
Westminster Media Forum: Developing the sports viewing experience Speakers from Sky Sports, Lewis Silkin and Deltatre discuss eSports, OTT and personalisation By David Fox
Tuesday, February 18, 2020 - 12:40
Print This Story
Left to right: Alex Kelham, Baroness Taylor of Bolton (panel chair), Steve Smith and Pete Burns
Offering a good viewer experience is crucial to retaining eyeballs and turning sports fans into subscribers, but how can we develop that experience in a rapidly changing broadcast environment?
That was the theme of a key session at the Westminster Media Forum policy conference on sports broadcasting (11 February 2020, London), where the panel looked at how emerging technologies, such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, will impact viewers.
Innovation in sports broadcasting has always been about what does the customer want? How do we change what we do to drive customer needs? , said Steve Smith, executive director of content at Sky Sports.
Sport has always been the driver of technological innovation, such as the move to widescreen and HD. We made mistakes. We launched 3D. It was dreadful, he said.
The barrier of putting something between yourselves and the viewer didn't work. This should inform how we now move to AR and VR - the headset is a barrier, particularly for older generations.
What's important on the different platforms is you're delivering to different audiences, so you've got to tailor the tone of your content, the way that content is put together, and you've got to understand your audiences.
Innovation shouldn't be at the expense of what already works, he added.
2019 was the best year we've had in over a decade in terms of consumption and subscribers, and sport is helping to drive the rest of Sky's business.
He said that a big attraction for Comcast when it bought Sky was its sports output and its diversification across multiple platforms.
We look to deliver on all different platforms, and what's important on the different platforms is you're delivering to different audiences, so you've got to tailor the tone of your content, the way that content is put together, and you've got to understand your audiences on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and, more recently we're just getting involved with TikTok.
For all of these it is important to understand how to grow a customer base, many of whom may not currently want to pay for premium sport, but we need to keep developing that audience, he said.
The personal touch
Personalisation is key to improving the viewer experience, according to sports lawyer Alex Kelham, a partner and joint head of the Sports Business Group at Lewis Silkin.
It is developing in many ways, such as with Weavr, for eSports, which offers much more immersive, personalised content. It allows fans to go in and experience in-arena content through virtual reality and through AI, which ensures people get exactly what they want, whether focusing on a particular team or player or a particular aspect of the game.
She also sees a future where viewers pay via micropayments, or exchange payments (where you agree to watch a commercial in exchange for a piece of content). This means that the commercial teams and the lawyers need to get more creative.
One area Kelham finds particularly interesting, because of its legal implications, is virtual advertising. The ability to seamlessly add (or overlay) ads to a broadcast has been around for almost 20 years, and the technology works incredibly cleverly now so that the action is not distorted and allows multiple feeds to be seen in different locations and by different audiences on a live, real-time basis.
It can also be personalised, although this is only in its infancy. From a legal point of view there are questions about how regulations deal with this: Is it product placement? Is it surreptitious advertising? Is it compliant with local law? Data protection law is also important from a personalisation point of view, she said.
The real complexity here is that there might be multiple jurisdictions in play, so you might have a US event being broadcast via the UK, where advertising is added, to somewhere that has heavy advertising restrictions (such as bans on alcohol or gambling ads).
Going OTT
OTT platforms are perfect for the avid fan, but the viewers want a lot of extras to enhance their experience, be it live statistics, additional content, and personalisation around favourite teams or players.
For rights owners, OTT allows a direct relationship to truly understand their reach and engagement with audiences, said Pete Burns, vice president of OTT at Deltatre (pictured, right).
The flexibility these platforms allow can also raise the bar in viewer experience, such as with BT Sport's enhanced player with 360-degree VR content and HDR.
Connectivity is another huge issue. Trying to deliver two to three million viewers for a single event in a single country through OTT is a very challenging scenario that only a few can do, said Burns.
