COMMENT: ​Sports Broadcasting – where it’s been, where it’s at and where it’s going

There has been a trend in the broadcast industry to move away from traditional distribution towards OTT. With drivers like consumer demand for more OTT services, OTT offering greater flexibility, and the potential for cost savings moving this trend forwards. However, OTT distribution of live sport has traditionally been challenging because of latency issues. Live sports viewers want to be in the moment with their favourite team or athlete, and high latency ruins the experience and can drive viewers away. Because of this, traditional distribution methods like cable and satellite continued to dominate the market with their reliably low latency and high quality, while OTT was in a relatively early stage of its technical development.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup was meant to be the ‘turning point’ for live sports production and broadcasting. It was the first major global sporting event to feature live feeds distributed over public internet and delivered around the world, all with incredibly low latency. The success of this event was the proof point that some needed to justify large scale investment in OTT distribution. However, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it disrupted the status quo—with national lockdowns causing live sporting events to be cancelled and driving a necessary mass move to remote working. This separated the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Those who had already invested in OTT and remote production were ahead of the curve and those whose infrastructure was built for flexibility were able to quickly adapt to the changing landscape. There were those, though, whose infrastructure was inflexible and who were reluctant to invest.

This disruption undoubtably pushed the market, including those that were reluctant, into investing in OTT. Questions remain, though, about whether the promise that was shown in the 2018 FIFA World Cup was realised, especially as the 2022 event is around the corner, acting as a direct comparison.

How early were the early adopters?

The simplest way to track where sports broadcasters’ priorities have been, is to follow the money. Earlier this year, in partnership with IABM, we commissioned research that looked at the investments made by 45 sports broadcasters across the US and UK.

When we look at what sports broadcasters were investing in in 2019, over 60% were investing in production equipment and more than 50% were investing in content storage. However, just over 40% were investing in remote production and just under 40% were investing in networking equipment. What this tells us is that in 2019 sports broadcasters were by and large more concerned with improving the quality of their content than investing in OTT and remote production.

Though a substantial number did invest in staying ahead of the curve, when you cast your mind back to what the market was thinking at the time this is unsurprising. According to a Deloitte report from 2019, the single most important factor for sports fans at this time was the quality of the broadcast or stream—and only 39% of sports fans were satisfied with the broadcast and OTT experience. Which makes it all the more likely that many broadcasters’ priorities and technology investments in 2019 were focused on meeting viewer demands for better quality content.

Of course, nobody predicted that a pandemic was around the corner, so the reasoning that it’s better to meet customer expectations than adopt new technology is understandable. How did this reasoning pan out over the pandemic though?

Keeping the ship afloat

When we compare pre-pandemic to the first year of Covid-19, the technologies that were invested in mostly stayed the same, but the order of priority changed. In 2020, remote production received the most investment.

While this is perhaps unsurprising, given lockdown restrictions and social distancing guidelines, it highlights the impact of the pandemic and new ways of working as the key factor driving the mainstream adoption of remote production. We can also see the addition of lightweight compression to technologies most invested in during 2020. With increased remote production, lightweight compression technology would have been integral in delivering content and helping broadcasters to reduce costs—especially during a year with financial constraints.

When asked why sports broadcasters invested in these technologies, the main reasons stated were to maintain competitive edge, and to upgrade existing capabilities—which would have enabled them to continue producing and broadcasting sports content with restrictions in place.

We’ve made it possible, now let’s make it good

Interestingly, none of the sports broadcasters we surveyed invested in remote production during 2021, which, given the focus that remote production was given in 2020, is entirely plausible. A large amount of resource was poured into maintaining operations which meant that the infrastructure was now in place to maintain a reasonable service.

This then resulted in several new technologies coming into focus that hadn’t been prioritised in previous years. Including content delivery networks (CDNs), digital rights management (DRM), as well as origin/packager and personalisation/recommendations technology.

As sports broadcasters adjusted to the ways of working that the pandemic enforced in 2020, the focus of 2021 was on making up for lost time, and ensuring they were broadcasting as much content as possible—reflected in the increased need for CDN technology to ensure flexibility and the reliable delivery of high-quality content, as well as the need for origin/packager technology and DRM solutions to ensure its secure delivery—and networking equipment to maximise bandwidth and deliver more content cost-effectively.

While sports broadcasters noted they had invested in personalisation technologies as a direct response to the pandemic, it is referenced again as a technology priority in 2021. With more content being consumed, sports broadcasters were keen to ensure the investments being made in their content and distribution were being seen by viewers.

Among all the disruption and changing priorities, networking equipment remained a constant focus for investment. There has been a constant driver and need to deliver low latency, live content, and support real-time remote production. According to IABM’s Technology and Trends Roadmap 2022, networking technology is reaching maturity, which can perhaps be attributed to the continued investments sports broadcasters have made in networking equipment to support operations during the pandemic.

Four years on. Is sports broadcasting where we expected it to be?

Sports broadcasting has come a long way since the last World Cup. With the pandemic shining a light on the importance of having flexible infrastructure. Those that were quick off the mark had an advantage over the rest of the market. The fact that remote production dominated the investment priorities at the height of the pandemic illustrates how ill-served that facet was. However, after two years of investment, the market is where we expected it to be. Sports broadcasters now have the task of optimising that infrastructure, maintaining their competitive advantage by reducing operational complexity, reducing cost, and improving the quality of the experience for customers. With cameras and encoders taking the top spot in terms of investment priorities for 2022, we see the market is now maturing past providing a basic service to meeting specific customer/user service expectations.

Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen is CEO of Appear