SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park, the network was transporting 2.5 gigabits per second of multicast traffic — continuously. That’s more than 200 terabytes of data flowing seamlessly to ensure that each screen in the venue is getting full, uncompressed 4K video feeds. It was an incredible showcase for our technology.”

“Beyond that, over the past year we have expanded our sports and entertainment portfolio with two new key global partners — McLaren Racing and Real Madrid,” he continues.

“Additionally, we are also growing our presence within Major League Soccer in the US to complement our soccer presence worldwide.”

“We look forward to collaborating with our partners across the sports and entertainment space to explore new opportunities to enhance the fan experience in venues, such as the renovation of Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, through new innovations like Cisco Connected Scarf.

Martin believes the sports and entertainment industry as a whole — and venue connectivity specifically — is at a major inflection point. “We believe that Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6 technology will continue to shape the future for venues, teams and operators around the world as they look to optimise not only the fan experience, but also operations and sponsorship,” he says. “This technology has proven to be transformative for what is possible across emerging video, virtual and augmented platforms; the leading sports brands and venues see what is possible and they’re implementing it now.”

Cobalt Digital

SUZANA BRADY

SVP OF WORLDWIDE SALES AND MARKETING

“Cobalt gear played a role in NBCUniversal’s awardwinning Tokyo Olympic Games broadcasts,” says Suzana Brady, SVP of worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital.

NBCU covered the whole content pipeline, from acquisition in HLG and distribution in PQ to a new version of its Skypath distribution system, ensuring the Ultra HD versions were made available to more than 50 local TV stations across the US.

“NBCU used the 3D LUT processing feature on Cobalt Digital’s 9904-UDX audio/video processor cards as the engine for its very own NBCU’s LUTS which fed their UHD playout system,” says Brady. “Incorporating the Cobalt cards into its workflow allowed NBCU to achieve quality conversion of either SDR to HDR, or HDR to SDR, and cross-conversion from HLG to PQ, providing the broadcaster with the enhanced agility to deliver the finest possible video quality to its audience.”

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In July, Cobalt announced that NEP’s IP-powered Supershooter 6 mobile unit had rolled out with 12 frames of Cobalt Digital gear onboard.

“For Supershooter 6, Cobalt provided NEP with 12 HPF-9000 20 slot, high-power frames packed with openGearform factor cards and Cobalt’s OGCP-9000 Ethernet remote control panel optimised for live colour correction applications,” says Brady. “The configuration comprises 4K- and HDR-capable cards and supports up/down/cross conversion, audio processing and colour correction. Highlights of the system include over 100 Cobalt openGear distribution amplifiers from several of the company’s card families, including the 9910, 9501, 9502 and 9410, to give Supershooter 6 a full scope of 3G/HD/SD/ASI capabilities in a compact footprint.

“Since launching in May, Supershooter 6 has been deployed to support live production of the NHL playoffs and the women’s and men’s College World Series.”

As well as celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022, Cobalt has also released numerous products, options and upgrades this year geared towards sports and live production, including its Indigo 2110-DC-01. Indigo is a factory option that supports uncompressed 4K and adds native SMPTE ST2110 interfaces to the audio and video processing elements on the company’s 9904-UDX-4K openGear card.”

Cyanview

DAVID BOURGEOIS

CEO & FOUNDER “Our products are used for remote shading of specialty cameras, mostly on high-end events,” says David Bourgeois, CEO and founder, Cyanview. “This year saw the expansion of the use of large-sensor cameras on sports. For us it started with Fox’s Megalodon, controlled over LTE for the whole NFL season. Fox is also controlling drone cameras like Sony FX6, Red Komodo and Atom One cameras on Nascar. CBS also used our system to control a Panasonic GH5S within a Freefly Movi gimbal on the Golf Masters. This NFL season, BSI, 3G Wireless, CP Communications and C360 all use our control system for the pylon cameras. ESPN is also controlling Sony FX9 and Venice wireless large-sensor cameras on Monday Night Football.”

Cyanview worked on the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. “They have 50 onboard cameras, typically four per car, all controlled remotely for shading, switching channel, picture in picture. It’s their own RF solution,” says Bourgeois. “The cameras are of different models, so the challenge there was to have a good global shutter camera with enough sensitivity to cover the night and dynamic range to deal with the sun during the day without any access to the camera for 24 hours. But even though [there are different camera protocols] they can control them all from any of the three shading positions spread between the RF truck and the main OB shading area.”

The company also worked with wireless cameras on the Tour de Suisse. “The setup we provided for this multi-stage cycle race included eight Cyanview RCPs installed in the main OB truck,” says Bourgeois.

These controlled shading on cameras on motorbikes, a helicopter carrying a CineFlex camera system, and shoulder operated Sony camcorders among others.

“We also have a few companies who started to use our products for remote production,” he adds. “PGA covered multiple events at once controlling Sony ENG cameras on golf at multiple courts in Florida from their studios in New York.”

Deltacast

LIONEL DUTILLEUX

INTERNATIONAL SALES MANAGER Eleven Sports is using Deltacast augmented reality for live storytelling during Belgian Pro League matches. “This is a great example of the use of augmented reality and live data at the heart of the production, finding the right balance between AR data and readability of the game,” says Deltacast international sales manager Lionel Dutilleux. “Meanwhile, CNN Portugal is using Delta-highlight to bring enhanced football analysis to fans with 3D storytelling and a virtual stadium.”

During the one-hour show, Rui Santos em campo, CNN Portugal uses Virtual View and Delta-highlight to allow around six to ten analysts to add an expert level of analysis to the games.

Deltacast has also extended its live graphics platform to stadium and arena displays by adding the multi-sports interface and by supporting 8K and non-rectangular screens (centre-hung displays). The Delta-stadium solution aims to boost fan engagement in major arenas and stadiums by managing content, scoring and graphics in real time.

“Deltacast is now FIFA-certified for the 3D virtual offside line for VAR in football,” adds Dutilleux. “It provides the solution to the leagues through its VAR partners Evertz, SimplyLive and Slomo.”

Over the next six months, Dutilleux says the company will aim to get more stadium and arenas equipped with Delta-stadium, and more leagues to deploy the virtual offside line.

The company has observed a few trends in sports broadcasting, he adds. The first is a change in viewer behaviour. “Currently, the sports industry is experiencing a change in the platforms where content is consumed,” he explains. “TikTok for example, a social network focused on video consumption, is rapidly growing among the new generations. This affects sports production and the type of solutions used for graphics. The second technology trend we observe is around data. The challenge here is to transform data into valuable information for fans. This is where Deltacast expertise comes into play.”

Dizplai

The big news for Dizplai in 2022 was its rebrand from Never.no and its incorporation of cloudbased audience engagement platform Bee-On.

“It’s an exciting major milestone for the company. As content creation continues to

evolve, we’re seeing a unique opportunity for the brand to expand on the foundations and success we’ve built over the years,” said Ed Abis, managing director of Dizplai at the time.

The company has since gone on to announce a number of key partnerships, including the integration of Reddit’s API with Dizplai. This gives content creators access to over 100,000 active communities on the platform. Producers can source and display authentic, real-time conversations and curate topical discussions, themes or reactions in their live production to contextualise news, sports factual and entertainment stories.

The native integration of the Stats Perform API into the Dizplai platform was also announced. This is designed to create a quick, simple connection between the live data and display of dynamic graphics, to inform and entertain sports fans on broadcast and digital channels. The agreement includes an official partnership with Stats Perform’s Sports Partners Intelligence Network (SPIN), an initiative connecting influential and complementary partners to continue the delivery of innovative content delivery across the market.

Dizplai has also helped clients such as BT Sport, DAZN, BBC, ITV and Manchester City FC to create interactive viewing experiences.

Dolby

ARKIN KOL

HEAD OF COMMERCIAL PARTNERSHIPS EUROPE

“Live sports in Dolby Atmos is currently one of the most important growth topics for Dolby worldwide and especially in Europe,” says head of commercial partnerships Europe Arkin Kol. “In the UK, 200 Premier League games are broadcast each season by Sky, BT and Amazon in Dolby Atmos, plus 150 English Football League and Carabao Cup matches, and around 30 shows across rugby, hockey and PPV boxing. Some 420 UEFA Champions League [UCL] and Europa League games are produced in Dolby Atmos, broadcast in the UK.

“Canal+ in France also started broadcasting the UCL in the immersive sound format and, with the start of the new 2022/23 season, Sky in Germany started to broadcast every Bundesliga top match of the week on Saturday night in Dolby Atmos. Additionally ProSieben Sat.1 is going to show a handful of selected Bundesliga matches during the season on its UHD channel in Dolby Atmos. We expect to gradually expand the offer in Europe and are talking to all relevant broadcasters and partners.”

This year, Kol says the co-operation with the entire ecosystem, with all partners, from the national and international leagues, the broadcasters and from the supply chain, was — and is — crucial for Dolby.

“At the same time, we as Dolby ensure that the high-quality content, the exclusive live sport, is also delivered in the best quality to the end consumer, to the fans,” Kol adds. “Millions of televisions, plus millions of soundbars and home cinema systems are now in homes across Europe and around the world, guaranteeing that viewers can experience a stadium-like atmosphere on their couch in the living room. It is therefore important that Dolby Atmos plays an important role for users in almost all situations.”

Domo Broadcast Systems

MIKE BUDGE

CEO “It’s been a huge year for us in terms of our structure and the opportunities that has given us, including being able to assist so many tier 1 sport broadcasters around the world with their remote production needs,” says Mike Budge, CEO at Domo Broadcast Systems. “In March, Broadcast Wireless Systems (BWS) and DTC Domo Broadcast joined forces, and we now operate under the name Domo Broadcast Systems. It’s a collaboration born out of the need for growth and innovation to meet the rapidly expanding demands being placed on the sports broadcast industry. As a result, we not only retained the engineering and sales teams from both original companies, but continue to expand them, with some of the best in the business joining us.”

“Over the past year, our solutions have been well travelled, from the UEFA Women’s Euros in England and the Europa League final in Spain, to the Repco Supercars Championship in Australia and the Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam,” Budge adds. “Most recently, Gravity Media used our new 5MHz bandwidth modulation at the US Open Tennis Championships, allowing them to minimise the number of RF licences needed to cover their 23 wireless cameras on site. The solution meant they could cut the number of licences in half, while still maintaining high-quality, reliable performance.”

The company also provided an in-housedeveloped system comprising four camera onboard transmitters and a recording/playback system for France’s major circuit racing championship, the FFSA GT.

“This system was all controlled by our DBS IP-mesh backbone that lets broadcasters centralise control of their wireless devices on a single RF channel,” says Budge. “Domo Broadcast Systems has worked closely with Timeline TV since their inception. Our Sapphire encoders and decoders are the workhorses behind many of Timeline’s complex sports transmissions, and Timeline has embraced our recently launched Onyx platform — ultra low latency HEVC solutions that offer 4 x UHD or 4K transmission.

“The Onyx has taken latency down to unheard of levels and allows broadcasters to transmit video down two different paths using a variety of IP formats, including SRT, at bitrates of up to 120Mb/s. It has definitely been a game changer for remote production in sports broadcasting.”

Edgio

TRAVIS NORMAN

PRODUCT MARKETING SPECIALIST “With more broadcasters getting involved in the live sports streaming space, it’s imperative that we provide them with reliable, scalable content delivery to support their needs,” says Travis Norman, product marketing specialist, Edgio. “We deliver online traffic for a recurring large-scale sporting event that happens on Thursdays in the US. Recently, for this particular event, we supported a 160% increase in traffic, compared to prior day traffic at

peak. This was a record-setting accomplishment for us when it comes to delivering content for live events and highlights the value that Edgio brings to the streaming industry.”

Norman points out that, according to Nielsen reports this summer, streaming has officially surpassed traditional cable. “While we could all see the writing on the wall, this is important news for us and the content delivery industry,” he says. “Our sports production clients want to provide exceptional experiences for their customers, so one of our focus points has been on nanosecond timing for latency reduction. This is helpful in providing a smooth, reliable experience for both our customers and end users. While streaming isn’t the same as being in the stadium, our goal is to make it as close as you can get.”

“The combined strength of our three foundational companies, Limelight, LayerO and Edgecast has moved us into a much stronger position in the marketplace,” says Norman.

“Our goal is to become the go-to partner for businesses seeking to deliver faster and safer digital experiences. To achieve this, our focus over the next six months will be on app development, web security, streaming and content delivery.”

As streaming takes more market share from traditional broadcasts, Edgio is keeping a close eye on what’s happening in the form of monetisation. “Whether that be forensic watermarking of data to prevent piracy, to server-side ad insertion, effective monetisation will continue to guide our moves in the sports production space,” adds Norman.

EditShare

STEPHEN TALLAMY

CTO “In 2020 the emphasis was forced upon the industry to find ways to do remote production,” says Stephen Tallamy, EditShare CTO. “What has emerged from that is the recognition that sports broadcasting, by its very nature, comes in bursts and we should use remote production capabilities to reflect that.

“Cloud editing is an obvious application. If you find yourself with the rights to a large sporting event you need a lot of editorial capacity for a short duration. The cloud is the obvious approach to minimising capital cost and the environmental impact of buying hardware that will only be used for a few days.”

“The EditShare solution, Flex Cloud Edit+ pairs our content storage and management technology for hybrid cloud and on premises servers with our partner, Data Expedition’s CloudDat high bandwidth transfer software and your choice of edit software: Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve,” he continues.

“To deliver the best possible solutions, we have formed close partnerships with other leading vendors. We have worked with Cinedeck, for example, to provide comprehensive support for 4K and HDR UHD, which is now the norm for premium sports events. We have implemented NDI throughout our offering, so broadcasters can make maximum use of bandwidth from remote sports venues to the production base.

“We have also advanced functionality that we see as both extremely valuable and unique in the industry, which we call Universal Projects. Part of our Flow content management software, it provides complete and seamless bidirectional synchronisation of projects between Flow and your choice of editor. You can set up a project in Flow, complete with bin structures and all the content you will need, then with a single click load it into whichever editor you need, confident that the editor will be able to start working instantly.”

The next six months will see Editshare continue product development to meet clients’ ongoing production requirements.

Tallamy observes: “Production companies are looking to maximise cost-effectiveness through remote production: sending the minimum possible crew to the location, sending as many signals back to base as possible, and producing and enriching content there.

“All of this depends upon scalable, accessible, secure content storage which sits seamlessly into intuitive production workflows, putting the material where it is needed without adding to the administrative burden of the creative team.”

EMG

SHAUN GREGORY

CEO “There were many highlights over the past year for EMG and we had the pleasure to be involved in a number of major sporting productions,” says CEO Shaun Gregory. “EMG successfully delivered broadcast facilities, on behalf of UEFA, across all 31 matches of the UEFA Women’s Euro football championships, culminating in the spectacular final between England and Germany at a sold-out Wembley Stadium.”

“EMG supported BT Sport in successfully delivering the UK’s first live 8K broadcast of a premier sporting event into the home, by providing an 8K truck and on-site facilities for BT Sport’s broadcast of the Saracens vs Bristol Bears Gallagher Premiership Rugby match in March,” he adds. “EMG also produced the Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte fight at Wembley Stadium, London, for BT Sport. Other highlights include premier cycling race the Giro D’Italia in Italy, the Tour de France and the Oxford versus Cambridge boat race in the UK, alongside a host of top-class football, golf and more. It’s been a great year and EMG is looking to more of the same next year.”

This year also saw EMG begin a group rebranding process in multiple countries, with CTV and Telegenic in the UK now operating under the EMG brand.

“CTV and Telegenic, market leaders in the OB space, made an amazing contribution to the market, but their consolidation delivers numerous synergies that will enhance the market value of EMG and deliver a stronger and more dynamic single entity,” says Gregory. “Removing the barriers between these divisions has delivered a stronger, more experienced

and refocused EMG, which has a clearer and more powerful market offering, is able to better engage with new customers and markets, re-energise relationships with the existing customer base and develop more innovative technical solutions for the market. As well as this rebranding, EMG welcomed a host of new faces to the business to strengthen the business, including Lucy O’Brien as group CTO and Neil Jones as CCO. The last two years have been exhilarating and 2023 looks set to be an even more exciting year — we have a lot to be thankful for.”

ES Broadcast

JONATHAN LYTH

GROUP CTO “In a dress rehearsal for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, ES Broadcast provided ENG cameras to support HBS in its coverage of the 2021 FIFA Arab Cup, held in November and December 2021,” says Jonathan Lyth, group CTO, ES Broadcast. “Matches were held at six of the eight World Cup venues and ES Broadcast provided eight Sony PXW-Z750s and 10 PXW-FX6s for crews following the teams involved. For the World Cup, the amount of equipment will ramp up significantly, with 40 Sony PXW-Z750s, 60 PXW-FX6s and three Sony ILME-FX3s currently being prepared for imminent shipping to Qatar.”

ES Broadcast also recently completed an IP upgrade for the University of Minnesota (UMN), developing a solution that enabled UMN to migrate from SDI to a COTS-based uncompressed IP production workflow, with a strong focus on keeping down both cost and complexity.

“The system was designed and deployed on a 100G switch infrastructure supported by Imagine Communications’ SDNO routing control solution and Selenio Network Processor for on-ramp SDI-to-IP conversion, frame synchronisation and audio shuffling,” adds Lyth. “The ST2110 control room incorporates a Grass Valley K-Frame V Series production switcher, while a fleet of GV LDX 92 HDR IP camera chains were also provided.”

This year, ES Broadcast became the UK’s first Grass Valley GV Media Universe Advanced Channel Partner, and the company also announced a partnership with cloud-based live production specialist Mavis Broadcast, allowing ES Broadcast to offer the Mavis Live SaaS-based production platform to clients in markets such as sports and esports.

“Investment in equipment has been crucial for ES Broadcast over the last year,” says Lyth. “The company’s rental fleet has undergone significant expansion, with the addition of the latest camera technology in the shape of a fleet of Sony HDCF5500 Super 35mm system cameras. The camera adds the shallow depth of field beloved by the cine world to a system camera, allowing users access to storytelling creativity in a camera that is custom designed for the live production environment.

“We anticipate it will prove a very popular addition to sports coverage. And, as we approach another busy period of sport over the coming months, the company also acquired almost 70 Grass Valley LDX 98 UHD IP camera channels. These will slot seamlessly into IP, remote and cloud workflows.”

Image: CANAL+

Eurovision

FABIEN ROBINEAU

HEAD OF GLOBAL SALES & MARKETING “As a leading provider of connectivity for the world’s major live sports events, one of the highlights of the past year for us has been working on the global distribution of the UEFA Women’s Euros 2022 in England,” says Fabien Robineau, head of global sales & marketing, Eurovision. “We provided two satellite news gathering trucks at each venue to distribute two match feeds as well as the pre- and post-match live interviews. We distributed all matches from the quarter-finals onwards in UHD-SDR and provided an international signal for UEFA’s broadcast partners to live stream the competition on their OTT platforms.”

“Alongside our long-standing distribution agreements with many of the world’s toptier sports federations, we have also provided connectivity solutions for exciting new sports competitions such as the first Super League Triathlon esport competitions and the debut Nitro Rallycross international season in partnership with Aurora Media Worldwide,” adds Robineau.

“On the technology side we are continuing the migration to our Content Hub service, which better integrates both content owners and rights holders into the Eurovision Global Hybrid network. This allows content owners to make more content available in different formats and with personalisation options, and it gives rights holders greater flexibility and greater simplicity with the feeds they can book. We have also conducted the first tests of enhanced BISS-CA audio features, which opens up the possibility of separate encrypted audio feeds.”

Eurovision is “excited looking forward”. “The increase of content localisation means that our unrivalled scale and expertise managing top tier events and complex set-up is more and more in demand,” says Robineau. “We are driving automation and orchestration as well as leveraging our software capabilities to integrate into our customers systems, simplifying workflows.”

“Remote production is providing new opportunities for us,” he adds. “There is a big drive towards efficiency and sustainability and, once into our network, we can add value to the feeds connecting to remote centres for production, graphics or commentary and deliver just the right mix to the broadcasters.”

Evertz

MO GOYAL

SENIOR DIRECTOR — INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, LIVE MEDIA SOLUTIONS

“It’s been an exciting time for Evertz and the Bravo Studio live production product suite,” says Mo Goyal, senior director — international business development, live media solutions, Evertz. “Over the past year, we have seen DreamCatcher used in a number of major events and new locations. We’re also seeing a shift in how production is being done with the addition

of cloud and 5G networking. At the end of 2021, we were part of the IBC Accelerator Programme that looked at 5G for live production; we used DreamCatcher Bravo Studio in Microsoft Azure to produce some fan feeds during the FIFA Arab Cup in Doha, Qatar.

“Electronic Arts continued to use our DreamCatcher [for replay] in the cloud as part of its production of large events, including its annual Madden Championship Series in November during US Thanksgiving,” continues Goyal. “Our technology continues to be used for major events including the Super Bowl, the Winter Games in Beijing and Royal Ascot to name a few. We are also excited about the continual growth of the DreamCatcher install base. We recently installed a number of DreamCatcher DC-Ones in Australia — including the new Allianz Stadium in Sydney — with our partners Studiotech Australia as part of a production technology refresh.”

