The transition to IP delivery and production will continue to have major impact on every aspect of the industry. Whether on-prem or from data centers, this transition is revolutionary. Software-only implementations, together with subscription-based microservices, will be the next wave impacting opex vs capex and how business gets done. Bridge Technologies and their representative in North America, 2110 Solutions, are at the center of this transition. Their solutions for monitoring, analyzing, and visualizing every aspect of the live production and distribution signal chain are comprehensive. SMPTE 2110 and 2022-6 standards for live-production applications offer incredible flexibility and big cost savings for those that can use it in collaborative environments in studio, cloud, image, or REMI applications.

The shift toward REMI and cloud technology is reshaping sports production by blending physical and virtual systems. Adder supports this transformation with solutions like the ADDERLink INFINITY 3000, which bridges physical and virtual KVMs (keyboard, video, mouse), and ARDx technology, which facilitates secure, out-of-band remote access to production systems. ARDx enhances integration by enabling connectivity with older or legacy machines, ensuring compatibility across diverse workflows. These technologies empower hybrid production environments, ensuring flexibility and robust remote operations.

With new cloud-based remote technology, such as ASG’s Virtual Truck™, virtual production removes the capital expense of maintaining a physical truck or permanent control room. Although onsite talent, such as camera operators, will still need to be present, the entire backend of the production can now be done remotely. One advantage of a cloud-based production workflow is that you’re no longer driven by talent selection or location — whether it’s the competence of the operator or their equipment preference — because equipment can be changed with the simple push of a button. It’s democratizing live production and opening the field to a new generation of professionals where you are able to hire the best people wherever they are.

The shift toward more sports production in the cloud is going to require significantly more power for broadcasting and, in particular, reliable power. Companies like Aggreko have provided temporary power for broadcasting events for years, to ensure that a video feed doesn’t cut out during that Hail Mary touchdown or photo finish on the track. Such demands will become even more critical as sports broadcasting moves online. Streaming services are joining legacy networks in broadcasting matches, placing games solely in the cloud, and this trend will only accelerate in the years ahead. Modular power like generators and battery storage will become an essential part of sports broadcasting as the power demands of games grow well beyond the capacity of the grid.

The shift toward distributed and cloud-based production is revolutionizing sports broadcasting. These models allow different elements of production — such as control, data processing, and storage — to be handled from various locations, significantly improving efficiency. Centralizing tasks like vision mixing, replay, graphics, and audio mixing enables highly skilled and valuable production teams to handle multiple events in a single day, reducing the need for travel and lowering the environmental impact. Additionally, centralized production facilities offer better accessibility compared with traditional onsite setups, creating opportunities for a more diverse workforce. Although there will almost always be a requirement for some physical presence at events, the growing trust in distributed-production systems supported by reliable, high-quality technology is making location-agnostic production an increasingly attractive and viable option.

We’re approaching 15 years since our first four-source satellite REMI transmission, and today, we regularly send 10 or more sources from the venue to the studio with consistent success. The era of trial and error is behind us. What’s ahead is a focus on refining processes and reducing operational costs. In the coming years, it will become commonplace for directors, graphics operators, TDs, replay operators, and even camera operators to work from home or fixed studio locations, further revolutionizing how live events are produced. Reliable backhauls from the venue to the headend will be crucial. A satellite truck with encoding equipment and a qualified technician will be paramount in ensuring a successful production.

For the 2024 Paris Olympics, OBS, in partnership with NEP Group and Intel, deployed a fully virtualized production solution with manifold CLOUD driving its signal processing and multiviewer systems. Completely software-based Virtual OB allows software-defined and virtualized workflows for live production at the highest level. Although “virtualization” often invokes “cloud,” it isn't confined to cloud. Hardware virtualization involves abstracting hardware, hiding physical characteristics of computing platforms, allowing seamless operation across several host machines and across different hardware technologies. arkona and manifold are focused on centralized production of live events with more-connected facilities. Private-cloud facilities offer production services for Tier 1 events that public cloud can’t, while private- and hybrid-cloud centralized production environments provide flexibility, redundancy, and lower costs, with high-end performance.

Cloud-based production tools enable remote and distributed production, reducing the costs of field production, with less equipment in the truck and fewer people on the road.

Remote and cloud-based production introduces many opportunities for sports, such as gamification and more ways to build interactive experiences. However, the single biggest short-term change is that it lowers cost significantly, and this means that a lot of sports that don’t have the budget for traditional-style productions can be turned into TV and streaming content with cloud and REMI. The access to high-quality broadcasting for sports that traditionally lack substantial production budgets creates opportunities to expand content catalogs, increase revenue opportunities, scale without the need for expensive infrastructure, among many other competitive advantages.

Overall, the number of sports broadcasts has increased significantly in the past 10 years. Most sports fans expect to see national, regional, and local sporting events on a screen — and have come to expect instant replays of the close plays! Professional sports lead the pack in production quality and audience sizes. However, regional, local, and boutique sports broadcasts are growing in popularity because of the high-quality streaming and accessibility. The quality of these productions will continue to improve and will take advantage of REMI and cloud techniques because of the efficient nature of these production workflows. Audio-Technica striv to provide equipment that enables audio capture and monitoring suitable for on-prem, REMI, and cloud-based workflows.

