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Tag: HBS

  • XR Sports Alliance attracts new members

    XR Sports Alliance attracts new members

    MUMBAI: The XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) is beginning to gather momentum. Founded by video streaming solutions company Accedo  together with wireless tech company  Qualcomm Technologies and  sports host broadcaster HBS, in June 2024, it has announced its first batch of members. These include: sports rights owner E1 Series; telecom operator Deutsche Telekom; AR glasses and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) XReal and and technology service providers, Ateme, Skyrim.ai.

    The new members will  be contributing to the XRSA, which aims to accelerate knowledge gathering, technological advancement and time-to-market for XR sports services, as well as gather and share industry knowledge across the globe.

    Said Accedo CEO Michael Lantz: “The XRSA was born from a shared vision. Our ambition is to build a powerful collective of passionate leaders and experts from both the sports and XR industries, all committed to advancing the commercialisation of XR sports services. Every member is important for how we shape our end-to-end experimentation framework and how we lay the foundation for scalable technology and sustainable XR business models.”

    Qualcomm Technologies senior director business development Patrick Costello added: “Through the XRSA user testing framework, we  will gather valuable data from global deployments and share these lessons learned reports with our members, ensuring insights are drawn from diverse audiences to inform future developments.”

    HBS digital head Sylvain Lebreton  commented: “The planned experimentation deployments in early 2025 will involve extensive experimentation with both non-live and live spatial video formats and evaluating user interaction with various immersive fan features and spatial advertising. We will continue to grow the membership over the coming months and welcome interest from companies across the ecosystem, both those wishing to serve as contributing members, as well as observing members.”

    Accedo, HBS, and Qualcomm Technologies, will be at CES 2025 from 7-11 January 2025. 

  • Accedo, Qualcomm, HBS launch XR Sports Alliance

    Accedo, Qualcomm, HBS launch XR Sports Alliance

    MUMBAI: XR in Sports is about to receive a shot in the arm. Three large global players have joined hands for a strategic alliance which seeks to bridge the sports and XR industry. These are global video solutions provider Accedo, leading hardware and software enabler Qualcomm Technologies and HBS, a specialist sports broadcast organization.

    The three founding members aim to bring together market-leading stakeholders, drawing on Accedo’s expertise in video user experience, distribution and monetization, Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon-powered XR technology and expertise, and HBS’ strong sports ecosystem.

    The program aims to accelerate knowledge gathering, technological advancement and time-to-market for XR sports services, as well as gather and share industry knowledge.

    The XR Sports Alliance aims to drive the development and deployment of XR Sports products and services by providing an end-to-end solution framework to help key stakeholders deploy state-of-the-art XR services efficiently and at scale. The framework encompasses immersive video production and distribution, system architecture definition, data and monetization frameworks, user testing and technology and business model advisory elements. Moreover, the program will be open to third parties to join, including XR OEMs, to drive the development of purpose-built XR hardware for the sports and video entertainment use case.

    At its core, the program aims to connect leading companies from the sports, video, telco, infrastructure, and hardware industries to collaborate in innovation projects, collectively contribute to each other’s roadmaps, and exchange knowledge and feedback, to support and accelerate industry growth and innovation.

    Accedo CEO Michael Lantz said: “We believe XR will become an important content distribution and user engagement platform and we want to connect industry stakeholders to collaborate and innovate. The Alliance network will enable industries to uncover industry demand in different geographical regions and shine light on the pipeline of upcoming XR solutions, allowing sports rights owners and holders to make data-driven decisions.”

    Qualcomm, Technologies senior director product management Patrick Costello added: “We are entering a new era of spatial computing. We firmly believe that XR experiences will revolutionize how fans engage with sports and we are already seeing a rise in adoption of immersive entertainment experiences thanks to the emergence of new XR devices and increased investment by OEMs for sports content rights. The XR Sports Alliance will bring together key players in the sports entertainment value-chain, collectively fostering the ecosystem to deliver game-changing immersive sports experiences.”

    HBS head of digital services Sylvain Lebreton commented: “This program aims to be a game-changer for the sports industry, helping to drive innovation. We are engaging with industry leaders across every part of the XR and sports broadcast ecosystem, which we are sure will ultimately accelerate the development and deployment of commercial XR sports services.”