Goyal is seeing continual investment in the cloud for live production and tools to enhance fan engagement, but adds that demand for more content during live events for audiences is becoming a challenge.

“Audiences are consuming the live event across multiple platforms but also are looking for choice,” he explains. “For example, some fans watching a PSG football match may want to watch the full game, but another fan may want to watch a camera solely on Messi and another on Mbappe. This additional content helps maintain the fan’s engagement over the match but can be costly if done with traditional production workflows.

“Using tools like our Bravo Studio in the cloud can add these additional feeds more costeffectively than traditional workflows while giving the audience more content and choice.”

In terms of trends that will likely shape sports production, Goyal highlights gamification of the fan experience. “Another trend will be on technology or innovations to reduce the latency for live streams,” he adds.

EVS

SÉBASTIEN VERLAINE

HEAD OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

“EVS solutions are deployed for a significant amount of sporting events throughout the year. However, if I were to pick one that drew particular attention, it would be the European Championships that were held this summer in Munich,” says Sébastien Verlaine, head of marketing & communications at EVS. “For this multidisciplinary event, our partner EMG deployed over 60 EVS servers across the city in the IBC and different venues to cover the various sports. EMG also deployed for the very first time our new SaaS content exchange platform MediaHub, which was launched a few weeks later at the IBC show. This solution enables content owners to maximise the value of their content by facilitating its distribution to rights holders worldwide.”

Verlaine describes EVS as being in growth mode, with a record-high order intake in the first half of 2022 and a historical deal worth over $50 million signed in August. This was with a major US-based broadcast and media production company and includes the delivery of EVS’ live production, replays and highlights solution LiveCeption, combined with a long-term service level agreement.

“We have also managed to hire 52 people in recent months; EVS employs 594 team members across the globe,” he adds.

In terms of trends, Verlaine says the transition to IP is still an important concern of EVS customers. “It facilitates the implementation of remote and distributed production workflows,” he explains. “The request for these types of workflows has dramatically increased since the pandemic began in 2020 and we don’t expect it to wane in the future.”

“The use of the cloud is also on the minds of our customers and EVS is introducing a balanced approach where the right combination of hardware and software is deployed between on-prem, the cloud — private or public depending on needs — and edge computing,” he continues. “The reason is that sometimes it makes more sense to deploy parts of the workflow on site for economic and/or security reasons. Furthermore, a balanced approach allows our customers to continue to use their existing infrastructure while easily scaling it up by using the cloud.”

Flowics

GABRIEL BAÑOS

CEO “In the past year, the adoption of Flowics Graphics has significantly increased in the live sports production sector,” says Gabriel Baños, CEO, Flowics. “Our platform has been used for producing motorsports competitions in Spain with our client Quality Media, ski and cycling events with Eurovision Sport and many more. One of the highlights was the case with Eurovision Sport and the production of the live broadcast of the 2022 Tour of Hellas race. With the Flowics Data Connector for Matsport and Flowics Graphics, the production team easily incorporated broadcast graphics with live stats and timing information in a fully remote production, which was a first of its kind.”

In September, Vizrt Group acquired Flowics. “Flowics and Vizrt Group are both pioneers of software-defined visual storytelling, and sports broadcasters and leagues throughout Europe rely on our tools for real-time graphics and visualised sports analysis,” Baños says. “The Flowics team is now supported by Vizrt Group’s expertise and large global network of partners. That means Flowics and Vizrt have a shared road map of innovations for simple, quick-todeploy, cloud-native graphics solutions that sports broadcasters can use from anywhere. That synergy will benefit all Flowics’ sports and esports customers.”

Flowics already has a robust catalogue of sports-related data connectors, which includes Sportradar, Stats Perform, Genius Sports, Swiss Timing, and more. “These native integrations of live external data can directly populate broadcast graphics created with the Flowics cloud-native

engine,” adds Baños. “We will continue to expand the Flowics Data Connector catalogue to broaden the assortment of live external data sources graphics teams can choose from. We’re also working on a renewed graphics control interface, and we’ve got more partnerships and more platform integrations in the works.”

In terms of technology trends, Baños says moving to the cloud is now a reality. “Cloudbased technologies are paving the way for a new way of producing and distributing sports content — including graphics and fan interaction,” he explains. “Sports producers use Flowics Graphics not only to create live, data-driven graphics to use within their broadcasts, but to attract and retain audiences and create more interactive content outside the broadcast. With our platform, they can engage fans via social media and through live polling embedded on their websites or apps.”

Genelec

HOWARD JONES

PR DIRECTOR “With broadcasters often working in a confined space with sometimes difficult acoustics, the need for compact and ultrareliable studio monitors that can adapt to their acoustic environment has driven a lot of our recent product development,” says Howard Jones, PR director, Genelec. “With the increased take-up of immersive audio, that requirement is magnified — since producing consistent immersive mixes relies on total monitoring accuracy and a system that’s optimised for the space. So we have a big focus on compact DSPpowered nearfield monitors and refining the GLM calibration software that enables them to adapt to their acoustic surroundings.”

“To help our customers produce accurate audio mixes that translate reliably, our GLM 4.2 calibration software update was a big step forward,” he continues. “GLM works closely with our Smart Active monitors and subwoofers to allow the user to optimise their monitoring system to the room, and GLM 4.2 includes the brand-new Grade report — which provides a complete analysis of room and monitoring system performance, in line with best practices — including ITU-R BS.1116 recommendations.”

Grade provides specific observations and advice on any acoustical issues, helping users and studio designers to fine tune the room’s acoustic treatment, adjust monitor and listener positions, and optimise bass management.

“It analyses a wide range of variables including frequency response accuracy and early vs late sound at the listening position, time of flight accuracy, early reflection structure and a complete room acoustic analysis,” says Jones. “These all combine to identify the reasons for any inaccuracy in sound colour, the precision of stereo imaging, the degree of listener envelopment, subwoofer and bass management performance and more.”

The next six months will be a combination of the slow return to more face-to-face events — both trade shows and Genelec’s own bespoke events — with a continued focus on quality video tutorial and webinar content.

“One thing the pandemic quickly showed us was the myriad opportunities to inform and communicate with our customers online, and the appetite for useful, educational material is huge,” says Jones. “We’ll also be continuing to grow our global network of Experience Centres, which enable customers to audition a wide range of Genelec monitoring solutions in a controlled, critical listening environment.”

Globecast

VALÉRY BONNEAU

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

“In November 2021, Globecast partnered with France Télévisions Overseas, and its regional directorate Réunion la 1ère, to trial a 4K pop-up channel on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion, covering the Grand Raid 2021 ultratrail race,” says Valéry Bonneau, internal and external communications director, Globecast. “Globecast also worked with Orange to create a trial of 4K contribution over 5G for the event, which facilitated remote production.”

“All 4K local production was driven by Réunion la 1ère and La Solution RF, with more than 10 cameras, three drones, four native 4K feeds and the upscaling of HD 1080p signals too,” Bonneau continues. “Globecast created and branded the channel, with pre-recorded content supplied by France Télévisons, Réunion la 1ère, The Explorers, Ateme, Eutelsat and Ilotdrones, with live coverage from the Réunion la 1ère production truck at the start line sent straight to Paris. The finish line feeds were remotely produced at Réunion la 1ère premises first, then sent to Paris. This was the first ever 4K content live broadcast from La Réunion.”

Once all the content was received in Paris, it was uploaded to playout in the cloud. “Globecast then managed the global channel media supply chain for OTT distribution via CDN,” Bonneau says. “It was also streamed on YouTube Live and Facebook Live.” Additionally, Globecast managed the supply of the pop-up channel to Eutelsat for the DTT-by-satellite platform Fransat Ultra HD and delivered the channel to TDF for DTT distribution on La Réunion.

“The 5G trial was initially planned to work in parallel, but as the race unfolded, Orange and Globecast’s 5G non-standalone ‘bubble’ covering the stadium finish line was actually used live for two 4K contribution feeds to the pop-up channel.”

“Horse racing channel Equidia has also deployed Globecast’s Managed Cloud Network service, plus encoding, to expand the amount of content available and to easily select which affiliates receive what content,” he adds. “It’s tailored for sports broadcasters and rights holders and provides Equidia with cost-effective, secure cloud-based distribution.”

According to Bonneau, Globecast currently has four key strategic growth initiatives, supported by significant investment: end-toend OTT video ecosystem integration; media supply chain cloud services; remote production connectivity and production hosting; and digital platforms using Globecast Media Hub services.

Gravity Media

ED TISCHLER

MANAGING DIRECTOR, EMEA “As the only end-to-end provider of bespoke technical solutions and tailored production and creative services across global sport, entertainment and drama, we are

proud to have delivered a number of sports production highlights since September 2021,” says Ed Tischler, managing director, EMEA, Gravity Media. “The highlights would include Goodwood 2022. Following the announcement of Gravity Media being awarded the highly coveted contract to bring three of the motorsport calendar’s greatest events to the screens for Goodwood, we are delighted to have supplied more than 90 hours of live content across the three events, including six days of live coverage for ITV. This also included world feeds for international partners, dedicated digital production, exclusive partner content and fully crafted highlights shows for domestic and international fans.”

Gravity Media also provided dedicated support across the Women’s Euros 2022.

“The team provided production services across the UEFA Women’s Euros, including commentary for all rights-holding broadcasters around the world using our production centre in Chiswick as its base, before transferring to the venues for semi-finals and final,” says Tischler.

“In addition, Gravity Media has provided dedicated services for ESL Gaming, Formula 1, Wimbledon, ARES Fighting, Sub7 Sub8, the Archery World Cup, FINA World Aquatic Championships, Roland Garros, the FA Cup Final and the London 10k,” Tischler recalls.

Since September last year, there have been several company developments. “One of the highlights was our recent Gravity Media Production Centre Manchester opening in the iconic ABC Buildings; we are poised for the most exciting chapter this company has ever known,” he adds. “Recently, we grew our talented senior team by announcing the key appointment of Steve Kruger as executive director — technology, while Pete Newton is promoted to the new role of executive director — media services & facilities.

“This year, we are focusing on the evolution of remote broadcast production for sports federations and broadcasters globally, looking into how we can reduce costs and our global carbon footprints while raising production values and coverage for fans. We recognise that we have a responsibility towards growing the talent pool, so we have committed to this through various avenues, including our Production Centre expansion across London’s White City and Manchester, bringing together broadcast, production and post-production solutions.”

Hitomi Broadcast

RUSSELL JOHNSON

DIRECTOR “Hitomi has always been involved in the coverage for the Women’s Super League. To see it go from a three-camera shoot to a 12 is great recognition that the women’s game is being given a more equal broadcast commitment to the men’s game,” says Russell Johnson, director, Hitomi Broadcast. “Hitomi MatchBox solutions help with multi-camera alignment and can provide the timing difference between the cameras with the new latency feature, which was successfully trialled by a major sports broadcaster at the US Open golf.”

The launch of MatchBox Latency has created considerable interest from sports broadcasters specifically in relation to remote production, multi-camera alignments and where visual effects are included in the broadcast path.

Hitomi plans to broaden its applications to as many sports as possible, including esports, where knowing the delays from the feeds from multiple paths is key and venues need to be synchronised.

“Production costs are going down allowing for more elaborate set-ups, including an increase in cameras to grab more interesting footage from around the events, particularly for the high-end subscription-based sports coverage,” observes Johnson. “There also appears to be an increase in remote productions and a heavy adoption of IP workflows. These trends increase the need to measure latency and Hitomi has the solution required.”

Hyper Studios

SAM WILSON

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER “Since September 2021, Hyper has been involved in a lot of exciting sports projects, including Super League rugby for Channel 4, MLB’s Home Run Derby X World Tour, the FIFA World Cup, the EFL and the World’s Strongest Man,” says Sam Wilson, business development manager, Hyper Studios. “The largest project has been our flourishing collaboration with Sky and Sky Sports UK. Our data-driven, cloud-enabled, real-time graphics products, solutions and related services have become integral to Sky’s cutting-edge sports productions, growing from an initial four Hyper Engines with Hyper Studio to accommodate remote productions during the pandemic, to currently 28 Hyper Engines and multi-user licences for Hyper Sports, covering over 500 football fixtures a year, including all Premier League, EFL and internationals.”

Hyper was recently selected by IMG for its production of ITV’s English Football League Highlights show which is using the data-driven Hyper Sports app connected to multiple Viz NLE plug-ins to allow editors to drag and drop prebuilt match graphics directly into their timelines.

“For our ongoing commitment to IMG and the English Football League, we provide 36 Hyper Engines and Hyper Sports data management and playout systems,” he continues. “This partnership with IMG has evolved to include sport events such as the World’s Strongest Man, Spurs Play app, R&A Amateur Golf Championships, Super League rugby and more.”

Expansion is planned for the next six months. “We are moving into our new offices near Cheltenham and plan to expand our team of developers to keep up with the influx of new business,” says Wilson. “We also plan to expand our sales and marketing teams to start a full

promotional and sales campaign at the start of 2023.”

Cloud production, automation and AI are three market trends that Wilson identifies for Hyper. “They go hand in hand,” he says “Hyper is working on some exceptionally cool projects with various high-profile broadcasters and manufacturers that I really can’t talk about. What I can say is that we have been running fully automated rugby highlights for Sky in the cloud with our friends at Wildmoka for the past few months.”

Imagen

TOM BLAKE

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR “The Imagen product has been strengthened to support new use cases for sports organisations such as prepackaged delivery workflows that deliver content to leading OTT platforms,” says Imagen commercial director Tom Blake. “The Imagen platform auto-packages finished content according to the specific needs of each OTT platform, for example delivering direct to Amazon Prime Video in the required formats and metadata. We’ve introduced a multi-site offering which enables sports federations and governing bodies to create a host-site and subsites all on the same platform. They can share infrastructure, allow for an aggregated content search and create a sustainable approach to cloud storage.”

“We have massively enhanced our capabilities for live ingest and redistribution of SRT feeds,” he continues. “This opens a raft of new possibilities for operational efficiency and a simplified experience for our clients’ customers to take live events directly into their online services. Alongside this, all Imagen tools can be used across this live ingest content, such as live logging, clipping and download.”

The company is also working to broaden its ecosystem by integrating with platforms commonly used across the content lifecycle, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Elastic Search, WSC Sports, Greenfly, Blackbird, Telestream Vantage, Zapier and Videocites. “We will keep adding more extensible integrations,” he adds. “Through a combination of these partners and core tools inside Imagen, we have amplified the possibilities of content performance analytics with a revolution in data collection and datadriven production decisions.”

As for the future: “We have a host of enduser experience enhancements, such as a reimagination of how to create collections and a dynamic way of sharing these, along with combining visualisation of events and timerelated media into a nifty calendar widget; all clever stuff to make it easier for users of the platform to navigate,” he reveals. “On the backend, we are creating a more streamlined upload experience, so ingest and metadata input is even more efficient and, of course, continuing to optimise storage tiering to be more economical on both financial and carbon cost.”

Imagine Communications

JOHN MAILHOT

CTO NETWORKING AND INFRASTRUCTURE

“This year we were closely involved with the new NFL facility at Englewood, California, an all-SMPTE ST2110 facility with six studios, five control rooms and links through to the adjacent stadium,” says John Mailhot, CTO networking and infrastructure at Imagine Communications.

“Imagine Selenio Network Processors [SNP] provide all sorts of core functionality, from signal conversions to point multiviewers, wherever required. The overall system control uses our Magellan software, which oversees third-party equipment, as well as the SNP infrastructure. The NFL installation relies on our unique virtual re-entry functionality, which means complex router setups and signal flows can be established and rerouted instantly. It allows NFL to organise themselves around operational requirements, not be tied to engineering limitations.”

The new production centre was online in time for the start of the last NFL season, and it was involved with the 2022 Super Bowl, including the half-time show.

“This sort of production-oriented architecture is very definitely the way of the future for sports broadcasting,” says Mailhot. “European highlights include the French Open tennis, where every signal was processed, converted or monitored through SNPs, as well as our work with one of the UK’s largest sports providers on their HDR rollout.”

Mailhot says rapidly growing interest in HDR has driven continuing improvements in colour processing, delivering more accuracy and controllability.

“An important part of these continuing developments is providing users with the tools they find familiar and comfortable,” he adds. “So we have integrated the RCP colour panel from Cyanview into the SNP. The panel is a completely familiar surface for colour shaders, so they can get straight to work making the best, most consistent images for HDR and check compatibility with SDR.

“We have also implemented JPEG XS as another personality for the SNP. This codec is hugely important for sports broadcasting because it provides excellent quality at very low latency.”

“One final advance that is worth a mention is a big boost in audio processing and channel management,” he adds. “A sport broadcast might include some 5.1 origination intercut with stereo feeds and archive content. The MultiMerge software for SNP takes in all the different audio track formats and outputs consistent 5.1 and stereo, checked for loudness, to give a consistent soundtrack to the audience.”

Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES)

SIMON JONES

STUDIO MANAGER “One big win for IMES in the past year was the expansion of our partnership with French content producer and broadcaster Canal+ Group to digitise up to 110,000 hours of its extensive tape archive, including sports content, creating digital assets for its streaming

services,” says Simon Jones, studio manager, IMES UK. “We’re staffing a dedicated team for maximum efficiency and the content will be uploaded directly to a bespoke MAM platform based on IMES’ Smart Vault digital content repository.”

“Globally, we’ve also worked with sports organisations such as the San Francisco Giants baseball team to help them audit and create their physical and digital inventories,” Jones continues. “We work with one of the biggest names in sports production to digitise historic tennis archives as well as volleyball and some ice skating events. IMES works closely with this major production company to provide rich and relevant metadata to ensure that each file is named correctly and can be easily searched and found when needed. If more detailed information such as scores, participant names, or finishing position are required, these can also be added.”

A continuous development is the evolution of IMES’ MAM platform Smart Vault, which offers hybrid storage for content.

“One of its new features is the option to create subtitles burned into video through multiple personalised dictionaries for audio transcription,” says Jones. “This is a valuable tool to help streamline the internationalisation of sports content, an important revenue stream for media companies who own the rights to different sports competitions. Another interesting new monetisation opportunity that Smart Vault is now offering for sports content owners is the possibility of creating NFTs out of assets stored on the platform.”

In the next six months, IMES will launch a new physical storage environment in France, located 5km from the city centre of Paris.

“It will have storage vaults built specially to archive media assets, ensuring high-level security and climate integrity,” says Jones. “From an R&D perspective, we’re currently testing the adoption of AI to make sports content stored in our Smart Vault MAM platform even more easily searchable and accessible. We’ll also continue to explore long-term preservation solutions and more accessible solutions for deep storage to help content owners store sport’s magical moments for posterity, as well as continue to streamline delivery and operational efficiencies for Smart Vault.”

LAMA

EWAN CAMERON

CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER

“One of biggest highlights in the last year has been with our AutoMix and AutoSync solutions that are used by Warner Bros. Discovery as part of its pan-European IP network and European Technology Transformation (ETT) project,” says Ewan Cameron, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Lean And Mean Audio, or LAMA for short. “These solutions were used in delivering the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, all the major tennis tournaments and many other major sports. This success has really proven the viability of our software-based audio solutions philosophy for the most prestigious of sporting events.”

He continues: “Based on our close relationships with many global broadcasters, we understand that although there may be common systems and setups, in reality each of them has unique workflows. As a result, to maximise the value of our audio solutions, we have had to design custom software elements that can slot easily into their setups. To strengthen this customised approach, we have set up a new division of talented DSP, C++ and web developers. This makes it possible to develop these custom solutions and solve our customers’ broadcast audio issues that cannot be addressed by standard off-the-shelf products.”

“We have seen that our standalone AutoMix solution works well for certain user cases, we have also had feedback that broadcasters would like to combine this functionality with the ability for manual mixing,” he adds. “To cover this requirement, we introduced the beta version of our software mixer, LAMA Mix.

“This mixer is designed to be a software replacement for the large-scale hardware broadcast console but will also include the option of using the same algorithms that we use in our AutoMix solution. This will allow for a best of both worlds solution and will also not have the limitations of the traditional hardware mixers, due to the unlimited channels, busses and groups. Also, as it is software, it is also more flexible and scalable, as it can run anywhere — on premise, on private or public cloud — and can be easily turned on and turned off on demand.”

Lawo

ANDREAS HILMER

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER “Besides Lawo’s significant contribution to the global sports events in Japan and China, there are quite a few more highlights to mention,” says Andreas Hilmer, chief marketing officer, Lawo. “Outstanding has been the Video Contribution Next Generation (ViCoNG) project of Belgian digital services provider Proximus, based on a V__matrix infrastructure, Lawo’s software-defined video processing and multiviewer platform. ViCoNG connects 18 Belgian arenas to the PmH production house, the video assistant referee (VAR) headquarters, as well as Eleven Sports and other broadcasters. It allows for both traditional and remote productions of up to 10 simultaneous matches, using between 16 and 28 cameras per match. The system and all devices are controlled using Lawo’s VSM IP broadcast control system.”

“Another highlight was the European Championships 2022 in Munich, where EMG was responsible for the live broadcast, using an AoIP setup from Lawo,” continues Hilmer. “Nine galleries in the IBC in Munich’s Olympic Stadium and one gallery for outside venues were equipped with Lawo mc²56 MkIII production consoles powered by a cluster of eight shared A__UHD Core audio engines in a redundant setup. Also, the commentary infrastructure was 100% Lawo.”

