Eyeballs: Zest Technologies on how SRT is helping to overcome the challenges of visibility in sport
By Lorna Garrett, Zest Technologies managing director.
There’s nothing like live sport. Despite the pandemic accelerating the change in viewing habits of audiences that are no longer tethered to a fixed broadcast schedule, sports fans still want to see sports teams play as it happens. Overhearing a spoiler about an as-yet-unseen episode of Stranger Things may make viewers grumpy, but sports fans get absolutely livid if they hear the outcome of a game before they’ve had a chance to watch it.
They want to cheer their teams on in real time. They want to feel that somehow their sheer desire to win is going to be transmitted to the players. They want to be part of the community of fans and the excitement of an outcome no one knows for certain.
Perhaps not surprisingly, during the pandemic people watched more sports. According to Altman Solon’s 2022 Global Sports Survey, 57% of respondents said they were watching more sport compared to 2020. The most watched sports were football (42% – no surprise there), tennis (9%), cricket (8%) and rugby (7%). So, what is covered by the other 34%? That’s no small sum to go unacknowledged.
Exciting changes
In the UK this past summer, it was remarkable to watch the nation rise up to cheer on the Lionesses as they played Germany in the UEFA Cup. Not only did it become the most watched woman’s football match in history, but at the time it was the most watched TV event of 2022. In the UK, 17.4 million viewers tuned in, with another 5.9 million watching online according to BBC Sport, while in Germany, TV viewership peaked at 22 million, the European Broadcasting Union said.
This is an exciting change for the sports industry. While increased investment and support in women’s sports has helped to build awareness in players and clubs, nothing can beat the awareness building that comes when sports are shown on TV and digitally. And this goes beyond women’s sports.
Many sports face a challenge of visibility, receiving little regular coverage despite being played by millions around the world (think hockey) or having millions of viewers during events such as the Olympics. There is a strong link between increased exposure, viewer interest and broadcast revenues.
Recently, the coverage of non-traditional sports has seen an uptake. It has come about in large part due to the increasing use of the public internet as a transmission path for video streaming. The opensource secure reliable transport (SRT) video protocol is providing sports broadcasters with an economically and technically viable means of sharing new sports options. Until recently, transmitting to a smaller audience just wasn’t manageable financially, with not enough revenue to cover costs. And, while transporting video over the Internet was possible and cheaper than other means, networks are unpredictable.
Bringing opportunities
SRT has changed all this, bringing opportunities where there were once barriers. By adapting to real time obstacles, such as packet loss and bandwidth fluctuations, SRT is optimising video transport over the public internet; it is no longer seen as a back up solution.
The pandemic saw broadcasters scrambling at first. Staff couldn’t travel or even work in traditional centralised studios. Needed tech was limited. SRT was not only a readily available solution, but it also brought and continues to bring the added benefits of increased efficiency.
With broadband available everywhere and SRT allowing for the needed reliability, staff and talent can be based anywhere in the world and broadcasters can adapt more easily to the situations in which they find themselves. The remote production opportunities that have emerged are not simply here to stay, they have become a de rigueur part of video workflows and how the industry does business successfully.
As we move into 2023, more broadcasters will continue to adopt SRT. According to Haivision, 63% of broadcasters already have [Broadcast IP Transformation Report 2022]. This movement will certainly be helped along by those technology innovators who are continuing to find ways to reduce broadcast latency and improve security, particularly when transporting video over long distances globally.
SRT uptake is also being helped along by the use of SRT gateways, either on-premises or cloud-based, giving broadcasters a more flexible way of meeting specific streaming and protocol requirements. For example, a gateway lets you securely share live video outside of firewalls, with minimal IT intervention. It can also change stream protocols so that the live video stream can be received as an SRT input and then converted to RTMP for onward delivery to social media platforms. It offers a flexible means of distributing content to different end users, such as editors or producers, who can view content on their phones via an app. It can also be delivered to an SRT set top box; the delay might be a bit longer, but you can then take HDMI output up onto a large screen, which again can be used for monitoring.
As a member of the sports broadcasting industry providing technical solutions, I’m excited for what 2023 will bring in terms of further SRT innovation and opportunity. But as a sports viewer, I admit I am even more excited. The chance to see the visibility raised of a host of rarely broadcasted sporting events, particularly women’s sport, is a change for the better.
As the Lionesses have shown us, sometimes we simply need the chance to watch a sport and then it will find its audience.