Level change: BT Sport reaches for the cloud in next phase of its decentralised remote production evolution By Heather McLean, Editor
Thursday, March 17, 2022 - 13:35
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BT Sport is producing its Fight Week Live: UFC London preview show in the cloud
BT Sport is embarking on the second stage of its decentralised remote production evolution with a radical move to the cloud.
The broadcaster is expanding its use of cloud production as it further enhances its use of innovative ways of working to reduce its carbon footprint, increase inclusion, and continue pushing for more flexible and sustainable ways of creating live sports TV.
On the overarching strategy with cloud technology for BT Sport, Jamie Hindhaugh chief operating officer BT Sport, tells SVG Europe: This is an extension of our ever-going journey around remote production, and specifically around two elements, our opportunity to continually push and drive the sustainability agenda, and also more and more look at inclusion, ie, people can work in different locations, therefore you can be more inclusive of the team you pull together.
But [we're] also looking at further opportunities [with cloud], so at the moment on remote production, we've got around about 10 different ways of doing remote depending on the venue, depending on the rights we're covering, etc. It's been very successful, [and we're] very, very pleased with that, and we're seeing on the whole a sustainability impact of about 50% reduction on some key events.
But [we're also looking at what other] opportunities there are around cloud first understanding what cloud is and also understanding the capabilities of cloud [and therefore what will be] the sensible next step to further push on both those sustainability and inclusion agendas, he says.
Taking UFC into the cloud
Tonight BT Sport is producing its Fight Week Live: UFC London preview show in the cloud. The live preview show with UFC president Dana White and BT Sport's Michael Bisping, Caroline Pearce, Adam Catterall and Nick Peet, is running ahead of the UFC's return to the O2 Arena this Saturday.
We've been doing this for a little while and we've been starting to look more and more at the application of cloud tools as the next generation, next step on from our COVID-induced remote production transformation
Coming from the top of the BT Tower with 50 guests, the preview show will include a live audience and a five-camera set up, using Mavis cloud technology to get the production on air to BT Sport 2 HD and YouTube.
BT Sport chief engineer Andy Beale, says: The director wants to be close, so the director's actually going to sit one floor above on the tower, with his iPad and his fallback and just carry on. He could literally be anywhere, but he wants to be close to help us out with the shots, which works really well.
The producer, the PA, and the graphics will be in Stratford, but again, they could be at home; it's just a really nice, simple, robust model. It'll be kept on the public internet from the tower into the cloud and onto both social, onto YouTube, and onto our linear TV platform, BT Sport 2 HD, which is really exciting.
Experimental phase
BT Sport has been working on its cloud agenda in an experimental phase for almost half a year. Hindhaugh states: We've been playing in the cloud world now, for want of a better term, for about six months. As you'll have seen previously, programmes like the Ashes Daily show were fully produced in the cloud.
We're using that [kind of test] twofold: firstly, it's to understand the workflows, with Andy [Beale CTO at BT Sport] sense checking what does and doesn't work. But secondly, it's allowing us to fine tune and explore the opportunities that cloud brings. So Andy's been doing some brilliant work with the Premier League, for instance, on an IBC Accelerator Challenge: Sustainability in Production.
Beale says: We've been doing this for a little while and we've been starting to look more and more at the application of cloud tools as the next generation, next step on from our COVID-induced remote production transformation. And, as we mentioned at [SVG Europe's Football Summit 2022], that came to a head in a bigger way around our IBC accelerator demo, working in collaboration with the BBC, Sky, and Premier League, where we took off chunks each and tried to break down the bigger jigsaw puzzle of a big Premier League game, trying to explore interoperability, trying to explore security, trying to explore the production tool set, is it good enough, is it fast enough, is it high enough quality?
From the IBC Accelerator Challenge BT Sport amassed a 77% power reduction versus a similar production using its previous remote technology system, which, says Beale, is massive, absolutely massive .
Beale says the power savings with cloud are exciting. In the old days everyone left all their [kit] just turned on the whole time, so it's not particularly sustainable, whereas this is, since you finished, turn it off . As much of the opportunity [with cloud SaaS] is what is not turned on, as much as what it is turned on, so that's also a really big win.
The ability to genuinely that easily just change location and carry on putting out a first class show, shows how powerful the opportunity around the cloud is
Talking through what BT Sport means by cloud', Beale says: We learned lots in that trial [IBC] demo, says Beale. We learned lots of things about interoperability that we wanted to learn, but [to] then push ourselves on a bit further [we needed to do more trials]. We wanted to move forward and try the use cases and try different things.
What's really, really interesting is that, much like all the different remote work
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Level change: BT Sport reaches for the cloud in next phase of its decentralised remote production evolution By Heather McLean, Editor 
