Tech focus: Normalising top tier sports production in the cloud

The cloud has enabled sports productions to access content and collaborate with partners in more creative and efficient ways. Not many years ago, fully cloud-based production was not considered a serious candidate for high-end sports production, but now there are few areas of the workflow that the cloud doesn’t touch. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that video over IP itself was viewed with scepticism.

Canada-based Haivision has spent two decades working with major sports broadcasters. The company’s Makito video encoders are designed for mission-critical live broadcast contribution and have been used in thousands of sports broadcasts around the world to encode video for use across IP networks. Along with its encoders, Haivision developed the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol which enables secure, high-quality, low-latency video delivery across the public internet.

The SRT protocol is open-source and has become an essential part of the cloud broadcast toolkit. Its promise of high quality and low latency has made it a favourite of top-tier broadcasters, but now SRT is even employed by small broadcasters and streamers who like it for its interoperability and advanced error correction. Over 500 vendors have adopted SRT making, in some ways, a de facto industry standard.

For sports broadcasters, SRT made it realistic to use the public internet in place of satellite or fibre for broadcast contribution, which resulted in big savings, but also opened the door for what would become fully cloud-based workflows.

“Broadcasters started seeing that it really worked and was much more efficient and cost-effective – and that you didn’t need to bring as much equipment along,” says Mark Horchler, Haivision marketing director, products and solutions. “Now it’s at the point where people assume you’re going to use the internet for at least part of your content contribution.”

Haivision publishes an annual Broadcast Transformation Report, the latest of which was published in spring of 2024, based on responses from more than 800 broadcast and media professionals. This fifth annual report found that 84% of broadcasters are using cloud-based technology production in the cloud, but only 4% are using cloud exclusively. These numbers seem to underline the principle that cloud is not a place of residence for broadcasters, it’s a tool to applied to certain points of the workflow where and when it makes sense to do so.

What it excels at is joining together distributed resources. Taking on-premises processes and putting them in the cloud can have certain benefits, but where cloud shines is in its ability to join up processes across multiple premises into one unified whole.

“We have cloud products that broadcasters can use to allow other companies or affiliates to share content through the cloud,” says Horchler. “The production – or part of it – might still happen on prem, but the cloud can be used as a gateway between the content from the field and the producers and anyone else who needs access to that content.”

Remote production

Lower latency and increasingly sophisticated cloud tools have enabled remote production – aka REMI (Remote Integration Model) – to go from an occasional extra to a regular feature of sports broadcast, and it is this remote concept that often first comes to mind when we think about production in the cloud. But Horchler notes that one of the most important aspects of cloud production is how it facilitates partnerships among multiple companies.

“It’s allowing broadcasters to work with other companies, with other broadcast services, partners and rights holders around the world. It allows global collaboration, not just with individuals who are working remotely, but with other companies involved in the broadcast production.”

The first cloud-based Olympics

OBS Cloud was launched back in 2018 as a collaboration between Olympic Broadcasting Services and Alibaba Cloud. The 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games saw the debut of OBS Cloud 3.0 which provided the technology backbone for what was promoted as the first cloud-based Olympic Games.

At the Paris Games, live cloud became the main method of remote distribution to media rights holders for the first time, replacing satellite, and two thirds of remote services booked by media companies covering the Games used OBS Live Cloud. OBS’ content delivery platform Content+, fully hosted on Alibaba Cloud, allowed rights holders to download highlights from any location in the world in three different resolutions, enabling efficient distribution to linear, digital or social channels.

“Ensuring a robust, resilient, stable and secure cloud infrastructure is critical to deliver smooth, interactive, and immersive sports broadcasting via cloud for global audience,” an Alibaba Cloud executive told SVG Europe. “These efforts presented new opportunities to empower media professionals in their dynamic coverage of the Games in more innovative, interactive and creative ways.”

“Ensuring a robust, resilient, stable and secure cloud infrastructure is critical to deliver smooth, interactive, and immersive sports broadcasting via cloud for global audience”

Another feature supported by Alibaba Cloud, the IOC Media Archiving AI Solution, made it easier for rights holding broadcasters to select from the more than 11,000 hours of content generated at the Games. The tool includes an automatic video highlight generation function which identified and compiled memorable moments. Alibaba’s proprietary algorithms also aided in the indexing and categorisation of decades-old content from the Olympics Archives, enabling easy content discovery from the massive volumes of Olympics footage from the past.

“These innovations not only make media professionals’ work more efficient and cost-effective, but also allow them to explore more dynamic, interactive, multimedia ways to better engage global sports fans.”

A smart game strategy

Broadcast cloud experts Amagi have helped sports channels move to the cloud and leverage cloud for greater fan engagement through launching new services and channels. Cloud has allowed Amagi customers to experiment at lower risk – and lower cost.

