Soaring Higher: Hawk-Eye Sharpens Focus on Sports Broadcasting

Soaring higher: Hawk-Eye sharpens focus on sports broadcasting By Michael Burns

Friday, January 3, 2025 - 09:28

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The PGA TOUR Studios building at the PGA TOUR Global Home campus houses 17 HawkReplay servers and four HawkNest servers (Photo: Chris Condon/PGA TOUR)

2024 was a landmark year for Hawk-Eye Innovation's Broadcast Solutions Division, which focuses on live production, offering a full broadcasting ecosystem for venues, facilities and trucks.

When people hear about Hawkeye, they think officiating, data-driven stats, or VAR; we're not any of those things. It's separate from the core, says K. Douglas Price, head of commercial & operations broadcast solutions at Hawk-Eye. But we're always sharing ideas about improved production capabilities. We're able to take that technology and improve [capabilities] for the broadcast side, and for the broadcasters.

Slow-mo-in-one

Sitting down to chat with SVG Europe before Christmas, Price cited The Masters, The Open (US and British), The Players Championship with CBS, and the Super Bowl LVIII as standout achievements. Considering the latter project, he says: We streamlined a complex solution for the most-watched TV programme in US history. Six of the nine operators worked remotely, including 4K zoom operators, showcasing the power of remote production.

The company has also enjoyed success with the HawkReplay remote production and instant replay broadcast solution, bringing 4x UHD slow-mo to the industry, primarily working in conjunction with the Sony HDC 5500 UHD , says Price. We're continuing that work with the HDC-P50.

The Sony-owned business launched its HawkNest asset management server at IBC2024, built in just 10 months. That was a monumental release, a massive effort on the part of our team for something that probably should have taken three to four years, he adds. It allows us to have an end-to-end broadcast solution: we have the cameras from the Sony side. We have replay capabilities from HD up to UHD, with all the slow-mo in between. And now we have an asset management, load balancing solution that complements our replay system. We continue to keep moving forward, and the feedback that we're getting from customers is astronomically positive.

However, collaborating with The Professional Golfers' Association on the new PGA Studios project at Ponte Vedra, Florida, has been a major highlight for the broadcast division. The facility will house the bulk of PGA productions with centralised operators.

HawkNest is pivotal for PGA Studios to help them with their media management for thousands of clips a day, says Price. The cost efficiencies of running productions in this way, the time saved and reimagined workflows are opening a host of new possibilities for broadcasters. Our focus has been on that project, but out of that has also spun many, many other projects and some features.

Officially launched on 2 January, the state-of-the-art facility houses 17 HawkReplay servers and four HawkNest servers on the studio side, enabling 16 remote operators to access all 144 inputs across the network.

Every shot on the live side has two ingest systems and three HawkNest systems, says Price. Also CBS Sports has been testing HawkNest during the NFL season; they're working with 17 to 20 HawkReplay systems. They've been strong advocates for our technology.

In the US, most broadcasters use some version of the HawkReplay system. ESPN employs it for Monday Night Football, Amazon uses it for Thursday Night Football, and Netflix will feature it in their two Christmas shows, he continues. Broadcasters and truck companies are increasingly recognising the value of our solutions. For example, Netflix's Full Swing uses our replay systems to ingest 140 feeds from major PGA tournaments, excluding handheld roaming shots, to build out the show's content. Our technology supports workflows from live production through to post-production.

European growth

Price says the company is also seeing exciting growth in Europe. Many broadcasters, including The Open Championship and the Scottish Open, have used our systems over the past two years. The Ryder Cup also utilised our technology, and we're in discussions to expand further in 2025.

While we don't yet have many systems deployed in Europe, grassroots interest is growing, especially among freelancers who see the potential, he continues. For example, ten users work with our systems annually at The Open, and feedback from these professionals is helping us build a strong foundation. Just last week, after presentations in Denmark, we were invited back ahead of NAB. The momentum in Europe is building, and we're optimistic about what's ahead.

Price says one key differentiator for HawkReplay is the ability to capture all feeds. They're 16-channel boxes, and maybe you're only following 12 feeds, but on cameras 15 and 16, something happens. It's just a matter of rerouting 15 and 16, just rewinding, and we go back and catch that hole-in-one, or that goal. That's unlike traditional replay systems limited to specific routed feeds; once a moment is missed, it's gone. That has started to ring dynamically not only with the broadcasters but also with the production teams who don't want to miss key moments.

For example, a typical PGA event may have around 100 feeds, while major tournaments push up to 140. We capture all these feeds.

The momentum in Europe is building, and we're optimistic about what's ahead

He offers an example of capturing a 196th-ranked golfer getting a hole-in-one. Nobody else would have caught it, but then we're able to tell his story, he says. One of the things that separates us is that [whereas others] make a clip, we're making markers. We're rec

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