The 2023 LiveU Sports Streaming Summit was successfully held in Manchester. Representatives from sports clubs, leagues, broadcasters, universities, LiveU ecosystem technology partners, and production companies engaged in in-depth discussions on various topics. This year, speakers repeatedly emphasized the importance of fans in content creation.
Two client presentations highlighted the significance of fans in sports programming: the production team from Manchester City Studio shared their narrative-driven approach, which adds a fresh perspective to exciting matches by incorporating various fan segments who genuinely love sports; while Ireland's Clubber TV introduced their successful niche-oriented case studies.
The Manchester City Studio team is responsible for producing content for all the club's teams and events, directly pushing it to their own channels for fans around the world to watch. The team leader emphasized the need to earn and maintain the trust of elite athletes, as they are the source of fan interaction. To achieve this, the team decided to include three content creators in the first tier, placing elite players and fans at the center of the events. This approach allowed them to capture the ecstatic reactions of players realizing they had just become the Premier League champions for the 2022/2023 season.
The live team utilized LiveU encoders, which not only captured players' actions but also provided live commentary from around the stadium. To bring fans into the narrative's center, they used LiveU to capture live audio and video from fans in the stands and fan zones, authentically conveying the atmosphere of the event to the audience.
Another partner, Clubber TV, launched a dedicated Gaelic Games channel on its content platform, using the LiveU ecosystem to report on local and regional Gaelic Games. Although Gaelic Games are niche, over 2,000 clubs participate, with more than 100 matches often held simultaneously on weekends. Traditional broadcasting methods can only cover a small fraction of these matches. Clubber TV introduced LiveU's lightweight portable encoders, requiring just one or two staff members to be deployed at the venues and using LiveU Studio in the cloud to produce programs that can be aired at any time. Now, they have the capability to cover larger-scale events while also allowing more people to engage with this culturally significant sport, thereby expanding their fan base.
Gaelic Games venues vary widely in quality, and the Clubber TV team encounters both well-equipped facilities and very basic fields with stones. Therefore, they use LiveU to transmit video from the site to the cloud. LRT™ (LiveU Reliable Transport) binds effective connections through 4G and 5G modems and enhances video transmission via WiFi, Ethernet, or low Earth orbit satellites when necessary. As Clubber TV noted, LiveU devices enable their team to shoot at any venue they wish and provide reliable, high-quality, low-latency video.
Moving cameras instead of moving crowds ultimately brings more people (fans) to our platform or program by creating and sharing passionate and interactive moments sustainably. Now, many production teams wish to easily and quickly scale up or down their productions, accurately placing cameras where fans need them, and being able to live stream the entire story rather than transporting tapes from the site to the production center to play back selected content. Producing more immersive, high-quality content and sharing it in real-time with audiences and fans is no longer the exclusive domain of companies with large infrastructures. With reliable, high-quality, low-latency IP binding, various types and scales of sports storytellers can focus on what truly matters: telling compelling stories to the audience, allowing fans to experience and enjoy the matches, ultimately winning over more fans.