  • India Today-Axis-My-India exit poll mechanism enters Harvard Business Class

    India Today-Axis-My-India exit poll mechanism enters Harvard Business Class

    NEW DELHI: Known for its most accurate predictions, the India Today Group’s exit-poll mechanism has made its way to the Harvard Business School curriculum.

    The India Today-Axis-My-India post-poll surveys have given the most definitive predictions in about 95 per cent of all the elections that took place in the country between 2013 and 2020.

    Now, the same research and multi-layered mechanism has become the first ever case study built by the Ivy League business school.

    The case study, now part of the HBS’ classroom course on elections, highlights the complexity associated with successfully predicting elections in the world’s largest democracy, with all its diversity, varied geographies, shared international borders, sprawling rural populations and 23 different languages.

    The case study, written by professor Ananth Raman, senior associate Ann Winslow and research associate Kairavi Dey, discusses the process that goes behind forecasting elections in India and the methods the channel uses to analyse data along with the research firm to reach accurate forecasts – from selection of field surveyors, hiring and training, data-collection technology, quality auditing, data analysis to final forecasting.

    India Today Group is delighted to be associated with Axis-My-India and this global recognition. The association goes strong for years and the results are a testimony to the most focused research and proven methodology.

    UPS Foundation professor of business logistics chair, OPM, HBS Professor Ananth Raman stated that predicting elections accurately in an extremely complex country like India is indeed challenging.

    The case study, which illustrates numerous operational details, including those associated with training surveyors and moving them across different locations based on their linguistic and socio-economic identities to get a feel of the electorate’s pulse, will inspire students at the Harvard Business School to create their own entrepreneurial journey, he noted.

    Professor Raman also mentioned that while they have seen numerous examples of experienced organisations struggling to predict election outcomes in the recent past, this case illustrates how a robust mechanism devised a process to predict outcomes most accurately.

    What sets it apart from all the other competitive surveys is its reach across the length and breadth of the country (700+ districts), an average survey size of over five lakh people for national surveys, GPS-enabled tablets to maintain geographical sanctity, as well as computer-aided questionnaires backed by social intelligence to garner maximum data veracity. 

  • FIFA World Cup coverage promises to be a game-changer

    FIFA World Cup coverage promises to be a game-changer

    NEW DELHI: Unlike the 3D that dominated the best viewing of the last FIFA World Cup, the second biggest tournament on the global sporting calendar after the Olympics, the entire media is concentrating on 4K and even more superior technologies.

     

    Bedeviled by significant infrastructure problems that have reached all the way from the airports that will receive the international arrivals to the stadia of the 12 host cities that will stage the games, hamstrung by the communications problems caused by an overloaded telecoms system and marred by protest and unrest, broadcasters the world over have learnt the painful lessons that modern Brazil is at best an awkward place to operate in.

     

    With the tournament just around the corner (12 June- 13 July in Brazil), the consensus is that host broadcaster HBS has done its best in ensuring diversity connections and implementing an impressively redundant form of production that has seen 12 identical, containerised production centres built in Germany and shipped over to Brazil.

     

    Moving equipment around the country, especially after the group stages are over, was always going to be a major problem, and it is one that HBS has decided it does not want to be involved with. All of which is part of the reason why EVS loaded 234 servers on a container ship bound for Rio sometime in March. But it is what some of those servers are doing when they are installed that is probably the real story from Brazil 2014.

     

    Apart from the Ultra HD effort, it is remote production that this year’s World Cup really moves the goalposts. Not just simply an add-on, remote production lies at the heart of the HBS production workflow in Brazil, according to a report by the National Association of Broadcasters in the United States.

     

    16 EVS XT3 servers are to be installed at each venue and, alongside them, two of the company’s C-Cast Agents which represent the sharp end of its connected content production architecture.

     

    C-Cast Contribution will be used to link the IBC and the 12 venues across the country together, live streams passing through the two C-Cast Agents at each venue where they will then be transcoded and transferred into an Amazon Cloud-based infrastructure. About 45 seconds later at the most they will then hit the C-Cast Central servers, which will then govern the material’s distribution on the network. This means passing the footage on to the Adobe Premier-based HBS production teams (there are 36 Premier suites in the IBC) and other rights holders at the IBC and further afield too. The servers automatically generate proxy files, allowing the various remote teams to access content at low resolutions, create clips and then import a high bandwidth version.

