By Jimbo Haneklau, vice president of sales, sports and live events, Imagine Communications.

In today’s sports venues, there are two networks at play — the main IT network and a separate network behind the scenes that handles broadcast operations. Integrating the two was once a major hurdle to the widespread adoption of SMPTE ST 2110 in stadiums and arenas. However, over the past several years — as ST 2110 has become more mainstream — the divide between IT and broadcast has narrowed significantly.

In its place is a growing demand for visibility across both environments, with broadcasters expected to deliver deeper insights into their infrastructure to drive efficiency, ensure reliability and provide both production and IT teams with the confidence that systems are performing optimally. Today, monitoring plays a critical role in meeting this demand; and on game day, visibility often starts at the multiviewer wall.

Reading the field

In live sports production, broadcasters need to know which feeds are live, which are down, and that audio and video signals are reaching the right destinations. That level of awareness requires a centralised view of the entire system. As large venue builds have grown more complex, production crews are increasingly looking for single, vendor-agnostic monitoring platforms that consolidate all operational data.

It’s not just about convenience — it’s about confidence. A unified monitoring environment allows teams to oversee every feed, verify performance, and anticipate issues before they affect the broadcast. That same expectation is now extending to the IT departments managing the venue’s wider network, who want access to the same analytics and visibility tools the production side relies on.

Security is also becoming a key part of this discussion. Monitoring isn’t only about keeping feeds live — it’s about protecting the entire operation. If an HVAC unit fails and a rack room starts to overheat, systems must automatically power down to prevent equipment damage. In today’s climate, where data security is paramount, these responsibilities increasingly fall to broadcast teams as well. The result is a dual focus on proactive monitoring to detect issues early along with preventative monitoring to reduce operational risk.

With broadcast networks in sports venues now running on IP infrastructure, the ability to collect and act on real-time data has never been greater — and broadcasters are embracing the mindset that if they can monitor something, they should. From there, the focus shifts to how teams visualise that insight in real time.

Multiviewers at the centre

In any live production environment, the multiviewer is the heartbeat of the operation. When a broadcaster is calling a game or building a live show, the multiviewer wall in the control room is where everything converges — every camera angle, every audio and video feed. It’s the visual hub that enables real-time awareness and split-second decisions about what goes to air.

Because multiviewers already process massive amounts of data — pulling in feeds, displaying signal types, and tracking where those signals are routed — they naturally align with monitoring. The information that drives multiviewer walls is the same data that monitoring systems rely on to verify system health and performance. So, as technology evolves, multiviewers are becoming part of a unified monitoring ecosystem, transforming from simple display tools into intelligent gateways for operational awareness across the entire infrastructure.

And as computing demands grow, broadcasters have been turning to more powerful, software-defined multiviewer solutions that run on COTS hardware. This approach lets them define software capabilities independently and source hardware that fits their specific operational needs. At the same time, they’re demanding tighter integration between multiviewers and advanced monitoring tools to enable real-time data correlation and instant visibility across live operations.  Tomorrow’s multiviewer isn’t a wall — it’s a service. A service that delivers personalised, contextualised and data-rich views to operators anywhere in the world.

Next season’s game plan

Looking to 2026 and beyond, data-rich visualisation will be essential in live sports production. Broadcasters require an ever-increasing amount of contextual information displayed directly on their multiviewer PIPs — not just video, but signal health, metadata and performance indicators that guide real-time decisions.

Alongside visualisation, flexibility will also be key. For example, a venue might host a football match one night and a concert the next day. The production team needs the ability to reconfigure layouts and orchestrate new multiviewer walls quickly based on the programme type. That adaptability, supported by intuitive, template-based tools, is becoming critical as productions grow more dynamic and as new directors and operators rotate through control rooms more frequently.

Because every production team works differently, ease of use will continue to define the user experience. The more the industry can empower broadcasters with customisable, intuitive systems that combine power with simplicity, the better equipped they’ll be to deliver consistent, high-quality broadcasts. And as systems become easier to use, the next challenge is harnessing the growing volume of operational data effectively. More information than ever before is being gathered from across the broadcast chain, and the next step is learning how to use that data proactively. That’s where AI comes in — applying intelligent analytics to detect trends, highlight anomalies, and support faster, more informed decisions.

AI’s role will continue to expand as it becomes capable of analysing system performance in real time, identifying issues before they disrupt operations. In Imagine’s solutions and across the industry, AI will help assess hardware and software health during runtime, automatically flagging performance degradation or potential failures before they occur.

Beyond predictive maintenance, it can also protect critical systems — for example, recognising when a server is overheating, isolating the issue and shutting it down to prevent damage. As monitoring and multiviewer tools evolve, AI will serve as the connective layer, transforming raw data into proactive issue resolution, intelligent device protection and smarter feed management.