Monday Workshop Grid

Engineering teams are on the front lines when it comes to integrating new technologies, new workflows, and new standards. Leaders in remote engineering discuss the current state of the industry, the challenges they have encountered in the move to IP and virtualized systems, and much more.

Engineering teams are on the front lines when it comes to integrating new technologies, new workflows, and new standards. Leaders in remote engineering discuss the current state of the industry, the challenges they have encountered in the move to IP and virtualized systems, and much more.

Brazil is taking a significant step in revolutionizing media consumption by deploying a next-generation broadcast system known as TV 3.0 (DTV+), based on the ATSC 3.0 standard used in the United States and South Korea. In this presentation, Carlos Cosme – Globo and Yannik Grewe – Fraunhofer IIS will explore Brazil’s transition to immersive and personalized sound using MPEG-H Audio and 4K/8K HDR video during the live pilot broadcast of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Latin America’s largest broadcaster, Globo, along with its partners, showcased the seamless interoperability of TV 3.0 components, highlighting substantial improvements in service quality. Attendees will gain insights into the collaborative efforts among device manufacturers, technology vendors, and broadcasters that underpin this transformative journey, paving the way for a new live sports experience.

The move to live cloud production has resulted in a number of great developments with respect to the production tools that exist in a cloud-based environment. Developers of cloud-based systems and tools discuss how their products are making the move to a virtualized environment, how they will help production teams work better, and much more.

ESPN, Meta and COSM will share their production workflow, distribution and monetization strategies for the next-gen fan experience. What are the new market opportunities (and production realities) for broadcasting sports in these immersive domes venues?

Regardless of how much a fan or venue spends on their displays, the smartphone (once called the second screen) is the sports fan’s number-one screen.  This trend now offers teams and their brand partners the opportunity to further engage their fans with supplementary content, promotions and a premium game experience.

The L-Bar proved that the viewer enjoyed a reapportioned screen experience, providing rich fan information and new sponsor inventory. Squeeze backs and Reveals followed and production teams are now experimenting new graphical treatments to serve the converging opportunities of betting and live game streaming.

The virtualization of the game is coming and the leagues are already there, exploring ways their fans will someday become immersed in the action. The metaverse expands rights holder inventory via a parallel sports production with no real-world limitations.

Join us for a presentation from Deloitte that will dive into the explosion in interest in women’s sports and what it means to the sports rights and media landscape.

Join us for a conversation with Amanda Vandervort who oversees the entire USL women’s pathway, including the W league and Academy for Girls. We’ll discuss what it takes to launch a new league, growing a brand in a new world filled with social media channels and influencers, Amanda’s own career, and much more.

HBCUs and HBCUGo are working together to raise the profile of women’s athletics both on campus and via TV and streaming exposure. We’ll dive into the latest efforts, plans for 2025 and beyond, and how your organization can help HBCUs make a difference with women’s sports.

It finally appears that women’s sports has collectively captured the attention of marketers, programming executives, social media, and fans. So where does women’s sports go from here? How can women’s sports continue to rise, increasing its value as a media property, it’s ability to pay athletes more money, and it’s attractiveness to brands and marketing companies? How does the industry raise the levels of production, give women’s sports better time slots, and help it grow?

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.

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.

Cloud-based production infrastructure built in super scaler data centers and leveraging their connectivity backbone is poised to radically change live production by allowing entire teams to collaborate remotely and for concurrent program streams to be independently produced for one event from common sources. What are the implications of this effort for audio and will senior A1s soon be “working from home”? Join us for an exploration of this subject

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.