remier League teams may be fulfilling fixtures in empty stadiums at the moment, but at least fans at home can still watch these games. Amateur sides, niche sports and college teams cannot afford this luxury, yet fans’ desire to follow their favourite teams has actually risen during the pandemic. It was this untapped need that prompted Swedish streaming giant Solidsport to form a partnership with Dutch AI and live-streaming specialists,
field of play. AI, meanwhile, detects the action of the players and the ball and is capable of creating virtual crops from the video capture. The system is driven by software rather than a camera operator and relies on a debonding server, based at the venue or in the cloud. “The camera misses nothing, so you can either let the AI do everything or just use it for extra streams,” explains Mobile Viewpoint sales manager, Mark Andrews. Via Mobile Viewpoint’s LinkMatrix cloud-based management platform, other tasks that can be carried out remotely include scheduling, highlights, replays and scoreboard ad overlays. Remote commentary and analytics also form part of this year ’s roadmap, according to Andrews. Solidsport chief executive Tobias Thalbäck says that his company made ten installations across Sweden and Finland throughout 2020 and intend to carry out more than 50 additional fittings across the Nordic region this year.
Mobile Viewpoint, to increase the number of automated sports broadcasts it offers across northern Europe. Highly regarded for its bonded cellular-to-live- streaming mobile encoders for 4G and 5G, Mobile Viewpoint has been developing AI solutions under its IQ Video Solutions banner for the past couple of years. These include the IQ Sports Producer (IQSP), a family of automated live sports production systems designed for single-operator use and remote productions. The system is made up of a panoramic 4K camera, which overlooks and captures the whole
FILLING THE FAN VOID In the Covid-19 era, automated sports broadcasts have become the norm with grounds empty
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