The Super Bowl has long been one of the last bastions of appointment television—an event that still commands mass live viewership in an era where traditional broadcast audiences are fragmenting. Yet, as new research from AdTaxi suggests, the way fans engage with the game is rapidly evolving, the survey finding that nearly 70% of the audience now utilize secondary media to interact with Super Bowl-related content and streaming platforms are now on par with traditional TV as a primary viewing method.

These shifts underscore a larger transformation in how sports content is consumed, moving us firmly into a new era of the content continuum—a seamless blend of live, linear, on-demand, social, and interactive experiences. The shift we are seeing with the Super Bowl exemplifies a broader transformation in how audiences, particularly younger generations, engage with major live events. This shift is not confined to sports—it extends to award ceremonies and other significant broadcasts, reflecting a fundamental change in content consumption patterns.

The Expanding Super Bowl Experience
The Super Bowl is no longer just about the game. It’s about the total experience, from pre-game hype and player interviews to real-time social media commentary and post-game analysis. Fans expect content that extends beyond the live broadcast, with bite-sized, on-demand clips and interactive digital engagement becoming just as crucial as the event itself.

The AdTaxi data reflects this: With 77% of respondents indicating they will watch, listen, or follow the event, half will “tune in” using digital video (connected TV or streaming services)—exceeding traditional cable and broadcast TV’s combined 32% share of the total audience. This is the content continuum in action—where the value of sports media is no longer confined to a single, linear broadcast.

The Broader shift in Viewer Behavior
The 2025 Super Bowl reflect a wider trend in sports, as younger viewers – especially those from Generation Z— exhibit distinct media consumption habits that differ from previous generations. They favor short-form, on-demand content and interactive experiences over traditional, linear broadcasts. This preference has led to the rise of the "clip culture," where highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, and personalized content are highly valued.

This trend is evident as many younger fans prefer watching highlights over full games, according to data from a YouGov Sports Whitepaper. The study showed that a 34% of engaged global sports fans aged 18 to 24 prefer watching clips or highlights to watching live games in their entirety, while 14% follow games on social media.

Unlocking New Revenue and Engagement Opportunities|
For rightsholders, the growing shift toward streaming, social media, and on-demand platforms presents both challenges and opportunities. Traditional broadcast models, which rely on high-value live rights, must now incorporate a multi-platform approach that extends the lifecycle of content.

By leveraging cloud-based production and AI tools, rightsholders can create and distribute real-time game clips, social media highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, and interactive live streams – ensuring that sports coverage is not just an event, but an ongoing, interactive narrative.

In embracing the content continuum, organizers extend the lifecycle of their sports events, encompassing pre-game build-up, live interactions during the event, and post-event highlights and analyses. This approach not only caters to the viewing preferences of younger audiences but also creates additional opportunities for engagement and further monetization.

The Cloud-Powered Future of Sports Media
The acceleration of cloud-based production workflows is one of the biggest enablers of this new media landscape. Where traditional production methods required hours to repackage live content into highlights and clips, cloud technology and AI-driven editing can do this in near real-time. The ability to instantly publish key plays, social media-friendly snippets, and interactive features across platforms ensures that rightsholders remain relevant in an environment where immediacy is everything.

For leagues, broadcasters, and digital platforms, this is a wake-up call: the future of live sports is not just about securing high-value rights—it’s about maximizing the value of every moment within the content continuum.

Embracing the New Playbook

As the Super Bowl demonstrates, the days of a single-screen, one-way viewing experience are fading into the past. Sports fans now demand multi-platform, interactive, and always-on content, and rightsholders must adapt to remain competitive. The winners in this space will be those who rethink their content strategies, embrace real-time production tools, and recognize that the game doesn’t end when the final whistle blows—it lives on in every clip, post, and conversation that follows.

This is the new era of sports content consumption. The question is: are rightsholders ready to play?

The Super Bowl is no longer just about the game. It’s about the total experience, from pre-game hype and player interviews to real-time social media commentary and post-game analysis. Fans expect content that extends beyond the live broadcast, with bite-sized, on-demand clips and interactive digital engagement becoming just as crucial as the event itself.

The AdTaxi data reflects this: With 77% of respondents indicating they will watch, listen, or follow the event, half will “tune in” using digital video (connected TV or streaming services)—exceeding traditional cable and broadcast TV’s combined 32% share of the total audience. This is the content continuum in action—where the value of sports media is no longer confined to a single, linear broadcast.

The Broader shift in Viewer Behavior
The 2025 Super Bowl reflect a wider trend in sports, as younger viewers – especially those from Generation Z— exhibit distinct media consumption habits that differ from previous generations. They favor short-form, on-demand content and interactive experiences over traditional, linear broadcasts. This preference has led to the rise of the "clip culture," where highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, and personalized content are highly valued.

