12 YOUR TAKE Live Sports
put on using the power of computers and their abilities to use complex algorithms to intelligently process ever-greater amounts of data to complete previously unimaginable tasks. It goes without saying that, as a technology-focused business, we have always had a long road map of exciting ideas. In this breathing space, we can not only look at making what we do more creative and efficient, but also how we can evolve the underlying platform and technology to support the changes that we see coming. Much as this is a devastating time around the world for many economies and individuals, we do believe that when we come to the other side of this, we will have some exciting things to unveil. It’s not all about R&D though. While the sports broadcast industry might be on hold, the contracts and long-standing valuable associations we continually strive to develop and maintain with leading rights holders and partners such as LaLiga, Mediapro and FC Barcelona, the Bundesliga, the DFL, Sportcast and Lagardère Sports, the NBA and the NHL – give a long- term stability to our business. These are trusted and long-standing collaborative relationships with long engagement times and opportunity cycles. To that end, we are already in conversations regarding how our technologies, and new developments, can and will be deployed in the next season, the one beyond or even into the future. As trusted advisors, we are also actively working with our partners and clients to support the restart of live sports when it comes. Part of that is about putting our technologies back into play, but maybe not quite in the manner that they were before, with more focus on social distancing and discussions revolving around how we can all collaborate more to support a reduced need for on-site operations. However, another part of that revolves around some interesting discussions about how the overlay and WE ARE ALSO ACTIVELY WORKING WITH OUR PARTNERS AND CLIENTS TO SUPPORT THE RESTART WHEN IT COMES
placement graphics we specialise in can reduce the impact of empty stadium or arena seating on viewer experiences, while offering opportunities to display socially important messaging and additional value to key commercial partners once the cameras are turned on again. Esports is an interesting growth area – one which we are continuing to monitor and has seen some huge wins as traditional live sports have ceased. While advertising within a game is effectively a matter of coding and making changes to virtual ad assets depending on where the viewer is, managing the back end of such an operation can be a complex task. Of course, the bigger events will still want to return to the live arena-hosted extravaganzas that is more of our natural environment. It is also interesting to think about how the production of live sports may have to change, especially if this turns out not to be a one-off event and we have subsequent waves of infection and accompanying lockdown cycles. Sports and sports broadcasting have always been a people- intensive industry – be that relating to fans in the stadium or production crews behind the scenes – but, increasingly, they don’t have to be. The large operational footprint taken up by your typical tier-one sports production could be shrunk dramatically by remote production and routing cameras into a centralised operation facility using
ever-more ubiquitous fibre connectivity, or even leveraging emerging video over IP standards, for instance. Sports rights owners are already acknowledging that a traditional broadcast model built around fans in stadiums is not the only game in town. There is much to be said for the potential of direct-to-consumer OTT models where sports, clubs and new and more-established broadcasters can monetise individual fans via subscriptions or even targeted promotion in-game! Covid-19 has changed a huge amount of what we thought we knew in a short space of time. But it gives us a great opportunity at the same time. At some point, the switch is going to be flipped and the arenas, circuits and stadiums of the world will be filled with sporting activity again. The waiting cameras will be ready to beam those images around the world to eager audiences. Now is a great time to be looking at the structures underpinning all of that and work out how we want to change them so that, when we all come back, we come back even better.
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