Live from the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup: Optus Mobilizes in Big Way to Serve Australian Fans By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, August 10, 2023 - 5:53 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Optus Sport, the Australian OTT football-centric service, is the only place for Australian football fans to capture every FIFA Women's World Cup match (Channel 7 is broadcasting 15 matches) and the service, launched in 2016 when it acquired the rights to the English Premier League, is putting a lot of production resources and effort into making sure subscribers not only don't miss a second of match coverage but also get plenty of wraparound coverage.
Josh Hanson, Optus Sport, associate director, projects, creative, and content technology, recalls when Optus first landed the rights to EPL in 2015 there was no infrastructure at all to launch the service the following season: the team literally had to go out and buy laptop to create content with, it was a complete start up. That's not the case this month as around 200 people will be working for Optus on the event.
We have around 100 people across field operations, the studio crews, and our stadium operations as well as our social and digital teams who are amplifying the tournament across our channels he says. And then we have over 100 Optus staff working on the tournament here at our headquarters from different teams.
Optus coverage begins at 8 am with Daily Kick Off, covering all the football news from around the world and a preview of what lies ahead.
The Optus studio for Daily Kick Off has been extra-busy during the Women's World Cup. (l-to-r): Niav Owens, Tanya Oxtoby, Chloe Logarzo, Thomas Sorensen
We have more World Cup content than we can handle but we're also combining our other football rights into the show plus and reporting on the latest news from around the globe, says Hanson. That show runs for an hour each morning, and generally we will go to air about half-an-hour before the first match each day, although for some matches, we have started with hour pre match. And then we try to roll the coverage post match as long as we can.
All matches, apart from the Australian matches and the final, are hosted from the Optus facility in Macquarie Park, about 20 minutes north of Sydney and 15 minutes from the IBC where Optus also has a small presence. There are also five talent and production teams, comprised of talent, a camera operator, and a producer, travelling around Australia and New Zealand and being onsite for matches.
We also have a presentation platform in the stadiums where we will have four presenters and then we have sideline positions using LiveU, says Hanson. We also have a community team that's going to the fan festivals, community gatherings, pubs and clubs and just being amongst the fans and really capturing that energy. The field operations are extensive.
Helping improve those field operations has been Ethernet lines which HBS is providing at both the presentation platform and pitch side.
We like to go live on multiple platforms, says Hanson. If we've got a reporter who goes live into the broadcast, we might pop up five minutes after that and stream them onto TikTok or YouTube or Twitter. It works well for us, and we are really excited when FIFA and HBS told us we would have the ability to have the Ethernet drops at the stadiums because it allows us to tell more stories and that's what we want to do. We're looking forward to the Euros 24 where hopefully those facilities are also available.
The Optus Sport social team is in full swing, tapping into the FIFA Max server as well as the FIFA social media Interface. The FIFA Max allows the team to get access to more footage of team arrivals, departures, training, and other events that would otherwise be hard to cover.
We can send our crews to training and focus on having our talent do their part and tell the story on camera and then we have the actual B roll come in via FIFA Max, he explains. That has been really helpful for us.
FIFA Max has also allowed for much more content to be delivered via social media channels.
There is lots of content that comes in from FIFA and HBS that we can leverage, says Hanson. We basically have a model where we pull in as much content as we can, and we publish it out into our platform and let the customers decide what they want to watch. But the more we publish, the more they watch.
Content is being created 18 hours a day, every day, including rest days. That's a change from past tournaments when the team would take a break. But with social demands and the tournament being on home soil there is a ton of demand for content whether it is a rest day or not.
We've decided we're gonna push through and really make sure the social channels and the morning programming capitalizes on the energy and excitement of the tournament, says Hanson.
At the center of the content creation are a team of 25 Adobe Premier editors creating content for everything from social media, the studio programs, and more. If a goal happens the team can spring into action and publish it out to the social channel, that they are responsible for.
If a goal happens it's really frantic in here because someone will grab it and publish it to TikTok and then someone else will publish it to Twitter, adds Hanson. And then someone in craft editing will include edit it, ready for the studio coverage. But everybody is focused on the same thing at the same time, and they cross communicate. The coolest thing is the social guys can clip up something and pump into the studio and the guys who are working on studio support, can clip up something and publish it into the project for the social team. It's a small operation but it's very efficient.
Another key deliverable a
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Live from the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup: Optus Mobilizes in Big Way to Serve Australian Fans By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