This trend is evident as many younger fans prefer watching highlights over full games, according to data from a YouGov Sports Whitepaper. The study showed that a 34% of engaged global sports fans aged 18 to 24 prefer watching clips or highlights to watching live games in their entirety, while 14% follow games on social media.

Unlocking New Revenue and Engagement Opportunities|
For rightsholders, the growing shift toward streaming, social media, and on-demand platforms presents both challenges and opportunities. Traditional broadcast models, which rely on high-value live rights, must now incorporate a multi-platform approach that extends the lifecycle of content.

By leveraging cloud-based production and AI tools, rightsholders can create and distribute real-time game clips, social media highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, and interactive live streams – ensuring that sports coverage is not just an event, but an ongoing, interactive narrative.

In embracing the content continuum, organizers extend the lifecycle of their sports events, encompassing pre-game build-up, live interactions during the event, and post-event highlights and analyses. This approach not only caters to the viewing preferences of younger audiences but also creates additional opportunities for engagement and further monetization.

The Cloud-Powered Future of Sports Media
The acceleration of cloud-based production workflows is one of the biggest enablers of this new media landscape. Where traditional production methods required hours to repackage live content into highlights and clips, cloud technology and AI-driven editing can do this in near real-time.

The ability to instantly publish key plays, social media-friendly snippets, and interactive features across platforms ensures that rightsholders remain relevant in an environment where immediacy is everything.

For leagues, broadcasters, and digital platforms, this is a wake-up call: the future of live sports is not just about securing high-value rights—it’s about maximizing the value of every moment within the content continuum.

Embracing the New Playbook
As the Super Bowl demonstrates, the days of a single-screen, one-way viewing experience are fading into the past. Sports fans now demand multi-platform, interactive, and always-on content, and rightsholders must adapt to remain competitive.

The winners in this space will be those who rethink their content strategies, embrace real-time production tools, and recognize that the game doesn’t end when the final whistle blows—it lives on in every clip, post, and conversation that follows.

This is the new era of sports content consumption. The question is: are rightsholders ready to play?

During the last U.S. general election in 2020, remote production was starting to gain momentum in sports broadcasting but had yet to become prominent in other TV segments. Cloud-based production was still in its early stages.

Fast forward to today, and the technology has advanced rapidly. What was once considered groundbreaking has now become standard practice, and this election cycle will see cloud-based production utilized on an unprecedented scale. The impact of these technological advancements means that coverage of this year’s election cycle – including numerous federal, state, and local elections across the country – will be more extensive, inclusive, and thorough than ever before.

Remote Production and Connectivity
Election coverage is distinct from other live media due to the often-remote nature of interviews and productions. Establishing connectivity from diverse locations – such as politicians attending a factory opening in Michigan, an agricultural farm in Iowa, or a local debate in California – is crucial. Broadcasters and operators are increasingly leveraging bonded cellular and cloud-based production technologies to capture and deliver these feeds where needed.

The flexibility of these technologies ensures that no location is too remote. This connectivity enables real-time broadcasting from virtually any part of the United States, ensuring that every voice is heard and every perspective is covered. This marks a significant improvement from past election cycles, where logistical challenges often limited extensive coverage to more accessible areas.

Additionally, cloud-based production offers unmatched scalability and flexibility. Production teams can quickly adapt to the fast-paced nature of election coverage, responding in real-time to breaking news, unexpected events, or changing circumstances. This allows broadcasters to provide continuous, up-to-the-minute coverage without the constraints of physical infrastructure.

The ability to rapidly deploy resources and integrate various media formats – from live video feeds to social media updates – creates a richer, more interactive viewer experience. This enhances the depth and breadth of election coverage and increases audience engagement and participation, making the entire process more dynamic and inclusive.

Empowering Smaller Media and Citizen Journalists
A key aspect of this year’s election cycle will be the involvement of smaller media outlets, citizen journalists, and social media influencers in reporting, commentating, and influencing voters – especially younger generations. Political parties are increasingly recognizing the power of these platforms, with dedicated teams working to promote positive messages about their candidates on TikTok and Instagram.

The cloud enables smaller media entities and influencers to rapidly produce and generate election content, even using a phone as a camera feeding signals to a cloud-based production platform. This approach significantly reduces production costs, making it affordable to create high-quality productions. Smaller news operations and citizen journalists can produce broadcast-quality content for less than $100 per hour.

This shift fundamentally changes the economics of election coverage. Voters can view, share, and engage with a broader spectrum of political voices and commentators than ever before. The democratization of production technology ensures that not only major players but also smaller, independent voices can participate in and shape the election narrative.