Through REMI and cloud-based production, customers can enable faster, more cost-effective, and scalable workflows. Traditional onsite setups required significant resources and logistics, but, with cloud-based solutions, production teams can now collaborate in real time across multiple locations while reducing travel and hardware costs. This shift is particularly impactful in sports, where rapid turnaround and high-quality content are essential. For Avid, these changes align with our vision of empowering remote teams of sports producers to edit, manage, and distribute content in real time from anywhere, ensuring that they can meet the high demands of live sports production. As this landscape evolves, we’re focused on delivering innovations that enhance flexibility and keep pace with the growing complexity and speed of sports production.

Cloud-based production permits greater flexibility and scalability, allowing sports properties to present content in unique ways for disparate audiences. At scale, the benefits of live cloud production encompass more than the flexibility to produce alternate broadcasts and distribute content broadly. Cost savings, time savings, and access to diverse talent pools are additional benefits, along with the significant reduction of our industry’s carbon footprint. While change can be challenging, embracing modern production capabilities will allow us to create more content and serve fans in new and compelling ways.

REMI and cloud are literally changing the game, fundamentally shifting how sports media is created and consumed by fans. As demonstrated during the 2024 Olympic Games, cloud-compatible technologies are reimagining critical production components that operate alongside on-premises equipment and provide massive scale. REMI advances are increasing efficiency and reducing capex costs. Production flexibility is obvious with fewer trucks, less equipment, and less onsite crew. By decentralizing operations, cloud technologies like Backblaze empower access to global talent, while ML and AI workflows automate complex tasks. The result is a strategic evolution that allows real-time adaptation to evolving viewer preferences. As REMI and cloud technologies mature, we’re witnessing a progressive migration from hybrid models to predominantly cloud-based production environments that will completely redefine the landscape of sports-production technology.

Cloud-based production is about scale, agility, and quality of life. It creates a more repeatable, sustainable, and flexible workflow — across a broad range of productions — that you can quickly and easily scale up when needed and simply turn off when you’re done. And you can do all of that while providing your team more freedom to live their lives. Your best crew members don’t need to spend all their time on planes, and your budgets reap the benefits alongside them.

The demand for sports content is higher than ever, and, with today’s fast pace of digital consumption and a more diverse range of content than ever, broadcasters need to invest in flexible tools, like collaborative technologies and remote workflows, that support growing content-production needs. Video converters like the ATEM Streaming Bridge allow broadcasters to collaborate on shows and create a global network of high-quality remote-broadcast studios. The URSA Broadcast G2 camera can upload videos directly to Blackmagic Cloud, so that media becomes instantly accessible at the studio. These new technologies increase efficiency, simplify workflows, and enhance productivity.

Our industry has been facing many challenges, including an aging workforce, which has resulted in a shortage of top talent. Decentralized production teams allow better access to and utilization of sports-production talent. Additionally, leveraging a cloud production facility offers more redundancy compared with legacy production trucks. Cloud/REMI production is also much more environmentally friendly, and the reduced travel costs offer significant economic benefits.

The shift toward REMI and cloud-based production is transforming sports production by enabling remote, efficient workflows. I was recently at UFC 309, where I watched the Advanced Image Robotics camera system snap photos from an iPad and instantly share images on UFC.com. Tools like PTZ cameras, remote-production systems, and cloud platforms streamline operations by facilitating real-time collaboration and content distribution. These technologies ensure that content is immediately accessible to the right teams, enhancing live coverage and expanding audience reach. By reducing the need for onsite equipment and staff, REMI and cloud solutions not only lower costs but also enable greater scalability and flexibility. This innovation is making live sports production faster, more adaptable, and capable of engaging broader, global audiences.

The demand for live sports content at all levels is driving the use of remote- and distributed-production technologies, from global sports events to more-niche sports that would not be commercially viable without remote workflows. Remote production is not a new concept, but recent developments in virtualization technologies have enabled greater flexibility for distributed production workflows. Calrec has recently released True Control 2.0, which allows remote control of audio DSP from any of our new Argo consoles, Type R, and the new Calrec ImPulseV cloud engine. The powerful and agile combination allows sport production to be truly distributed, with operators controlling remote IP processing cores, whether these are locally on-premises, hosted on public cloud, or edge processing for local venues.

The adoption of cloud technologies and REMI for sports production is a momentous shift forward for our industry. To support remote and cloud-based production, camera and lens manufacturers’ products must have IP-network connectivity that supports a variety of protocols, and we take this into consideration when designing our products. One example of this is the adoption of the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol in our EOS C400 and C80 cinema cameras and the XF605 professional camcorder. With SRT, video and audio can be streamed via IP, enabling live streaming within a broadcaster’s existing video-production infrastructure. The introduction of IP-based camera control, specifically Canon’s Remote Camera Control App (RCCA), provides unified remote control for all Canon PTZ cameras and selected cinema EOS cameras and camcorders.

The sports-production landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation with REMI and cloud-based production, driven by the need for greater operational and financial flexibility, the demand for additional content, and the shift toward global distributed and expandable teams. This shift is not only about technology; it’s about reimagining how production teams can work more intelligently without geographical barriers, thus enabling more-dynamic and -responsive content creation. We’re seeing many broadcasters already embracing these models, tapping into the best talent for any type of production, big or small, anywhere. Lastly, the technology powering core production functions has reached a high level of maturity, with some aspects — such as production switching — becoming commoditized. Thus, new production models can place greater emphasis on technology that empowers rich storytelling narratives.