A major trend at last week's TranSPORT event in New York City was how maturing file-based workflows enable the linking of a sports network's broadcast center with the remote-production site at a live event.
More and more frequently, live-sports-content creators are establishing infrastructures that streamline processes that require less production talent and personnel to be on the road.
MLB Network executed a quintessential example of this workflow during its coverage of October's World Series. The network offered hours of live pre- and post-game content surrounding the games, and all of it was produced, directed, and switched not from Busch Stadium in St. Louis or Fenway Park in Boston but at the MLB Network broadcast center in Secaucus, NJ. The system delivered 10 camera feeds and more than 45 channels of audio to Secaucus over 10 routable paths.
The double-sided benefit for us is, your production crews are in the control room and the facilities that they know and their editors are with them, said Brad Cheney, director of engineering, MLB Network. Everyone is able to collaborate in a much more cohesive fashion. The second side of it is, because all of the editors are there and because all of those feeds are there, they are able to turn shows and other programming around in a much quicker fashion.
One of the technology leaders in file-based networked infrastructures is EVS, whose XT3 server has taken replay and video archival, storage, and transmission to new heights.
When you see these evolutions happening between moving things back and forth between these remote-connected venues, there's different approaches, said James Stellpflug, VP, sports products, EVS Americas. There's the encode and move all of the cameras back because you have a different model that's switching the entire broadcast from back in the studio. Then there's the other need, where you're complementing the production. You have a live event going on, but you need to extract content from that, and you need to get it back to the broadcast center for the editorial layers and building other ancillary shows that may be coming on at halftime or after the game. So, from an EVS standpoint, that's where we saw the fact that we tend to ingest a high volume of content during these live events and it's not always practical to move it all back in real time. So we're trying to put the right tool sets there.
EVS has worked hand-in-hand with mobile-production provider Game Creek Video in developing these file-based infrastructures for major network partners, including Fox Sports, NESN, and SNY. With the EVS gear, Game Creek provides full-bitrate video to the broadcaster, which encodes it and ships it off via IP.
As bandwidth has increased and new technology and software have been brought to the table, now we have the broadcast center reaching into the truck and pulling content out, [and] we are pushing content, said Jason Taubman, VP, design and new technology, Game Creek Video. Sometimes, what we're hearing now is, they don't want the content pushed; they want it to stay right where it's at, and they'll get it when they need it. That's really being enabled by high-bandwidth links to the major venues that we're at and the lo-res proxy that's being made available through the XT3s.
Of course, major sports events carried by the likes of Fox Sports have the financial capabilities to ensure that direct links are available. For a wide majority of sports events - be they at college campuses or NASCAR tracks - high-quality connectivity is not always available. In those cases, IP has emerged as a valuable, cost-effective option.
You need a transport that's not only fast but that's also reliable, says Jason Warman, director of sales engineering, Aspera. In many cases, one of the killer features is, you need it to be resume-able because you do have intermittent connectivity loss and, when you're sending a 10-gig master file, you don't want to start over from the beginning if there's a slight blip on the IP side. So that's what Aspera is doing: giving those tools that take distance out of the equation so you can have that flexibility to have the best folks working on an event despite where they are.
As sports become more global, international transmission also brings about unique challenges. The sports network, One World Sports, had such unique challenges in moving content globally for niche sports that it gave birth to a technology vendor of its own, ONE CONNXT.
Our solutions are tailored to each event, says Mark Lobwein, head of sales for ONE CONNXT. [For] a small event, we may just take it straight over IP, cross our fingers, and hope it works, or we may take two or three routes and push it out to a different location.
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...
A major trend at last week's TranSPORT event in New York City was how maturing file-based workflows enable the linking of a sports network's broadcast center with the remote-production site at a live event.
