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numerous opportunities for sports organisations to make the most of their content. AI platforms make this possible through metadata tagging, content management and e-commerce capabilities. “Past broadcasts and events hold significant value,” says Gary Warech, head of sports and entertainment at Veritone. “Through GenAI, archives can be rejuvenated and showcased with curated highlight reels, nostalgic montages or other audio and video content types. This approach both revitalises past content and helps carve out avenues for sustained revenue generation via sponsorships or licensing opportunities.” Sports organisations can gain insights into their content through transcribed audio, logos, facial recognition and other AI cognitive engines. NFL team San Francisco Giants described this speed and visibility into its archive with AI content management as having its own ‘personalised YouTube.’ AI is used in MAM systems closer to production, as seen in EVS’s Mediaception Signature solution. Its natural language search capabilities enable non-technical users to locate content. “With AI, the potential to cater to diverse market segments – ranging from editorial teams and advertisers to the direct fanbase

– is exponentially magnified,” adds Warech. “But it’s more than just a direct fan-engagement tool. It serves as a means to do more with existing and future content, creating new content forms while extracting greater value from an archive.” New AI-powered content recommendation systems and advertising tools are opening more revenue streams. For example, AI/ML models dynamically identify the best spots on-screen to deliver ads. “This is important as viewers don’t want to be diverted away from the main event and forced to watch full-screen ads,” details Nitin Jain, managing partner at Skandha Media Services. The company developed the Evince ad-verification tool for one of the largest OTT providers in India, which currently owns the rights to stream a marquee cricket tournament in India. “For live sports streams that may be firing hundreds or thousands of ads over the full length of a live event, providing consistent and accurate data has been challenging,” Jain admits. “The human resources

needed to accomplish this level of verification just isn’t viable. We introduced ML to automate the process – training cameras to identify and capture ad elements.” IT’S AN AI FUTURE Metahumans, or digital doubles, might change the face of sports broadcasts. During the 2022 Fifa World Cup, animated replays created in Unreal Engine from official Opta match data showed new angles of play not captured by broadcast cameras. The AI-powered results – displayed on TUDN, the highlights show of broadcaster Televisa Univision – proved popular. SMPTE noted that the gamification of the event made it more accessible for those who normally wouldn’t be into the sport. However, it also observed in a recent paper that the technique is expensive, which could explain why it hasn’t caught on with fans. Despite this, SMPTE suggests that, in the future, fans could rewatch games of their favourite sports from angles never thought possible.

THE PROOF IS IN THE PIXEL Evince records and stores ads with precise timestamps, so advertisers receive real-time proof of delivery

WITH AI, THE POTENTIAL TO CATER TO DIVERSE MARKET SEGMENTS IS EXPONENTIALLY MAGNIFIED

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