Sanoma Media invests in RT Software’s Tactic for pesäpallo coverage

RT Software’s Tactic telestrator is now analysing the action of Finland’s national sport, pesäpallo. RT Software worked with Grassmark to deliver this project for Sanoma Media, Finland’s leading broadcaster and media business.

Pesäpallo is similar to baseball, and it is hugely popular in Finland where everyone learns to play the game as a child.

Antti Simola, Grassmark technical manager, explained: “We have worked with Sanoma Media since 2018 and have a good working relationship with them. When they came to us with their plans for a new studio to broadcast pesäpallo we knew we needed to assess the market to see what sports analysis tools were available to provide the best insights to the audience at home.

“Although everyone knows pesäpallo from their school days, the professional game has lots of tactical aspects that make the game challenging to win and addictive to watch. We really wanted to find a graphics tool that would help everyone understand the details of how the teams play the game tactically.

“We compared features of different products and decided Tactic offered the ease of use we were looking for. The price point was also attractive when compared to some other products we assessed. We had great support from RT Software to get a demo up and running before we made a final decision. When we found a problem, they were really helpful and fixed it for us, so the whole experience has been very positive.

“Training the operators was easy too. Some of our operators did not have very long before we used their sequences on air, but they took to it very well.”

Mike Fredriksen, commercial director, RT Software, commented: “It’s great to see Tactic being used to support the national game of Finland. Tactic is a great fit for Sanoma Media’s objective of explaining the game to viewers at home, it’s exactly why we designed the product the way we did.

“It’s also a great endorsement of the product that it has worked so well for a sport we were not familiar with. We often talk about football when it comes to Tactic, but the product is really flexible and has always been designed to work with all sports. It means that the operator training is not wasted if Sanoma Media or Grassmark choose to move to other sports in the future.”

Antti added: “The 2023 season has just finished and we have used Tactic every week since the season started in April. Having completed a whole season, we are confident that the viewers at home like the results, so we look forward to using Tactic more in the future.

“As winter approaches our studio productions switch to volleyball, floorball and basketball, so we plan to continue enhancing our coverage of these sports by using Tactic.”

Fredriksen said: “I’ve seen the finished results of Tactic used on air and the new studio set looks great. It’s been a great pleasure for us to work with Grassmark and we hope we can expand our work with them as they continue to work with Sanoma Media.”