Lawo was also involved in the Dolby Atmos remote production of the Bundesliga this year.

“The most important product developments were the Home-native .edge hyper-density SDI/IP conversion and routing platform,” says Hilmer. “[.edge] is designed as an easy drop-in SDI router replacement and as a hyper-density conversion unit for IP and hybrid infrastructures, providing 192 SDI/IP conversions per 2RU. For sports production, which are usually based on trucks or flight-packs, this means immediate savings in rack space, weight and power consumption. [It also] provides full support for the SMPTE ST2110 suite of standards with ST2022-7 redundancy built in.”

Hilmer says Lawo continues to follow its internal S25 strategy. “This obviously includes new products as well as new developments and functions for existing products via softwaredefined updates — good for the environment and good for our customers,” he adds. “We will continue to further harmonise the user experience following our LUX Lawo User Experience guidelines. Beyond that, you can be sure we will keep on pushing the envelope in IP video, audio, control and monitoring solutions. Watch this space!”

Leader Europe

KEVIN SALVIDGE

SALES ENGINEERING MANAGER “The growth of UHDTV/HDR live production has been a feature of 2022, with the trickle down of HDR from major marquee events like the Olympics and World Cup, to day-to-day events like the English Premier League and Formula 1,” says Kevin Salvidge, sales engineering manager, Leader Europe. “All of these productions have one thing in common: while producing an HDR program stream, the SDR program stream cannot be compromised. The Leader LV5600 waveform monitor and LV7600 rasteriser support the simultaneous display of multiple HDR transfer characteristics, thus allowing the HDR supervisor to simultaneously monitor both the SDR and HDR program and make the necessary fine adjustments to ensure they both meet and exceed the broadcasters’ required standards.”

Salvidge adds: “Developments of the LVB440 IP analyser are continuing to enhance remote production, with the addition of support for SMPTE ST2110-22 JPEG-XS. At IBC2022 we demonstrated for the first time a customisable Instrument View option that allows remote productions to configure and display the analysis tool productions require without the need to convert the IP streams to SDI video and add latency to the production.”

“We work closely with our customers so we can continue to support their operational and production requirements,” he continues. “We are currently defining the production standards for simultaneous UHDTV/HDR and HD/SDR production that will be with us for the next 20 years. It’s great to be involved in these discussions and helping our customers continue to deliver outstanding content from live sporting events around the world.”

In terms of technology trends, Salvidge identifies remote IP production as a key driver. “Products like the Leader LVB440 are providing operational and production staff with the tools to work remotely. This will allow more live events to be broadcast with the same high production values that we have become accustomed to.”

LiveU

RONEN ARTMAN

VP MARKETING “It’s been another very busy year for LiveU across the sports market, a market that we’ve been actively developing in terms of products and services,” says Ronen Artman, VP marketing, LiveU. “Earlier this year, UK-based production company Over Exposed turned to LiveU once again to create dynamic, viewer-engaging and highly cost-effective 5G remote production coverage of the iconic Vitality London 10K run. The run also integrated the British 10K Championships.”

“The production company is known for its remote productions and overall outside broadcast work,” he adds. “It owns four LiveU units and expanded this to six to create the dynamic, mobile coverage of this event.

“Over Exposed deployed a mix of compact LU300 and multi-cam LU800 units. It provided the on-site technical facilities, acquisition of the feeds via LiveU and then the management of those feeds back to Gravity Media. Gravity Media’s remote production gallery received the feeds and handled the production — commentary, graphics and anything else required — before distributing to London Marathon’s YouTube channel and the BBC Red Button service.”

In summer the company announced that Volleyball World, creator of an integrated ecosystem connecting all volleyball stakeholders (fans, athletes, corporate partners) together through both digital and live events, had turned to LiveU to bring cost-effective coverage of its global beach volleyball tournaments to viewers around the world across 2022.

“Volleyball is the fourth most watched sport globally and continues to grow rapidly,” says Artman. “LiveU is providing a fully managed, end-to-end IP distribution service using LiveU Matrix and LU800 field units and we’re supporting multiple tournaments across 2022.”

“LiveU deployed LU800s as multi-camera encoders on-site, connected via both LAN and WiFi, with cellular connectivity for backup,” Artman adds. “The company’s technology can easily switch between these networks providing tremendous, seamless resiliency.

“Meanwhile, our announcement at IBC2022 that we’ve partnered with SES to launch an integrated video contribution and distribution solution for global live events has attracted a huge amount of attention. One of the first customers, Oranda Singapore, recently deployed the joint solution for live broadcasts of sports climbing in Korea to viewers across EMEA, the Americas and Asia using LiveU’s portable units with SES’s satellite distribution.”

LTN Global

JOE FERREIRA

VICE PRESIDENT, SPORTS AND EVENTS “A major highlight for LTN this year was the launch of LTN Arc, our fully managed production service that handles every aspect of live event versioning, extending reach across platforms and geographies,” Joe Ferreira, vice president, sports and events, LTN Global, recalls. “LTN Arc enables content owners and sports broadcasters to efficiently deliver customised streams of live sports content to digital audiences across domestic and international markets, meeting diverse platform requirements and enabling seamless downstream monetisation.

“Alongside Arc, we launched our cloudbased playout solution LTN Lift. While Arc is a service centred around live events, Lift provides automated versioning capabilities for full-time channels to reach cross-platform audiences.

“Arc and Lift address the challenges and opportunities posed by versioning and customisation in our industry. Media brands need to reach viewers with tailored, localised content experiences to drive subscriber retention. Both services help content owners and sports broadcasters customise live content at scale for global distribution, enabling efficient multi-platform distribution and revenue generation.”

Ferreira says LTN has been focused on helping customers navigate change and complexity in today’s digital media landscape. “Alongside new solution launches, our open, connected network strategy, underpinned by our proprietary IP multicast network, is enabling us to simplify IP-based transmission workflows in what can be a fragmented and chaotic global video transport ecosystem,” he adds.

Ferreira observes that the trend for broadcasters to pivot to remote production setups over the past couple of years has continued in 2022. “While media organisations needed to leverage remote production workflows during the pandemic to keep delivering live events, the trend continues to accelerate in the postpandemic era,” he says. “We are also seeing a significant shift in organisations moving towards IP-based transmission workflows to enable versatility, reach across venues, and lower latency and reliability, something the LTN Network provides the infrastructure for.”

“Another exciting trend is the explosion of OTT platforms and devices,” he adds. “Media companies require a mechanism to brand, monetise and distribute content in a scalable and tailored fashion — to meet diverse platform requirements and drive viewer engagement with culturally relevant coverage, harnessing local language commentary or custom graphics.”

Lumen Technologies

SARAH WU

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, GLOBAL CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK SERVICES

Recent events Lumen Technologies has helped to deliver include the Winter Olympics, Tour de France, UEFA Euro 2020 and Roland Garros. “Using our Mesh Delivery, we had a 74% average CDN offload on Roland Garros for the French broadcaster,” says Sarah Wu, director of product management, global content delivery network services, who works with Lumen’s edge application delivery services. “We supported major OTT sports platforms streaming the EU football leagues, Formula 1 and motor races in general, and supported major events through our Vyvx offerings, including the US Open and World Athletics Championship.”

In March, New England Sports Network (NESN) selected Lumen Technologies for broadcast and content backhaul delivery services. The company will provide these video delivery services for all Boston Bruins and Boston Red Sox away games. NESN also leverages the Lumen dedicated Cloud Connect platform for disaster recovery, helping to ensure uninterrupted coverage for all games.

In April, Disney Streaming and Lumen began an effort to produce standardised CDN configuration metadata and APIs for the streaming video industry. Lumen also introduced ISP Matching for Mesh for live sports events, a hybrid peer-assist solution based on the WebRTC protocol, as well as offering low latency for sports through its CDN, and expanding its CDN capacity with a new node in Egypt.

“At-home production, public internet transmission using the SRT protocol to deliver low-latency video over the public internet, and JPEG XS encoding are major trends,” observes Wu. “There’s also peer-to-peer delivery for live and global events as well as for major game releases [esports]. It helps improve video quality or download speed while controlling costs and offload the network during peak traffic. Our Mesh Delivery for Streaming has been around for a few years to enable this, and we’re launching soon Mesh Delivery for Downloads to help with game downloads.”

Luna Remote Systems

JO ADAMS

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR “Since Covid, there has been a huge jump in people needing to utilise remote production technology, which is of course our business, and we think that has gone a long way into the popularisation and further utilisation of our systems,” says Jo Adams, commercial director, Luna Remote Systems.

“More people have been able to realise the amazing shots that remote cameras can achieve and the practicalities they can bring, such as space saving or crew efficiencies, and that using these systems does not have to break the budget. We’ve been able to reach a lot more people to discuss their projects and how we might bring new vision to their productions.”

“The popularity of VR/AR and the ability of our systems to work with that technology is also a massive plus point, given how that area has grown, especially in the sports arena,” she adds.

“We sent one of our four-point wirecam systems to the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Portland, via NEP UK for World

Athletics,” says Adams. “The system was used to great effect along the back straight. Set up as a two-point system, but with the four winches, this allowed parallel and horizontal movement along the entire length of the stadium.

“We got some amazing shots for Sunset+Vine in Cannock Chase on the mountain bike course at the Commonwealth Games in August, with one of our Dactylcam wirecam systems. And in the world of esports, we have been to Busan in Korea and Singapore with Riot Games, with a four-point wirecam, remote dollies and five Mo-Sys heads.”

The company has taken on three new technicians this year and two trainees. “Most likely there will be need for more as we go into 2023,” says Adams. “In terms of equipment, we made further investments in wirecams in the main, two more stadium-sized Eagle Eye fourpoint systems and two new studio- and arenasized Eagle Eye systems. We invested in another high-speed Falcon point-to-point system which can travel at speeds of up to 70mph over a distance of 1km. We’ve also bought an Agito tracking camera system.”

M2A Media

MATT HUGHES

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER “As innovators in cloud broadcast developing live video solutions, we’re seeing an up-swing in sports rights owners looking to move their workflows to AWS Cloud,” says Matt Hughes, chief commercial officer, M2A Media. “We empower them and their broadcast partners to automate distribution, acquisition and live streaming at scale and at speed.”

“In 2022, we announced customer wins with two premier sports rights owners: ATP Media, the global sales, broadcast production and distribution arm of the ATP Tour, and FIBA, the international basketball federation,” he adds. “ATP Media required a solution to power the delivery of its live tournament feeds that automated and scaled their use of AWS Media Services. We worked with ATP Media to implement our IP transport product M2A Connect to manage the acquisition of streams from third-party suppliers and their onward distribution via an easy-to-use user interface. The solution allows for dynamic event-based routing and entitlement management to ensure the correct feeds are distributed to the correct takers, including individual feeds, as well as ATP Tennis TV.

“With FIBA, we developed a VOD-to-live solution to allow the federation to leverage existing VOD assets enabling the creation of a 24/7 linear-like channel. The solution uses a combination of our low-latency, broadcastgrade live streaming product M2A Live, to automate the VOD playlist into a channel that can be distributed on a direct-to-consumer basis. In addition, FIBA distributes the Courtside 1891 TV channel directly to global takers using M2A Connect. With M2A Connect, FIBA can further monetise its vast existing array of content from across the globe improving its reach to basketball fans globally.”

The beginning of 2023 is set to be an exciting time. “We’ll be taking the wrap off and launching the revamped version of M2A Live, which will serve to provide a leap in capability, as well as a simplified user experience,” says Hughes. “Our new office in Portland, Oregon, will also formally open. This will help our push into the Americas with a direct channel to support customers around the clock.”

Magnifi

VINAYAK SHRIVASTAV

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER Magnifi by VideoVerse (previously known as Toch AI) unveiled its new GUI/dashboard at IBC2022. Using AI and ML technology, Magnifi’s solution intelligently analyses video footage based on specified, preset criteria. Content is analysed in seconds, with clips being auto-resized and optimised to meet various social platform requirements so they can be auto-shared with speed and ease. Adding an option of editorial controls, the new interface offers content rights holders and broadcasters the ability to balance every level of automation with creative freedom.

“In addition, our AI-enabled ball tracking technology has been improved upon, allowing for a precise and impactful resizing of content,” says Vinayak Shrivastav, CEO and co-founder of Magnifi. “There is a distinct rise in popularity of highlights being shared via services such as Google Web Stories and other social platforms which require optimised 9:16 videos. Magnifi is delivering industry-first features… alleviating the need for editors to manually analyse, resize and crop video to meet the dimensions and orientation required by these popular platforms.”

“To be able to automate the production of 9:16 videos, it is crucial to have a high-performing ball tracking mechanism,” Shrivastav continues. “Various challenges need to be overcome, such as accounting for the changing camera angles and movement, and the varying speed and unpredictable trajectory of players and the ball alike. Working through various false positive and negative scenarios, our AI team was able to produce an output that overcame these challenges and on deployment was able to ‘auto-flip’ videos with a high degree of accuracy. This was a turning point for the company — we could now resize videos without any manual intervention and do it at scale to keep up with the live event happening on the cricket field.”

Shrivastav looks forward to AI and Web 3.0 providing a solution to stream and watch live sports in the metaverse and sees 5G mobile connectivity as crucial to supporting the demands of content-heavy remote-working production.

Matrox Video

FRANCESCO SCARTOZZI

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT FOR THE BROADCAST AND MEDIA GROUP (BMG)

“Whenever you see a sporting event, chances are that Matrox technology is behind the scenes, or under the hood, powering the live production,” says Francesco Scartozzi, vice president of sales and business development for the broadcast and media group at Matrox Video. “For major sporting events — such as the Super Bowl, US Open, F1 events, premier European soccer

leagues and MotoGP — every international television network uses Matrox SDI I/O, ST2110, and/or H.264 codec cards, whether it’s to drive AR graphics, virtual advertisements, or state-ofthe-art virtual studios.”

“More and more broadcasters and live event producers interested in remote productions also leveraged Monarch Edge encoders and decoders as they are purpose-built to cover every REMI workflow consideration,” Scartozzi adds. “Tally and talkback for bidirectional communication between on-site and in-studio personnel and genlockable decoders for seamless integration into on-prem facilities are some of the design features that prove that Monarch Edge is built for REMI.”

With broadcasters looking for innovative ways to leverage the cloud for live production and distribution, Scartozzi says Matrox is working with partners such as GlobalM to offer orchestration over the internet. “This is a cost-effective approach to live productions by sending and sharing high-quality, lowlatency contribution streams to the centralised production and distribution hub via cloud-based links, versus traditionally expensive satellitebased links,” he says. “Real hurdles prevent tier 1 live sports and news events from being produced in the cloud. We must address latency, audio/ video synchronisation and redundancy, if our industry is serious about using the cloud for what is traditionally only offered on-prem.”

Over the next six months, Matrox will focus on building an infrastructure/framework to help the broadcast market transition to the cloud. “The only possible way to make this a reality is if we embrace the asynchronous nature of the cloud and marry that with the intimate knowledge of broadcast workflows, requirements and constraints,” says Scartozzi. “Matrox is uniquely positioned to build this framework/foundation to enable best-of-breed solution vendors and offer broadcasters a true path to live cloud productions. Without this framework, all that can be achieved is a lift-andshift model, which doesn’t get us as an industry to where we want to be, a virtual equipment room in the cloud.”

Mavis Broadcast

PATRICK HOLROYD

CEO “This year Mavis Broadcast helped BT Sport put a purely cloud-based production on linear TV for The Ashes and the UFC in London,” says Patrick Holroyd, CEO, Mavis Broadcast.

“An encoder box with the capacity to send six feeds into the cloud using MLSP powered the BT Ashes Daily live output. Footage was uploaded from EVS into Mavis, with monitoring and VT support at BT Sport’s MCR in Stratford, London.”

“We’ve also provided the solution that aggregated the English Cricket Board’s T20 Blast series from around the country, and broadcast live on its YouTube channels,” adds Holroyd. “Providing the platform for the Professional Triathletes Organisation press conferences for 2022 events has also been great.”

Holroyd feels the acceleration of underlying hardware that enables and powers cloud production technology is set to shape sports production workflows, and will impact on Mavis Broadcast’s business

“This is why we work closely with AWS to understand their roadmap and try to ensure our feature set complements their capabilities,” he adds.

If you visited the Atomos stand at NAB or IBC2022 you’ll have seen Cloud Studio: cloudbased live video production services for sharing and real-time collaboration developed in partnership with Mavis. It comprises Capture to Cloud, which uploads files from Atomos network-connected devices to cloud-based platforms, including Adobe’s Frame.io; Atomos Stream meanwhile uses any Atomos networkenabled device to live stream to popular platforms such as Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube and more.

“Announcing our partnership with Atomos is truly an exciting chapter for Mavis. The capability to provide low-cost, high-quality streaming devices that also act as recorder and screens will accelerate true cloud-based remote production,” says Holroyd. “There will be a lot more to come from our partnership with Atomos — watch this space!”

Media Links

GILL PAYNE

MARKETING MANAGER “Media Links provides mediaover-IP transport technology solutions for many of the most watched sports events around the world,” says Gill Payne, marketing manager, Media Links. “We are the chosen technology for reliably and securely transporting critical highvalue content — video, graphics, audio, data and control signal transfers — across the globe for events, including the Olympics since 2004, the Super Bowl since 2008, World Cup games and many more. We work with service providers and broadcasters that transmit live TV and feeds to their licensed partners and consumers all over the world.”

The company recently launched its MDP3020 Max version that supports 4K UHD transport with JPEG-XS compression. “The MDP3020 Max processes multiple incoming 4K, 12G-SDI video/audio streams by first applying JPEGXS compression and then encapsulating this content into packets for transport over an IP network,” says Payne. “By utilising JPEG-XS with its inherent high image compression quality and ultra-low latency processing characteristics, the MDP3020 Max is ideal for live sports and remote production applications where network edge bandwidths are typically constrained and where time sensitive, immediate interaction between the studio and venues is a necessity.”

“We also launched MetroXpress, our selfcontained, expandable/scalable turnkey IP

over fibre system solution for transporting multimedia services across metropolitan or localised wide area networks,” continues Payne. “It provides the ability to more easily and cost effectively transport/switch/control the highest contribution quality real-time multimedia services across a regionalised IP network, optimised for carrier-class performance.”

Payne says Media Links will continue to enhance and develop its technology solutions in delivering IP this coming year, to accommodate the rapidly evolving needs of the sports market, including ST2110-20, 22, 30, 31 and 40 technologies, 25Gb IP interfaces, data centre and cloud migration connectivity, and SRT/RIST capability for any service, to name a few.

In terms of trends, he sees the move to a robust and interoperable network management system that provides intuitive service provisioning, real time monitoring and troubleshooting of network elements for media networks as “a necessity”.

“A truly efficient NMS is intuitive to use and scalable whereby network operators and broadcasters can quickly bring new services online for studio, remote and field locations, all while monitoring and maintaining the reliability of active network devices,” he adds.

MediaKind

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE PINEAULT

SALES DIRECTOR, SPORTS “Earlier this year, MediaKind supported NBC Sports by providing video contribution and distribution solutions for its production of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing,” says Jean-Christophe Pineault, sales director, sports, MediaKind. “NBC Sports utilised MediaKind’s range of video processing and advanced modular receiver technologies to support its high-quality, low-latency and reliable video distribution to viewers throughout the United States.” technology service for video production, streaming, monetisation and fan engagement.

“MK Engage is built on a modular framework that covers the entire streaming pipeline, from ingest to delivery, enabling sports franchises and live content providers to increase fan engagement while exploring new revenue streams,” says Pineault. “New to the MK Engage service this year is a synchronised video playback feature that enables our customers to align the video player frame with the front end and open new use cases within the live streaming experience. For example, a sports broadcaster can show which player is in possession of the ball, or which golfer is teeing up on the golf course through video overlay.”

He continues: “In the sports space, our biggest focus is on enabling the entire industry to have the freedom to stream live without limits. Many challenges need addressing, particularly around scaling enormous periodic peaks of concurrent live streaming. Much of this content has been delivered to millions of users, primarily over broadcast networks.”

“However, in today’s OTT world, the vast majority of content is watched via unicast and therefore requires synchronisation of separate data feeds,” he adds. “With streaming now ubiquitous to all forms of media, we are concentrating on helping sports rights holders evolve their business models so that they can take their live video delivery workflows into the digital era and tap into the new opportunities for fan engagement. Migrating to the public cloud also enables minimal operational complexity while minimising the latency of live feeds.”

Moov

LAURIE BEAMONT

PROJECTS DIRECTOR “The past 12 months have been incredibly busy for us at Moov; we’ve been involved in a number of projects ranging from virtual studios and screens productions to on-screen graphics and VR360,” says Laurie Beamont, projects director at the company. “One of our highlights was providing AR alongside our usual graphics offering for BT Sport at Wembley for the Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte fight. Working alongside our friends at Spidercam and BT Sport creative, we were able to develop a dynamic and editorially supporting device which really enhanced the coverage on such a high-profile night.”

