deltatre designs official IAAF app
The World Athletics Championships culminate this weekend, with Usain Bolt on course to add two more gold medals to the one he won for the 100m earlier in the tournament. The event, from the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, is being covered on conventional broadcast television but organiser the IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation) is promoting mobile devices as the best way to keep up to date with the action all day through a new app.
The Official IAAF App for smartphones and tablets running Apple iOS and Android was designed by sports TV graphics specialist deltatre, which has worked with the governing body for the past 20 years. Competition for each day of the nine-day event begins at 9am with qualifying heats, building up to the medal finals before the 10pm finish.
The app delivers a variety of information, including the events schedule, real-time results, flash quotes, news, still images, video, competitor biographies and medal alerts. This data is put together by a team of 40 operators working in the Stadium, each covering different aspects of information gathering and graphics preparation.
Differing settings are available for users, ranging from the ‘IAAF Family’, including journalists, with access to live quotes from athletes soon after a race; to ‘Fanatic’ and ‘Casual’ as varying levels of interest among the public. “We are thrilled to have expanded our mobile services with the official IAAF app and have made the 14th edition of the Championships available to everyone in the world,” comments Giampiero Rinaudo, chief executive and co-founder of deltatre.
The company is also providing systems for TV results and graphics services, plus information for commentators.
Football coverage is a major user of deltatre technology and it has reached new agreements with two UK broadcasters for the sport. BBC Sport has renewed its service contract with deltatre for results information and graphics on live matches and studio programmes, with an extension to include World Cup Rowing, amateur boxing, the Cross Country Championships and the 2013 Rugby League World Cup.
Premier League Productions, part of IMG Productions, has now signed a deal with deltatre for the 2013-14. 2014-15 and 2015-16 Premier League seasons to cover graphic and data services on its international production and distribution. This will be based on deltatre’s Magma platform, which will run pre-prepared templates for information to be added from Premier League data partner Opta. Also part of the contract is the CIS (Commentator Information Service), a web-based tool providing commentators with live statistics on games.