Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzz term for sports broadcasting in 2025, and SVG Europe Audio is set to welcome a discussion on the technology at this year’s Sports Audio Summit.
Being held on Wednesday 19 November at Kings Place, Kings Cross, London with sponsorship from Audio-Technica, ‘Deep Thought: Exploring the strategic implications of AI in live sports production sound’ is taking a close up look at this disruptive area.
Chaired by SVG Europe Audio’s Roger Charlesworth, the panel – Nuno Duarte, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) sound design and audio manager, Professor Felix Krückels from the University of Darmstadt and Rob Oldfield, Salsa Sound CEO and co-founder – will take a deep dive into the strategic implications of AI for audio in live sports production.
From autonomous and assisted mixing, through to AI-enabled QC for multiple concurrent programme streams, our panel will take a closer look at where AI can be leveraged going forward, and will examine the technical, creative, and commercial considerations driving broader adoption of AI-powered workflows.
Also, Gabriel Solsona Sagrado, RTVE network specialist, is set to distil field-proven practices at RTVE to align multi-microphone arrays in sports to a common reference, preventing comb-filtering, preserving transients, and improving downmix and Atmos translation.
Additionally, in ‘Another brick in the wall: Students in audio’, we will hear from Felix Krückels, Professor at the University of Darmstadt, recent graduate Robyn Filman, Ren Neave, a University of Salford undergraduate, and Ethan Grimwood, a sound assistant at Cloudbass. The panel will explore how the new generation of audio engineers and guarantees that are out there are looking at audio in live sports production, from what interests them, to what they hope to gain from a career in this area.
The keynote – ‘Powder and ice: Looking ahead to the sound of Milano Cortina’ – will see Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) sound design and audio manager, Nuno Duarte and Karl Malone, NBC Sports and Olympics senior director of audio engineering, each present on their audio plans for the Winter Olympics, before sitting down with independent consultant, Roger Charlesworth for a discussion on the challenges they are set to face.
We will also hear from Alex Rybalko, Riot Games senior manager of broadcast engineering, in ‘Follow the sun: Riot Games on its evolution of esports audio’. Rybalko will talk about how the esports pioneer’s new Project Stryker remote broadcast centre (RBC) in Seattle, US – which joins the first RBC in Dublin, Ireland – is revolutionising esports audio production.
In ‘Production virtualisation for audio in outside broadcast’ we will hear from Alex Judd, Sky Sports technical specialist, alongside Pam Barnes, Cloudbass’ head of audio, talking about the audio on new hybrid production models and designing flexible trucks for the broadcaster’s Premier League contract.
There will be plenty of time for networking at the Sports Audio Summit, and all are welcome.