“We were also proud to be a part of BBC Sport’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games this summer,” Beamont continues. “This was a remote production with the studio based in Centenary Square, Birmingham, but with the control room and gallery teams based in Salford. There were challenges with providing a virtual set extension, which used NCam tracking, to a studio 90 miles away from the Brainstorm render engines, but the end result was spectacular. This offering was on top of our regular on-screen graphics contribution, which covered over 200 hours of television across 11 days.”

In terms of company developments, Beamont says: “Over the past 12 months we’ve been able to develop in a number of projects and provide new and enhanced offerings in areas such as studio screens and VR360. This has either come in the form of using existing platforms in a new way, or developing our own tools that work alongside, or harness the capabilities of, other platforms. This allows us to be more agile when approaching projects to ensure that the final solution is more tailored and ultimately more powerful.”

“Our use of gaming engines has increased over the past 24 months and utilising the power of Unreal has really allowed us to explore new methods of deployment and approaches to projects,” he adds. “We see that flexibility in approach within the products and tools that we develop and deploy on productions is becoming more of a necessity in the current broadcast graphics landscapes.”

MRMC Broadcast — a Nikon Group Company

MARIUS MERTEN

SPORTS BROADCAST MANAGER “At MRMC, we have made continuous improvements to our software products and introduced new robotics at the same time, allowing us to further meet our customer’s requirements,” says Marius Merten, sports broadcast manager, MRMC Broadcast. “We have introduced the ARC-360,

a small, robust, weatherproof PTZ camera with roll capability. It is unique in that it provides the smooth movements that MRMC is known for while being entirely weatherproof. The ARC360 builds on our PTZ enablement offering, which we have further strengthened with our acquisition of Slidekamera. We have also introduced a new heavy nodal head, the PTA-2, with an option for an opposite mount. Equipped with this, it is designed to take large box lenses.”

The MRMC Broadcast team has grown rapidly over the past year. “Along with a more streamlined structure, we have hired new staff to provide our customers with the level of service that is expected for broadcast, including key hires in product development, support, and sales,” says Merten. “We are taking part in several interesting PoCs, which demonstrate our capabilities to the market. We recently finished a PoC in horse racing with a new product called Relay. This is a system that can be applied to track-based sports such as car racing, horse racing and Olympic sports.”

“As we finish the PoCs and continue to develop our robotics and tracking systems, we will be in a strong position to take our offering to market in a scalable way,” he adds. “MRMC Broadcast is traditionally a solutions-led company, and we are working closely with our partners and resellers to design products that continue to be intuitive and robust enough for customers to own and manage.”

NativeWaves

CHRISTOF HASLAUER

CEO AND FOUNDER “We have been working with Sport Digital Fussball in Germany delivering next-level experiences to their viewers,” says Christof Haslauer, CEO and founder of NativeWaves. “At the beginning of this year, we enhanced the coverage and viewer experience of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) for Sport Digital Fussball viewers by adding data and analytics and instant replays on demand. These enhanced experiences were available to viewers who watched these games on the Sport Digital website. We are currently delivering selected games from the Brazilian and the Portuguese leagues to Sport Digital Fussball viewers who are watching the games on their mobiles, tablets and PCs.”

Hausler says important developments occurred around core product NativeWaves EXP in December last year. “NativeWaves Exp is a highly customisable experience framework that enables deeper fan and audience engagement across numerous types of content, programming and live events,” he explains. “Viewers can choose an enhanced event-centric experience on smartphone, tablet or mirrored to the TV, offering additional camera angles, audio tracks, instant replays and highlights, social media integration etc, including full on-screen navigation. In addition, NativeWaves EXP can be used and configured as a second screen experience.”

“From a NativeWaves EXP perspective, over the next six months, we will bring to market experiences such as cricket and American football while developing new experiences for sports such as biathlon and darts,” he adds. “From our streaming platform perspective, we plan to complete automation of most of the key tasks required to deliver multiview experiences, making it simple for our customers to handle most of the operations themselves.”

Hausler feels the user experience is becoming the focal point of sports production. “Our framework approach to delivering next-level viewing experiences means that we can help broadcasters and streaming services deliver these experiences to their viewers without the need for any major changes to their existing workflows. The new experiences not only help grab the viewer’s attention, but also provide new opportunities to monetise the content that they have acquired.”

NEP

BRIAN CLARK

SALES DIRECTOR “NEP is proud to work in support of its great clients such as Aurora Media Worldwide, DAZN, Sky, Sunset+Vine, IMG, ITN, BBC and WBS, with some notable events such as Wimbledon, the Commonwealth Games, indoor and outdoor athletics events, ITV for the FA Cup and horse racing, Extreme E, Silverstone, Nitro RX and the WTA to name a few,” says Brian Clark, sales director for NEP Major Events.

NEP recently launched TFC Flow an IP-based Diva tool which offers complete control of data, intercom, video and audio signal flow within a unified live event network. “It is managed through TFC — our proprietary web-based control platform, and debuted at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games,” adds Clark. “We continue to push the boundaries with our remote broadcast solutions for our clients, with innovation on the signal acquisition and routing to our Mediabank media asset management tool, as well as new products we are developing that will expand our media processing and media management toolkit.”

Clark says NEP will be growing its centralised production platform around the world, which leverages the power of the TFC control system. “This is a key factor for NEP and the end-to-end solutions we want to offer our partners,” he adds. “By looking at the entire ecosystem, we can ensure that we offer the correct solution for each project and production rather than the traditional areas that facilities companies were expected to deliver.

“We’re continuing to develop a global production ecosystem and our cloud-based solutions, working towards our vision where our clients and their production teams can collaborate with each other and create, manage and exchange content with the world. This connected ecosystem will allow us to deploy a full suite of practical and user-friendly technologies which will span our end-to-end capabilities in pre-production, production and post-production workflows.”

Net Insight

ULRIK ROHNE

CTO MEDIA “Net Insight has been very busy over the past year, delivering the next-generation solutions that elevate sports production,” according to Ulrik Rohne, CTO media. “Net Insight joined the GV Media Universe Alliance, so our platforms, including Nimbra Edge, a hyper-scale cloud media delivery platform, and Media Pro Application, a fully programmable, adaptable and scalable virtualised media function, can bring lossless, synchronised and broadcast-quality media transport across any infrastructure to GV Media Universe.”

Net Insight has also been working with pay-TV broadcaster Arena Sport to deliver the world’s first combined remote production and centralised VAR contribution network throughout the Balkans for Serbia’s SuperLiga.

“Net Insight delivers secure and reliable live contribution for both projects simultaneously, contributing critical feeds over IP from stadiums across the region to Belgrade,” says Rohne. “The deployment, which is powered by the Nimbra Platform, enables Arena Sport to launch new channels and deliver more content over the whole region, easier, faster and more cost-efficiently. The platform allows the payTV broadcaster to stay ahead of the curve by responding to market needs easily and quickly.

“Net Insight has also been working with The Switch, supporting the transmission of top-tier live sports events. The Nimbra Edge platform plays a key role in MIMiC, The Switch’s cloudbased transmission service, enabling The Switch to remotely configure sites and benefit from hitless operation with two diverse transmission paths combined at the receiving end. This is a mission-critical capability for The Switch’s customers that include broadcasters and rights holders who benefit from the best quality with the lowest latency for live sports events.”

“In August this year, Net Insight announced the most significant upgrade to its Nimbra 1000 platform, introducing flexible and advanced ST2110 functionality and safeguarding highbandwidth media applications up to and beyond 100Gbps,” he adds. “Net Insight’s enhanced suite of ST2110 functions in the Nimbra platform enables customers to safely and easily run up to and beyond 100Gbps WAN network applications, including processing functions such as JPEG XS, JPEG 2000 and MPEG4.”

Newsbridge

PHILIPPE PETITPONT

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO “One sports production highlight for Newsbridge over the past year is our work with the Icelandic Football Association (Knattspyrnusamband Íslands, or KSÍ),” says Philippe Petitpont, co-founder and CEO, Newsbridge. “With media rights in hand for the very first time, KSÍ was just ten days from the start of the season when it set us the challenge of establishing its AI-powered media hub with up to ten live feeds and archive capabilities.”

Icelandic Football is using the Newsbridge cloud media hub to centralise match footage from multiple leagues. “They’re ingesting eight live streams to our platform each week, amounting to 1,800 hours of video per year,” says Petitpont. “The streams themselves are recorded by Icelandic sports technology firm OZ Sports. Through the Newsbridge Media Marketplace, teams from the men’s and women’s leagues can view, clip and collect the match content they need. Coaches also access the media hub to download clips for game reviews.”

“We’re also proud of our recent work with French rugby union club Stade Toulousain,” continues Petitpont. “Toulouse is using the Newsbridge Cloud Media Hub to store and sort tens of thousands of photos. What is especially important to them is the ability for players, sponsors and the press to access the platform and immediately find, download and share content. Through Multimodal AI logo detection and facial recognition, Toulouse’s media assets are automatically indexed and sorted into dedicated Collections upon upload. Individual collections are then shared with specific sponsors and other partners who can access — via our mobile app — the specific match and training images relevant to them.”

Newsbridge recently announced a €7 million Series A fundraiser. “As a deep tech company, we’ll be continuing to define the new state of the art in managing content with Multimodal AI, and investing further in R&D,” says Petitpont. “We’re excited to continue our technological developments in data fusion and semantic search so that our customers can use our Multimodal AI to find the exact photo or video clip they need in less than two seconds.”

In the coming months, Newsbridge is establishing a presence in North America, with a first office in New York.

Panasonic

GUILHEM KRIER

HEAD OF NEW BUSINESS & MARKET DEVELOPMENT

“We have plenty of sports projects across Europe that we are proud of, but we would like to highlight two in particular,” says Guilhem Krier, head of new business & market development, Panasonic Connect Europe — Broadcast & ProAV. “Over the years, Suora Broadcast in Finland has been pioneering technological advancements and continuous improvement, alongside environmental responsibility. Carbon footprint management is an essential part of any responsible production process and since 2021 Suora Broadcast has achieved carbon neutral production, as it runs on green energy and has invested in electric vehicles.”

“As of today, up to eight productions can take place in parallel remotely,” continues Krier. “The technical solution behind this achievement includes remote production with Panasonic AK-UC4000 camera systems, and virtual

studios equipped with Panasonic PTZ cameras, Zero Density Reality Engine and Panasonic Kairos. Kairos is at the heart of the system; it manages and processes the game signals and broadcasts the output internationally.”

The second project concerns esports production in Spain, namely eLaLiga for FIFA 21.

“For this live production, Mediapro needed a system to leverage the best of IT-based hardware and IP protocols while making the best of software-based user operation,” says Krier. “With gamers playing at home, a set with two productions running simultaneously and two control rooms, all signals were fed into Kairos, allowing production teams strong and intuitive live composing capabilities, to add unlimited numbers or layers and effects, while allowing the audience to watch on any platform what’s happening in real-time.”

Krier says a key driver for Panasonic is finding new digital ways to remotely collaborate and present its solutions to customers, partners and internal teams.

“As a result, this summer we have welcomed the first users into our brand-new AV Digital World, a digital web tool designed to show our entire portfolio in a playful 3D environment,” he adds. “This web space is accessible from any browser and any device and will allow you to learn about our products and solutions for different market segments.”

The company also launched the AW-UE80 PTZ camera, which Krier claims is “ideal for midlevel/ mid-budget sports production”.

Proaudio Group

FRANCESCA BIANCO

CEO, PROAUDIO GROUP “Our core business is about making the world sound as good as it looks,” says Francesca Bianco, CEO, Proaudio Group. “We belong pretty much everywhere sound needs to be recorded then aired, shared, or streamed. We serve broadcasters, production, post-production and streamers.”

Proaudio’s highlight this year took place in the very heart of a 300,000 cubic metre sports venue. “The Barys Arena, in Astana, Kazakhstan — Astana Tigers’ new hockey stadium — had an impressive loudspeaker system that could not cope with an eight second reverberation time,” explains Bianco. “We followed this project from A to Z, working along with the client’s designers and engineers, from issue analysis to final set-up. Our goal was a speech transmission index (STI) of greater than 0.5, and reverberation time no higher than four seconds.

“Touching plasterboards or other structures that ‘dressed’ the Arena wasn’t an option we could work with, so we engineered an acoustic treatment for the only surface still available — the roof — and we relied on its steel structure. We engineered a gripping and suspension system to allow the installation of 2,767 polyester fibre panels, with first and second double safety anchorage, hanging just like laundry.”

Proaudio supplied the panels, made in Italy from 75% recycled PET, as ‘mattresses’ each weighing 6.88kg.

“We chose and purchased steel cable suspension systems, with a security grip, and engineered the spring to hook them up,” explains Bianco. “After a few weeks’ work, all the panels were up, and the result was way beyond expectations: STI of 0.56 and early decay time (EDT) of 3.8s.”

“We wrapped it up by calibrating the electroacoustical system with system integrator Professional Show,” adds Bianco. “We delivered several different EQ configurations to load, according to the event to be hosted (music, hockey game, speech and so on). The acoustic result has been fully achieved and aesthetics are also good. Astana’s Barys Arena now has its ‘black sky’.”

Proaudio Group operates through divisions and subsidiaries. “SMAPaudio.com, our equipment division and pro shop, supplies windshields: we’ve served DAZN, RAI and a number of football teams,” says Bianco. “We have just set up a new division, WeResolve — that’ll specifically help broadcasters and producers set up their production and postproduction workflows. We’ve signed a specific partnership agreement with Blackmagic Design.”

Quidich

JASKARAN SINGH BAKSHI

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

“Quidich has grown over twice in size, from a strength of 34 people in September 2021 to 70 people at present,” says Jaskaran Singh Bakshi, director, global business development, at the company. “It has successfully established its presence in India and the subcontinent, deploying its drone, augmented reality, buggy and player tracking services across cricket, football, athletics, hockey and kabaddi.”

“Quidich Tracker [QT] is the first of its kind tailor-made technology for cricket that facilitates broadcasters to uncover stories related to fielding strategies accurately and in real time,” he adds. “A custom-built AI camera mounted on the highest accessible point of the stadium optically tracks the live positions and movements of every single player on the field. The smart camera feed generates an average of more than 5 million data points per T20 game. These data points are not just used as a storytelling tool for the broadcast, but also for teams to access a dashboard and analyse their fielding strategies.”

Since its inception, the technology has been deployed at over 400 cricket matches, including during the Indian Premier League, the Caribbean Premier League, the ICC T20 Men’s Cricket World Cup 2021 and the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022.

“The QT plot has gained so much popularity recently, that it appears a minimum of twice per over during any cricket game,” says Singh Bakshi. “If there is any significant fielding change, a QT field plot is sure to appear on your TV screen. The technology has been instrumental in increasing the tactical understanding of fielding strategies for spectators.”

Another highlight was an augmented reality eagle created by Quidich Innovation Labs and Disney Star Sports for the 2022 IPL final broadcast.

“The virtual bird took to the skies during the

innings break of the final game, played between Rajasthan Royals and Gujarat Titans,” says Singh Bakshi. “It was built using Unreal Engine and Quidich’s proprietary real-time markerless drone tracking system Spatio and marks the start of the partnership between Quidich and Disney Star Sports that will bring further augmented reality features to IPL broadcasts.”

Combining its artificial intelligence and machine learning prowess with AR and second screen technology, the company plans to build a solution that “will enable the stadium experience on a mobile/immersive device to bring the fan closer to the action”.

Qvest

HENNING MIEHE

KEY ACCOUNT MANAGER RENTAL “With state-of-the-art technology and services, Qvest has supported major TV broadcasters at live sports events with individual media equipment solutions on a global stage,” says Henning Miehe, key account manager rental, Qvest. “Among the live production events with dedicated customer support by Qvest were major sports highlights such as the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, the Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2022 and the European Championships in Munich.”

Qvest supported German TV broadcasters during the Olympic Winter Games 2022 in Beijing with a temporary production solution based on EVS’ XT-Via ingest and EVS Live PAM Suites, Avid Nexis data storage, pre-configured Avid Media Composer editing suites, and Vizrt engines and Viz Trio live graphics control to ensure technically high-quality reporting from China to the world.

“Our Qvest approach has proven itself in customer use especially in live productions in the sports sector,” says Miehe. “With experience from many international sports events, we know the requirements very well and can optimally support broadcasters in particular. For example, Qvest media technology solutions ensure minimal project risk and maximum budget efficiency for broadcasters — regardless of whether the team is working remotely or on site.

“Qvest will support a major German TV broadcaster for the upcoming football World Cup in Qatar with state-of-the-art media equipment that will make the workflows of the on-site crew easier and more efficient.”

“We see sports productions with HD resolution and HDR as a package with a lot of potential,” Miehe continues. “This means less complexity, more flexibility, better workflows and also very good feasibility for remote infrastructures, especially for temporary setups. This technology trend offers real added value for content, and we at Qvest are very well prepared with our team and equipment.”

Racelogic

JULIAN THOMAS

MANAGING DIRECTOR “Racelogic is relatively new to the sports broadcast technology market,” says managing director Julian Thomas. “We developed a radio-based indoor positioning/tracking system for the automotive industry over the last five to six years. In 2020 we started to adjust that system specifically to the film and broadcast industries, and it is now a product called AirPixel.”

In March/April 2022 Racelogic worked with WarnerMedia (Turner Sports) on the NCAA Men’s Final Four Games at The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“The goal was to add non-static AR content to the camera footage from SkyCam — think of a large virtual TV screen and big team logos hanging in the air above the playing field,” explains Thomas. “Tracking a SkyCam and adding AR on top of SkyCam’s footage is a big challenge because of the large volume in which the camera flies and the varying lighting conditions in the stadium. With traditional tracking systems, which are typically based on optical cameras and markers, it would have been impossible to do this.

“AirPixel excels in large volumes with varying lighting conditions, both indoors and outdoors. Our system has a fast setup time and scales very well to stadium size venues. The show aired with the virtual elements broadcast live and WarnerMedia was very happy with the results. This resulted in serious interest from other broadcasters to track not only SkyCams, but also wireless steadicams, cranes, drones and so on.”

Since its entry in the sports broadcast market, Racelogic has been working with major lens and camera manufacturers as well as providers of AR platforms and engines to make sure the systems are compatible.

“We are also in serious conversations with several global sports events rightsholders and broadcasters to use our AirPixel camera tracking technology,” says Thomas. “The potential to add attractive and relevant virtual content as well as advertising has been one of the drivers behind this interest. We expect that 2023 will bring a number of very interesting live events where AirPixel will be used to provide AR footage that has been impossible to create so far.”

RaceTech

JOHN BOZZA

CEO At Royal Ascot in June, camera crews and extensive outside broadcast facilities from RaceTech provided live enhanced coverage each day to a multitude of international and domestic media outlets, including Sky Sports Racing, Ascot Racecourse TV, Ascot social media production, Ascot’s world feed, various individual bookmaker channels with full availability and support to ITV Racing. RaceTech also supported the HBA Media TV-distributed Golden Hour show produced by IMG, as well as fully supporting the ITV Sport production by supplying numerous RaceTech cameras and feeds.

“This year, alongside our coverage of major sporting spectacles such as The Derby, Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival, we are delighted to have grown our support of racing initiatives such as the Racing League, Sunday Series and Blenheim Horse Trials,” says John Bozza, RaceTech CEO. “Our work around remote production has grown with several racing fixtures being produced remotely from our hub at Raynes Park in London.”

This remote production hub has grown significantly to include remote camera control alongside RaceTech’s key production tools.

“We have also built two mini OB units to support our work for rights holders such as ITV and the Hong Kong Jockey Club,” says Bozza. “We have continued to recruit and develop new industry talent across a wide range of roles.”

“We will continue to build on our work recently undertaken around virtualisation and the cloud in partnership with AWS,” he adds. “Remote and automated camera technology is also very exciting and will continue to impact how we operate.”

Reality Check Systems (RCS)

MATT ROHRS

HEAD OF OPERATIONS “Now in our 25th year, RCS — like our industry as a whole — has undergone a significant transformation over the past few years,” says Matt Rohrs, head of operations, RCS. “Known for our expertise delivering solutions with Vizrt, we have expanded our services through projects using Ross XPression, Unreal Engine and Singular.live. Launching a custom control interface — RCS Cobb — for controlling multiple different graphics renderers is one example. We have played an integral role in advising and supporting clients in their transition to remote and cloud workflows, using our decade of experience in creating remote production centres to design and build innovative and efficient workflows for clients all over the world.”

“In addition to supporting long-term clients, RCS has worked on some major new launches and projects over the past 12 months, including a new set of on-screen graphics following a rebrand for UFC that included Viz, XPression and Singular versions,” continues Rohrs. “We have also recently worked with Amazon Prime Video to deliver graphics as part of its new TNF alt feed productions for the NFL.”

Rohrs says remote and cloud productions are the most significant trends for the market.

“We first delivered an automated production workflow for Sky Germany 11 years ago and the Sky Sport News gallery remains one of the most sophisticated and efficient in the world,” he adds. “Almost ten years ago we delivered a remote graphics production infrastructure for what is now ESPN NL for its Eredivisie match production. We continue to work with them, supporting their switch from Viz to XPression, and most recently delivered a dedicated graphics package for a live match broadcast to TikTok.”