     

    “I think in total there are 75 media rights licenses distributed for the IBC in Rio, and in addition there are offsite production teams that have web browse access from their own home cities, and there are 83 licenses distributed so far for that,” comments EVS SVP Marketing Nicolas Bourdon.

     

    There have probably been more distributed, as this is far more than just a plain vanilla distribution of the nine feeds from each venue round the world. Mirroring the way the C-Cast second screen app works, the remote teams can add content — including camera angles and highlights — that have not been made part of the world feed into their coverage, switching it from a gallery as if they were in a truck outside the stadium.

     

    With this new solution, the number of broadcasters deciding to ‘dial-in’ from their home territories into the FIFA MAX server in Rio makes it feel like a genuine game-changer.

     

    FIFA’s estimates are that around 50 million people will be downloading its official application, which is being white labelled and has been picked up by more than 100 rights holders so far.

     

    “Broadcasters can have a white label app that they can put their own logo on,” explains Bourdon. “Viewers can then access different types of content, up to six live camera angles, clips and key actions from a game, statistics, and a full language translation of all the logs and captions.”

     

    C-Cast Central manages availability of material via APIs, and while the white label smartphone and tablet apps, not to mention a customisable web player (based around deltatre’s Diva system), are proving popular, many of the major broadcasters around the world are folding the multiple C-Cast streams into their own fully-featured apps. Add these figures to FIFA’s 50 million and you undoubtedly have the biggest outing yet for the technology.

     

    Content will reside on an Amazon server farm controlled by EVS from where it will be passed to deltatre’s platform (deltatre is also the main data provider from the tournament). From there it will be either be encoded for delivery using Elemental technology over the Akamai CDN or, if the stream is to be integrated into a broadcaster’s own efforts and a third-party CDN, via the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

     

    Expect to see some interesting new features crop up too. HBS will be using the as yet unreleased C-Cast 3.0 out in Brazil, with the idea that this will then be productised into C-Cast v3.1 in time for IBC.

     

    Four years ago, Sony was limbering up to broadcast 25 matches from South Africa in stereo 3D. Measured against that, the 4K effort for Brazil 2014 seems relatively minor: a mere three matches being captured in the format, all from Rio’s Maracan? Stadium.

     

    However, the significance is the same: the company is using the World Cup to seed demand for the format that it hopes will break through to the mass market by the time of the following Olympics. Maybe this time it will work.

     

    4K trials — indeed trials of pretty much all of the World Cup workflow — were held at the Confederations Cup last summer and though the Telegenic truck that was shipped from the UK for them isn’t available this summer, the crew will still be sourced from the British OB provider, albeit working in a 4K-capable Globocast truck.

     

    The matches will probably represent the most comprehensive coverage afforded a 4K production yet, with 12 Sony F55 cameras slated for each game and a number of the speciality cameras from the standard HD broadcast also being upconverted for the occasion.

     

    It seems that the final will now be actually broadcast in 4K format as opposed to being simply beamed into cinemas or destined for a souvenir film for online distribution. Names are not being discussed as yet, but it seems that there is a queue of interested broadcasters and, according to Sony, “More than one will broadcast the feed.”

  • ‘Cricket needs to evolve’

    ‘Cricket needs to evolve’

    If there was one person who brought about the biggest change in sports broadcasting in India in 2006, it was Nimbus chairman Harish Thawani. He took the big gamble by acquiring India cricket rights for a whopping $612.8 million and became a broadcaster.

    Thawani holds forth on sports broadcasting in terms of the changing landscape, Asia emerging as a major player and the importance of multiplicity of platforms and technologies.

    Traditionally the sports media industry has had 3 major segments: full service sports management/marketing agencies (such as IMG, Sport Five, Nimbus Sport) that manage/market rights, sponsorship sales, stage/manage events, provide sponsor services, advise on and/or manage L & M programs, represent athletes etc (many agencies specialize in a sub-set of these); sports television companies that focus on host broadcast production and/or sports program production and syndication (such as Sunset + Vine, TWI, HBS, Nimbus Sport) and sports broadcasters (such as ESPN, Fox Sports, Sky Sports, NEO Sports).

