Under the hood: Sportcast on bringing the production of the 2021-22 German Bundesliga to life By Heather McLean, Editor Thursday, September 16, 2021 - 16:00
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Sportcast has rolled out a plethora of innovations for the German Football League for the 2021-22 season
Sportcast, host broadcaster for the German Football League (Deutsche Fu ball Liga - DFL), produces, refines, distributes and archives all of the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2's video material. It is tasked with responsibility for DFL's media value chain, from signal production in the stadium through to global distribution, and at the start of this new 2021-22 season, it is dealing with evolutions, enhancements and a ton of innovations.
The world feed of all 617 DFL matches produced by Sportcast is used by national and international broadcasting rights holders as a live feed or for highlights reporting. Sportcast is in charge of the entire infrastructure for the matchday-related implementation and distribution of the DFL's international product portfolio (IPP).
Says Tim Achberger, Sportcast's head of innovation and technology management, speaking to SVG Europe: We are a 100% subsidiary of the DFL. It's a really close relationship. I'm responsible for the innovation and technology department and on a daily basis I'm talking to the national and international product management team in Frankfurt, because we are continuously evaluating in which way do we need to adapt, and what are the new demands from customers. It's really an ongoing procedure between both parties, them as they officially give us the [plan for] the way we shall produce, [and for us] where we need to say in which way [ideas are] able to be realised, or in which way there are limits, because as always the guys have a lot of ideas and it's not always possible to realise these features.
We do have more and more OTT platforms that just have a different demand. They don't want to have the classical satellite downlink; they want a feed in the stream format that they can use directly in their ecosystem
Being the daughter company of the league means Sportcast has unprecedented access to whatever it needs, says Achberger. I think our biggest advantage is, because we are so close to the league and we have all these competencies, that we are able to realise many live tests during the regular season to test and to adapt technical concepts and products; and that's, I think, the advantage. It's fruitful discussion, not always positive, but fruitful! Therefore we are able to do the amount and kind of stuff that we're doing, continues Achberger.
For this new season, the DFL has made a plethora of enhancements to its broadcasts, from pitchside to the viewers' screens. Many of these enhancements were showcased and launched publicly at the Supercup that took place on 17 August, after being developed last year.
Says Achberger: We really made a lot of effort for the Supercup to bring up a lot of innovations and a lot of product ideas we had in mind to test during this event.
However, making everything work smoothly between the DFL and its rights holding broadcasters comes down to a lot more than showcasing new technologies, adds Achberger: As we are the co-ordinating body for the league and [we work with] a lot of freelancers and different providers, it's very important that we define the guidelines for all processes and that we check with the help of our quality management portal [to see] that everyone has understood the demand as well as [the guidelines] in the right way; what are their roles and in which way they need to adapt processes. If we see during the first match days that something doesn't work out as we might suggest that it should, we then [need to make it work].
I think our day-to-day challenge is to set up these core processes, to [understand] in which way we have new demands from our national broadcasters, from the international broadcasters, or from our core customer, the DFL, and also to see that these guidelines stay the same and that we are assured that if there are any changes, they will be adopted by all parties, says Achberger.
Sportcast is now offering a railcam, which was first trialled in 2020 at the Bundesliga match between Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04 at Signal Iduna Park on 24 October, with a full showcase at the Supercup on 17 August 2021
Evolving customer demands
One of those core processes that has changed recently is the DFL Media Hub, the world's largest digital football video database and a central source for DFL media products from the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs, which has evolved from an archive service to a lot more.
Achberger explains: The demand for getting pictures, streams and clips, as soon as possible or near-live, brings us new challenges for our Media Hub. Up to last year, we mainly were working on for the archive aspect and offering clips for all editorial aspects, mainly in the post production area. But now we see that there are more and more demands for near-live feeds for near-live clips, and therefore we're getting more and more changes in our DFL Media Hub as well. That's why we now call it Media Hub and not an archive anymore, because we are more and more connected to a lot of parties with near-live content.
This evolution of Media Hub is driven by customer demand. Over the past two years, Sportcast alongside the DFL has noticed a change in demands from its rights holders, who are evolving out from linear TV onto other over the top (OTT) platforms, and are also being joined by pureplay OTT providers.
I think that's the transformation we are now in; we currently need to provide on the one hand the top-end feed, and on the other hand, smaller solutions for the platforms that are coming up and platf
