Nordic Summit: Clark, Hellmuth, Horneland and Jakobsen discuss graphics, AR and AI

At SVG Europe's first Nordic Summit, executives from Sixty, IBM, Vizrt, and the NBA discussed the present and future of this important market segment.

Originally published by SVG Europe

Clever creation tools, graphics augmentation and increasingly sophisticated analysis tools are very much at the centre of new developments in sports broadcasting, not least to engage and retain those less-than-dedicated millennial media consumers.

At SVG Europe's first Nordic Summit, held in partnership with Media City Bergen and NCE Media, Sixty CEO Kjetil Horneland led a panel featuring Doug Clark, IBM Global Cloud & Cognitive Solutions Leader; Vizrt CTO Petter Ole Jakobsen; and Steve Hellmuth, EVP Operations & Technology at the NBA in a discussion about the present and future of this important market segment.

Some of those (broadcast) organisations are now publishing to 20 different platforms. So if you have some content, and you know that your viewers are fragmented in terms of consumption, you really have an issue there. One of the challenges is to find methods to ensure that enriched content can reach all these devices in an efficient way. Petter Ole Jakobsen Vizrt CTO

-- Horneland began by asking Vizrt's Jakobsen how he sees the broadcast industry changing in the area of sports. What are the biggest challenges ahead? There are some super-simple trends, Jakobsen replied. One is mobile, obviously. Another one is screens, and increased resolution. A third one is AR. And a fourth might be physical things: all this sport has to be a package of entertainment, with something for everybody.

And whether you end up using visual techniques or other techniques to achieve that, you're doing it for the same reason. We are so blessed that as long as I've been in this industry we've been able to continuously produce more advanced and realistic graphics, plus cheaper and and screens - and that trend is just continuing.

There was a recent study into media companies by Columbia University, said Jakobsen, and it showed that some of those organisations are now publishing to 20 different platforms. So if you have some content, and you know that your viewers are fragmented in terms of consumption, you really have an issue there. One of the challenges is to find methods to ensure that enriched content - with graphics I mean - can reach all these devices in an efficient way.

How the NBA engages with fans across mobile and socialSteve Hellmuth had previously conducted a one-on-one interview with SVG Editorial Director Ken Kerschbaumer earlier in the day, going in-depth into the way the NBA engages with its fans on-court, on television and on mobile devices around the world. Panel moderator Horneland picked up on this interview, asking Hellmuth to talk a little bit more about how the NBA engages with basketball fans across mobile and social media. The NBA has been innovative in many of these areas, observed Horneland, asking Hellmuth to explain his thoughts on how to retain users as we move ahead into the future.

We actually use a Vizrt tool, (Viz) Libero, to provide a layer of graphics. Any time people see video that includes graphics, analytics, includes some insight along with a great story and a great series of plays - that's what attracts them. Steve Hellmuth EVP Operations & Technology at the NBA

-- We have an engine where we are rapidly logging, tagging and capturing the video and it goes to editors who sit on top of different social media channels, said Hellmuth. They do what's then appropriate for that channel - you don't want to kill someone with 30 clips.

There's a level of appropriateness with Instagram that's different to WhatsApp and different to Facebook. And on top of that we actually use a Viz tool, Liberovision, to provide a layer of graphics. Any time people see video that includes graphics, analytics, includes some insight along with a great story and a great series of plays - that's what attracts them. That's what takes it from 200,000 hits to 2 million, right out of the box, he said.

They are learning more, in less time. The difficulty for us really is in retaining people at the NBA who have this kind of training, and really know basketball - people who can make the subtler aspects of the game apparent immediately.

What we're doing is working with Petter Ole and his team to have the player tracking data interfaced to the Libero so we can produce things rapidly, and get stuff into the first replay in the telecast, said Hellmuth.

How AI is boosting the impact of tennis Grand SlamsTurning to IBM's Doug Clark, moderator Kjetil Horneland said, We're moving into an abundance of data. Everything can be logged and everything is becoming more and more available. It leads to a point where we will still be telling some stories manually: but when we come to data and AI, there's a lot of talk about what's going on but we don't have many examples of good case studies out there. Doug, do you have some good examples of what IBM has been doing in AI in sports?

Sure, said Clark. First of all, thank you very much for today - it has been an exceptional day. From an IBM point of view we've been marrying three separate components. First of all we've investing in cloud for quite a long time. We have also acquired over the last few years some cloud video assets, live streaming and OTT. And we've been working for a long time not just in analytics but moving that on to machine learning - basically what we're all now calling AI.

Marrying those three things together, the acceleration of the innovation has just been astonishing, said Clark. One of the best examples I've got is tennis. IBM has been blessed to work with most of the Grand Slams over a good number of years: I think last year was our

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