“The trends for efficiency and remote production are now entrenched and we have years of experience in both,” he adds. “Our expertise in cloud production and across a wide range of platforms including Unreal and Singular.live has enabled us to deliver innovative solutions to answer the most challenging demands of our clients.”

Red Bee Media

WILL PITT

NEW BUSINESS SALES MANAGER “Red Bee Media provides a wide array of broadcast services to various stakeholders in the sports industry. Since September 2021, as the world of sport re-established itself post-Covid and following the delayed Tokyo Olympics, we have seen a significant increase in activity,” says Will Pitt, new business sales manager, Red Bee Media. “Some highlights include the contribution and distribution of live sport for rights holders such as BT Sport, Canal+, ESPN, RTL, BBC, Channel 4 and Fox, which include the UEFA Champions League, F1, Tour de France, Eredivisie, NBA and the NFL; White label OTT PPV and subscription platforms for leagues and clubs, including Fightzone, Extreme E and Ekstraklasa; post production and creative services for clubs including Paris Saint-Germain FC and FC Barcelona; provision of data services to Cogeco Canada as part of Red Bee’s partnership with Stats Perform; and live captioning services for DAZN boxing events, SBS, Ten and ABC (Australia).”

“On the product side, the demand for Free Ad-Supported Streaming (FAST) services has increased significantly across all sectors, including sport, and Red Bee’s comprehensive offer, including complete workflow management, dynamic ad insertion and distribution to platforms and smart TVs, has meant that we have been well placed to meet this demand,” continues Pitt. “As far as events are concerned, The UEFA Women’s Euros in July 2022 re-wrote the records for women’s football in Europe. Red Bee distributed every match on behalf of the BBC in the UK, with the final watched by an impressive audience of 17.5 million.”

Looking forward, Pitt says that as the lines between linear and non-linear platforms continue to blur, “sports rights owners and licensees will look to businesses like Red Bee Media to provide services that ensure the consumer’s journey to the content is as frictionless as possible and that the content is presented flawlessly every time”.

“In addition, 2023 is going to be a busy year in the sport, with the Men’s World Cups in rugby (France) and cricket (India) and the FIFA Women’s Football World Cup (Australia and New Zealand) all taking place,” he adds. “Contribution and distribution workflows for these and other events are being built and tested now. We want to ensure that nothing is left to chance when the events get underway.”

Ross Video

JAMES RANSOME

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, SPORTS & LIVE EVENTS EMEA

“Ross Video has been a part of many exciting projects involving some of the most iconic and innovative venues across Europe,” says James Ransome, business development manager, sports & live events EMEA, Ross Video. “Principality Stadium in Cardiff completely overhauled its production suite, choosing Ross

Video and PMY to drive its LED displays and match day productions.

“Principality Stadium is delivering a best-inclass experience by further engaging fans of the Autumn Nations rugby, WWE Clash at the Castle and the FIM Speedway GP, just to name a few. In the OB realm, Aret is using Ross Video technology to design several OB trucks around the Ultrix Acuity and Ultrix Carbonite across Italy. The Ultrix platform was perfect for these projects, as they can switch between UHD and HD without losing any IO or power.”

Ransome continues: “Spidercam joining Ross Video majorly enhanced the way we deliver a superior experience to our customers and their viewers in the sports and live events space. In addition, we have just launched the Ultrix FR12, which accommodates a huge demand for larger hybrid audio and video routing platforms. As it is software defined, sports broadcasters can configure their Ultrix based on the demands of the production at hand offering greater flexibility.”

“There is so much more to come for Ross Video,” Ransome adds. “Over the next six months, our customers can expect to see tighter integrations with Spidercam, as well as some very interesting developments in the Ross Production Cloud, specifically with Graphite CPC, our cloud production toolset. Here, we can offer an all-in-one cloud solution including 3D, data-driven, real-time graphics, a clip server, an internal audio mixer and switching. We’re also further enhancing our Hyperconverged platform, Ultrix.”

RT Software

MIKE FREDRIKSEN

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR “In terms of customer projects this year, we successfully launched live sports telestration with Tactic Live for Woodbine Entertainment in Canada and Racing Queensland in Australia,” says Mike Fredriksen, commercial director, RT Software. “Despite the pandemic we were able to deliver these projects successfully and on time and both customers are very pleased with the results.”

“Getting back to seeing customers at IBC2022 was fantastic,” he adds. “It was the first time our European customers could come and see our new company and product branding and the response was very positive. We released webbased products at IBC; the new web services approach to the Swift range will expand the range of deployment options for our customers, so we are looking forward to our customers embracing this.”

Tactic Pro is the company’s premium telestration package aimed at broadcasters.

“We have substantially improved workflows by introducing AI to the product,” says Fredriksen. “It means we can accelerate operators’ setup time, giving them more time to focus on improving how they explain match play. We collectively called this Next Gen Analysis because it allows broadcasters to give their audiences more of the detailed match analysis that sports clubs use in their training rooms. It brings viewers closer to the action and we’ve been overwhelmed by how well this has been received.”

“Our industry has seen tremendous focus on cloud technologies and we’re continuing to support that transition,” he adds. “The web services approach to Swift CG is a part of a larger effort to migrate more of our portfolio to this architecture. These technologies underpin a desire by customers to adopt more distributed workflows and remote productions, where control rooms can remain fixed, therefore increasing reliability, instead of having to be continually moved and rebuilt at different locations. One of our customers runs a global championship with teams constantly moving around the world. They are constantly pushing the boundaries on how to best deliver amazing sports footage and virtual graphics and we’re looking forward to continuing our relationship with them.”

“From a customer point of view, we look forward to being able to announce a very large partnership with a major national broadcaster,” he continues. “We’re providing their sports channels with touchscreen telestration, virtual studios, studio graphics, sports newsroom integration as well as channel branding for their playout channels — and all delivered in ST2110 uncompressed IP video.”

Salsa Sound

ROB OLDFIELD

CEO “We have expanded our technical team, launched new products and been a part of many new projects across international and national competitions. In addition, we also expanded our offering for AI-driven mix automation in new sports,” says Rob Oldfield, CEO, Salsa Sound. “[Highlights include] launching MIXaiR 2.0, our AI-driven automated audio mixing product, enabling automated live mixing and multi-versioning across multiple formats from stereo, 5.1, immersive and Next Generation/object-based formats, for different language or crowd perspectives; and being part of the multi-award winning 5G Edge-XR project, a UK DCMS funded project looking at enabling XR experiences by leveraging 5G networks to perform complex processing on the network edge. We were responsible for the immersive adaptive audio — paving the way for other metaverse applications where different dynamic audio perspectives are required for live events.”

“At IBC2022 we launched native MPEG-H support within MIXaiR — the world’s first live automated implementation of Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H next-generation format for personalised and immersive content,” Oldfield adds.

“We are always pushing the bounds of what can be done with AI in audio and increasing our volumetric audio solutions for the 360/ volumetric/metaverse. We have a lot of exciting projects and applications on the horizon that we will hopefully be able to talk about in the coming months.”

In terms of technology trends shaping sports production, Oldfield first identifies the move to the cloud. “This is well underway, and more cloud-native tools are required across all parts of the workflow including audio, hence we architect our software to run in Docker containers for easy cloud deployment,” he says. “There’s also the bringing together of the gaming and live sports world for watching in 3D/metaverse-type environments. Volumetric video and free-perspective technology of course requires volumetric audio built on, for example, Salsa Sound’s object-based audio capture framework.”

Signiant

JON FINEGOLD

CMO “A true highlight this year for Signiant was Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles,” says Jon Finegold, CMO, Signiant. “SoFi Stadium and the LA Rams use Signiant to help run the most expensive and sophisticated media stadium on the planet. As an entertainment venue, SoFi Stadium sets new standards in almost every category.”

“The sheer volume of media activated on game day included 300 LED surfaces outside of the stadium, 2,800 video boards and the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ SoFi Stadium video board,” Finegold adds. “Leading up to the Super Bowl included four events per week requiring 100TB/day of content, 1.12PB of content inbound via Signiant, and 458.97mb/s PBs moved every month.”

In the summer of 2022, Signiant launched Media Engine, a media management service built into the Signiant Platform.

“Media Engine makes it easy to search across any Signiant-connected storage, anywhere, on-prem or in the cloud,” says Finegold. “Unlike a conventional MAM, there’s no need to move or ingest content into Media Engine. Just leave the assets where they are. Since Media Engine is built into the Signiant Platform, the technology is already installed and connected to our customer’s storage. There’s nothing to install. Best of all, some Media Engine users are included with every Signiant SaaS subscription.”

Finegold observes that in modern live sports productions, the amount of data needing to be moved to and from a wide variety of locations before, during and after the game is growing exponentially. “Speed is foundational,” he says. “Sports organisations must make it easy for their people to find and access content from anywhere in the world. They require automated workflows to distribute content to multiple places simultaneously, and increasingly leverage both on-prem and cloud infrastructure. Lastly, they always involve a wide variety of systems that need to interoperate. With advanced network optimisation technology at its core, the Signiant Platform is perfectly suited for modern live sports productions.

“The acquisition of Reach Engine is helping accelerate our vision for the Signiant platform, which includes next-generation workflow capabilities that build on the innovations and deep market knowledge of the Reach Engine team.”

Silver Spoon Animation

PHIL VENTRE

SVP OF STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT “We’ve been fortunate enough to grow and develop in many areas of our business this year,” says Phil Ventre, SVP of strategic development, Silver Spoon Animation. “One of our most significant company developments was opening up XR New York, our full-service LED volume located just outside NYC. This studio has allowed us to further expand our capabilities for sports broadcasters in the realm of virtual sets and XR content that not only looks great but performs seamlessly.

“This spring with CBS, we brought back the crowd favourite Team-moji characters for [NCAA’s] March Madness 2022. We developed these playful, real-time AR characters to be highly customisable, with nearly 100 animations, dozens of special FX options and full runtime controls for team, colour, studio placement and scale. On set, a dedicated Team-moji operator worked in tandem with the March Madness show director to block and execute a variety of playful, dynamic skits, woven throughout the tournament, all in real time.”

“We also broke into the world of esports by partnering with Riot Games for the highly anticipated Wild Rift Icons Tournament in Singapore this June,” he adds. “Unlike traditional sports broadcasting, esports gameplay happens within the confines of a screen, so to elevate the broadcast, we brought 85 champions out of the game and into real life, live on stage in stunning real-time AR. Each champion featured custombuilt FX and runtime controls for triggerable animations, colour adjustments, lighting and placement.”

Ventre continues: “Late in the summer, we had the incredible opportunity to partner with Fox Sports and Nvidia to bring Major League Baseball legends back to life for a game at the iconic Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. We started by creating photorealistic 3D models of each legend’s head, and then composited them onto real-life body talent. Utilising advanced AI technology from Nvidia, we were able to facilitate rapid, realistic facial animation, resulting in a jaw-dropping final rendering.”

Ventre says Silver Spoon looks forward to continuing to strengthen relationships with existing sports broadcasting clients, including CBS, Fox and ESPN. “For the next six months we’re focused on continuing to push the boundaries of real-time production. This includes further innovation in our real-time broadcast AR services and expanding awareness of our XR capabilities including ICVFX and virtual sets for sports broadcasting,” he adds.

Singular.live

MIKE WARD

HEAD OF MARKETING “This year Singular worked with partners QTV and RCS to evolve their cloud-based remote production for SPFL clubs using live integrated data from StatsPerform to update graphics in real time with match statistics,” says Mike Ward, head of marketing, Singular. live. “We also delivered two new projects for ESPN, including a live TikTok match feed with dedicated graphics for ESPN NL and a complex topic bar for ESPN Deportes.”

Important developments include releasing the advanced data handling system Datastreams.

“This enables integration with data sources that deliver high-volume and high-frequency data,” says Ward. “It has helped with projects including motor racing. We have also launched a v2 version of our API which makes it even easier for developers and clients to integrate with Singular and build their own interfaces, giving them maximum flexibility when using the Singular platform. This is also being supported by an enhanced advanced developer portal and documentation. In addition, we have continued to add new technology and service provider partners to our network while also deepening existing integrations and partnerships.”

Ward continues: “We’ve got big launches coming up with some major networks and federations, as well as integrations with new partners. We are also launching a completely new portal that will serve people looking for a simpler, scaled-down solution. This will enable the core Singular team to focus even more closely on both our growing Enterprise customer base and our partners as we continue to harness intelligent overlays to deliver next-gen viewing experiences.”

Ward sees the move to remote and cloud production as impacting the whole industry. “With much work moving huge broadcast infrastructures over to cloud — and increasingly cloud-native — services now done, the focus is shifting to live cloud production,” he says. “As awareness and knowledge around the cloud has expanded so too has everyone’s understanding of the significant differences between ‘cloud’ and cloud-native, web-based solutions. Singular’s intelligent overlays offer a completely new way to deliver live graphic overlays that can be personalised, adaptive and interactive, while also offering live production a far more sustainable way of creating content.”

Skyline Communications

THOMAS GUNKEL

MARKET DIRECTOR BROADCAST “We have significantly expanded features and added new functions to our DataMiner platform to manage the complete lifecycle of sports events more efficiently,” says Thomas Gunkel, market director broadcast, Skyline Communications. “This starts with providing event planning apps and ordering portals to external customers, for example to book infrastructure and connectivity between a stadium and an MCR. Once all administrative tasks have been executed and the request has been approved, those get converted into actual activities to automatically provision, configure, control and monitor all infrastructure that is required to successfully deliver the event.”

“This is only possible because DataMiner is aware of all your resources, along with their availability, capacity and capabilities; it reserves them, and right before an event, it spins them up and configures them. This includes on-premises hardware and software, cloud-based functions and network bandwidth, but also people, rooms, or OB trucks,” he adds.

“As multiple teams are included in the execution of an event, such as the OB team, MCR, production and playout team, DataMiner also provides tailored web user interfaces for your event, which include exactly the data and controls each team or team member needs. After an event is finished, our platform decommissions the infrastructure again, for example disconnecting signals to free up WAN bandwidth or terminating a cloud instance. “We are about to release new features to also share our user-definable RESTful APIs with systems that are not running in your company, all via our cloud platform.”

“We clearly see the media industry moving to a much more agile and DevOps-based way of handling their daily business and new projects, which is perfectly in line with our philosophy to make it easy and quick for our customers to build and deploy projects on their own and to empower them to evolve and improve those over time,” he continues.

“A central theme for our innovations is empowerment of organisations. The DataMiner platform is all about enabling media companies to transform their workflows and to leverage the full power of the new generation of software products and cloud services,” he adds.

Slomo.tv

IGOR VITIORETS

CTO “The slomo.tv video assisted review system videoReferee, adapted for water polo, was used at the 19th FINA World Championships Budapest 2022, as well as at other international FINA water polo competitions,” says Igor Vitiorets, CTO, slomo.tv. “There was also the successful implementation of slomo.tv VAR technology in Kazakhstan, where videoReferee-8F servers and mini-II-vR-Cam cameras are used on a permanent basis at regular football competitions in the Super Cup and Kazakhstan Championship. A joint project with GFM Studio and the Georgian Football Federation saw the step-by-step implementation of the VAR technology based on videoReferee systems in Georgia (VAR Van solution).”

“Since September 2021, we have had many important events and product releases,” adds Vitiorets. “Slomo.tv’s videoReferee VAR systems have been tested and certified to the FIFA Quality Programme For Video Assistant Refereeing Technology. This allows the systems to be used at football competitions of any level of complexity and responsibility. In the last year, five slomo.tv slow-motion replay and multichannel recording servers have been delivered to Poland for TV production and sports broadcasting,14 VAR complexes have been delivered to Kazakhstan and, in co-operation with Deltacast, slomo.tv has integrated its videoReferee system with Delta-offside certified technology, enabling it to offer clubs and federations a complete VAR and VOL solution.”

The Arrow-V slow-motion replay and recording server was launched in a compact 2U chassis. “The Arrow-V is currently more powerful than any broadcast-grade replay server in 3G/HD mode with ISO cameras,” claims Vitiorets. “It supports 14 recording channels, 14 [simultaneous] search channels and two

playback channels with transition effect for both HD and 3G; it also provides up to 16 channels recording for NLE and two independent workplaces.”

The company also released new software for videoReferee, which takes into account suggestions and feedback from replay operators who have been working on its VAR systems. “We have taken the best from the various VAR workflows, creatively refined them using the features of our system architecture and ended up with an even more user-friendly and faster VAR system with a unique interface and a high level of standard ‘routine’ actions automation,” says Vitiorets.

“In the coming months, we will be finetuning and refining solutions for VAR centre architectures based on SRT technology and public internet. This will allow us to offer budget centralised solutions and VAR centres, while ensuring camera synchronisation and high signal quality.”

SMT

PATRICIA G HOPKINS

CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AND BRANDING

“For the 150th Open Championship, SMT debuted Shot View, its real-time ball shot location technology, a first in the tournament’s history,” says Patricia Hopkins, corporate vice president of marketing and branding, SMT. “A team of 24 SMT specialists travelled to St Andrews to recruit and train 180 volunteers to operate SMT’s proprietary GolfX tablets. For each round, a group of volunteers followed each player across the Old Course’s 18 holes, notifying spotters in the landing areas when shots were incoming. The spotters co-ordinated with SMT laser operators, who collected co-ordinates for ball resting locations, creating 3D maps to help calculate how far the ball travelled or how many yards were left to reach the pin. SMT systems ingested the data for distribution to broadcasters, digital productions and on-course videoboards.”

SMT Creative Studio delivered USTA’s world-feed graphics package for the US Open’s transition to UHD, introducing a modern, bold style that showcased deep analytics. “Alongside the graphics package launch, a stylised 3D model of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center also debuted, providing a reference point for viewers as the matches were played across the centre’s 30 courts,” says Hopkins. “These were utilised by the broadcast team as an in-between interstitial as coverage moved from various matches during the broadcast.”

SMT has provided real-time data and timing information to enhance NBC’s production of the past 11 Olympic Games. “For the Tokyo Games, SMT data integration services were utilised for live, on-air graphics, searches on the MAM system and for scheduling information,” Hopkins reveals.

For the 2021 NHL season, SMT provided the league with a combination of scoring, tracking, graphics and virtual insertion technology. “2021 marked the first season of SMT’s Optics data-based graphics system, driven by Oasis, our organising philosophy and data platform,” says Hopkins. “Featuring events such as passes, goals, times of possession and more, Optics enhances the viewer experiences with storytelling graphics like pointers, discs and trails that reveal game-winning strategies. SMT also debuted on-ice, revenue-boosting, virtual ad insertions driven by our Camera Tracker technology.”

SMT’s Team Analytics is now used by every Cup Series team at Daytona. “The newest iteration, version 5.0, included design tweaks so that the virtual cars look identical to the next-gen models,” reveals Hopkins.

Solid State Logic

TOM KNOWLES

DIRECTOR OF NEW PRODUCTS “Within Europe, the Solid State Logic System T broadcast production platform has been at the centre of a number of high-profile esports broadcasts,” says Tom Knowles, director of new products, Solid State Logic. “Blast.TV in Denmark and 120dB Sound Engineering in Poland used multi-console S500m/S500/S300 setups for both on premise and OB/flypack configurations, covering a series of next-gen esports events. Outside of Europe, System T was used to produce segments during the pre-game and half-time shows at this year’s Super Bowl. Installed at the NFL’s new West Coast headquarters, the show was mixed from one of five System T equipped control rooms, which are connected over fibre to SoFi Stadium — a first in the history of the championship game.”

Important developments include the launch of pay-as-you-go licensing in new System T TE1 and TE2 Tempest Engines.

“This enables operators to flexibly scale processing capabilities according to broadcast production requirements,” says Knowles. “Software licences for five different processing packs, defined by the total number of mono all-paths equivalent channels supported, from 85 to 800, are now available as perpetual or short-term, time-based rental upgrades. In addition to this, console software releases for the System T range added automatic discovery and connection managements for AES67/ST2110 streams via SAP and SDP. Patching is presented via a GUI, with full mono routing capabilities. The AES67/ST2110 additions come alongside full Dante AoIP routing integration, with discovery of any Dante devices and full audio routing control, including automatic stream creation, utilising the Dante API.”

Solid State Logic has announced a proofof-concept initiative for running the Tempest engine in virtualised and public cloud environments. “The engine is running and we welcome discussions and PoC events to further develop the software IO required on the cloud instance and discussions about usage cases and workflows,” says Knowles. “The virtual engine can be used with any System T surface or software control instance.”

Knowles notes the ‘growing swell’ of immersive audio. “We have seen an uptake in the use for System T for immersive production,” he says. “The flexible and agile CPU-based processing architecture and multi-gesture touchscreens provide a platform that can evolve as immersive audio technologies and the creative ideas of those processing content evolve. Features have been added and enhanced

to allow mix engineers to work with height channels without compromise, panning and monitoring includes height without complex workarounds involving multiple channels and busses linked together.”

Sony

OLIVIER BOVIS

HEAD OF MEDIA SOLUTIONS EUROPE “We’ve seen the adoption of large-format sensor cameras really take off in Europe, notably with the introduction of our HDC-F5500 with its super sensor S35mm, opening up new creative possibilities,” says Olivier Bovis, head of media solutions Europe, Sony. “The cinematic look offered by large sensors has notably been taken up by all the major football leagues around Europe.

