The key objective for entries seeking to be included on the IBC2023 Innovation Awards shortlist is to demonstrate transformative innovation addressing a real-world challenge.
For the Content Everywhere shortlist, the judges recognised innovations around real time interactive engagement delivering new audiences in Portugal and Israel; unprecedented access to on-board cameras in motor racing enabling a new interactive channel; and a first-time cloud-based broadcast production of a UEFA football match.
Register for IBC2023 Discover the biggest innovations in Amsterdam
The four projects chosen for the Content Everywhere shortlist were: KAN Israel, SPORT TV APP in Portugal, Sky Sports F1, and TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport). The winners of the IBC2023 Innovation Awards will be announced at a ceremony in IBC’s Premier Lounge at 18:00 CEST on Sunday September 17th.
KAN: Sport BUFF real time interactive engagement
For the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and the Eurovision Song Contest 2023, KAN Israel revolutionised the way viewers participated in the live feed and studio discussion with real time, interactive on-screen graphics (buffs) enabling families and friends to compete as they watched.
From rating goals or song performances, real time predictions of the scores and winners, to answering live quizzes, voting on their player of the match or act of the show, this was an innovative global first across rights, with over one million viewers across smart devices, web, app and TVs engaging over 30 million times and watching 298% longer.
On average 37% of all viewers that saw a buff engaged with it, with some matches peaking at 46%.
Across 29 days of continuous FIFA World Cup Qatar live action, up to 15 hours of live match feeds daily, plus hours of VOD, press conferences and shoulder programming, KAN and Sport BUFF changed the way Israel watched sport. The activation across Qatar 2022 coverage was so successful that the partnership extended to Eurovision 2023. Across the live semi-finals and final, audiences could vote and rate acts, predict winners and interact with the KAN editorial and studio teams.
Sport BUFF’s proprietary engine serves real time buffs as small transactional message data to an SDK to display over the top of the digital output. As it displays over the output there is no interference with the broadcast feed or latency issue, and it is synced via timecodes, metadata or even EPGs. This also ensures that if the viewer pauses the video, the buff stream is paused.
SPORT TV APP: Capturing new levels of audience engagement in Portugal
The OTT solution developed by Magycal for Portuguese sports TV network SPORT TV is delivering a new level of engagement to its audience.
It is a 360º solution for all SPORT TV’s digital content, offering a variety of live content, VOD, live scores and up-to-date information about all major football leagues. It features Smart Info, a breakthrough AI that evaluates scene context in real time to provide users with smart information at the right moments.
The SPORT TV APP was created with the aim of revolutionising the digital presence of Portugal’s number one sports broadcaster. By creating a strong link between broadcast content and digital world interactivity, this innovative case study has quickly made a national and international mark.
A unified subscription is shared between SPORT TV and TV operators, allowing users to use their SPORT TV multiscreen subscription between SPORT TV APP and TV operator apps. Viewers can activate players’ facial recognition by pressing the screen to bring up player information that ranges from goals scored to number of matches or minutes played.
The SPORT TV APP has quickly become the main OTT in sports in Portugal, achieving: 11,200% growth in registered users; 14% of the Portuguese population is registered; 85% growth in unique users; and 40% of the Portuguese population uses the digital solution yearly. It is rated among the top three sports apps in Portugal, both on Apple (4.6 rating) as well as Android (4.2 rating). It has also achieved, from scratch, gross advertising revenue of over €1 million.
Sky Sports: Delivering full access to Formula 1 on-board cameras
For the first time in the 2023 Formula 1 season, Sky Sports has had full access to all 20 on-board cameras and microphones and launched a brand new channel - the Battle Channel - using this access to bring viewers a complete focus on one battle between drivers further down the pack.
This is possible thanks to a move from hardware encoding to the cloud, which gives unlimited scalability and true access everywhere, driven by a virtual control room.
In the past, broadcasters would only be able to see and hear nine lines from the on-board action, which was edited and sent out by F1 itself. F1 could also switch from driver to driver without the broadcaster’s input, controlling what the broadcasters had access to and therefore what the viewers at home actually saw and heard.
Now, Sky Sports producers have all of that control and they can decide what the viewer at home sees. Once content has been approved by producers, viewers can choose to watch and listen to any racer, in any car, at any time, with no intervention from F1. This has never been done before. Technical supporters across the project are AWS, Grass Valley, M2A, Simply Live, Sky CT&I, Sky Product, Sky Sports, Techex and Vizrt.
It has been a success with customers, as shown by figures since launch (the IBC Innovation Awards entry was submitted in early June): 1.3 million F1 onboard stream plays on UK mobile out of 2.8 million total F1 stream plays; and 625k onboard stream plays on UK TV app, with an average of more than 40% of users launching the F1 event space playing an onboard stream.
TNT Sports: A cloud broadcasting milestone for the UEFA Youth League
TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport) broadcast a UEFA Youth League group match between Tottenham Under-19s and Sporting CP Under-19s, with the game produced entirely in the cloud for the first time ever.
A typical Youth League game broadcast package includes six cameras, a traditional OB truck, two generators for back-up power and a satellite uplink truck, all supported by 25 onsite personnel. Cloud broadcast dramatically reduces the need for people to be onsite or to operate in production rooms. Only eight people were required to be at the stadium, while seven other people worked 20 kilometres away at BT Sport’s Stratford studios with the necessary infrastructure in place.
BT Sport’s cloud-based broadcast relied on six wireless cameras connected to LiveU backpacks that transmitted signals to the cloud, using either 5G or fixed connectivity. The team used two AWS instances, one in Dublin and one in London, to provide additional redundancy during the broadcast.
The production team virtualised video and audio using Viz Vectar Plus, a software-based 4K switcher for cloud productions. In regular sports broadcasts camera switching is controlled and managed by personnel in trucks outside a stadium, but Viz Vectar Plus allowed the BT Sport team to switch remotely from the Stratford studio.
BT Sport showed instant replays from different angles, adding slow motion as well as custom animations and 3D video effects, all using NewTek 3Play. The team relied on NDI and the NDI Tools Suite to manage audio and video workflows during the broadcast.
Cloud broadcast brings a range of benefits: a simpler production, with less personnel on-site, less equipment moved, less cost, and less carbon footprint. A lot less that provides much more.
Want to know more? You’ll find more information about this year’s awards, the finalists and the judging panel on our IBC2023 Awards page.
No comments yet