Sport Production & Technology Summit 2021: Reflections on global industry transformation By Adrian Pennington
Monday, November 1, 2021 - 17:14
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After the great lengths the industry went to in order to keep sports on air during the pandemic it was a time for reflection, commendation and assessment of what comes next as the European sports broadcasting and production community convened at SVG Europe's Sport Production & Technology Summit 2021.
It wasn't lost on those attending the summit at Stamford Bridge, home to Chelsea FC, that this was a welcome occasion to get back in the room with friends and colleagues.
Hosted by sports reporter and TV presenter Natalie Quirk and sponsored by Panasonic, the conference and networking event was capped by the Sports TV Awards, sponsored by Canon, honouring the outstanding companies, teams and individuals that pushed sports broadcasting and production forward under perhaps the most challenging conditions ever.
Attendees had a chance to hear first-hand from thought leaders from Sky Sports, F1, NEP and Mediapro in extended round table conversations. Many shared similar experiences of guts and innovation in getting live sports back to air and now face the task of cementing the technologies and workflows that will continue to deliver remote and hybrid productions.
The sheer speed of change enforced by the pandemic has driven the adoption of IP and cloud workflows and tools, but this has also left a gap in skills that needs addressing.
Delegates also had a chance to hear the thoughts of SVG Europe sponsors about how their product and solutions strategies are responding to the ongoing evolution of sports broadcasting and production workflows.
Chris Clarke (pictured above, second left), CEO and co-founder, Cerberus Tech, said that his company had perfected the idea of self-service (or self-provisioning) where tools and services are accessed over IP and in the cloud.
Many of the core functions like IP distribution and transcoding is a commodity function. We should be able to open that up to button pushers anywhere. That's how we think IP and cloud will scale.
M2A Media, another cloud native company, noted that more premium sports brands have adopted cloud workflows over the past year and this trend was only set to grow.
Marc Risby (pictured above, second right), managing director and CTO, Digibox, made the point that vendors and users now face decisions on keeping, pruning and prioritising the technologies that were adopted in haste at the beginning of lockdown.
Companies, including ourselves, need to harden their systems and decide what to keep. It's clear to us that SRT is going mainstream for delivery over the public internet, that NDI has taken a big leap and IP has suddenly been pushed forward much quicker, he said.
Hawk-Eye deploys both hardware and specialist operators at venues and has had to reappraise its approach. We were forced to think about doing so in completely different ways, said Rasmus Larsson (pictured above, far right), product director, Sony Sports (Hawk-Eye Innovations and Pulselive). When we move to IP and cloud we are minimising the space between linear and digital, and that enables us to do things we couldn't do before using more automation and combinations of AI/ML and tracking technology.
Vendors have to offer more flexibility on price and move towards software as a service business models because that is what customers want.
Per Lindgren, CTO, Net Insight (pictured above, middle), said: In the move to cloud we need reliability, quality and security as well as better synchronisation of data, video and audio, but I think the bigger shift is not one of technology but one more related to business models. Vendors have to offer more flexibility on price and move towards software as a service business models because that is what customers want.
Telstra's head of global sales Anna Lockwood talked about the company's rapid transformation to meet customer requirements. We knew cloud and internet was something customers were asking for. We acquired MediaCloud in June this year that gave us a suite of significant software-defined and cloud-based capabilities, more than 70 cloud experts and a new MCR in London Docklands that is equipped with the capability to support major global companies and events.
When the pandemic hit it wasn't just broadcasters that were cut off. The fanbase was locked out of venues too. We worked with a lot of broadcasters to make their broadcast more engaging by bringing the audience in and making them feel part of a community, said Karl Kathuria, customer solutions director, Never.no. It's created a shift to an interesting format that gives people a chance to make their voice heard.
Super Cup
BT Media & Broadcast showcased the connectivity it designed, installed and managed for BT Sport's host production of the UEFA Super Cup on 11 August from Windsor Park, Belfast. Matters were complicated by the lack of native connectivity at the venue and the short timeframe in which to turn this around.
Laura Tressler, head of sales and client management, explained: We needed to deliver 22 Gigs of bandwidth to carry 46 visions and data feeds in under 30 days from a venue that was not fibred. Typically, it takes 45 days to design, transport, install and test links for an event of this scale.
BT Media & Broadcast's Laura Tressler presents a case study on the UEFA Super Cup.
The logistics of travelling trucks across the channel was another consideration but one that might be ameliorated with future advances in software defined networking (SDN). In the future, we see a time where we can reduce trucks on site by introducing flight case solutions and SDN which will allow us to preconfigure kit and optimise bandwidth in a better way,
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Sport Production & Technology Summit 2021: Reflections on global industry transformation By Adrian Pennington 
