By Jean-Louis Lods, VP media and monetisation, Ateme.
Sports broadcasting has always moved in cycles: years of steady refinement punctuated by sudden leaps forward. But 2025 wasn’t a refinement year, it was a leap.
Under pressure from rising rights costs, globalised fan bases and rapidly shifting viewer expectations, broadcasters began rethinking not just their technologies, but the entire architecture of how live sports reach audiences.
Three trends defined the year: the rapid maturation of edge contribution and remote production workflows; the shift towards cloud-native orchestration and SaaS-driven scalability; and a decisive industry push to deliver global sports experiences more efficiently, supported by meaningful bitrate savings and the mainstreaming of next-generation codecs like AV1. And these forces aren’t slowing down. If anything, they set the stage for an even more transformative 2026.
Remote production grew up at the edge
Remote and distributed production were not new in 2025, but the confidence in them was. Major broadcasters and streamers embraced remote as the default for regional matches and global multi-venue tournaments alike.
A key driver was the growing adoption of edge-based contribution technologies, which offered reliable synchronisation, low latency and intelligent processing right at the venue.
Remote production was no longer about cost savings. In 2025, it became a creative unlock: more cameras, more angles, more specialty feeds and better support for immersive formats that depend on synchronised multi-camera inputs.
Cloud-native workflows become the new production logic
Cloud-native live workflows matured significantly in 2025. Broadcasters treated the cloud, often through SaaS orchestration platforms, as their elastic control centre, scaling up for peak events and scaling down just hours later.
What changed was not just the economics, but the creative opportunity. Cloud-first architectures enabled real-time data overlays, dynamic graphic layers, and early XR extensions, all assembled with the same tools teams use for traditional broadcasts.
This was the beginning of a new storytelling layer that will expand rapidly in 2026.
A breakthrough year for efficient global delivery
Distribution underwent an equally important transformation. In 2025, smarter compression strategies allowed broadcasters to deliver high-quality live sports with around 20% bitrate reductions, a material benefit at global scale.
By maintaining high quality at the source and then optimising each subsequent delivery step, broadcasters were able to reduce the bandwidth required for streaming without compromising video quality.
AV1 also reached maturity. Its efficiency, and its compatibility across devices, made it increasingly attractive for federations serving diverse global audiences.
These advances laid the foundation for delivering more demanding formats like 180º immersive replays or multi-angle XR feeds without overwhelming networks.
The 2026 outlook
- Every live event becomes a multi-experience event, now including true immersive and XR
The rise of immersive viewing is no longer speculative. In 2026, XR consumption will expand beyond experiments and into the mainstream, driven by devices like Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest.
But the real story, and the real challenge, is the encoding and delivery chain behind these experiences.
To deliver a convincing immersive sports moment, broadcasters need:
- HDR 1080p production to enhance and create a more lifelike experience
- High-resolution 180º video streams that feel natural and stable
- Multi-camera angle encoding so fans can switch perspectives fluidly
- Low-latency synchronisation across feeds so movements feel coherent
- High quality, efficient compression to keep immersive experiences from consuming unsustainable bandwidth
This is where the industry has quietly made huge progress. Encoding workflows originally developed for high-density contribution and advanced distribution are being adapted for XR formats. The same principles – efficient compression, low-latency delivery, multi-angle synchronisation and cloud scalability – now underpin immersive sports.
In 2026, we’ll see:
- Courtside 180º perspectives delivered live to headsets
- Multi-angle immersive ‘pods’ that let viewers pivot between tactical views
- Spatialised ‘director’s cuts’ for premium subscribers
- Hybrid streams that blend live video with real-time 3D data
These formats won’t replace traditional broadcasts, but they will become part of the multi-experience palette that major events are expected to offer.
- Flexible infrastructure will replace fixed infrastructure
Edge contribution, cloud-based orchestration and distributed production teams will interlock into a flexible, event-by-event workflow. The value will lie not in owning the biggest facility, but in building the most adaptable production fabric.
- Efficiency will become strategy, not just engineering
With global audiences expanding faster than budgets, efficiency becomes fundamental. Bitrate optimisation, AV1 adoption and intelligent distribution will affect not just engineering plans but business models, rights negotiations and sustainability reporting.
The conclusion
2025 wasn’t the year sports broadcasting changed, it was the year it embraced permanent change. Remote production matured, cloud-native orchestration became essential, efficiency became strategic, and immersive formats emerged as a credible part of the viewing mix.
In 2026, the industry must build on that momentum: more intelligence at the edge; more elasticity in the cloud; more efficient global delivery and, increasingly, more immersive, XR-ready encodes bringing fans closer to the action than ever before.
The future of sports content will be defined not by the loudest technology, but by the workflows that allow every fan, everywhere, to choose the experience that feels most like ‘being there’.
