By Jesse Foster, director of strategic accounts and products, MultiDyne.

The sports broadcasting world saw a lot of change in 2025. For years, people talked about workflows evolving slowly, but this past year didn’t feel slow at all, it felt like everything jumped forward at once. You could see it across pitches, courts, racetracks, and especially behind the scenes, where engineers were suddenly dealing with new formats and production models at the same time.

Fans now expect viewing experiences that feel more personal and almost hands-on. Broadcasters want to do more with smaller teams, and the gear at the edge of live capture – cameras, fibre paths, gateways – is finally maturing enough to keep up. Looking ahead to 2026, the push towards immersive content and cleaner, more efficient REMI workflows isn’t going anywhere and in fact, it’s picking up speed.

Immersive capture is becoming more common

One development in 2025 was the move towards immersive image capture. For a while, the industry experimented with cinematic looks and shallow-focus shots, but this year took things a little further. Broadcasters and platforms actively tested stereoscopic rigs, dual-sensor systems, and even mobile devices adapted for professional workflows. It wasn’t unusual to see an AR/VR-ready dual-eye camera sitting right next to a standard broadcast setup. Even the mobile-device trials showed that ‘non-traditional’ cameras are becoming real tools in multi-cam production.

A lot of this was driven by major platforms looking to bring fans closer to the action with the use of AR/VR headsets, for example. European football led a lot of the testing, but it wasn’t limited to Europe. Large immersive environments, like dome theatres, also played a role. They introduce a new revenue model for leagues and rights holders by offering premium group viewing experiences. At the same time, broadcast pipelines continued adapting to HDR, HFR, 4K, 8K, and other formats needed to feed these environments. The main point here is that immersive isn’t really a side experiment anymore. It’s becoming part of long-term planning.

REMI and hybrid IP are the backbone

While immersive got a lot of attention, it was really the growth of hybrid IP workflows and REMI production that made much of it possible. Broadcasters continued to lean on at-home models in 2025, sending small teams and IP-ready gear onsite while centralising most of the work. It’s not just about saving on travel anymore either; it’s about consistency, accessing more talent and scaling quickly when needed.

Inside venues, SDI and IP now co-exist in a way that feels more natural than experimental. Modern productions need more data per camera, especially when juggling different resolutions or immersive formats. That means equipment has to move high-bandwidth signals without making the workflow more complicated. Depending on the infrastructure, that could involve uncompressed ST 2110 or more bandwidth-friendly options like JPEG-XS, SRT, or NDI. Accurate timing (usually through PTP) has become a basic requirement as these signals travel long distances or get pushed into the cloud. Broadcasters want gear that handles hybrid workflows without lots of converters or extra hardware.

Don’t forget about fibre

One issue that didn’t get a lot of headlines in 2025 was fibre scarcity in major venues. As productions added more camera positions and needed more bandwidth at each location, teams had to rethink how they used their existing fibre.

With this, multi-signal transport became more important, especially when you need to move several 10G or 25G feeds over a single optical pair. Immersive rigs only add more pressure and for many engineers, squeezing the most out of existing fibre became just as crucial as upgrading the rest of the workflow.

What to expect in 2026

Two trends seem almost certain to grow next year. First, immersive sports will move from testing phases to real offerings. More broadcasters and streamers will experiment with fully immersive viewing options for certain leagues or matches. We’ll see things like AR/VR packages, dome-venue showings, and personalised angles drive up the demand for flexible capture tools, high-bandwidth transport, and hybrid production setups.

Secondly, REMI will continue to grow into a tighter cloud-to-venue workflow. In 2026, we can expect more automation, more cloud-native processing, and equipment that can encapsulate, compress, transport and sync video at the edge without a pile of extra boxes. We also think that SDI at the camera and IP to the cloud will remain the dominant hybrid approach.

At the centre of all this is how fans change their viewing behaviour. They want more control over how they experience content (whether it’s through watching TV, on their iPad, or on their phone). For broadcasters, catering to this means investing in technology with better capture and more flexible infrastructure.

The real breakthrough in 2025 wasn’t any single device or technology. It was the realisation that sports broadcasting is no longer just about showing the game, it’s about getting viewers as close as possible to feeling like they’re there.