The Impact of Cloud-Based Production on Election Coverage
Whether it’s a national election, a state referendum, a local council race, or a political debate, cloud-based production services offer the versatility and efficiency needed to meet diverse broadcasting requirements. Cloud video services provide an end-to-end solution that includes remote IP video production, clipping and editing, and transmission. These services enable broadcasters to produce and deliver broadcast-quality live programming to and from anywhere in the world, including near-real-time social media highlights.

For production, cloud-based platforms handle all aspects of the workflow, from editing and graphics creation to communications and talk-back. This cloud-based production-as-a-service model gives content producers the flexibility to use their crew or rely on external providers to supply experienced operators who can deliver high-quality programming.

As more viewers follow election events via social media, cloud platforms offer clipping and editing tools to create and post event highlights as they happen. For instance, during a national election night, social media teams can clip and edit key moments from candidate speeches, exit poll announcements, and voter reactions in real time, ensuring that the most engaging content reaches the audience immediately.

The cloud’s transmission capability provides IP delivery of feeds from any location to multiple destinations via the internet, ensuring high-quality transmission that can support HD and UHD broadcasts. For events in remote locations with limited internet access, cloud-based transmission can be supported with bonded cellular services for either the primary feed or as a backup, leveraging 5G where available.

The comprehensive range of capabilities and flexibility offered by cloud-based production platforms give political event producers unmatched agility. They offer broadcast-quality production, highlight creation, and delivery not only for live national and regional elections but also for streaming political debates, town hall meetings, and press briefings. This technology complements existing remote production and delivery services, allowing content producers to choose the level of service they need to effectively cover the political landscape.

Cloud-based production is revolutionizing election coverage, providing the tools necessary for comprehensive, high-quality broadcasts that can engage audiences across multiple platforms. As technological innovation continues to accelerate, the role of cloud production in election coverage will become even more integral.

A New Era for Election Broadcasting
The rapid evolution of production technology has made this year’s election cycle coverage more expansive and inclusive than ever before. With the rise of cloud-based production, even the most remote locations can be brought into the conversation, and a diverse array of voices can be heard. Smaller media outlets and citizen journalists now have the tools to produce high-quality content at a fraction of the cost, ensuring a broader spectrum of political discourse.

Looking ahead, the role of innovative platforms will be crucial in shaping the future of broadcasting. By democratizing access to high-quality production tools, these technologies are not only enhancing election coverage but also paving the way for a more inclusive and representative media landscape. The future of election broadcasting is here, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever before.

MUMBAI—Tata Communications has announced it has concluded a global five-year deal with World Athletics to provide host broadcasting services covering World Athletics events, including the World Championships in Tokyo in 2025. 

World Athletics is the international governing body for track and field and running events. 

In 2025, when the deal begins, the work includes the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing in March, World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou in May and World Athletics Road Running Championships in San Diego in September, as well as the flagship World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

The World Athletics Championships, taking place from Sept. 13–21 in 2025, is an event that regularly draws a global viewing audience of one billion people.

As part of the deal, Tata Communications will deliver customized, live content to broadcasters around the world and as the host broadcaster, it will take on the pivotal role of crafting immersive coverage for World Athletics events. The company will also provide localized regional feeds.

"It is an exciting time of new content and changing viewer demands,” explained Dhaval Ponda, global head of Media & Entertainment Business, Tata Communications said. "Tata Communications is ideally placed as a global connectivity provider to help World Athletics meet its ambition of bringing athletics and inspirational stories to fans around the world. We offer the global footprint and scalable, resilient solutions necessary to carry these stories from arenas directly to viewers, whether from the UK, Tokyo, USA or beyond. As we bring the vibrancy of global athleticism to screens, I'm eager to see those stories inspire the next generation of Indian sporting excellence."

The deal with World Athletics will use Tata Communications’ global media platform. Built on a video native edge platform and application stack, the platform offers reliable end-to-end support.

As part of the World Athletics efforts to increase the reach of the sport across the world, Tata will also support those initiatives inside India. 

LOS ANGELES and MUMBAI—Tata Communications has announced the opening of a production and delivery facility in Los Angeles to support future business development and growth.

Named The Switch @ Victory, the new facility will give Tata Communications the ability to serve more live content customers with end-to-end media production and connectivity services, it said.

The 66,712-square-foot facility is located on Victory Boulevard on the border or Glendale and Burbank, Calif. The two-story building sits in the heart of Hollywood’s extended production community and offers a live production center to support customer configuration requirements, the company said.

The purpose-built facility becomes the hub for Tata Communications’ and The Switch’s production and delivery services. It is designed to support live content production for rightsholders of all sizes, it said.