“We also partnered with BT and EMG UK to deliver a full 4K HDR broadcast workflow earlier this year for the Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte boxing fight, again illustrating just how much demand there is for a more artistic look in live production and enhanced operational workflow.”

“Remote production and IP-based production have also meant that new sports are being streamed or broadcast or existing sports are coming in at a lower economic and environmental cost,” he continues. “As an example, Nevion, a Sony Group Company, is working with TV2 and Telenor to deploy an IP-based system that defines how sports venues and production companies can participate in TV2’s production workflows. With over 60 venues and multiple simultaneous games involved, TV2 is contracting several production companies to produce the content. All games are to be produced remotely, with TV2 producing the final programme to be aired — effectively making this a distributed production, with centralised production hubs. TV2 can also produce other events directly, from the venues or new locations.”

TV2 contracted Telenor to build the WAN infrastructure needed to achieve these objectives and provide it as a service to them. “The solution is based on Nevion’s softwaredefined media node, Virtuoso; its SDN media fabric, eMerge; and its media orchestration platform, VideoIPath,” says Bovis.

“At IBC2022, Sony and Nevion introduced several new services and products that will continue to accelerate the transformation of workflows to facilitate distributed and remote production,” he continues. “Networked Live heralds a new era of on-premise/cloud hybrid distributed production solutions, which increases the potential for remote and distributed production, based around universal connectivity. Resource sharing between geographically distant locations enables highquality live production and processing from anywhere. This will allow sports production to be done anywhere and at any scale, levelling up the quality of sports productions overall and increasing efficiencies through a better distribution of people and technological resources — overall ensuring long-term business sustainability.”

SOS Global Express

STEVE GRUNING

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SALES AND ALLIANCES

“The Beijing Olympics, Super Bowl, Wimbledon, French Open, WTA Tour, US Men’s National Soccer Team, British Open, LIV Tour and RBC Canadian Open were all successful sports moments because of the cutting-edge approach that SOS Global delivered on behalf of their clients,” says Steve Gruning, senior vice president, global sales and alliances, SOS Global Express. “The Olympics are always a significant logistic achievement. For the Beijing Olympics, SOS moved over 100 tons alone back to the US, Australia, Singapore and Europe. The WTA Tour is another event we successfully delivered, covering Asia, North America, Australia, Europe and Central America.”

Gruning reveals that 2022 has been a year of significant investment in personnel and innovation to increase the SOS Global portfolio of services. “Knowledgeable staff coupled with the latest technology has created an environment that ultimately provides highly customisable solutions for our client’s needs to deliver their events successfully and on a global scale,” he says. “The FIFA World Cup and PGA Bermuda Championship are still on the 2022 calendar, with 2023 shaping into another incredible year in sports. SOS Global Express looks forward to supporting and providing custom solutions to clients for all upcoming worldwide live events.”

Spiideo

EMIL HANSSON

HEAD OF PRODUCT — SPIIDEO PLAY “To name a few, we’ve worked with organisations such as Gothia Cup, Ringier Sports and MLS Next Pro to scale their automatic production across hundreds and sometimes thousands of games this past year,” says Emil Hansson, head of product — Spiideo Play, Spiideo. “Gothia Cup, for example, broadcast 2,000 games to 177,000 viewers over a single week with 43 Spiideo camera systems.” “We have focused a lot to go even further into large-scale automatic production by developing our fully cloudbased product suite to enable our customers to broadcast even more with less resources,” continues Hansson. “We launched CloudStudio Anywhere, which is a web-based product for enriching the production with graphics, video overlays and audio commentary from the comfort of your home or from anywhere. MLS Next Pro has 15 announcers that remotely use CloudStudio for giving their viewers an enhanced viewing experience.

“Another important development for Spiideo has been to go deeper into integrations towards various data sources relevant for our customers. In order to meet this growing demand, we have established a professional services team that

help our customers build customised solutions, such as integration of event API and custom graphics, helping them deliver a top-level production that in turn will maximise the return on their media rights and investments.”

Hansson observes that the increasing availability of rich sports data will enable new immersive viewing experiences that could be tailored directly for the individual.

Meanwhile the company can reveal plans for the next six months. “There will be some great add-ons to our already large and flexible portfolio of AI cameras, making sure we cover all the potential needs our customers have,” says Hansson. “We will also see more and more of those unique sport experiences that made our Spiideo Perform product popular entering into the sport production pipeline.”

Sport Buff

JONTY WHITEHEAD

PRESIDENT “I think the sheer breadth and scale of the sports and federations that we have partnered with this year have been what has really excited us,” says Jonty Whitehead, president, Sport Buff. “From esports tournaments on Twitch through emerging brands such as Formula E, playing a part in the growth and reach of women’s football across FAWSL, NWSL, UWCL and the Women’s Euros, right up to established partnerships that will help deliver this year’s biggest global sporting event. This all helps to demonstrate what a versatile and adaptable solution Sport Buff delivers.”

2022 is a landmark year for Sport Buff. “We have engaged over 70 broadcasters around the globe as they plan their live sports coverage and activations for November and December 2022,” says Whitehead. “Sport Buff will be used by broadcasters on every continent, reaching hundreds of millions of viewers. This sets Sport Buff apart from any other fan/audience engagement solution due to the sheer scale of the operation. Putting our full attention into faultless delivery of this opportunity will establish the brand, the business and the data that will allow us to turbocharge growth across the space and onto many different genres and verticals.”

Whitehead sees media convergence as the key to all sports broadcasting going forward.

He defines this as “the ability to personalise a viewer’s experience and to make them feel like they are having their voice heard within the main broadcast”.

“Sport Buff’s interactive overlay technology is where broadcasters and rights owners need to focus their attention in the years ahead,” he adds. “It can speak to a fragmented, disillusioned younger audience, provide brand new inventory for sponsors and advertisers, unlock direct monetisation opportunities plus open up a rich new seam of audience data.”

Suora Broadcast

RONI KIANTA

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER

MIKKO PYLVÄNEN

SALES MANAGER “The most important development within the past and next six months is our new premises in Helsinki,” says Suora Broadcast CPO Roni Kianta. “We are building the new production facilities entirely based on ST2110 for meeting future sport production requirements. We will have five studios, off-tube facilities and other production facilities plus office premises at the new building. At the first phase, all our [horse] trotting productions will be transferred to the new premises, and the basketball studio productions and other sport off-tube productions will follow in February 2023. At the next phase we are planning to transfer the rest of our sports productions to the new facilities as well.”

“As sustainability is one of our main values, the new facilities will be certified in accordance with the international environmental certification system BREEAM and the aim is to reach the Excellent level,” says sales manager Mikko Pylvänen. “One example is our heat recovery system from the central apparatus room, which will provide a sustainable way for heating the building as we do not need to purchase any heating from outside.”

“Our main sport productions are with ice hockey, as we provide technical facilities and personnel for all Finnish Elite League, CHL games played in Finland and most of Finland’s National Ice Hockey Team productions (juniors, women, EHT),” says Kianta. “As a highlight, our ice hockey season culminated in May 2022, when the Men’s World Championships were played in Finland. We produced on site studio productions and additional match cameras for our customer MTV from both locations, Tampere and Helsinki. In addition, we had a studio truck and OB van in the Tampere Fan Zone during the whole event.”

Suora also covered Finland’s National Basketball Team World Championships Qualification Games over the 2021/2022 season.

“We started to provide production services within basketball in November 2021,” says Pylvänen. “As we do quite a lot of ice hockey and trotting, basketball is nice addition into our portfolio. We provide world feed productions of all World Championship qualification games played in Finland, as well as a domestic feed for our customer Sanoma Media Finland. The production is the total 14-camera OB production defined by FIBA. In addition, we provide studio productions for Team Finland World Championship qualification games played abroad.”

Supponor

MASSIMO MAGRI

EU MANAGING DIRECTOR, AND GLOBAL HEAD OF FOOTBALL

“The past 12 months have been an incredible success for Supponor,” says Massimo Magri, EU managing director, and global head of football at the company. “Supponor Air received league-wide approval in Germany from the Deutsche FußballLiga (DFL). This gives us technology gold standard status, as the first, and currently only, fully software-based virtual advertising solution available to all Bundesliga clubs.”

“This allowed Supponor, global sports business agency SportFive and Borussia Dortmund to undertake the first commercial deployment of Supponor Air in Germany during the Borussia Dortmund vs RB Leipzig match in April 2022,” he adds. “Subsequently, Supponor

Air was adopted by FC Bayern Munich, while VfL Wolfsburg announced its partnership with Supponor in August of 2022.”

“Additionally, Supponor Air was adopted on a league-wide basis by the Italian Serie A in all 380 matches, in partnership with Interregional Sports Group (ISG Media), and via a direct partnership with Juventus FC,” Magri continues. “In Spain, the 2021/22 season marked the first season in which Supponor Air delivered Virtual Cam Carpets in over 300 LaLiga games per season, in partnership with broadcast production partner Mediapro and through Supponor’s direct partnership with FC Barcelona. Also, in the French Ligue 1, Supponor Air was deployed on a wider scale, including four games during the 2021/22 season, a number which is expected to double in 2022/23.”

The technology was also adopted by UEFA for its European club competitions, including the UEFA Champions League knock-out stages.

Outside of football, Supponor achieved another milestone in May 2022, with the deployment of Supponor Air during ice hockey’s IIHF World Championship in Finland where all 64 events of the tournament saw the virtualisation of the dasher boards in Helsinki and Tampere arenas. This was followed by the 3ICE 3-vs-3 ice hockey tournament in North America, between June and August 2022.

Magri adds: “The most recent partnership for Supponor is with the National Hockey League in North America, via the deployment of digitally enhanced dasherboards that will launch for the 2022/23 season.”

The company is also serving a host of other sports, including several rugby partnerships; in total, Air was deployed in around 3,000 live sports events across the world.

Synamedia

ELKE HUNGENAERT

VP OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT “Live sports streaming is pushing video technologies to new creative heights,” says Elke Hungenaert, VP of product management, Synamedia. “That’s why many of the advances coming out of Synamedia over the past year have focused on this space, from the Synamedia Go SaaS-based cloud video suite to specialist offerings that protect, enrich and deliver sports streaming.”

“Our technology takes the sport watching experience to new levels with live stats, multiangle cameras, watch parties, betting and more, all while keeping a lid on costs,” Hungenaert continues. “When millions of sports fans tune in to stream the same 4K stream at the same time, the network has to create a million unicast connections. To scale without choking the network and costing the earth, we have made incredible efficiency gains in deep edge caching with our Fluid EdgeCDN solution, featuring a sophisticated AI-based traffic prediction to deal with sudden demand spikes. Then, when streamers want to monetise their service, our industry-first application-tailored latency delivery mechanisms free up the network.”

For example, to support betting, the technology enables the swift deployment of WebRTC optimised caches for ultra-low latency so both viewers at home and stadium fans can bet on the next penalty. Or, to support fans chatting in real-time while watching a match, it switches to synchronised latency.

“This eliminates the need of partnering with multiple vendors, reduces infrastructure and cuts costs,” observes Hungenaert.

“Our Vivid Workflow as-a-Service (WaaS) portfolio, which supports any service provider with low-latency OTT services for sports and live events, is complemented by Quortex, a cloudnative SaaS solution for just-in-time processing of live streaming and disaster recovery. It cuts costs, energy and CO2 by providing exactly the resources required at any given time, rather than a ‘just-in-case’ service.”

“Another breakthrough is Immersive Live Sports Streaming in 8K, allowing operators and content owners todistribute8K content at scale, cost-effectively to subscribers over any platform for the first time,” continues Hungenaert. “BT Sport’s broadcast of the Saracens vs. Bristol Bears rugby match in March was the first live streaming of 8K to the home, allowing us to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technology.”

Tedial

JULIAN FERNANDEZ-CAMPON

CTO “Over the past 12 months — and longer — we have been busy developing our new media integration platform smartWork, which we presented to the US market at NAB and the European market at IBC,” says Julian Fernandez-Campon, CTO, Tedial. “This new concept provides sports media companies and content owners with a NoCode approach, complexity abstraction and visual tools, which are built into the platform. This means that users within sports production environments, who don’t have coding or deep technical knowledge — ‘citizen developers’ — can easily build and manage content supply chains, which can include integrations of external thirdparty systems without vendor or specialist intervention. This new approach sees all the applications integrated within the smartWork media integration platform and enables business continuity for sports broadcasters to easily be achieved, as their current systems can also be integrated. This significantly improves operations by adding new business processes or cloud services.”

According to Fernandez-Campon, the M&E industry — including the sports market — is transitioning to a wider, more diverse range of software, IP, cloud and cross-platform technologies. “There are more tools than ever before for every part of the workflow,” he says. “More software applications are needed, and companies must rely on a greater number of vendors; companies of all types and sizes must navigate a fragmented market and choose the applications they need for their specific content supply chain. This can be a challenge even for large organisations.”

Fernandez-Campon claims smartWork

“empowers users to define integrations autonomously — without vendor participation — and create workflows in a flexible and agile manner”.

“Aligned with Movielabs’ 2030 Vision for media creation, the platform removes timeconsuming and complex configurations via a common UI that guarantees an optimal experience and easy access to applications, external systems including legacy MAMs, PAMs and DAMs ensuring business continuity, and features self-validation,” he says.

Telestream

STEVEN BILOW

SENIOR PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER “Telestream products and services continue to be a significant enabler of sports production and delivery workflows around the world,” says Steven Bilow, senior product marketing manager, Telestream. “As the demand for high-quality remote productions using the latest technology continues to grow, Game Creek Video, a technical production services company responsible for bringing some of the largest sporting and entertainment events to air, has been expanding its mobile fleet.”

“One new truck, tailored to the fall 2022 sports and entertainment season, is named Centennial. This powerful SMPTE ST2110 IP-based broadcast vehicle has been designed for maximum flexibility, handling formats from HD to 4K with full support for HDR to ensure superior contrast, brighter primary colours, richer secondary colours, and a more ‘realistic’ user experience,” he explains. “Telestream Prism waveform monitors, which were specifically requested by clients for installation in Centennial, are used at several positions throughout the truck. They have allowed a single instrument to replace two at each camera shading station and have contributed to making Centennial ready for the fall sports and events season. The Prism MPD series of waveform monitors have the largest touchscreen display in the market for maximum visibility, yet they only extend five inches into the rack, making it a perfect footprint for truck installations where every inch counts.

“In addition, NBC Sports selected Telestream to provide media capture, automated media processing, closed captioning and test and measurement equipment for its production of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games from Beijing.”

According to Bilow, two important technology trends that are impacting sports production workflows are high dynamic range (HDR) with wide colour gamut and the growing maturity of IP infrastructure in both studios and production trucks.

“Telestream provides solutions in both of those technology areas and we’ve seen rising interest in HDR for media processing, quality control and waveform monitoring, and equally growing interest in ST2110 for live capture, waveform monitoring and network monitoring,” he notes.

Tellyo

STUART G RUSSELL

HEAD OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

“We’ve been very pleased to work with a number of sports customers since last September, including the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), LIV Golf, the Indian Super League (football) and Sunset+Vine (for its coverage of the Henley Royal Regatta), as well as partnering with the organisers of the European Universities Games to help power the live online coverage of their event this summer in Lodz, Poland,” says Stuart G Russell, head of marketing & communications, Tellyo. “The work with the ITTF was particularly enjoyable because not only did we help World Table Tennis produce the live and highlights content for their first ever Singapore Smash — the first in a series of new ‘smash’ events that form the backbone of the ITTF’s revamped annual competition calendar — we also supported the competitors via our Tellyo Talent app.”

Tellyo Talent enables event organisers to share approved video content with athletes, competitors, actors, brand spokespeople and sponsors. This content can be personalised (but not edited) and then shared through social media with the talent’s own community, helping amplify and extend the reach of content while protecting rights and licensing. According to Russell, part of WTT’s strategy with the Singapore Smash event was focused around raising the profile of the players themselves. Using Tellyo Talent, WTT provided unique video content every day so players could bond with their fans.

“In terms of the platform, we’ve added some important functionality since last year, including SMPTE 12M compliant multi-camera synching, support for multiple audio tracks, full 24/7 playout capability, improved multiviewers for multichannel monitoring, support for a wider number of aspect ratios, and compatibility with an increasing list of third-party hardware control solutions,” he continues. “We are really looking at the next big step in terms of the development of our platform, and I would expect us to be heading towards NAB 2023 with some exciting news up our sleeve.”

Telos Alliance

MARTIN DYSTER

VP OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT “Our Telos Infinity hardware and Virtual Intercom (Infinity VIP) platforms have been used in a number of sporting applications this year,” says Martin Dyster, VP of business development at Telos Alliance. “With VIP now available as the only cloud-native intercom available to Grass Valley AMPP users, it has been deployed as part of an English Premier League football remote production for the 2022/23 season. It has also been trialled by many prospective customers investigating the viability of cloud video production in a number of other sporting genres, ranging from handball, basketball, baseball and rugby, to some very niche sports like arm wrestling!”

The company’s focus on virtualisation has continued apace during the past 12 months.

“Telos Infinity VIP has generated a huge amount of interest and remains a focus of the company’s commitment to developing virtualised solutions,” says Dyster. “Part of that drive has seen us partnered with Grass Valley at NAB and IBC in 2022, and in many projects and proof-of-concept deliveries both with and without Grass Valley. Despite the many detractors who have claimed that the TV broadcast industry is not ready to embrace cloud for live production, we have seen precisely the opposite, with sales of virtualised communications product almost matching those of hardware. Many customers are dipping their toe into the water, using virtualised solutions as add-ons to their traditional systems in a hybrid model.”

Dyster continues: “The next six months will see more of the same in terms of product evolution. Telos Infinity VIP is evolving constantly as we expose it to more and more customers, and their differing requirements and applications continue to shape the development of the product. Intercom is a constant and critical component within almost all broadcast productions, but the use of intercom varies considerably depending on the genre of content and the culture of the user. With a cloud deployable product like VIP being so new, yet built on the foundation of a hardware platform, it can tackle most situations, but customers continue to surprise us with their requirements, and we continue to address those requests.”

Telstra Broadcast Services

ANDREAS ERIKSSON

CEO/HEAD OF TELSTRA BROADCAST SERVICES

“TBS has worked on a huge number of exciting sports productions over the past year,” says Andreas Eriksson, CEO/head of Telstra Broadcast Services. “These include the Winter Olympic Games last February and the Paralympics in March.

“Alongside these highlights, we also conducted the longest remote production distribution in the world — from Birmingham in the UK to Australia. TBS is excited to have a full calendar of major sporting events to deliver for international broadcasters for the rest of this year and long into the future.”

Eriksson continues: “TBS welcomed Deidre Joubert, Pierre Seban and Emory Strilkaukas to the business to strengthen its business development function in both EMEA and the Americas. Alongside enhancing the team, TBS chose long-standing customer and partner Grass Valley’s GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) to enable cloud-based production and playout capability for Stan Sport, Australian streaming service Stan’s premium, live and on-demand add-on sport package. Stan Sport can now deliver UHD coverage of premium live sports such as the UEFA Champions League, to subscribers.”

“TBS made an important upgrade to the capabilities of its next generation Internet Delivery Network (IDN), basing it more on established internet standards and taking a web-first approach to delivery for broadcasters,” adds Eriksson. “The upgraded IDN features more automation for efficiency, greater network flexibility, higher bandwidth and lower latency.”

“With more broadcast organisations adopting remote and cloud-based production workflows, and the rapid rise of new content platforms and viewing options, TBS also updated its Media Production Platform (MPP) to scale and expand as user needs evolve,” Eriksson says. “New platform enhancements included improved replay capabilities for live production and the addition of full linear playout capability, including the ability to create Free Ad Supported TV (FAST) channels quickly and cost-efficiently. All our efforts our focused towards supporting broadcasters to flexibly deliver in a rapidly shifting market.”

TeraVolt

TOBIAS FRÖHLICH

CPO AND CO-FOUNDER It’s been a big year for TeraVolt, which delivers UX and viewing experiences for sports fans, with its addressable TV solution SmartPages, the Audience Manager for automated on-screen notifications, and its sports viewing suite TVXRay.

“At IBC2022, we brought to market our TVXRay on smart TVs,” says Tobias Fröhlich, CPO and co-founder of TeraVolt. “An Android TV device in a living room is now (almost) as interactive and as personal as a smartphone. There is now so much more joy in watching sports. We know that viewers prefer to watch on the biggest screen possible while they expect options for interactivity.”

“It was important to enable our TVXRay solution to truly personalise live sports broadcast for multiple football competitions on app and web,” continues Fröhlich. “With our patented technology, it is now possible for each viewer to get video alerts from any live football match and catch up on any key moment, be it Premier League or Bundesliga. For TV platforms, networks and OTT it is essential that they no longer lose eyeballs to any second screen: viewers have all relevant live data at their own fingertips — about the competition, the match, or the players, when searching for additional information and stats.”

Fröhlich believes a lot of innovation starts in football. “With the DFL — the Bundesliga — we have got a partner who is very open to innovations,” he explains. “But football is not necessarily the most suitable sport for every new feature.”