    Two trends seem to be emerging in the sports media sector. On one hand there appears to consolidation taking place in both the agency and broadcast sector (more of that later) and on the other hand the lines are getting blurred between the roles with agencies or their parent companies such as Nimbus entering the broadcast sector (with its recently launched NEO Sports) and broadcasters such as ESS pitching for rights on a global basis and consequently winding up acting as rights agencies in countries where they don’t broadcast.

    Consequently the future may see new role definitions, new competitive stances and strange alliances emerging; and quite possibly competitors in one region being partners in another.

    Trends close to home

    The importance of Asia is growing. In football it is now the world’s second most valuable rights territory. In cricket it is by far the most valuable. Japan, Korea, China and the ASEAN are fuelling unprecedented growth in rights values for basketball, golf, motor sport, tennis, even baseball.

    Pan Asian broadcast services are under threat and I think in 3 years will become unviable, as the regional broadcasters gain ground. The rise of the regional broadcasters and/or platform owned sports channels (from Al Jazeera in the Middle East to NEO Sports in South Asia to Astro’s Super Sports in Malaysia, to PCCW in Hong Kong and Starhub’s Super Sports in Singapore) have encouraged rights holders to stop doing pan Asian deals and opt for country wise deals. The success of the recent EPL auctions on a country wise basis was an example, where ESS lost a substantial portion of the valuable territories to regional broadcasters including China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and several others.

    Multiplicity of platforms and technologies will fetch sports broadcasters in Asia higher share of subscriber revenues. Sports and movies drive pay TV! In the Middle East we have three DTH platforms and three cable companies vying for premium sports channels. In India we have two DTH platforms with two more to come and a very large cable industry, Malaysia’s long standing monopoly of Astro will diminish with Telecom Malaysia’s massive IPTV foray. Hong Kong has two cable systems. Every major country is developing multiple platforms.

    Perhaps in 2-3 years time, we might see a consortium of regional broadcasters emerge, forming a pan Asian footprint but retaining regional autonomy, using the benefits of consortium buying of rights, collective platform negotiation ability, exchange of best practices and technology; and who knows perhaps even cross holdings into an Asian superstructure.

    Global management is now happy to work in Asia thereby giving Asian sports broadcasters the ability to merge local skills into global best practices, and compete with the global broadcasters such as ESPN and Newscorp (Fox, Sky, Star)…for e.g. NEO Sports has a Scottish COO, an Australian head of acquisitions, a Polish technology consultant and an Indian CEO!

    Cricket : The challenges and opportunities

    Cricket needs to evolve. The economic dominance of Asia powered largely by India represents both an opportunity and a threat to the globalization of the sport. Opportunity because the funds now at the disposal of cricket allow it to invest in development across the world. Threat because if the Indian economy slows down or the sports broadcast industry further consolidates, the revenues of the sport will decline. Cricket must reduce its excessive dependency on India. But that is easier said than done.

    The sport is essentially a 10 country sport with only 4-5 countries providing revenues worth the mention. The structure of the sport needs to emulate football and we need to dismantle the class system wherein only 10 countries get to play Tests and regular ODIs. In football even India plays internationals despite being ranked below 125! Cricket needs to allow all ICC member countries to play internationals. With the emergence of shorter formats (which itself are the way to the future of the game), like 20/20, it is easier for weaker teams to win against stronger teams occasionally because all that it takes is for 1-2 batsmen to fire for an hour or so!! Such results fuel fan following and the sports grows in new countries.

    Lastly cricket needs to understand that its obsessive focus only on revenues (read highest bidder wins!) is perhaps an expensive trade off as the interests of the highest bidder are not necessarily aligned to that of the sport. E.g. broadcasters that win global rights are not necessarily equipped or even wanting to encourage free TV broadcasts or multiple platform broadcasts for their interests lie in exclusivity and the subscription revenues that come with it. Fortunately many cricket boards have begun to understand that and now prefer to engage sports agencies (albeit with a revenue MG) to manage their rights with the mandate to increase revenues but also increase reach, improve branding, procure better sponsorships, develop new markets and assist in development programs through coaching videos etc.