The Switch @ Victory is operational. Several companies, including Fox Alternative Entertainment, producers of “America’s Most Wanted,” already are using the facility.

The facility positions Tata Communications to expand in the U.S. and beyond as its customer base grows. It is fully equipped offering:

• Four sound stages with powered lighting grids and green screens.
• Large multi-row seating production control rooms with best-of-breed switchers and digital audio consoles.
• Multiple insert studios for media training, live shots, and satellite media tours.
• Dressing rooms and lounges for talent.
• Multiple conference rooms.
• Video-audio edit stations.
• More than 100 workstations.
• Private offices, kitchens and breakrooms.                             
• Auditorium with seating.
• Prop and costume storage.
• 230 parking spaces that can support a powered base camp for production trailers, grip trucks and other equipment.
• 130-degree view of Hollywood Hills.

The Switch @ Victory sits on Tata Communications’ global, low-latency video delivery network with added satellite links.

Tata Communications completed its acquisition of The Switch Enterprises in May 2023.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK, and MUMBAI—India telecom giant Tata Communications is acquiring The Switch Enterprises LLC, a New York-based provider of global end-to-end live video production and transmission services in a cash only transaction valued at $58.8 million. With The Switch’s customer base including top tier sporting venues in North America, Tata says the acquisition will give the company “a strong foothold into the Americas media and entertainment market, extend its portfolio into live video production and become uniquely positioned as an end-to-end media ecosystem player in the entire content development value chain globally.”

The closing of the transaction is dependent upon regulatory approvals. On completion of the transaction, The Switch Enterprises will join the Media and Entertainment Services (MES) business of Tata Communications under Dhaval Ponda.

Founded in 1991, The Switch’s delivery network connects production facilities with 800+ of the world’s largest content producers, distributors, and sports and event venue, according to the company. Over the past several years, the company has been working with with fellow Tata customer Net Insight to deploy a 100-gig fiber backbone across the U.S. 

As the M&E industry’s demand for remote production has ramped up over the past several years due to Covid, so has the need for high-speed network services, something that Tata itself was focusing on even prior to the pandemic, when it announced its plans to launch its own 100 gig network in February 2020.  

(Also read: COVID-19 Accelerates Cloud-Based Sports Production, Says Tata Executive)

Announcing the acquisition, Tri Pham, Chief Strategy Officer, Tata Communications said, “Our combined forces of The Switch’s strong presence in North America and Tata Communications’ global position will create a formidable powerhouse in the global media ecosystem helping enterprises harness emerging digital consumption patterns to drive innovation and disruption. In addition, The Switch production infrastructure as a service model will allow Tata Communications customers to accelerate adoption of remote production from any event around the world.”

Dhaval Ponda, Global Head of Media & Entertainment Business, Tata Communications added, “The global media & entertainment industry is at a once-in-a-generation digital transformation driven by a fundamental change in consumer consumption behaviours. Tata Communications is already helping some of the largest global sports federations, broadcasters and OTT platforms manage this disruption through our next generation digital media platform. With The Switch team, we will now be able to develop holistic, scalable solutions encompassing live and scheduled programming for television, leveraging pre-recorded and filed videos for new content creation as well as all post-production. The Switch and Tata Communications teams, together will help the industry evolve to the next level of at-venue and at-home fan engagement.”

Speaking on the occasion, Eric Cooney, President & CEO, The Switch said, “The team at The Switch has worked hard creating a market leading live production and transmission offering in the US and beyond. We are extremely proud of our achievements and the trust that Tier 1 media companies place in our services. As the media industry evolves, The Switch has an ever larger role to play in the future of live sports and entertainment and in helping our customers maximise their lucrative content. With Tata Communications we will accelerate this journey providing stability, investment and vision in support of future growth. I am excited for the future of The Switch and the opportunities that this brings to our team and customers.”

Back from the COVID-19 hiatus, the production of live televised sports has contributed to a bit of normalcy for millions of fans left gameless and homebound by the pandemic.

But things are different. Cardboard cutouts populate seats around home plate and canned crowd noises punctuate touchdowns. Things, too, are different when it comes to how games are being produced during the pandemic, says Dhaval Ponda, global head, Media and Entertainment Services for Tata Communications.

The outbreak has simultaneously accelerated and altered REMI, or remote integrated production, driving producers not only to minimize crew at venues but also to push past centralized production to its virtualized equivalent that makes working from home possible, he says.

Ponda should know. Tata Communications offers a product portfolio that caters to broadcasters and sports authorities in need of live sports contribution and distribution services, cloud-based virtualized production workflows and end-to-end for Media & Entertainment tech services.    