“Unlike traditional on-premise setups with rising maintenance costs, cloud solutions reduce operational expenses by 40-60% over 3-5 years while simplifying playout and distribution,” says Amagi’s head of sports, Kiel Fox. “Broadcasters can scale infrastructure in real-time for events like regional subfeeds or pop-up channels and experiment with monetisation strategies, like FAST channels or VOD services, without heavy upfront investments.”

Fox notes that cloud can also help manage live events with flexible scheduling, automated workflows, and ad monetisation tools while reducing costs. Additionally, more varied disaster recovery options ensure resilience in emergencies.

Jean-Christophe Perier, head of marketing at Globecast, agrees: “Sports is always trying new solutions,” says Perier. “They want to find new audiences and improve the experience. And they want to increase the monetisation. Cloud is the best way. If what you’re trying doesn’t work in the time frame you’ve set for certain KPIs you can stop. You don’t need to commitment to a five-year agreement like you used to do.”

But Perier also cautions sports broadcasters to be wary of the cloud leading to commitment phobia. Just because you can try lots of different things, doesn’t mean you always need to. Focus is still key. There is no substitute for good planning.

“At the end of the day, cloud is not cheaper, but you can do so many things with it. The flexibility is fantastic. When we give the visibility and the tools to our customers, they really are keen to try it.”

Broadcasters do need to be smart about when and how to use cloud. Making sure you’re using the right tool for the job is key.

“The biggest hurdle is the high dependency on stable, high-bandwidth internet connectivity, which is critical for ensuring consistent performance in live events,” says Fox. “Latency concerns can arise in regions with limited infrastructure, affecting real-time broadcasts.”

And without good cost management strategies in place, cloud costs can also escalate unexpectedly in scenarios that involve extensive data transfer or prolonged usage. Additionally, the complexity of integration with legacy systems or workflows can also create operational inefficiencies during the transition to cloud-based solutions.

“Organisations with well-established, cost-effective on-premise setups may not benefit significantly from the cloud, especially if scalability isn’t a priority. For long-term, static workflows or when dealing with confidential content in highly regulated environments, on-premise solutions may provide greater control. Finally, the cloud may not be ideal for workflows with minimal flexibility requirements, where the cost of transitioning outweighs its potential benefits.”

Fox sees the future of sports and cloud as increasingly flexible, scalable and interactive.

“As technologies like 5G and edge computing mature, cloud-based workflows will enable ultra-low-latency live streaming, immersive viewing experiences with augmented and virtual reality, and dynamic personalisation for viewers.

“Artificial intelligence will play a key role in automating highlights, enabling real-time analytics for fans, and optimising ad placements. The cloud will also empower smaller sports leagues and teams to compete globally by democratising access to premium broadcasting tools.”

Giving sustainability a sporting chance

Moving workflows to the cloud can be a great help in reducing a broadcaster’s carbon emissions. Cloud enables remote, distributed operations that can reduce or eliminate the need to move people and gear from location to location. Transport is one of the content production’s biggest sources of emissions, but also one with a known solution. A good rule of thumb is that the fewer things you move, the lower your carbon footprint.

Since public cloud is built on the concept of shared infrastructure, it can operate quite efficiently, without the downtime that on premises data centres may encounter. But data centres do consume energy – and sometimes a great deal of water. Productions have to be mindful of the fact that carbon emissions don’t just vanish because workflows have been shifted to the cloud.

“As technologies like 5G and edge computing mature, cloud-based workflows will enable ultra-low-latency live streaming, immersive viewing experiences with augmented and virtual reality, and dynamic personalisation for viewers”

Aware of cloud’s high energy consumption at the Olympic Games, Alibaba Cloud’s sustainability solution, Energy Expert, helped measure and analyse energy consumption at all 35 competition venues at the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.

“By migrating the intelligence related to the power consumption and demand of the competition venues to the cloud-based platform for the first time,” explains Alibaba, “the solution enabled more accurate analysis and better-informed power consumption planning for future Olympic Games.”

The consolidated energy data included electricity consumption, power demand contingency, venue capacity, competition-related information and onsite weather conditions, which were made available through a single user interface.

“Innovations in energy-efficient hardware and server virtualisation are reducing the power requirements of data centres,” says Amagi’s Kiel Fox. “Additionally, strategies like dynamic scaling – optimising resource usage based on demand – and edge computing – processing data closer to the source – are further improving efficiency.”

The race for AI-boosted tools has introduced a further sustainability challenge with fears that the wide adoption of AI will negate any of the sustainability benefits cloud confers. But one thing cloud does offer is flexibility. Workflows can be constantly rethought and adapted to the needs of each production. This means the opportunity for continuous progress towards sustainability, along with progress towards better and better storytelling.