Tata Communications on the crucial role of online experiences and how it will deliver for World Athletics

With the dust now settled on the fantastic spectacle that was the Paris Olympics it’s tempting to think that’s it for another four years for la crème de la crème of sport, especially when it comes to athletics, the cordon bleu event of any Olympiad. Yet even for the likes of gold media winners like Keely Hodgkinson, Noah Lyles, Letsile Tebogo and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the show must go on.  And the elite level athletics show, as governed by World Athletics, will be shown by Tata Communications.

World Athletics – the world governing authority for its sport -says it has a fundamental vision to use the power and accessibility of athletics and its athletes to create a healthier and fitter world. Its core mission is to work with 214 national athletics federations to develop the sport around the globe, and with local organising committees to stage the biggest international athletics events. Broadcasters are among its key stakeholders.

The association’s slate for 2025 includes including the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing in March; World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou in May; the World Athletics Road Running Championships in San Diego in September; and the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, the association’s flagship biannual event.

The 2025 edition – taking place in Tokyo from 13-21 September – is excepted to see more than 2000 athletes from some 200 countries take part in one of the world’s biggest sporting events with the Japanese capital hosting the event for the first time since 1991 and for the second time ever. World Athletics says that it is committed to increasing the reach of the sport across the world and at the heart of this strategy is the broadcast of the World Athletics Championships which regularly draws a global viewing audience of one billion people.

Looking to facilitate this ideal, World Athletics signed in June 2024 a five-year global host broadcasting services deal with Tata Communications covering World Athletics Series events. From 2025, Tata Communications will be regarded as a key strategic supplier for World Athletics, with a view to elevating innovation and audience engagement to what are described as “new heights”.

As it announced the deal, World Athletics said that it was looking forward to working closely with Tata Communications to “leverage the power of their enhanced technology platform “to bring a superior broadcast experience for athletics fans around the world.”

For its part, and in recognition of its responsibilities as the host broadcaster of World Athletics Series events, Tata Communications says that will take on what it regards as a “pivotal” role, crafting immersive coverage, and delivering customised, “world-class” live content across continents.

As it looked to deliver on such premises, Tata Communications said that it works from a principal that online digital experiences play an increasingly crucial role in the long-term success of content delivery but that providers face many challenges when creating memorable digital experiences. Slow and unreliable content delivery, an ever-increasing number of cybersecurity threats, and demand spikes can get in the way of ensuring a smooth digital journey.

Fundamentally, Tata Communications was confident that it could enable broadcasters to elevate the viewer experience and create a connected fan base through localised regional feeds, with its global media platform being able to provide reliable end-to-end support for the coverage demands of the sport’s international events, offering a “superior” broadcast experience for fans globally, and specifically for its domestic market.

To alleviate such concerns, Tata Communications offers a video delivery platform supported by a content delivery network (CDN) architecture with 28 super nodes on the back of a Tier-1 ISP network. The CDN Edge is said to be within 20ms for more than 80% of India’s population; within 30ms for any user in North America and Europe; within 40ms for users in Asia. In addition, the company believes its platform can enable efficient delivery of live and video on demand (VOD) content with quick start-up and zero buffering. The platform also provides capabilities to support transcoding, transmuxing, storage and video distribution.

Outlining what specific type of the transmission service is being deployed for World Athletics, Tata Communications said: “We use internet with local breakouts for lowest latency routing on international long distance. [The set-up] It’s deployed at the track which are typically in city centres in each race location and at production centre in London. We are using our global edge compute and network connectivity to provide a low latency and highly reliable connection for the 300+ camera feeds back to the production facilities.”

As it was delivering its service, Tata Communications stressed that it shares World Athletics’ vision to increase the reach of the sport across the world and that over the course of its contract it would support strategic initiatives including a focused emphasis on growing the sport within the huge Tata Communications domestic territory of India. It said it would also work with World Athletics to use the power of technology to enhance and progress World Athletics’ sustainability efforts, which is core to its future strategy.

“It is an exciting time of new content and changing viewer demands. Tata Communications is ideally placed as a global connectivity provider to help World Athletics meet its ambition of bringing athletics and inspirational stories to fans around the world,” said Dhaval Ponda, global head of media & entertainment business, Tata Communications. “We offer the global footprint and scalable, resilient solutions necessary to carry these stories from arenas directly to viewers, whether from the UK, Tokyo, USA or beyond. As we bring the vibrancy of global athleticism to screens, I’m eager to see those stories inspire the next generation of Indian sporting excellence.”