By Henry Goodman, Calrec, director of product management.

When it comes to live sports, in 2025 it’s broadcast technology that’s levelling the playing field.

A 2025 study from Performance Research and Full Circle Research reported that nine in 10 sports fans are tuning into at least one streaming service to watch live games. More consumers now watch live sports content on digital streaming channels than over the air (OTA) channels, and the streamers are looking to dig in even deeper. Another 2025 study, this one by Neilsen’s entertainment and content metadata arm Gracenote, reported the likes of Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount+ had all increased their live sports content in the last quarter of 2024.

Meanwhile, specialist over the top (OTT) streaming companies like DAZN, Dyn Media, FloSports and Fubo are concentrating on more niche content where viewers can enjoy live coverage of powerboat racing, chess, and even cheerleading tournaments, providing fans with live and behind the scenes content that they can’t get elsewhere.

The reason is a simple one; live sports is – and always has been – a huge driver of user growth and retention for streaming services. Those retention levels are why the major sports networks are playing the streamers at their own game, producing direct to consumer (DTC) content that complements their own OTA programming to drive more engagement and retain more eyeballs.

This is all great news for the fans who not only have more choice but have deeper access to the sports they are passionate about, as content providers at all levels strive to deliver more personalised and engaging coverage in an increasingly competitive market. In short, everyone is stepping up their game in a bid to reinvent themselves and ramp up deliverables.

The challenge for technology vendors like Calrec is to empower content providers at every level to deliver all these extra sports broadcasts. More than any time before, we really are all in it together.

Blending live sports production

The way broadcast technology is developing is bringing about a much more collaborative and location-independent future for live sports production; one where technology and creativity are increasingly inseparable. The widespread acceptance of remote and distributed workflows is enabling broadcasters to expand and adapt their existing production facilities to meet the scale of any project with any number of hybrid production workflows. The ability to blend on-premise infrastructure with remote operations has become an essential way for modern sports broadcasters to generate more content, where thousands of audio channels can be orchestrated across multiple DSP environments, and workflows can be dynamically adapted to meet production needs no matter where the action is.

This combination has redefined not only what the production chain looks like, but what it’s capable of, and the business case for these flexible infrastructures is very clear.

While it unlocks more content for more people, it also enables those OTT broadcasters specialising in niche sports to compete on an equal footing to the major sports broadcasters in terms of quality, utilising resources that are not geographically tied to any location; with hybrid workflows, there’s no reason why niche can’t be premium too.

Meanwhile, the reverse is also true. Hybrid workflows are making premium sports content much more cost-effective, and it’s why service providers at the highest levels have launched new broadcast trucks that play to these strengths throughout 2025.

Next generation OB facilities

Hybrid trucks and Remote Operation Centres (ROCs) are carving a new era for outside broadcast operations creating flexible paradigms where IP cores can sit onsite at a venue, on the edge, or in the cloud, and control surfaces can exist anywhere. By tapping into a truck’s full potential from a remote location, remote units are no longer solely responsible for the success or failure of a live broadcast, and they don’t need to be fully staffed. They’re simply an additional resource on a broadcaster’s extended network.

Building on this expanded, more flexible model of live production, Gravity Media’s new Nova 60 series OB truck has been delivering world class cricket coverage all summer. Covering 93 matches and 17 venues, it’s one of a new generation of Gravity Media’s outside broadcast units using Calrec True Control 2.0 technology to integrate with any of the company’s nine dedicated sound control rooms at its White City production centre in London.

Elsewhere, NEP UK’s new NEO hybrid outside broadcast trailer has also relied on remote workflows to minimise production costs while maintaining the same high broadcast standards for Sky Sports’ EFL production coverage. Aiming to reduce the number of vehicles NEP sends to site and designed around headless Calrec DSP cores and an onboard compact Type R mixing panel for full disaster recovery, the lightweight mobile unit has been covering up to three EFL matches every single week and is remotely controlled in Sky’s production hub in Osterley.

While trucks like these are delivering full-scale live content week in, week out, they are the tip of the iceberg. This new breed of remote-friendly trucks can work autonomously or be completely remote-controlled, and as hybrid infrastructures continue to evolve, the next stage of broadcast innovation is unfolding in pure software environments.

And although a full-scale onboarding of virtual resources might still be at the early adopter phase for many broadcasters, augmenting an already hybrid setup to gain additional capacity and flexibility with a combination of hardware, software and virtual resources is a very attractive proposition.

All this underscores the growing efficiency of modern broadcast workflows and the ability to define production resources on a job-by-job basis makes broadcasters much more resilient to meet rising economic pressures.

As we go into 2026, the priority for broadcasters will increasingly be about selecting the right deployment models to align with the commercial realities of each production. In much the same way that things have changed for the viewer, the production chain too is no longer linear. And it’s these flexible production ecosystems that hold the most value, both for broadcasters and for fans at home, whether they are tuned into the FA Cup or the NCA All-Star Nationals Cheerleading final.