Watch out for Tier 1.5: The future of sports production is flexible and nimble says Open Broadcast Systems

By Kieran Kunhya, CEO, Open Broadcast Systems.

In recent years, driven by the insatiable appetite of consumers for more sport content, there has been a new category of sports productions, a kind of Tier 1.5 of sports broadcasts, sharing some attributes from Tier 1 productions and some from Tier 2 productions.

Many of these productions reach many television and web platforms like a Tier 1 broadcast, but have substantially smaller budgets. In contrast, a Tier 2 production may reach only a single web destination.

Tier 1.5

For these reasons Tier 1.5 sports are a great place to see innovation happening as they have premium audiences (often on pay tv sports channels or pay-per-view online) but not so premium production budgets.

The nature of Tier 1.5 sports means they are produced at relatively low budgets, at short notice and in places with limited traditional connectivity. For all these reasons, traditional “big truck” production isn’t suitable for these kinds of events.

At such short notice, these events need to be produced with flypacks (that need to fit in an aircraft hold) or potentially smaller vehicles. All of these constraints drive rapid innovation in miniaturising production systems.
Nimble productions

At the same time, consumers demand more from these nimble productions, especially as they are used to high quality sports graphics in video games. As a result many of these productions have developed world-class graphics systems at a fraction of the cost and size of traditional systems.

Likewise, large top end cameras may not be realistic in these kinds of productions, so smaller and lower cost alternatives can provide good quality pictures. Traditional ‘big-iron’ mixers may not be suited for these kinds of productions either, and so more nimble software mixers are used instead.

And last but not least, connectivity. Traditional satellite and fibre connectivity is likely non-existent, so these productions need to innovate with new technologies such as 4G, 5G and Low Earth Orbit satellites like Starlink and OneWeb. Most importantly, these innovations are not just invested in once and sweated out over several years; there is continual and gradual development, allowing for flexibility that traditional solutions can’t provide.

There is a rapid and iterative level of innovation in the Tier 1.5 sports industry that is unmatched anywhere else. It’s for this reason I think Tier 1.5 sports are the place to watch in 2024; all the attention might be on the large events, but do not underestimate the tortoise slowly creeping up to the level of Tier 1 productions!