In this interview, Ponda discusses the changes he has witnessed since the outbreak in how live events like sports are produced, the impact of COVID-19 on the uptake of a virtualized alternative to rolling OB trucks to venues and what’s likely to happen to live sports production once the pandemic has passed.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology: Remote production has taken on a whole new—or perhaps more accurately stated expanded—meaning in television since the COVID-19 outbreak hit. What are the top technical challenges when it comes to producing live video when talent and crew are widely dispersed?

Dhaval Ponda: I would say there are a top three when it comes to technical challenges. The first one revolves around the workflow.

We are changing the entire workflow. Instead of that team of between 40 and maybe 200 traveling to the venue, events are being produced out of a remote production hub. In the post-COVID world we are increasingly deploying that team in their homes.

This distributed workflow requires a different workflow in terms of how live content passes through.

The second challenge centers on virtualization of production equipment and hardware. Production teams are now relying on virtualized services, and that’s a big shift. The media industry has some work to do when it comes to embracing this virtualization of services.

Instead of going to a gallery, members of the production team are working from home, and they have to rely on the broadband at their particular location to access those virtual services.

The third aspect is mainly around the popularity of short-forms and features, which have relied on being at the venue. For example, a quick commentary and a highlight video of a certain event at a match is done locally from EVS hardware located on site.

So, these short-forms and features for a given event are also now being done remotely. That creates a different form of long-tail services, which are done slightly differently. The tools around that are all web-based and portal-based. Those are the three main challenges.

TVT: Let’s unpack that answer a little. You brought up REMI (remote integrated production) and you brought up cloud-based workflows. REMIi or at-home initially was based on a production center servicing sporting events taking place at multiple, dispersed venues. Are the production centers now giving way to the cloud? And, is there sufficient bandwidth to support this approach to live production with crew so widely dispersed?

DP: I think about two years ago, everyone spoke of remote production as going to a central location. Very quickly, as firms started moving to that central location and that model, they realized they were again hitting some of the usual issues that they had with personnel on site.

There’s an investment in real estate, and they are typically prime locations because your talent is going to be in Manhattan, London and so forth. There's a lot of CapEx involved with the same hardware you once had on site. So people started looking at a virtualized environment where the talent could work from anywhere.

This not only meant you did not need a central location, but you could also reach out to talent located anywhere. They no longer needed to travel to a particular venue to provide commentary or subtitling or whatever. It is now more distributed and moving towards a work-from-home environment.

TVT: This gets back to the bandwidth issue from home for these remote production crew members, right?

DP: It’s a challenge. How do we manage broadband quality that may not necessarily be enterprise grade? Another issue that’s particular to editors working from home using a laptop is they don't always have all of the tools and applications they have in a studio environment.

We have worked with the sports production community and sports federations as partners and what we have done is—purely from a video transport standpoint—we have worked with the right encoding mechanism to ensure that even a low-quality live video feed is made available to a particular individual who is working from home and he is still able to edit a live video feed. That is step No. 1.

We have also deployed remote production applications on the edge, and we have brought this particular edge infrastructure closer to individuals. This has made a massive impact. We have now deployed this underlying video infrastructure, which we own and operate, globally.

PLUS: Recreating the Sports Fan Experience Virtually

By bringing the production tools closer to the edge, we are actually removing the underlying network quality issue. And because this is a live feed and it is at the edge closer to wherever you are, you are able to edit a live feed in real time, and it is still being broadcast as if it were six months ago and it was being done in a studio.

TVT: What does that mean to move these resources closer to the edge? Does it mean you have placed datacenters at the edge running these virtualized production tools? And if that’s the case, how can you do that when production crews are so dispersed?

DP: You are absolutely right. Over the last 20 years, Tata Communications has invested close to $6 billion to create submarine cable system assets to use for global connectivity. Tata Communications is probably the largest single owner and operator of privately owned submarine cable capacity and hence the datacenters and cloud capacity that sits on top of that.

All of the hyper scalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft [are] also key partners when it comes to deploying services on top of that. So, we already have the benefit of having a massive infrastructure at our disposal that is owned and operated by Tata Communications globally, and our video infrastructure sits on top of that.

About two years ago, we also deployed a low-latency video streaming service called VDN. It operates on a technology from Net Insight, which was later bought by [Amazon] Prime Video. This low-latency video streaming infrastructure was created to cater to low-latency sports viewing.

For example, if you're watching the NFL, usually you notice that it is slightly delayed on an iPad or a mobile device. The delay can be anywhere from about 20 seconds to a minute. That comes down to some protocols, which are legacy protocols like HLS that Apple always used for video streaming.

[VDN] uses UDP and brought that latency down to two or three seconds. This was deployed for global sports, and we use it currently for distribution of a number of Tier 1 properties for some of the world's largest OTT platforms.