    India : Road ahead is clear

    With economic growth beating the 8 per cent per annum mark and the next 10 years (if not much more) quite clearly a boom phase, there’s seldom been a better time to invest in India. Broadcast industry revenues are growing at 17-19 per cent per annum, spending on leisure including sport by Indians is on the rise, and the advent of addressable systems particularly DTH bodes well for premium pay TV services such as sports and movies.

    India : Cricket domination continues

    Having said that even the world’s largest markets don’t support more than 2-3 pay TV sports companies, which meant that my prediction of some months back that from a 6 player market we will see a 3 player market by 2007 has come true even before 2006 is out. DD and Sony are at least for the moment quite clearly out of the cricket rights acquisition market. Zee has taken control of Ten, so its essentially 3 companies now in sports broadcasting each with 2 channels (Neo Sports and Neo Sports Plus, ESPN and Star Sports, Zee Sports and Ten Sports); which should allow all three to operate profitably and given the amazing range of sports product available would give all three enough options to program their channels, except for one catch. The cricket catch.

    In a single sport country, this means that Neo Sports with its powerful cricket assets over the next five years, the depth of sports expertise of Nimbus behind it and powered by Star India’s distribution leadership will have a smooth side. As will ESS with its long standing experience, market franchise and reasonable cricket assets now strengthened by the ICC package. The challenge for ESS will be that in 2007 some if not all of their previous cricket assets start expiring and that means an uncertain path ahead. If renewals are hard to come by, they will have to wait for 2011 when the next World Cup is staged to make a strong come back.

    India: Domestic sport

    I had said in early 2006 that this would be the year of domestic sport in India. Hopefully the numbers bear me out. BCCI commenced 72 days a year of domestic cricket coverage and extensive re-branding and re-formatting. Even with the start-up phase distribution of NEO Sports it rocketed to the No 1 sports channel position in the TAM data in its first week itself with the broadcast of the domestic Challenger Series, with peak TVRs of 9.2 in one match! The Duleep Trophy final achieved peak TVRs of 2.7 on a weekday despite it being a 5 day match format! Zee Sports broadcast of Indian domestic football has also shown consistent results. I think by mid 2007 the ratings of domestic cricket will start rivaling Test match TVRs consistently and weekend One Day matches in the domestic Super League could be the killer app for NEO Sports!

    India: Other Sports

    Hockey is dead. It’s now official. It received a quiet and indecent burial at the recent Asian Games where India did not make it to the semis and no one shed tears.Tennis, golf and motor sport plough on their elitist path into Indian homes that would scarcely know the difference between a birdie and a break-point. I can hear howls of protest from the same elitist benches and to them I would say walk down (as I have) the streets of Jalgaon, Coimbatore, Ajmer or even Hyderabad and ask what a birdie is. The range of cute or crass answers might surprise you.

    That leaves football and to me the dark horse badminton as the 2 sports that India can and I think will develop a TV loyalty to. Football because it has a 3-4 state base, and the western and southern metros are beginning to take up to it (on TV I mean) and also quite simply because it is the true world game. Which is why at NEO Sports it already broadcasts live the Bundesliga and the Italian Serie A.

    And Badminton because it is India’s largest participation sport after cricket. It is extensively played in India and easily understood. It has never been adequately programmed on sports channels and not enough has been done to market it. NEO Sports plans to change both of that starting early 2007.

    India: Sports entertainment

    When Nimbus Sport did the Extraaa Innings production for Sony during the 2003 Cricket World Cup, only Nimbus Sport and Sony believed that merging sport with entertainment will lead to a serious opportunity to build a viewer franchise. It made the purists cringe (and rightfully so) but it raked in the TRPs and the revenues.

    Some months back I had announced that we see sports entertainment as the big hole in the market and NEO Sports Plus will launch a slew of sports entertainment shows by 1st quarter 2007. ESS was quick to follow with its own announcement and the good news is that they’ve already started 2 shows, both of which are showing very promising ratings.

    I think NEO Sports Plus will do 70+ GRPs a week by mid 2007 off the back of sports entertainment and its focus on football and badminton.