As for the future, Fröhlich says TeraVolt will not only be ready for every smart TV operating system, but it will also go to market with personalised viewing experiences for additional sports. “Over the next half a year, we will adapt the truly engaging features of TVXRay to cricket, motorsports, tennis and hopefully more,” he adds.

The Switch

ROBERT SZABO-ROWE

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

“It’s not sexy, but our cloud transmission services have seen incredible growth in the past 12 months,” says Robert Szabo-Rowe, senior vice president, product management, The Switch.

“The flexibility and price point have really clicked with our customers as they develop new workflows for new content and events. The huge rise in the production and curation of content that is not the main live event is great, clipping and editing for the development of highlight content, social media channel development — not just for teams and events, but for the players as well — is changing the value proposition for live content and we’re very happy to be right in the middle of that.

“We have invested heavily in our fibre network to enable us to offer the level of service required by our customers. We don’t see that ending anytime soon with the drive to 4K and the associated services that will run alongside that. We are also investing in our cloud platform MIMiC to broaden its appeal and flexibility for live production, clipping and editing and all the delivery variables we encounter in the market today. It’s a very exciting time to be in this space.”

This year, the company has supplied control room production, studio and transmission services for: Mountain West, Sun Belt, NCAA College Football, US Ski & Snowboard, AMA SuperCross, X Games, ESPN Tier 2 remote productions, La Vuelta a España and UCI Road World Championships.

“With the advent of reliable, high-quality cloud services we are seeing the birth of a whole set of new opportunities within the live sport marketplace that will exist alongside the traditional live TX we have all grown up with,” he adds. “Each of those niches presents an opportunity for us and we are looking closely at how we develop our services within those areas. In the more traditional space, the ever-growing drive for quality, not just picture resolution but dynamic range as well as audio improvements, sits alongside some of the new developments such as data and metadata capture and management, which is key to enhancing the customer experience.”

TSL

MARK DAVIES

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY

“TSL products are used in various sports broadcasting applications across the globe, both in studio and out in the field,” says Mark Davies, director of products and technology, TSL. “A recent example is TSL’s audio monitoring solutions being selected for a largescale project with Game Creek Video and its GCV Anywhere kit. This is a remote interface for OB trucks that allows production teams to produce and control live broadcasts while off site. TSL’s MPA1-Mix-Dante is part of the kits and is designed for use at an outside broadcast or headend where fast audio QC of multiple sources is needed.

“TSL Tally and audio monitoring equipment was used extensively across all sights in the production of this summer’s highly successful XXII Commonwealth Games centred around Birmingham in the UK.”

Davies says TSL has put a strong emphasis on R&D and product development over the past year. “With this, we have expanded on our three business sectors with developments across the board, including audio, control and power,” he explains. “TSL prides itself on designing solutions that empower customers to help them streamline their workflows.”

“When it comes to audio monitoring, the new Sam-Q-Net introduces TSL’s Sam-Q advanced audio monitoring capabilities, with support for ST2110-30, ST2022-7 and multiple control options including NMOS,” he adds. “One of the benefits is that the onboard redundant 1G Ethernet connectivity vastly reduces the cost of deployment for audio monitoring where a 10G connection isn’t required.”

TSL recently launched the X-Connect IP routing software and hardware solution. “X-Connect is a control layer that ensures all the individual pieces of a broadcaster’s audio and video kit can easily be found, launched and managed across a network that is utilising IP media routing. It can be added into any existing infrastructure as it utilises NMOS and is vendor agnostic, making it compatible with virtually all media devices,” says Davies.

“During the next six months, TSL will be targeting enhanced sport production across all our product sectors, with our new basic and intelligent power distribution products, SamQ-Net for AOIP monitoring and X-Connect allowing an alternative to traditional SDI routing infrastructure without the associated pain.”

TV Skyline

ROBERT KIS

CEO “We had a very successful winter with a total of 18 winter sport host broadcasts, for example the Alpine Skiing World Cup in Wengen, the Four Hills Tournament in Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen or the Biathlon World Cup in Oberhof,” says Robert Kis, CEO, TV Skyline. “In spring, a new DTM [German touring car] season started for us as a general service provider, while in summer, we broadcast several UEFA Nations League matches, for example Germany vs. England.”

Kis continues: “Together with our client U.Com Media, we developed a remote production workflow for the broadcast of the Ladies European Tour and produced different golf tournaments all over Europe, for example in Spain, Sweden and Finland from our Skyline Remote Center in Mainz.”

The upcoming winter has even more winter sports in store for TV Skyline.

“New for us are all host broadcasts of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation worldwide, including the Bobsleigh World Championships in St. Moritz,” Kis reveals. “In addition, the Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof are on the schedule for us next February.”

TVN

MARKUS OSTHAUS

CEO “One of TVN Live Production’s year-round assignments is the weekly football coverage of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, amounting to more than 100 productions a year,” says Markus Osthaus, CEO, TVN.

“The 2022 summer season culminated in the participation in nine productions in 11 days at five finals, including the UEFA Europa League final, DFB Cup final and UEFA Champions League final,” he continues. “With all six OB vans and several of currently 10 SNG units, TVN’s broadcast crews travelled to the venues in Spain, Germany, Albania and France.”

At the UEFA Champions League final in Paris, TVN was present with three OB vans for interviews and studio broadcasts for three rights holders from the German-speaking region in parallel. In addition, the operators created several feeds with virtual advertising for rights holders in Asia and America in UHD-HDR. The firm continued by broadcasting the DFL Supercup in Leipzig between DFB Cup winners RB Leipzig and FC Bayern Munich. Within the framework of the production, TVN was asked to test the new Sony HDC-F5500 camera, the first full frame system camera generating a cinematic look. TVN also broadcast the UEFA Supercup in Finland between Champions League winners Real Madrid and Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt.

Also, at the SportsInnovation 2022 trade fair in Düsseldorf, TVN Live Production produced the ‘innovation games’, with two UHD OB vans and various equipment, including drones, minicopters and specialist cameras, much of it used for the first time publicly.

“This great workload could be handled due to TVN´s increased technical and personnel capabilities,” says Osthaus. “We are seeing a growing order volume, especially in the field of football.

“This number of productions was only possible due to the merger of TVN Mobile Production, the DFL/Sportcast subsidiaries LiveCast TV Produktion and HD Sat Communication at the end of 2021,” continues Osthaus. “The joint venture TVN Live Production has significantly increased its specialist staff, know-how and equipment. A wide range of TVN state-of-the-art OB vans and mobile solutions is enhanced by two further OB vans and nine SNG vehicles. Since the crews and technical staff have been co-operating for years, all of the parties complement each other both technically and from a business perspective. This tried-and-tested co-operation is being constantly reinforced.”

uniqFEED

ROGER HALL

CEO “uniqFEED develops leadingedge virtual advertising solutions to enable sports rights holders to maximise the commercial potential of sponsorship inventory in live sports,” says Roger Hall, CEO, uniqFEED. “Our softwarebased solution enables the overlay of stadium advertising with virtual content, or for virtual content to be placed onto empty space such as the field of play. Multiple feeds can then be created, offering enhanced audience targeting capabilities.”

“In May 2022, uniqFEED was delighted to once again work with ATP Media and WTA at the Madrid Open, deploying our virtual advertising technology at over 48 matches throughout the tournament, creating an additional nondomestic feed with virtual advertising overlaying the stadium advertising on the baseline wall of the Manolo Santana Court and inserted on the court surface,” Hall continues.

“In August, uniqFEED released the most advanced version of our AdApt virtual advertising software solution, supporting new sports to make virtual advertising accessible to rights holders in as many different sports as possible. We currently offer solutions for tennis, baseball, basketball, table tennis, football, badminton and ice hockey and the next release will see uniqFEED’s first full solution for LED perimeters in football.”

In September, uniqFEED also participated in IBC’s Accelerator Programme as part of the 5G and the Arena of the Future for XR Events.

“The aim of the project was to explore the potential for 5G and XR for creating and commercialising virtual environments such as esports arenas,” says Hall. “uniqFEED’s part in the project was to enable the augmentation of the ‘arena-verse’ with personalised virtual advertising content. uniqFEED’s team of developers and engineers continue to look to the future, particularly in the areas of immersive technologies, extended reality and the metaverse to ensure that our products are ready for Web3 and the next generation of live sports production.”

Veritone

DAVID CANDLER

SENIOR DIRECTOR, CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS

“Veritone was very proud to recently take part in the 50th 24h Nürburgring racing event by partnering with SportTotal Live, EMPA and base to process live footage in a matter of minutes, making it globally accessible to all key stakeholders including teams, manufacturers and sponsors,” says David Candler, senior director, customer solutions, Veritone. “What was previously a much slower and manual process became fully automated with Veritone Digital Media Hub, a cloud-based intelligent asset management solution powered by AI through Veritone aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform. As a result of using Digital Media Hub’s powerful cognitive AI engines, key moments were quickly identified so that all key stakeholders could find the content they needed within minutes for multiple downstream use cases.”

“2022 also saw Veritone return to New York for the US Open Tennis Championships, where we sit at the heart of the closed file content

distribution and archiving workflow,” Candler continues. “Veritone is also very proud to continue to represent the US Open through its content licensing services.”

Over the past year, the company has expanded its footprint across the global sports industry. “We have inked more sports-related deals across our SaaS platform, from SportTotal Live in Germany to Globo and Google in Brazil, with more new customers to be announced soon,” says Candler. “We have also increased our integration with sports production solutions such as iconik.

“In addition, we have furthered our relationships with major sports associations, such as USTA and the Fédération Française de Tennis, by renewing our content licensing agreements with them. We are also continuing to grow our live sport event services with events like the recent USTA US Open. In fact, seven of the world’s largest sporting events leverage Veritone,” he adds.

“October saw Veritone launch an international licensing marketplace called SportX, the first AI-powered sports monetisation platform for digital short-form content. SportX connects international sports rights owners with a global network of verified content buyers in a secure and intelligent content exchange. Some of the most exciting features will be sports event-based personalisation and dynamic pricing, which will help sellers capitalise on the content that is generating the most traffic, and the ability to use AI-powered metadata to connect buyers and sellers faster, and at scale.”

Videe

PAOLA MONTANARI

CEO “In August 2021 Lega Serie A appointed Videe as one of its trusted suppliers for the provision of host broadcaster service,” says Paola Montanari, CEO, Videe. “Since then, we’ve been providing our 4K HDR OB truck which perfectly fits such main sporting productions thanks to its top-end technology, the presence of two independent control rooms and a 77sqm internal space to host up to 37 people.”

“A wide range of cameras and tailor-made production units also made Videe the ideal partner to different kinds of productions, ranging from diving to horse racing, from teqball to cycling, from basket to snowboarding to open water swimming,” continues Montanari. “One of our main achievements is Barcolana, the biggest sailing race in the world. The project is very challenging: we have to receive AV signals from inside the fleet and from a helicopter covering 40sqkm. RF technology is then combined with IP infrastructures; the system is fully engineered by our team. Limited space on the compound also means resources are concentrated into one OB truck, providing feeds both for the Italian and worldwide coverage.

“We should also mention the Alpine Ski Championship. For RAI and Infront Italy we provided super-slow motion and hyper-motion cameras as well as 4K remote-controlled micro-cameras with RF and optical fibre RX/TX systems.”

As for the months ahead, Montanari says “the keyword is R&D”.

“With an eye on the market, we’re working in the remote production field. After a proven experience in the F1 remote production for Telefonica-Movistar (2017-2020, from all circuits), we’re experimenting with new approaches and new implementations. At the same time, we aim to partner with sports federations to add value to emerging sports championships.

“Remote production, particularly meant in terms of cloud production, is going to have a great impact on the broadcast sector,” she continues. “This will lead to a fragmentation of the OB truck market while leaving the floor open to lighter solutions. At the same time, through the reduction of budget and the requirements of a typical live TV production, it will significantly help content related to emerging sports to spread. Thanks to our remarkable experience and our highly skilled and up-to-date team, we are ready to take on the challenge.”

ViewLift

RICK ALLEN

CEO ViewLift offers an end-to-end platform for sports leagues, clubs, teams and rights holders to distribute and monetise their content across multiple platforms, including web, mobile, OTTs, connected TV, smart TVs and gaming consoles. Contributing more than 340 million streams in 2021, it has teams across Europe, the US and Asia.

Fan engagement is a key aspect of the ViewLift offering, with features such as a live game stat tracker, easy ticketing through provider integrations and game tickers. In addition, ready-made, customisable app templates enable users to quickly create new instances for new sports/leagues/teams to expand viewership. The company has worked with numerous clients across the sporting landscape, including The Rugby Network, Supercross, Professional Fighters League, LNP, Buzzer and MotoAmerica.

“We’ve been developing a new, best-in-class digital regional sports service,” says Rick Allen, CEO, ViewLift. “We have significantly ramped up our development team; integrated all major global payment platforms and premium ad networks; built out new apps on major smart TVs; and expanded our sales and marketing staffing and initiatives.”

“Plans for the next six months include: the expansion of FAST integrations; increased fan engagement tools; and helping sports teams and leagues use data from their owned and operated DTC digital services to drive broader distribution, including linear,” says Allen.

The CEO sees several technology trends shaping sports production workflows namely greater fan engagement via personalisation, consistent with data regulation; combining live video with greater digital visualisation, gaming and gambling; ultra-low latency; and increasingly sophisticated AI-automated highlight clipping tools.

Vislink

MICHEL BAIS

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER “We have made continuous enhancements to our 5G and AI-powered solutions over the past year in terms of performance, compatibility and efficiency of

operation,” says Michel Bais, chief product officer, Vislink. “Notably, we have been featured participants in several advanced 5G trials for live sporting events.”

Vislink participated with BT Media & Broadcast and the BBC in trialling a standalone 5G private network for broadcast coverage of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Using Vislink Mobile Viewpoint UltraLink-Air 5G cellular encoders to enable wireless camera connectivity, camera operators could roam freely within the network area during the event, as opposed to relying on broadcast cameras that connect to the outside broadcast solely using RF signals that rely on proprietary equipment. This enables the delivery of smooth, uninterrupted video feeds, and the ability to interface directly into IP-based content delivery networks utilising 5G internet connectivity.

The Commonwealth Games network trial followed an event in May where Vislink innovations were on display at the Gallagher Premiership Rugby match between Saracens and the Northampton Saints at StoneX Stadium in London. At that event, Vislink supported a BT-led project to highlight the potential for 5G in broadcast contributions, which centred on the connection of the matchday cameras to a standalone private 5G network.

“We have had several significant new product releases,” says Bais. “Including the AeroLink airto-ground system for capturing and distributing breaking news and sporting events footage; an NFT-ready video clipping tool that offers new opportunities for fan engagement and monetisation of sports content; Vislink Cliq, a compact and robust OFDM wireless solution for tier live events; and Vislink 5G 4Live, a complete end-to-end remote production system designed to provide a premium-quality, uncontended 5G private network solution.”

Looking at trends in the market, Bais observes that the industry is “continually looking for new ways to monetise content in the most efficient ways possible, and solutions in AI-automation hold immense potential to realise that. We believe that this trend plays to one of our key technological strengths”.

Vivaro Media

DANIEL GONZALEZ

CEO “Over the past couple of years, we had the chance to offer live video contribution and distribution of major events — such as the FIFA World Cup and the Winter and Summer Olympics — to broadcasters worldwide,” says Daniel Gonzalez, CEO, Vivaro Media. “We are also contributing to the dawn of a new era of remote production. Since our company acquired Vivaro Video (former TVTel), we’ve been able to offer a turnkey solution to reduce the crew at the venue, optimising our customer’s resources with a central production location. The result is an improvement in quality due to standard, high-end equipment. The remote production becomes a complete service once the live video content reaches our international fibre network, making it possible to distribute the event from anywhere to everywhere.”

“Since late 2021, we have seen a considerable increase in the demand for transport of occasional use events,” continues Gonzalez. “Simultaneously, we have received a greater number of requests to provide services related to special events like the FIFA World Cup. This scenario led us to increase our team, which is now spread across Montreal, Mexico City and Santiago.”

“Finally, in 2022 our company rebranded, changing its name from Aldea Solutions to Vivaro Media,” he adds. “We are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vivaro Group (formerly known as Marcatel), a collective of companies that support our initiatives to deliver the best solutions in video transmissions.”

Qatar represents the fifth consecutive FIFA World Cup in which Vívaro Media provides video transport services to rights holders globally. “In this edition, Vívaro Media will transmit live signals of the event to 18 different media companies, reaching around 600 million viewers in 10 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands and South Africa,” says Gonzalez. “To deliver live transmissions to broadcasters around the world, we’ll deploy innovative solutions which include 160 video links, 28 data links and more than 60 Gigabits of bandwidth from Qatar to 18 broadcasters on three continents. We will also be transporting signals in ultra-high definition and 4K, along with hitless and ultra-low latency delivery.”

Vizrt

SAM LEADSOM

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR OF SPORTS “It’s been a hectic year for Vizrt,” says Sam Leadsom, commercial director of sports at the company. “By the end of this year, we will have released 23 products and updates to support our customers.

“Of particular interest this year are Vizrt Engine 5 with its improved integration with Unreal Engine 5 and our Adaptive Graphics feature, which supports multi-screen and platform distribution. Also, our Live Production in the Cloud solution. This product has captured the imagination of our customers, resulting in several incredibly ground-breaking proof of concepts using the cloud or virtual infrastructure. We will unveil the virtual stadium campaign in time for the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. It adds a creative component to the storytelling capabilities of Vizrt’s XR Set solution and Viz Libero 8.0 and 8.1, which have also had a complete graphics refresh.”

“The acquisition of Flowics, joining the Vizrt portfolio as Flowics by Vizrt, also strengthens our graphics offering in multiple ways — adding agility, flexibility, HTML graphics and a set of robust sports data connectors,” he adds.

“A few standout projects include the BBC’s

Winter Olympics virtual studio, which converted an 84sqm space and made it virtually limitless. The tight integration with Unreal Engine 4 and Viz Engine 4 was so realistic that some people mistakenly thought the presenters were in China instead of Media City Salford.”

“We also saw the first use of our proprietary Viz AI technology integrated with Vizrt’s Object Tracker at the Daytona 500 Nascar event by Fox Sports,” Leadsom continues. “Viz AI in Object Tracker allowed the detection and tracking of the race cars over any incoming video feed; no other camera tracking was required. Simplicity and non-intrusiveness were the critical strengths of the tech. Fox Sports is keen to explore how they could use it in their other sports broadcasts.”

“In the last 12 months, heads of sports for EMEA, AMECS and APAC have joined or been appointed, a cloud live production centre of excellence lead joined us from NFL Networks, and I joined as the commercial director for global sports,” he continues. “We’ve hit the ground running and have seen an immediate impact with key renewals and new businesses growing our customer base.”

Waves Audio

GREG KOPCHINSKI

LIVE AND INSTALL PRODUCT MANAGER “In 2022 Waves Audio introduced the Cloud MX audio mixer, a 100% cloud-based audio mixer with superior sound quality for cloud broadcast environments,” says Greg Kopchinski, live and install product manager, Waves Audio.

“The first release of Cloud MX supports up to 64 stereo input channels and a total of 44 mix buses that utilise Waves double precision 32-bit floating point mixing engine to deliver pristine sound quality for any broadcast program feeds.

“A significant feature of the audio mixer is the ability to use a broad selection of Waves plug-ins on every input and output channel. These plugins are audio processing modules that provide functionality from common channel strip processing (such as EQ, filters and dynamics) to advanced features including intelligent noise reduction, multiband compression, dynamic EQ and innovative sonic enhancement tools.”

Waves Cloud MX also fully supports the Dugan Speech Automixer, a real-time voiceactivated processor designed to control multiple live microphones simultaneously, such as those used in commentator and sports talent panel discussions.

“In fact, many of these same processing tools have been used for years in on-prem, OB, REMI and hybrid broadcast environments by top audio engineers around the world,” adds Kopchinski. “Waves audio processing is renowned in studio, live and post production and has earned Waves a Technical Grammy Award.

“Waves Cloud MX is NDI-compatible and fits easily into NDI-based cloud production environments, including Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP). The support for NDI audio stream inputs and outputs ensures interoperability with replay, graphics, switching and other cloud production systems.”

Kopchinski says Waves will continue adding new features and capabilities to Cloud MX, “based on requests from sports production A1s and system operators”.

“The accelerating adoption of cloudbased production workflows by tier 1 sports broadcasters highlights the importance of innovative software driven solutions that are compatible and fully interoperable with adjacent systems,” he adds. “As the leading audio processing vendor for cloud broadcast environments, Waves understands that production teams can deliver more content across richer distribution channels as technology providers work together to provide capabilities that optimise the workflow from ingest to delivery.”

WorldCast Group

CYRUS UIBLE

SOLUTION ARCHITECT “2022 has been an exciting year for the Kybio team here at WorldCast Group,” says Cyrus Uible, solution architect, WorldCast Group. “As a reminder we provide on-premises and cloud-based monitoring to the media and broadcast industries and have been particularly fortunate to be an integral part of the mobile broadcast team of an international racing company this season. We’ve also recently been chosen to monitor the outsourced master control facilities for a US sports network, becoming the chosen in-house monitoring tool for their master control provider. Monitoring the equipment and services that make sports happen is what we do.”