To do that, for the video streaming to work, wherever your global audiences are located, we had to deploy this infrastructure with our datacenters on our edge anyway because a viewer could be located anywhere.

The distribution of this video infrastructure sort of followed that pattern, so we were quite lucky that we already had solved this problem for a different use case.

TVT: Once the COVID-19 pandemic passes, do you expect television production to return to its traditional on-site ways?

DP: What COVID has done is to bring forward a number of disruptions that would have taken 12 to 18 months. All of that is already being baked in. What I mean by that is workflows have already changed in the way production teams are structured, located and work together.

The type of content has also changed dramatically. We see a lot of virtual racing, eSports, short-form feeds and videos being produced as a matter of everyday life. Finally, these disruptions have also proven to the industry that it is possible to work remotely and produce the same quality feed and enjoy the benefits of working from home, such as lower travel costs.

So, I don't see the industry reverting back entirely to a pre-COVID way of doing things because the financial and the operational savings and the benefits of a remote environment far outweigh whatever you would gain by reverting back to going to a venue.

Once things are back to normal, I'm sure many things probably will return to the way they were before, but in the case of sports production and other live productions—whether it is in terms of operations or how content is produced—things will have changed for good.

LONDON—As demands for 4K sports broadcasts increases, Tata Communications has announced that it has developed a 100G media backbone that is designed to assist with growing bandwidth demands.

This new infrastructure from Tata Communications was designed in collaboration with Net Insight to enable broadcasters, OTT companies and eSports businesses to deliver more immersive viewing and gaming experiences. Specifically, the backbone was built using Net Insight’s Nimbra 1060 WAN transport platform, which enables the delivery of IP-based media services across global media networks. Nimbra 1060 will underpin Tata Communication’s global end-to-end managed Video Connect Network.

For major sports events, this infrastructure can support up to 50 raw video feeds and the delivery of unilateral, localized feeds by different rightsholders for their regions, per Tata Communications. In addition, working with other Tata Communications workflows will help with full remote production of these events. The 100G capacity lowers the barriers for global sports organizations to move from satellite-based content distribution to fiber across entire continents, the company said.

For eSports, the 100G backbone helps overcome potential bandwidth issues needed for components like multiple cameras, cutaways, real-time reactions, commentary and editing.

“Viewers, sports fans and gamers increasingly expect immersive, high-quality content—delivered live from the other side of the world or on demand—on a range of different media platforms,” said Dhaval Ponda, associate vice president, media and entertainment, Tata Communications. “This 100G backbone and our managed video services will help our customers innovate with agility and become more competitive.”

The broadcast game is changing beyond recognition. We live in an age of on-demand and personalized media, where the consumer expects to be in control of their viewing schedule and for content to be available in a multiplicity of forms, at any time and on any device.

These shifts impact all aspects of the entertainment industry. However, the sports industry, one of the largest broadcast businesses on the planet, has a whole host of new challenges and opportunities to contend with to maintain eyeballs. Chief among these is the idea that sporting events, which could always count on fans tuning in to traditional forms of broadcast at pre-set times, now need to broaden their horizons in terms of content distribution to grow their fan-bases and keep different types of fans engaged.

The fact is, loyal existing fans and those who are newer, casual followers of a sport want to engage with sports in many ways. Some might want to watch a match from start to finish, live on TV, others might just want to see a few highlights on Twitter. Some might not even be that fussed about the actual match, but more about the stars and personalities and seeing what they get up to on Instagram. So, broadcasters and content owners need to cater to all these fan types.

To win the viewership fight, TV networks and other content owners must figure out how to take advantage of technologies that create a high-quality, immersive viewing experience for fans across TV and OTT platforms. At the same time, broadcasters are still under pressure to increase production quality while keeping costs low to create high return for their sports investments.

A DELICATE BALANCE

A recent report from PwC projects the sports market to grow at a compound annual rate of 3.1% across the four segments, from $69.3 billion in 2017 to $78.5 billion in 2021, and that’s just across North America.

Yet, in sports, traditional broadcasting methods are getting more and more restrictive and require a lot of investment. To deliver cost effective, high-quality content to audiences and create a viewing experience that is closest to witnessing a match live in the stadium, more and more broadcasters globally are embracing remote production. This means that production teams don’t need to travel to each venue, and the different localized broadcasts can be brought to audiences more efficiently.

We helped Star Sports in India, the number one sports broadcaster in the country and subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, build this type of platform for their coverage of the VIVO Pro Kabaddi League, the second most popular League in India. During each match, the remote production team operate out of the Star Sports facility in Mumbai, working seamlessly with an on-site engineering team. They collaborate in real-time to deliver every moment of the action to more than 200 million viewers. The remote production platform ensures the smooth transmission of a combination of signals and camera feeds from each fixture because of its ultra-low, four-frames-per-second latency and hitless switching capability.

