Spotlight on the sports: Production trends that shaped 2024, according to AJA
By Abe Abt, senior product consultant at AJA.
During this year’s summer of sport, fans around the world were glued to their screens as they tuned into incredible broadcast and live stream coverage of several high-profile sporting events. Broadcasters and production teams spared no expense, pulling out all the stops while also working to streamline operations behind the scenes. As a result, sports fans got more access to ultra-high definition, cinematic visuals, multi-channel streams, and immersive experiences than ever; a testament to the rapid maturation of the tools quietly powering live sports production. While 4K HDR production, streaming, IP, and REMI workflow advancements helped make these experiences possible, they also provide insight into what to expect of the market in 2025.
4K HDR production workflows mature
In 2024, it became clear that 4K HDR live sports production demand is outpacing that of HD SDR in many parts of the world. Modern sports fans want to experience the grit and the glory of every game, as if they were physically in the stadium or arena, and 4K HDR production delivers on that front. Even if viewers watch the game in HD SDR, they’ll still get a higher quality picture when 4K HDR is the production standard. To accommodate this demand, we saw more broadcasters and production teams couple 4K HDR production with advanced colour and image processing technology to deliver blockbuster calibre sports broadcasts and streams.
As they did, challenges emerged. Most workflows combine a range of SDR and HDR sources, which can be tough to unify visually in the end result. Technology developers, however, rose to the occasion, rolling out and improving real-time HDR and colour conversion and processing tools throughout the year that made it easier to blend SDR and HDR footage, unbeknown to fans. These evolutions helped professionals better manage different colour spaces and dynamic lighting conditions, allowing them to adjust them on demand, and narrowed the divide between live and post-produced content. The fact that these high-quality, immersive viewing experiences are now a new norm is certainly something for fans to get excited about, and we can’t wait to see how production teams continue to push the envelope in 2025.
Multi-channel streaming possibilities multiply
Fans used to watch their favourite players, teams, and matches linearly, but in today’s digital era, that’s no longer sufficient; they want to be able to view different aspects of a match or multiple matches on their phones, tablets, and social media sites. Enter multi-channel streaming, through which broadcasters simultaneously produce multiple sports streams for a range of platforms, from YouTube to Facebook Live and other direct-to-consumer streaming apps.
In the past few years, many sports broadcasters have even put fans in the director’s seat when it comes to their viewing experiences. Some allow fans to select the view of the pitch they want to see, or which racer live cam feed they’d like to follow during a motorsports broadcast. Using an interactive menu, they can then toggle between those feeds and the main broadcast feed, or even another live commentary feed.
The streaming and IT infrastructure equipment needed to support these workflows has become increasingly accessible in the past few years, prompting even more niche sports to adopt these exciting new technologies. As they have, they’ve been able to expand their fanbase and overall viewership. It seems it will be a trend with staying power, and one that will continue to unlock new fan engagement opportunities in the coming year.
Confidence in the future of IP workflows grows
2024 may just go down as the year of SMPTE ST 2110. Enabling sports broadcasters to move uncompressed video, audio, and metadata over dedicated IP networks with low latency, the set of IP standards drew new attention from broadcasters and production facilities alike in 2024. More broadcasters and production teams embraced the technology, often in an IP sandbox, or hybrid SDI/IP environment, to seamlessly deliver uncompressed 4K/UltraHD HDR video across productions.
The trend was largely driven by a reduction in the cost of 25Gb SMPTE ST 2110 network switches, once perceived as a luxury reserved for greenfield and big budget projects, and the release of new SMPTE ST 2110 technologies bridging workflow gaps. Between these developments, many found the approach within reach. What this means for 2025 is up for speculation, but it’s a safe bet to assume that more experimentation with SMPTE 2110 in a hybrid environment will continue next year. As it does, going backward doesn’t seem likely.
REMI advances
This year, demand for the remote integration model (REMI) showed no signs of slowing in live sports production, and we expect it to remain strong in 2025. These workflows are transforming the craft as we’ve come to know it. By using IP networks to transmit live video and audio to centralised production hubs, productions can reduce their OB truck and team travel costs and equipment footprint without sacrificing production quality.
Sports production teams can achieve the same calibre of live production as they would on site, but with much less gear and more remote staff, so they can select the best team members for each job. With live REMI feeds often distributed to a remote production centre, teams can also handle more events simultaneously, ensuring fans never miss out; it becomes much easier to produce a football match in one arena, while producing a cricket game from another at the same time.
REMI workflows have also made high-quality production more accessible to smaller market sports organisations, since they no longer have to have a full production team and/or a broadcast truck on site for every event. So far, the trend has really changed the game for how sports are broadcast and produced, and we can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.
While no one knows definitively what’s on the horizon for sports production, we expect all these trends to continue evolving, with a few surprises sprinkled into the mix. With this in mind, there’s certainly a lot for sports fans, broadcasters, and production teams to get excited about as 2025 gets underway.