Monday PM Program at a Glance

Generative AI holds a lot of promise when it comes to transforming live sports production and we’ll discuss the current state of AI within production tools, the potential future for generative AI within the industry, and the challenges and pitfalls of relying on AI.

PSSI Global Services faced the challenge of transforming UFC live broadcasts to support high-capacity REMI-based production. In this session, discover how they answered the demand for delivering reliable, seamless, low-latency video backhaul at scale in one of the most demanding live sports environments, ensuring fans worldwide experience every moment of UFC action in real-time.

Every sports TV production begins with pixels and we’ll spend 30 minutes discussing some of the recent developments that will help your production capture more pixels and better pixels, both of which will help improve the quality of your viewer’s experience.

The pressure is on in the live production space. From increased production costs to the constant battle for viewers’ attention, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find that balance between leveraging resources effectively and building out a content engine that converts. In this session, Tom Buffolano, Head of Business Development at TATA Communications will discuss his experience in using remote production (REMI) to create revenue-generating content with a quick turnaround time. Plus, he’ll share the boxes you need to check when choosing the right REMI equipment for your organization.

Get exclusive insights into how uniqFEED and MLB brought virtual advertising to life in one of the world’s most iconic sports. This session delves into the challenges, achievements and future potential of implementing virtual advertising solutions at scale.

Once upon a time AR and XR graphics tools were only available to the largest of events. But that has changed in recent years and they are now having an impact in storytelling for shows big and small. Join us for our closing session as we discuss the latest developments in AR and XR tools and what to expect in 2025.

The shift towards cloud-based production is reshaping how media is created, managed, and distributed, offering unprecedented efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. Could environments are often easy to get into, but it’s also very easy to mismanage yourself into ballooning costs that that will give even the most grounded CFO night terrors. So how are sports-media orgs incorporating long-term cost-efficiency into their cloud development and deployments?

Secure transport of premium content over diverse networks is a challenge which requires no-compromise solutions for stream integrity, whilst offering maximum visibility and flexibility. Discover how innovative failover, content protection and seamless switching technologies are changing the way the world’s top broadcasters operate, whilst retaining end-to-end ownership of ground, cloud and hybrid workflows.

For Paris 2024, NBC Sports deployed its first cloud based production systems to allow a fully HDR workflow using Live Cloud Ingest at Scale, AI Captioning, and a Hybrid MAM environment. Using revolutionary connectivity and technology with its partners in AWS and Telestream, NBC launched its first cloud deployment with the high stakes of the Olympic Games. NBC Olympics leaders share the journey of transforming traditional methods and building trust, through to setting the right goals, testing, and cost modeling. Don’t miss this candid conversation detailing the industry-firsts achieved by NBC Olympics, what needs to be hardened, and what’s next — both for NBC and the industry as a whole.

Take a journey inside ESPN’s growing cloud-production ecosystem and see where they have implemented these groundbreaking workflows so far. From ‘All-in-One Productions’ on Little League World Series and college soccer to cloud-based Super-SloMo replay on college football, NHL, WNBA, ESPN ops and engineering leaders discuss the challenges in building out these workflows, their approach to automated deployment, and the state of the industry overall.

The integration of cloud technology into remote production has enabled broadcasters to manage complex live events with greater agility and efficiency. Learn how cloud solutions are enhancing REMI production, from enabling seamless real-time collaboration across distributed teams to optimizing resource allocation and reducing on-site infrastructure needs. Learn how production teams are integrating existing workflows with cloud-based solutions and how cloud-based tools and platforms can enhance efficiency.

The Philadelphia Eagles media production team found itself playing hurry-up defense trying to accelerate content creation while using slow access, failure prone tape. The team called upon systems integrator CHESA to help design a secure cloud-based workflow incl. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, Mimir’s asset management system, and a Quantum QXS shared file system. The winning results: instant access, faster delivery, and geographic redundancy. During this session, they’ll break down results and actionable insights from the team’s new gameplan.

The cloud is revolutionizing the way editing, postproduction, and storage are managed in the media industry, offering unprecedented speed, collaboration, and scalability. Postproduction and media-storage experts delve into how cloud-based solutions are enabling teams to work more creatively and efficiently, regardless of location. Also learn about the latest developments in cloud storage, including cost-effective strategies for managing large volumes of hi-res media and optimizing content retrieval.

