STREAMING SCOTTISH CHAMPIONSHIP FOOTBALL
ith no gate and no concession revenues, sports production has no choice but to adopt new technologies to be more efficient, cheaper and flexible. If sport organisations can’t engage fans and monetise the result, it could be game over. One cost-effective and Covid-safe solution is being provided by automated production technology. Every Scottish Championship football club has had a remote production system installed for the 2020/21 season, with the goal of enabling overseas supporters to watch their teams live over a new streaming platform launched by the SPFL (Scottish Professional Football League). Clubs can also use the platform for broadcasting matches domestically when stadium attendance restrictions are in place. The service is run by OTT specialist StreamAMG as part of a five-year deal with the league.
image for things like light optimisation – brightening shadowy areas of the pitch, for example,” he adds. StreamAMG then transcodes the live feed and delivers it to the front-end match centre, also built and hosted by StreamAMG. “Our fixture and event management system delivers real-time JSON Feeds of fixture data, geo holdback data and custom team data to the front end,” explains Peter Fox, StreamAMG marketing manager. “We also host and serve on-demand video via our CloudMatrix content distribution system, and handle login and user management via CloudPay.” Independent of StreamAMG, Pixelott already has its automatic production solution installed at ten clubs in Scottish Leagues One and Two and provides them with a ‘white label,’ managed OTT solution. That came into its own at the start of the season when fans were unable to attend. However, the system is not without its glitches. League Two’s Albion Rovers v Ayr United in early October had fans unable to see the feed, while others complained the camera failed to show goals during Ayr ’s 5-2 win. The automated sports production market is rocketing and Israel-based Pixelott reckons it has the lion’s share. More than 100,000 hours of live sport were streamed last month using its technology. The bulk of this is in US education, where Pixelott is currently outfitting more than 20,000 systems in high schools in partnership with PlayOn! Sports. The project is being paid for by syndicating content to third-party publishers such as Facebook, sponsorships and through a $10 monthly fee via PlayOn’s OTT platform. Given the massive pool of potential sports content across the country’s high schools, PlayOn’s goal is to produce more than one million live event broadcasts per year by 2025. “The automatic production field is causing the sports industry to rethink its approach. Covid accelerated the automated content creation evolution,” concludes Tarablus.
COVID ACCELERATED THE AUTOMATED CONTENT CREATION EVOLUTION
The system is based on Pixellot’s automated camera system, which costs as little as $40 to $100 per game to use. Its fixed, unmanned cameras have built-in ball-tracking technology to produce live HD footage at 50-60fps, which is then broadcast via a centrally operated streaming platform. “Pixelott’s camera is located in the middle of a stand overlooking the field of play,” explains Pixellot’s director of marketing, Yossi Tarablus. The system delivers a four-camera view, which is stitched into a panorama to resemble TV coverage. “Using machine learning, based on a football- specific algorithm, and computer vision, we simulate camera operation and vision mixing to follow the flow of play – and we have graphics and can replay multiple-angle shots. We can also manipulate the
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