THE COMBINATION OF TRADITION, NEWWAYS OF WORKING, FAN ENGAGEMENT AND EVERYTHING IN THE CLOUD: THISWAS SOMETHING NEWAND POWERFUL
demands increase, with the amount consumed per customer rising year-on-year, the capacity of 5G will also increase over its lifetime. Within the sports venue, 5G cameras can be placed in areas inaccessible to manned, wired equipment – such as near the goal netting, on walkways at the top of the stadium, the tunnel from the dressing rooms to the field, and beside team benches. Network slicing is a unique feature of 5G and offers increased reliability for live production, especially in congested areas. Using this, you can effectively reserve a piece of the 5G spectrum, so your devices won’t compete with anyone else for bandwidth in that slice. Such isolation is impossible when data traffic is on a contended network like 4G or Wi-Fi. This becomes a major stumbling block in densely populated areas, where many thousands may be using the same mobile phone or cell tower at the same time.
5G also offers the potential of ‘liberated’ production, using ultra low-latency
transport. Now, the reality of using 5G cameras with vision mixing and live production in the cloud is enabled, with just a laptop. Fewer crew members need to
travel to the stadium, with much traditional production operated by
remote teams, distributed across multiple locations. Needless to say,
reducing the air, road and rail travel required will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of broadcasters and content producers. NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR STORYTELLING Last November, Sky Sport in Germany broadcast a Handball-Bundesliga game between SG Flensburg-Handewitt and Füchse Berlin via O2’s high-end 5G network. This was the first live broadcast in Europe via pure 5G, and the game was also streamed on skysport.de and the Sky Sport YouTube channel. Sky Deutschland senior vice president of sport production, Alessandro Reitano, told a follow-up webinar hosted by production partner Vizrt: “The handball is really interesting, as it combines two worlds. We are looking at the evolution of the 5G network and how it can help us contribute and distribute content in a different way. Therefore, 5G in broadcast is needed. This is new – and I’m very proud that we’ve been able to work with the handball federation.” In 2020, Sky Deutschland produced a handball match end-to-end with 5G, where 5G was the enabler from a distribution point of view. The team used 12 smartphones in parallel with a traditional broadcast. This lean, flexible set-up enabled them
ACTION STATIONS
A peek behind the curtain of Vizrt’s set-up
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