IBC chair Stephen Nuttall on innovation in sport and the importance of reinvention
During last year’s IBC, newly appointed chair of IBC’s Partnership Board Stephen Nuttall was in Barcelona overseeing coverage of the 37th edition of the America’s Cup.
As head of television, Nuttall led a team that was tasked with creating the highest possible quality coverage that was open and accessible to an audience of new viewers while also “delighting and surprising” the most hardened of sailing fans.
He points to aspects of the production such as the use of AI to track boats and for keying to illustrate through new graphics the wind and sailing conditions, and capturing content in 4K HDR in an entirely wireless environment as examples of how last year’s America’s Cup “pushed the limits of what was possible, not just for live production but also for content to be used in other contexts such as documentaries”.
“One of the ways for a show like IBC to stay relevant is through innovation, and sport is a big enabler of innovation”
“We had people who had been working on the America’s Cup since the last century, along with people for whom it was the first America’s Cup, and that enabled us to create the best possible product. And in some ways, I think IBC does the same – it’s that same mixture of people who’ve been going to IBC since it was in Brighton, plus some people who are going to IBC for the first time ever.”
And sport, he says, was a central theme of last year’s IBC, with the Accelerator programme including projects on ultra-low latency sports streaming and personalisation using AI – innovations that align with the needs of sports broadcasters and audiences alike.
“The Accelerator programme has emerged as one of the jewels in the crown, because it’s one of the places where people can showcase innovation at scale,” he says. Last year’s IBC Innovation Awards were also dominated by sport, with four of the five winners recognised for work relating to sports coverage including Paris 2024 projects, the NHL and LaLiga. “One of the ways for a show like IBC to stay relevant is through innovation, and sport is a big enabler of innovation.”
Nuttall, who has replaced Tim Richards, was appointed chair of IBC’s Partnership Board last week. And the reason the position appealed to him, he says, was down to IBC’s role in the industry. “IBC is a place where the whole industry comes together, and that appeals to all genres of content, all types of broadcast, from YouTube creators to the biggest multinational conglomerates. It’s a place where equipment providers and the rest all come together. And that community spirit was something that attracted me to IBC.
“The media industry has been transformed by technological change over the course of my career, and it keeps on changing. And somewhere that brings the whole industry together and exhibits the very best of technological change and what it can do for content creators and for audiences is an exciting thing to be involved with.”
Nuttall’s non-exec role is to provide a link between the IBC board (comprised of representatives from shareholders IABM, IEEE, IET, RTS, SCTE and SMPTE) and the executive team.
“There’s a fantastic management team that has been in place for many years with lots of experience of how to run a good event. I did a fair amount of research and talked to exhibitors and attendees ahead of the interview process for the appointment, and one of the things that particularly struck me was the extent to which IBC is in people’s diaries, year in, year out, and how it continues to drive value for attendees.
Stephen Nuttall at the 37th America’s Cup
“The challenge for any trade show is to continue to remain relevant. There’s no room for anybody in the media industry to rest on their laurels, and IBC is absolutely not doing that…I think the show’s in really rude health, but it’s important to be good at reinventing yourself. If I think back to my time at organisations like Sky, Google and YouTube – jobs that I had earlier in my career – they are organisations that are really good at reinventing themselves, day by day and year by year. And that is what good organisations do.
“And if you look even now, well ahead of the show in September, there’s a massive amount of activity underway – the Accelerator Kickstart Day takes place on 12 February, and the deadline for submitting a Technical Paper synopsis is 7 February, so to anyone looking to submit one, now’s a good time to get that finished. It should be a really exciting Conference in September and I’m really looking forward to my role as chair and doing as good a job as Tim Richards did.”