Another company leveraging technology for a better production experience is Dorna, the exclusive commercial and TV rights holder for the leading motorcycle racing championship MotoGP. To ensure a seamless viewing experience regardless of location, and bring fans high-quality racing content across different platforms, Dorna created a platform with live OTT video feeds with remote production and High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) imaging. The cloud-based platform combines traditional video contribution services and IP connectivity, allowing Dorna to manage and distribute MotoGP video feeds from any location to any device in perfect synchronicity. The platform also comes with extra bandwidth, which eliminates the common lag with OTT content delivery and ensures the reliable distribution of live video feeds—footage from the track and 360-degree on-board cameras as well as commentary—on a global scale and regardless of what device fans are using. With more efficient and cost-effective broadcast operations, Dorna gives MotoGP fans the high-quality, exhilarating viewing experiences they crave.

It all boils down to this: the lines between traditional and digital media platforms have blurred causing a seismic shift in the entertainment landscape. The growing influence of livestreaming and global OTT platforms is a sign of things to come for the sports world. From a commercial perspective, increasing the geographical footprint means more eyeballs, and more eyeballs means more revenue opportunities—whether it’s through subscriptions, sponsorship, advertising or merchandising.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Every business, no matter the sector, needs to foster their existing customer base and attract new customers in order to grow, bring in new revenue streams and remain relevant in their market. In the sports industry, this has been achieved through the introduction of new platforms and formats to engage fans and make content more accessible for new audiences and keep existing fans loyal.

OTT platforms enable fans to watch any sport from anywhere, anytime. And over the next three to five years, the digital landscape will continue to grow, with OTT dominating the way sports is delivered to fans. Already, we’re seeing streaming platforms like Facebook Watch, Bleacher Report and DAZN change the way the world watches sports, bringing sports into an OTT streaming model, and making it free and easy for people to watch.

The rise of digital has already led to wide national deals being penned for major broadcast properties. The NFL has experimented with broadcasting games on Twitter and for the 2018 season, Major League Baseball teamed up with Facebook to produce one afternoon game per week on its Facebook Watch platform. This meant that fans at work or on the go in some way without access to a TV could still tune in to see their team play. In addition, various professional sports organizations have started to branch out into streaming their own content including NFL Network and NBA TV.

Meanwhile in Europe, Amazon Prime Video secured rights to broadcast live and exclusive English Premier League matches from 2019/20. The three-year deal means that Amazon Prime subscribers who might not live in their favorite team’s market, can watch 20 matches per season at no extra cost. And LaLiga, the top league in Spain, has signed a deal with Facebook that will see all 380 matches broadcast live on Facebook in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. And UEFA made the biggest game of them all—the Champions League Final—available for free on YouTube. It was a move that made perfect business sense. As Europe’s flagship spectacle, it gets them more eyeballs than any other event.

NEW EXPERIENCES

In sports, the live event will always be the main draw for fans, whether they are in-person at the stadium or watching it on TV. As the digital fan experience improves for fans, many sports leagues are looking at ways to enrich the live experience at venues to match up. We’re seeing innovative applications of augmented reality (AR) and data analytics to give fans real-time insights on players and athletes, while apps are making the (often painful) process of buying refreshments at stadiums easier.

A critical piece of creating immersive experiences is bringing viewers closer to the action—making every shot, pitch and corner turn as real as possible. Racing circuits like F1 have been doing this successfully. At Tata Communications, we worked with F1 to create a 360-degree live video concept that puts viewers right in the heart of the action, and it showed how fans could be given greater control than ever to choose how they want to watch and engage with F1—jumping on-board a car, or seeing up-close as the engineering team strategizes in the pit lane.

Another fast-growing motorsport, Formula E, has shown how digital has the potential to increase fan interaction with the live action through its unique, and much-debated, FanBoost feature. Fans are given the opportunity to vote for the driver they wish to receive a FanBoost before the race. The three drivers with the most votes receive a power boost of 30kW, which lasts for five seconds at a time and provides extra speed that can be used to perform a crucial overtake.

Motorsports are not the only ones experimenting with new ways of growing their audiences commercially, geographically and demographically though more immersive and engaging content. When it comes to social media, most of the major U.S. sports organizations have experimented with Twitter live streams, and the Facebook Watch video platform now enables U.S. users to watch live events in a community setting.