Collating audience data is valuable, however, again, few have yet been able to use this data yet to drive the viewer experience in real-time, and Deltatre is launching a new product to help with this soon.
Turning users into subscribers
Sky Sports used to have a weekly show called Ringside, about boxing, but it got very few viewers.
So, we've changed the approach we've taken, said Smith, to bring people back to the platform every day.
This means daily output on its platforms, using social media to back this up, linked to articles on its website, driving people to view its videos.
You build on the trust you've developed within the sport and within the industry, which is why from nowhere, transfer deadline day is now an event. Fans want to know mor
More from Sports Video Group
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: Google Cloud's Jane Day on the Impact of AI on ...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: AWS's Dana LaGattuta on Data-Driven Innovation ...
24/06/2025
Lions live: Dublin opener sees Sky Sports take remote route By Fergal Ringrose ...
24/06/2025
Pumas maul Lions as S4C and TG4 deliver first-ever joint host in Dublin By Ferg...
24/06/2025
ABC/ESPN Prepares for 2025 NBA Draft, the First at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By Mark ...
23/06/2025
Adventures in Live Cloud Production: Stories From the Trenches with MLB, NHL, NB...
23/06/2025
Finding the edge: How Badger & Combes produces live-streamed coverage of county ...
23/06/2025
Masters of Madness: New football format shakes up the rules of sportainment By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 11:38
Print This Story
The ball i...
23/06/2025
New State-of-the-Art Mountain Media Center Launches in Former Starz Encore Build...
23/06/2025
ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production F...
20/06/2025
Feeling Unlimited, Part 1: Athletes Unlimited Softball League Deploys Remote Pro...
20/06/2025
A True Test? Cricket's Growth on the Global Stage and the Role Broadcast Can...
20/06/2025
Sky Sports goes large for the British & Irish Lions Tour with AR graphics, UHD a...
20/06/2025
ESPN's Men's College World Series Finals Coverage Combines Innovation, L...
19/06/2025
SVG Rewind: PGA Tour Introduces Drone AR Smart Tracing, Reflects on Winning Geor...
18/06/2025
Technology focus: Fan expectations drive advances in the in-stadium experience By Jo Ruddock
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 08:36
Print This Story
For years, att...
18/06/2025
Making connections: How stadiums are meeting the ever-growing demand for data an...
18/06/2025
SVG Venues & Teams Summit Keynote: RWS Global Powers the Stadium Environment at ...
18/06/2025
SVG Rewind: Behind the Scenes of Producing Tottenham Hotspur's Europa League...
17/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mercury Intermedia's Tom Richardson, Mike Ligon o...
17/06/2025
Total Sports Performance from Relo Metrics, VideoAmp, Offers Next-Level Media, B...
17/06/2025
From Stage to Stream: Producing Live Esports Events in 2025 Leaders from ESL FACEIT Group, Riot Games, and more break down the latest trends By Jason Dachman, ...
17/06/2025
Inside FIFA 2025 Club World Cup Operations With FIFA's Oscar Sanchez, HBS...
17/06/2025
Production ambitions: Over Exposed on making the National League Promotion Final...
17/06/2025
DAZN Brings Global Ambition to U.S. Soil With Production of 2025 FIFA Club World...
17/06/2025
Diversified's Christine Williamson on How UT's New State-of-the-Art Prod...
16/06/2025
Grass Valley 4K Cameras Head to Greece for View Master Events' New Productio...
16/06/2025
Behind The Broadcast Booth, Ep. 3: Golf. My Future. My Game. Founder and CEO Cra...
16/06/2025
The REMI Revolution Is Here: How Remote Production Technology in Esports Pioneer...
16/06/2025
From Super Bowl to Indy 500, New Orleans Artist Frenchy' Captures Energy of...
16/06/2025
NFL Films Enhances Post Studio With Dolby Atmos Audio Forty-three channels of audio enable the facility to migrate to immersive By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Mo...
16/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Storj's David Colantuoni on Expanding Cloud-Based...