Are you ready for the 2018 Summer of Sport? Bring it on!
If you’re anything like us, you’ll be getting very excited about the summer of sport that’s fast approaching! The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicks off on Thursday 14th June and brings a whole month of tears of joy and despair as 32 teams from countries around the world battle it out to lift that famous trophy. Amid the football action is Wimbledon – the men’s final is on Sunday 15th July, the same day as the World Cup Final! Then comes the Tour de France, The Open, Test Cricket, The Ryder Cup…
So how will we be watching the ultimate football competition? FIFA is providing all the Wold Cup matches to broadcasters around the world in 4K HDR. If you’re watching in the UK for example, you’ll have a choice of BBC or ITV for your viewing pleasure and although the games won’t be available in 4K HDR on the traditional channels it’s likely that the BBC will broadcast matches in 4K HDR on iPlayer. It tested the service with a rugby match in April but didn’t promote it until after the event.
But what of AI? If you went to NAB or you’ve been hanging out on social media recently you may have seen our very own jump into the AI sports production arena with the introduction of SMARTLIVE, which marries AI to MAMs for elevated storytelling and increased fan engagement. SMARTLIVE, the ultimate live sports production solution, simplifies event preparation by capturing team, event and statistical data, automatically building an event inside its metadata engine. Simultaneously, it automatically creates the corresponding log sheets, player grids and the video feed capture schedule for the event. It is the intelligent solution for sports video production.
At this year’s World Cup, the adoption of AI is likely to be fairly minimal with tools used to support features such as video refereeing for example, but we believe that AI will be a key resource in future events and that we’ll see a real breakthrough in the not too distant future. This brings us to the questions: What does AI mean for sports production going forward? How far can it go technically? And what would be the dream AI scenario for sports broadcasters and content owners in the future? Read our July post to find out what we think…
In the mean time we’ll leave you with one final thought…Come on Spain!!!!!!