In the modern broadcasting landscape, attempting to manage every channel and platform may not be the right strategy for every sport. Rather, for a sport with a well-established audience and fan-base such as F1, the digital and OTT strategy must be aligned with the new audience demographics that the sport is targeting. So, for example, if a sport wants to target the under-25 audience, they need to be on a platform like SnapChat.

Future generations of digital products that deliver premium, immersive experiences with either live or archived content enabled by a wide landscape of underlying technology include personalized video, 3D video, augmented and virtual reality, and augmented video. According to a PwC study, these platforms could grow to a potential global market size of more than $1 billion by 2025. That’s a lot of potential viewers and fans that could be reached.

By tying together all the elements which make a great viewing experience, sports are deploying a variety of production and publishing strategies to create fever pitch on the plethora of digital channels available.

Brian Morris is vice president/general manager, Media & Entertainment for Tata Communications.

MIAMI & MUMBAI, INDIA—Tata Communications, a digital infrastructure provider based in India, and Primestream, a provider of dynamic media management, have joined forces to launch an enterprise-grade Media Asset Management (MAM) solution in the cloud that enables broadcasters, content owners and enterprises to capture, produce, manage and deliver media content.

Since it combines a cloud-based version of Primestream’s Xchange MAM solution, with Tata Communications’ cloud storage and high-performance Video Connect network, the companies claim the new media management platform enhances metadata-driven workflows—including video production, file sharing, editing and publishing—while supporting seamless global collaboration. It also enables advanced file acceleration and an expandable object storage solution, which permit disaster recovery or content archiving.

[Read: NAB Show Exhibitor Viewpoint—David Schleifer, COO, Primestream]

“Sports, entertainment and news organizations are under pressure to bring their global audiences more and more content, live, 24/7, across different digital platforms, and in new formats, such as UHD and live 360-degrees,” said Brian Morris, Vice President and General Manager, Media & Entertainment, Tata Communications.

“In this high-pressure environment, it’s no longer viable for production teams to work in silos, with files scattered around on different hard drives across geographies. Our joint offering with Primestream unifies and simplifies Media Asset Management from capture to distribution, helping to meet audiences’ insatiable appetite for new video content, and more powerful viewing experiences.” 

LAS VEGAS—Vice Media and Tata Communications struck a deal at April’s NAB Show that will have Tata building a cloud-based platform for global media asset management and distribution for Vice. Through this system, Vice production teams are expected to be able to capture content from anywhere and make it available to editors in production centers in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Toronto and London for publishing and broadcasting across Vice Media channels.

The new system will be based off Tata’s Media Ecosystem, which includes the Video Connect service. Video Connect complements Vice’s local area network and institutes a global area network of video contribution and IP connectivity. Offering speeds up to 10Gbps, Video Connect can transfer video files and remote collaboration between Vice Media teams.

The Media Ecosystem also comes with the IZO Cloud Storage to provide private cloud-based media storage for read-write access and archival of data-intensive video files. All Vice Media files, including videos in 4K, UHD and HD, are replicated in multiple private cloud locations in real-time for back-up and disaster recovery. Tata Communications has also integrated Vice’s media asset management and file acceleration tools into the platform.

STOCKHOLM—Net Insight has landed its first customer for its live OTT service, with global communications service provider Tata Communications signing a framework agreement for the use of Net Insight systems. This enables Tata to integrate Net Insight’s technology into the company’s Media Ecosystem, and in turn allow Tata to provide a range of live OTT content management and delivery services to its media and entertainment customers.

Net Insight’s live OTT system enables customers to harmonize first and second screens to synchronize multiscreen TV in real-time. In addition, the first and second screens are integrated, which allows the second screen to serve as an extension of the viewing experience and a tool for interactivity.

Located in Stockholm, Net Insight is a provider of live, interactive and on-demand media transport.

HERTFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND— Tata Communications, in preparation of the release of its new cloud broadcast playout service in September, has announced that PlayBox’s CloudAir virtual applications will support the new service.

PlayBox CloudAir

Tata Communications designed its cloud-based broadcast playout service for broadcasters and content providers. It is built on the company’s global fiber network and data center infrastructure; the system includes features like file transfer services and a networked-based video transcoding and delivery service.

The CloudAir from PlayBox, meanwhile, is a universal TV playout and streaming system designed for continuous unattended operation. The system can edit any clip in the playlist, except the one being played; it can also change the order of the playlist. A Live Show clipboard allows insertion and/or execution of events or live streams. CloudAir accepts MPEG-1/2/H.264, HDV and DV streams from any platform providing AVI, MPEG, WMV, Quick Time or MXF content. The system also supports files from third-party systems.

With the integration of the CloudAir, Tata Communications’ broadcast playout service offers an OPEX-based service that enables broadcasters to target areas like production of original content.