Engagement is the modern-day currency in media and entertainment, and nowhere is there more experimentation and innovation than in the streaming of live sports. A panel of industry leaders will offer their experiences in gamification, interactivity, alternate broadcast feeds, and the various other technologies and strategies that are changing how leagues and broadcasters engage fans of all ages through video.

Is it possible to caption thousands of digital highlights with human quality in near real time? Find out how NBC Sports and 3Play Media worked together to make the impossible possible for the summer 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

A season-long campaign, years in the making, to honor the 100-year history of one of sports’ more iconic franchises is going to touch every aspect of an organization: from branding, production, to in-stadium experiences, to special events, and beyond. But how does a team mark such an important anniversary on digital and social media, as well as every vertical platform? Executives from the New York Giants offer a look at the digital strategy behind their celebration of a century of football in the Big Apple.

When it comes to surrounding major live events with custom, targeted programming for digital and social platforms, FOX Sports is in an elite class. In this one-on-one conversation, get an inside look at FOX Sports’ digital production strategy, the facilities they have built to support it, and the work done for social around this past summer’s EURO and Copa America tournaments.

NBCU’s Peacock set several viewership records for live streamed events in 2024 with its coverage of NFL Exclusive games and the Summer Olympic Games in Paris. Learn how Peacock accomplished this feat at scale with superior video quality and a 100% success rate by enlisting an all-star team of technology partners led by Harmonic and AWS.

As opportunities for live content rightsholders grow, a core truth remains in live streaming and digital video delivery at scale: performance matters. How are technologies under the hood of the some of the industry’s most successful streaming services evolving and what new developments will help move the business forward? This panel discussion of tech leaders will address the pressing topics of today and tomorrow.

There’s plenty of buzz around the industry regarding AI, but how is it practically helping sports leagues, broadcasters, and content creators today deliver more at a higher quality to their users? This panel explores how AI is transforming the editing and delivery of sports video for apps and social media. Industry experts will discuss cutting-edge AI tools that streamline content creation, enhance engagement, and deliver personalized highlights in real-time across digital platforms.

As live sports increasingly migrate to premium streaming platforms, sharing these distribution channels with higher quality cinematically-derived and premium-episodic content, the bar on quality and immersive formats is raised. At the same time multiple live streams and full-game VODs, allow broadcasters to aggregate much larger audiences and more efficiently exploit broadcast rights.

While wireless carriers and super-scale RLAN providers continue to vie for more and more spectrum, broadcasters and professional wireless microphone users will continue to feel their available space encroached on, as incumbents are forced to share or give up existing spectrum.  In an upcoming administration that can be expected to be highly revenue-driven, once-sacred swaths of existing spectrum can be expected to go away to those willing to pay the most for them.  Join us for an overview of what has happened so far and what to expect next.

The ST 2110 family of standards allows for greatly increased audio capabilities. While some broadcasters are taking advantage of these to support NGA features with greatly expanded channel counts and reliable SADM metadata transport, others are simply locking in the limitations of legacy SDI. Further, there are a range of radically different approaches to audio-only routing, inside and out of 2110 networks. Can we arrive at a consistent best practice? How many program channels are enough, and how do should we architect to efficiently manage individual audio-only sources and destination in this environment?

Native-IP digital microphones have been slowly emerging from the lab and escaping from installed-sound conference rooms to play a greater role in live sports production. Now dedicated designs leveraging multi-capsule and MEMS arrays, real-time DSP, and efficient IP multichannel connectivity are starting to follow them.

Internationally, centralized production hubs have played an important role for major sports leagues, individual broadcasters, and a number of global events. In the states we have been slow to adopt this model. Is this starting to change and what are the implications for audio?

Expanding beyond autonomous and assisted mixing, AI is starting to play an increasingly important role in versioning multiple concurrent live streams for distribution. Importantly, AI is also quickly learning to accurately efficiently QC and correct large numbers of audio programs and discern subtle difference in intelligibility and mix attributes.

Our panel will share their perspectives on live audio production and distribution, including the role of direct-to-consumer models in opening up premium immersive and NGA formats, while expanding the volume of content production required.