    Regulatory

    So now TV is in the PDS, controlled prices et al (sorry administered prices). Is it constitutional? Are world class premium channels to be sacrificed at the altar of populism? These and many other questions will get answered in the coming months. Personally I believe that price caps will not go for at least 6 months, but in the interim a multi tier price cap regime may emerge, with Rs 5 as cap for most channels, Rs 10 as cap for GE and movie channels and Rs 20 for sports channels.

    On anti-siphoning the Supreme Court of India has ruled in the Ten Sports case. Many believe that in India where cable is cheap and DTH is also cheap and covers all cable dark areas, there is no grounds for anti-siphoning regulations. Moreover cable reaches nearly 65 per cent of all TV homes now.

    But if anti-siphoning laws do get enacted, they need to consider some rather serious issues:

    1. Is DD a terrestrial broadcaster or cable/DTH? ODI matches can’t be shared with DD under the guise of it being a public free TV terrestrial broadcaster, and then DD merrily supplies the signal to cable and DTH killing the pay TV business!

    2. A use or lose policy with strict timelines and license fee rationale will need to be adhered to by DD as it is in many countries where antis-siphoning rules are in force.

    3. DD must encrypt its signals to their transmission towers. No where in the world does a free TV broadcaster send unencrypted signals via satellite.

    4. If the anti-siphoning rules are truly meant to for public service, DD must refrain from commercial exploitation of the feed and agree to carry the rights holders feed with commercials. And DD must not decline other sports the right to be broadcast on DD National, when events of global stature and/or Indian interest are being staged.

  • Infront, HBS win Judges’ Award at IBC2006 in Amsterdam

    Infront, HBS win Judges’ Award at IBC2006 in Amsterdam

    MUMBAI: Infront Sports & Media, the company which handled the worldwide marketing and sales of the broadcast rights to 2006 Fifa World Cup and its subsidiary Host Broadcast Services (HBS) have won the Judges’ Award at the IBC show in Amsterdam.

    HBS was responsible for the host broadcast operations of the 2006 Fifa World Cup.

    The award was for New Media production at the 2006 Fifa World Cup in Germany. The tailored production services provided by HBS transformed the coverage of the event for New Media in terms of quality and content. The prospect of tailored production drove sales – this was the most widely covered sports event on the internet and on mobile phones to date. More than 100 countries were covered by 50 licensees in Mobile Telephony and World Wide Web.

    A team of 40 producers and journalists created a special New Media Content Package – tailor-made for licensees, designed for exploitation without the need for extensive editing and incorporating various innovations designed specifically for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The near-live clips were enhanced with specific or customised match and competition summaries, graphics, background sound, music and commentary.

    The fact that this was the first FIFA World Cup covered entirely in HDTV opened the door to improved picture quality for New Media. HD video-based Pan and Scan technology was utilised, allowing the editor to zoom in and capture the core action, producing a clear picture more exciting than ever for tiny handsets.

    HBS also offered a voice-over commentary service in the language of one’s choice. A total of eight different languages were booked and produced simultaneously in the IBC during the tournament: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swiss German.

    The benefits for licensees were considerable – better quality production, reduction of cost per licensee through central multilateral production and HD-based content, delivering “never seen before” picture quality in small formats.

    HBS director of production Peter Angell received the Award on behalf of HBS and Infront. He said, “This award confirms that our two companies, Infront and HBS, were right in deciding to embed new media requirements in the overall production strategy, providing licensees with a level of service never experienced before. The fact that all matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup were filmed in HDTV has transformed the quality of New Media coverage.

    ” Combined with the use of Pan and Scan technology to capture the core action in a way that is relevant for tiny handsets, it has delivered pictures of unprecedented quality. Licensees and consumers were thrilled”, he said in his acceptance speech.

    HBS CEO Francis Tellier said, “This special award acknowledges the quality of services and innovations our team has provided in the area of host broadcasting. The new media production of the 2006 Fifa World Cup has been the defining step forward and underlines our ambition, to lead the industry through innovation.”

    Infront Sports & Media president and CEO Philippe Blatter says, “We are proud that the outstanding production capabilities of the Infront Group have been recognised and we see this year’s IBC Judges’ Award as a challenge to push even further in future”.