64 XTREME DIRTVision
he scene has played out over and over for thousands of years. Racers circling around a dirt track, audiences tense with the
question of who will win and who will wipe out. But instead of chariots on the track, now it′s specially engineered cars, and instead of crowds packed into the Circus Maximus, it’s fans watching on their mobile phones at bus stops or on laptops during work meetings. Dirt Vision launched in 2004, which was early days in the world of livestreaming. The online channel is operated by World Racing Group (WRG), and offers live broadcasts and video on demand of dirt track races in the US and Canada. World Racing Group is rights holder for a number of sprint race series including the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series and World of Outlaws Late Model Series. “We started off by streaming a handful of races, when we had decent Internet connection at the venue,” remembers Brian Dunlap, WRG’s director of broadcast services. “It’s wild to go back and look at our old venue notes and see when we were happy to push out a 400Kbps stream. But for the time that was as good as most people’s home Internet connections could support. The improvement of Internet streaming has been a really cool thing to witness and to evolve with, and it’s really taken a front seat for us in the last four to five years.”
CELLSAT QUALIFIER In 2017, WRG did around 70 live broadcasts from dirt track venues across the US. Last year it kicked off an ambitious commitment to broadcast 100% of the World Of Outlaws racing season, which resulted in 120 broadcasts. This year will see further expansion of the broadcast season with 240 scheduled broadcasts. Each race production has a full-time engineer and a regular team of regional camera operators is brought in to shoot the races. At the venue, Series staff announcers supply live commentary. Blended cellular and Ku-band IP satellite technology from Dejero has been the key technology in WRG’s recent ramp up. The network blending capabilities of CellSat now allow livestreaming from venues, which previously would have had unworkable connectivity.
READY, STEADY, GO! Dirt Track has committed to broadcasting 100% of the World of Outlaws racing season
CellSat connects to the production switcher in the WRG production truck and its network blending enables livestreaming back to WRG headquarters in Concord, North Carolina, where it is then pushed out to Dirt Vision’s CDN and online outlets. The demanding 2019 broadcast schedule will require deployment of a second OB truck for one race series, a small flight pack for another, and a semi- permanent flight pack at Knoxville Raceway in Iowa, a venue which has been used for car racing for more than 100 years. STREAMING CRAFTSMAN When Dunlap started at World Racing Group 15 years ago, a good portion of his job involved overseeing broadcast packages for the terrestrial sports networks, alongside the group’s tentative streaming schedule. World Racing Group still does a handful of shows for terrestrial broadcast in the form of edited highlights or a tape delayed post-produced show, but now the media strategy is built around livestreamed broadcasts, available exclusively online. With free registration at DirtVision. com, users can access live audio from each event and archived video of races, made available a week or so after each event. Access to the live broadcast is
THE IMPROVEMENT OF INTERNET STREAMING HASBEEN ACOOLTHINGTOWITNESSANDTOEVOLVEWITH
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