“Particularly exciting feature developments this year have also included our Umbrella technology for monitoring remote teams, Kybio self-monitoring, and enhanced visual screens that will now be built-in for some monitored equipment. We’re continuing to make monitoring simpler as the underlying technology becomes more complex,” he adds.

“For the next two quarters we are very excited to bring more service-based monitoring features online as well as automation tools for more advanced self-healing and automatic logic workflows. In addition, we are increasing the size of our driver library to bring more visibility more quickly to our customers.”

In terms of technology trends that are shaping sports production workflows, Uible says it’s “still all about OTT and cloud-based services”. “Not as stand-alone, but as part of an overall ecosystem of technologies that is itself constantly changing,” he adds. “Making everything simpler for both operations and engineering will be crucial in the coming years. Striving for more ‘hidden technology’ will have a larger impact on not just sports but the wider live production industry as a whole.”

YuzzitPro

including TF1, RTL Group and the FIA World Endurance Championship, enabling them to create, edit, broadcast and monetise content from any video rush, webinar or live stream without the need for additional software.

The tool is of particular value to the sports broadcast sector thanks to features such as automatic clipping and its ability to live broadcast to multiple platforms at the same time.

Thanks to AI, data feeds and workflows, real time alerts trigger the automatic cutting of video clips when an action occurs during a live event. Users can then customise and share it on their chosen platforms, such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Facebook and Twitch.

YuzzitPro is natively interfaced with all platforms so users can easily share content simultaneously on their CMS, FTP and the main social media and VOD platforms.

Zero Density

YAVUZ BAHADIROGLU

GLOBAL GROWTH MANAGER “We launched Traxis talentS, the industry’s first stereoscopic talent tracking system that makes wearables and markers obsolete,” says Yavuz Bahadiroglu, global growth manager, Zero Density.

“From the score to player statistics, we know great graphics are crucial for a sports audience. As the most photo-realistic real-time production platform, Reality Engine provides the tools to create the most immersive content possible and revolutionise storytelling in sports graphics,” says Bahadiroglu. “Combined with Traxis talentS, sports broadcasters can now create photoreal virtual studio or AR elements that talent can easily interact with — all while moving freely. It’s the ultimate presenter experience as it’s quick to set up, with no wearables or beacons getting in the way of creativity. Also, knowing the exact position of the talent makes it possible to create interactive scenes. For example, if a presenter walks to a defined location, it can trigger the graphics to appear, and leaving this location makes them disappear automatically.”

“Real-time data integration is also extremely important for sports coverage,” he adds. “With RealityHub, any source can be used to feed the graphics, such as a local excel file or a live data feed, without using any plug-ins or writing a single line of code.”

In terms of sports production highlights, Bahadiroglu says IMG Premier League Productions went on-air from a brand new virtual studio for the new season, powered by Reality Engine. “Belgium’s RTBF has been utilising Zero Density products in the last four years,” he adds. “Each year it revamps its virtual set design for the UEFA League. It also recently covered the Women’s Euros with the help of Reality. Also Discovery/Eurosport Finland covered national Finnish ice hockey tournaments from a virtual set powered by Reality.”

Bahadiroglu reveals that RealityHub’s feature set will be rapidly expanded in the coming months. “We’re also expanding Reality Engine’s XR features and working on integrating the latest AI algorithms and machine learning capabilities in our existing product line,” he says. “The trend we feel is most shaping sports production workflows is the drive for photorealistic images driven by Unreal Engine. Zero Density first introduced Unreal Engine to the industry back in 2016, and we continue to push to innovate in this space today.”

Zixi

KEN HAREN

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MARKETING

“Zixi has seen significant increases in the volume of live events our customers produce, the number of target destinations live events are trafficked to, and emerging technologies that are lowering production costs and complexity while creating operational agility,” says Ken Haren, senior director of product marketing, Zixi. “Interesting recent projects that Zixi has been an integral partner in delivering include EA Sports, where Zixi worked closely with EA to deliver a premium live broadcast experience, delivered globally, for the Madden Bowl esports tournaments, managing hundreds of live sources and targets.”

“Also, Amazon has leveraged the cloud-based Zixi-as-a-Service (ZaaS) solution to rapidly scale cloud infrastructure, delivering highly resilient low latency-live video routes globally on demand,” says Haren. “Zixi has been working closely with Amazon, building new functionality into Zen Master to assist with automating production workflows around complex live event schedules.”

Haren continues: “With the Live Events Manager in Zen Master, producers can now manage complex events schedules, automating the acquisition of live events on an easily managed programming schedule. The new features also define automated workflows with pre- and post-game slating that seamlessly transition the programme feed through event stages, while providing easily updated real-time schedule changes when needed.”

The company also worked with Bare Knuckle Fight Championships (BKFC). “BKFC and Zixi built a production and distribution solution to rapidly launch their next generation live video delivery system,” says Haren. “Zixi is orchestrating live source ingest to cloud processing centres, where Zixi integrated low latency transcoders process the source content into packaged OTT streams and deliver to CDNs. Of particular interest has been how BKFC is leveraging the metaverse, partnering with The Aquarium, a metaverse gaming and event venue located in Decentraland. Viewers experience the fight together in an arena-like experience and Zixi is helping BKFC ensure an ultra-low latency, high-quality live experience is shared across the metaverse audience.”

In Scotland, Zixi could be found at the Pitlochry Games. “Working closely with industry partners, Zixi successfully executed a completely untethered live remote production,” says Haren. “Zixi feeds were backhauled over a private 5G network to live production mixers. Contribution feeds were then uplinked over bonded 4G/LTE and Starlink satellite networks to our cloud-based ZaaS service. ZaaS then conditioned the content for delivery to discreet global licence rights holders, matching the target requirements for format and delivery protocol.”

SVG EUROPE SPONSOR PAGE LEVEL CONTACT PHONE

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139 Bronze Thomas Fengel 141 Bronze Jennifer Edis +33 1 41 36 12 64 +44 1280 823803

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35 35

Gold Meghna Vidyasagar +91 97390 87670 Gold Matthew Williams-Neale +44 7736 481 258 141 Bronze Elise Riffuad +33 771372591

143 Bronze Sam Watkins 37 Gold Rainer Sturm 39 Gold Dorota Bouskela 39 Gold Alexandra Bischof

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43 Gold Christine Williamson

43

Gold Adrian Lambert 45 Gold Alessandro Lima 47 Gold Antony Chang -- Bronze Elodie Levrel 143 Bronze Andreas Hoeflich 47 Gold Felicity Webster 143 Bronze Kevin Emmott +44 7769908968 +49 1728640605 +33 684633212 +49 151 544 59 289 +1 415 298 2190 +352 2480 7111

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147 Bronze Luciano Belluzzo 49 Gold Georgiana Verdonk Sim +31 6 8219 0688 51 Gold Vicky Callister +44 (0)7506 786745

51 Gold Carol Bettencourt +1 631 545 2000

-53 Gold Dan Pope Gold Ollie Williams + 44 (0)7788977904

151 Bronze James Wilson 53 Gold Bob McAlpine 151 Bronze David Bourgeois 55 Gold Gerald Olivier 55 Gold Claire Bell 153 Bronze Alexandra Coulson +1 631 9888033 +32 470 65 07 06 +32 4 2397887 +39 011 384 18344 +44 7464343263

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Gold Ed Abis 57 Gold Stefan Kramper 59 Gold Sam Butchers

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70 Gold JodiMorelli +1 203 2492839

Grass Valley Gravity Media Hitomi 7 Platinum Elpi Klapa 9 Platinum Tia Maletta 155 Bronze Russell Johnson 07900 785017 +44 1923 589425 +44 797 0716261

Hyper Studios 155 Bronze Stuart Paterson-Browne 073401548881

Imagen Imagine Communications

71 71 Iron Mountain Entertainment Services 73 Gold Anna Cotton Gold Kathy Bunting Gold Alisha Perdue +1 416.722.1872 +1 614 747 0581

LAMA (Lean and Mean Audio) Lawo Leader LiveU LTN Global 157 Bronze Ewan Cameron 73 Gold Andreas Hilmer 74 Gold Kevin Salvidge 75 Gold Ronen Artman 77 Gold Nadia Khan +31 628601274 +49 72221002 +44 7286 178 752 +972 9 763 2414 +1 508 331 1870

Lumen Luna Remote Systems M2A Media Magnifi 77

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EMAIL

ben@808talent.com chang.li@accedo.tv mcoyde@acsmedia.com gavin.bunker@ae.live TFengel@aeta-audio.com jennifer.edis@racelogic.co.uk gina@phosphor.pro yinan.qyn@alibaba-inc.com meghna@amagi.com matthew.williams-neale@appear.net elise.riffuad@ampvisualtv.tv Sam@arista.com r.sturm@arkona-technologies.de d.bouskela@ateme.com abischof@audio-technica.eu tgeist@amazon.com Laurent_Seve@bce.lu christine.williamson@belden.com a.lambert@blackbird.video alessandro@blackmagicdesign.com achang@brightcove.com elodie.levrel@broadpeak.tv a.hoeflich@broadcast-solutions.de felicity.webster@bt.com kevin.emmott@calrec.com barryparker@cameracorps.co.uk jack.adair@canon-europe.com luciano.belluzzo@cartoni.com Georgiana.VerdonkSim@catontechnology.com vicky.callister@cerberus.tech carol.bettencourt@chyron.com dp@cingularity.tv oliwilli@cisco.com james.wilson@cloudbass.com bob.mcalpine@cobaltdigital.com david.bourgeois@cyanview.com g.olivier@deltacast.tv Claire.bell@deltatre.com alexandra.coulson@disguise.one ed.abis@dizplai.com stefan.kramper@dolby.com sam.butchers@domotactical.com nroesgen@edg.io katherine.guy@editshare.com terry@esbroadcast.com patrick.brand@emglive.com angela.gibbons@ctvob.co.uk robineau@eurovision.net Mo@evertz.com s.verlaine@evs.com richard@flech.com gabriel@flowics.com peter.hattan@for-a.co.uk makoto.tomiyama@fujifilm.com solja.nieminen@genelec.com jodi.morelli.ext@globecast.com elpi.klapa@grassvalley.com tia.maletta@gravitymedia.com russell@hitomi-broadcast.tv Stuart@hyperstudios.co.uk Anna.cotton@imagen.io Kathy.Bunting@imaginecommunications.com alisha.perdue@ironmountain.com ewan@lamamix.com andreas.hilmer@lawo.de salvidge@leadereurope.com ronen@liveu.tv nkhan@ltnglobal.com cyrille.huteau@lumen.com jo@lunaremote.co.uk lizzie.lawrence@m2amedia.tv geetanjali@magnifi.ai

SVG EUROPE SPONSOR

Matrox Mavis Broadcast MediaKind Media Links MOOV MRMC/Nikon NativeWaves NCAM NEP NEP Connect Net Insight Newsbridge NTT Electronics Panasonic Connect Phabrix Pro Audio Group Quantum Corp Quidich Qvest Racelogic RaceTech Reality Check Systems Red Bee Media Riedel Ross Video RT Software Salsa Sound SES Astra Signiant Silverspoon Singular Skyline Communications slomo.tv SMT Solid State Logic Sony SOS Global Spiideo Sport Buff Sportway Stats Perform Suora Broadcast Supponor Synamedia Tata Communications TEAM Tedial Telestream Telos Alliance Tellyo Telstra TeraVolt The Switch Timeline Television TSL Products TV SKYLINE TVN Live Production uniqFEED Veritone Videe Viewlift Vidi Vislink Vivaro Media Vizrt Waves White Light Wildmoka Worldcast Group YuzzitPro Zero Density Zixi

PAGE LEVEL CONTACT

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79

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-- Bronze Francesca Bianco 91 Gold Tom Hassall 165 Bronze Jaskaran Singh Bakshi +91 9575 846 846 93 Gold Matthias Reintgen -- Bronze Jennifer Edis +49 174 9481 983 +44 (0)1280 823803

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95 Gold Silvia Botella

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Gold Merav Cunningham +1 9723 9280843 99 Gold Jon Finegold +1 781 3126786

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173 Bronze Kate Krivitskaya 99 Gold Patricia Hopkins 177 Bronze Ross Gilbert 23 Gold Anne Churchill 101 Gold Steve O’Connell 101 Gold Todd Patton 103 Gold Benn Achilleas +1 3102858190 +1919 6024392 +44 1865 842300 +34 671756875 +1 800 628-6363 +46 70 294 6148 +44 7788 232577

177 Bronze William Personne 105 Gold Michael Morrison 105 Gold Johanna Koskela 107 Gold David Patton 109 Gold Christelle Gental 109 Gold Megh Amin -- Bronze Hannah Aitchison 111 Gold Claudine Cecille +1 8475 832100 +358 44 0214 055 +44 20 8992 1550 +44 788 1914289

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179 Bronze Melanie Tassone 179 Bronze Martin Dyster 113 Gold Stuart Russell 113 Gold Carlos Farias 115 Gold Wolfgang Jauer 17 Platinum Jessica Mintz

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183 Bronze Robert Kis 185 Bronze Markus Osthaus 185 Bronze Katy Walsh 117 Gold David Candler 119 Gold Paola Montanari 189 Bronze Manik Bambha 121 Gold Robert Oszvald +49 1703 733777 +49 (511) 12123705 +41 792197492 +44 (0)7785 301587 +39 0434-593608 805.341.6961 +44 6151 9385 25

25 Platinum Charlotte Van Hertum 189 Bronze Larry Tonon 123 Gold Mark Gedderman +1 401 787 0120

193 Bronze Gil Wasserman

+1972 3 6084064 193 Bronze Fanny Saint-Pasteur +44 (0)20 8254 4800 133 Gold Lucille Mari +33 (0)4 28 27 02 20 133 Gold Chantal Fourgeaud +33 (0) 557 928 928 197 Bronze Frederic Bruel +33 6 88 69 80 59 donald.sievewright@matrox.com moe@mavisbroadcast.com murray.barker@mediakind.com anunez@medialinks.com mike.phillipson@moov.tv marius.merten@nikon.com vv@nativewaves.com mike.ruddell@ncam-tech.com bclark@nepgroup.com dpalumbo@nepgroup.com mari.fogelberg@netinsight.net laura.petitpont@newsbridge.io marco-fabi@ntt-el-eu.com sivashankar.kuppusamy@panasonic.com. martin.mulligan@phabrix.com francesca.bianco@proaudio-group.com tom.hassall@quantum.com jaskaran@quidich.com matthias.reintgen@qvest.com jennifer.edis@racelogic.co.uk khills@racetech.co.uk mike@rcs.live silvia.botella@redbeemedia.com christian.bockskopf@riedel.net pchiu@rossvideo.com mike.fredriksen@rtsw.co.uk rob@salsasound.com merav.cunningham@ses.com jfinegold@signiat.com phil@silverspoonanimation.com mike@singular.live thomas.gunkel@skyline.be kate@slomo.tv p.hopkins@smt.com rossg@solidstatelogic.com anne.churchill@sony.com SOConnell@sosglobal.com todd.patton@spiideo.com benn@sportbuff.com william.personne@sportway.com michael.morrison@statsperform.com johanna.koskela@streamteam.fi david.patton@supponor.com cgental@synamedia.com megh.amin@tatacommunications.com haa@team.ch ccecille@tedail.com melaniet@telestream.net martin.dyster@telosalliance.com stuart.russell@tellyo.com carlos.farias@team.telstra.com w.jauer@teravolt.tv jessica.mintz@theswitch.tv charlotte.wearden@timeline.tv rob.adams@tslproducts.com r.kis@tv-skyline.de markus.osthaus@tvn.de katy.walsh@uniqfeed.com dcandler@veritone.com paola.montanari@videe.it manik@viewlift.com roszvald@vidi.eu charlotte.vanhertum@vislink.com larry.tonon@vivaro.com mgederman@vizrt.com gilw@waves.com fanny.saint-pasteur@whitelight.ltd.uk lucille@wildmoka.com c.fourgeaud@wordlcast.group frederic.bruel@yuzzitpro.com birim.yamanlar@zerodensity.tv john.wastcoat@zixi.com

GOLD

by VideoVerse

BRONZE

2023 events at a glance

EVENT DATE LOCATION DESCRIPTION

SVG Europe Austria (Regional Summit) February (TBC) Vienna, Austria

Platinum/Gold/Austria only

Sports Graphics 22 February Online

Football Summit 22 March Paris, France

Create, Share, Engage: Making and monetising sports content online SVG Europe Italy (Regional Summit) SVG Europe DACH (Regional Summit) 3 May London, UK

24 May Milan, Italy

Platinum/Gold/Italy only

21 June Berlin, Germany

Platinum/Gold/DACH only

Remote Production 5 July Online

The Austrian sports broadcasting and production community comes together for its annual day of panel discussions presentations and networking, discussing the latest developments in technology, workflows and more.

Insight into the latest tools and techniques for creating on-screen and studio graphics, including 2D, 3D and augmented reality, virtual studio systems and the capture and presentation of data to aid audience engagement. Advances in producing and distributing coverage, with case studies from FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and Women’s Euro 2022 Bringing together leading producers, production services teams and technologists at the forefront of creating, delivering and monetising engaging viewing experiences, with insight from sporting federations and clubs.

An opportunity for the Italian live sports production sector to gather in-person, share ideas and network.

An opportunity for the German live sports production sector to gather in-person, share ideas and network.

Discussions on the current state and usage of different types of remote production.

Sport Production Summit & Sports TV Awards

SVG Europe Women @ IBC

SVG Europe Networking @ IBC 14 September Amsterdam, Netherlands

SVG Europe’s flagship conference and networking event shines a spotlight on the sporting highlights of the year and provides an opportunity to debate the future of the industry and highlight recent successes. Includes the Sports TV Awards. 16 September RAI Amsterdam An in-person event providing information, education, awareness and networking opportunities for women working in sports broadcasting. 16 September RAI Amsterdam In-person networking during IBC2023.

OTT and Content Delivery SVG Europe Spain (Regional Summit) FutureSPORT and Content Strategies 11 October Online

October (TBC) Barcelona, Spain

Platinum/Gold/Spain only

8 November London, UK

An online exploration of the latest methods for distributing and sharing live sports content with viewers.

An opportunity for the Spanish live sports production sector to gather in-person, share ideas and network.

A forward-facing in-person event that will provide an opportunity to examine innovations in capture and distribution of content, plus the longer-term content production and distribution strategies of federations, broadcasters, production companies and their suppliers that will provide a definitive view of the direction of the live sports production and broadcasting industry. Insight and debate from leading figures in the world of audio.

PUBLISHED BY SPORTS VIDEO GROUP

260 Fifth Ave., Ste. 600 , New York, NY 10001 USA Tel: +1 212.481.8140 | Fax: +1 212.696.1783 www.sportsvideo.org

Ken Kerschbaumer, Executive Director, Editorial kenkersch@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +1 212.481.8140 George Bevir, Editorial Director george@sportsvideo.org | Tel +44 7909 528886 Heather McLean, SVG Europe Editor heather@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7986 473520 Will Strauss, SVG Europe Editor will@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7789 711611 Jo Ruddock, SVG Europe Content Editor jo.ruddock@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7980 264491 Veronica Newson, Head of Event Content and Production veronica@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7801 231312 Clare Sturzaker, Sales Director clare@sporstvideo.org | Tel: +44 7710 991595 Nicky Lane, European Sponsorship Consultant nicky@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7956 107882 Rob Payne, Managing Director, Worldwide Sponsor Development rob@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +1 212.481.8131 Andrew Gabel, Manager, Sponsor Development agabel@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +1 646.998.4554 Dawn Boultwood, Content Production dawn@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7967 197803 Livvy Maule Ffinch, Audience Development livvy@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7867 800191 Susan Schoepe, Sponsorship Coordinator sue@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7711 168858 Joe Hosken, General Manager, Europe joe@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +44 7429 090134 Martin Porter, Executive Director marty@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +1 516.767.6720 Paul Gallo, Executive Director paul@sportsvideo.org | Tel: +1 212.696.1799 Magazine Production Dean Cook, The Magazine Production Company www.magazineproduction.com | Tel: +44 1273 911730

ABOUT SVG EUROPE

Sports Video Group Europe supports the professional community in Europe that uses video, audio, and broadband technologies to produce and distribute sports content. Through SVG Europe, leagues, owners, teams, broadcasters, webcasters, OB companies, and technology providers learn from each other, turn vision into reality, and implement innovations. Sharing these experiences leads to advances both in the sports-production/distribution process and in the overall consumer sports experience.

MISSION

To advance the creation, production, and distribution of sports content. To provide a knowledge resource for the growing community of sports video professionals working for broadcast/broadband organizations, professional teams and leagues, collegiate and secondary schools, and facilities. To facilitate a dialogue with manufacturers, suppliers, and technology developers that will improve the quality and profitability of sports programming.

Because Sport TV Leads the Way

Leading sports television executives from across Europe are at the vanguard of Sports Video Group Europe. An independent affiliate organisation formed by the successful Sports Video Group in the USA, its mission is to advance the creation, production and distribution of sport content — on all screens — via information, events and industry initiatives.

Make sure your company and your industry are represented in this vital collaborative initiative.

Join SVGE today