MUMBAI: At the SVG India Summit Hosted By Starlab there was a session called ‘Future of India Sports Production’. Leaders in the India sports production community discussed new solutions, new workflows, and how they are preparing to meet new demands
The Panelists were:
Sidhhant Agarwal, SportVot, Founder
Anand Pimprikar, TATA Communications Media, Head – India & Middle East Business
Ajesh Ramachandran, ICC TV, Executive Producer
Sandeep Srikanth, JioStar-Sports, Senior Vice President, Creative and Production
Ramachandran noted that from fans, broadcasters there are various demands that come in from various parts of the world. He noted that from a global world feed perspective it’s quite complicated because the needs around the world are very different. A lot of the new consumer trends are moving cricket on from being traditionally a sit-back-and-watch-the-coverage kind of curated experience that is vastly changing into a lean-forward and customised-to-the-consumer type experience, especially through digital platforms.
“The global world feed on linear TV, which is also on digital still continues to be largely a curated experience. However, the age that we’re moving into is one of localisation and each consumer wanting something slightly different.”
Customisation In Cricket gets sophisticated: Customisation he noted is not just what we see currently, which is various languages, more analysis, and various things like that, but even more sophisticated, which is what power can you give the individual consumer? He spoke about camera feeds available to the individual consumer. There are various feeds that they can tap into. “So that sort of hyper-customisation is probably the one thing we need to look out for more and more in the future.”
ICC TV provides the global world feed, but the aim is to ICCs to do what they need to to facilitate all of this, in terms of what new camera positions can be given to them, what new feeds be provided for them. Then when it makes the global world feed, there is also keeping an eye on what the licensees downstream can do with that, and how they can improve upon that and customise it for their audiences.
A Consumer First Approach For JioStar: Srikanth noted that the approach of JioStar is consumer first. Language commentary in regional started with the 2015 cricket World Cup. The 2018 IPL was when the company started really producing what is now called cultural feeds, because it’s a lot more than just commentary.
“You’re really trying to customise that experience for that particular audience as they’re watching.” For the IPL there are almost 25 different streams, 12 different languages. But this is just the beginning. The task now is to break out even further of what is being done and can this 25 become 100? Can a consumer sitting at home watch a match in parallel with a customised cut of what his favourite player is doing at all times on the field?
The aim is to take lessons from cricket and putting that into all these other sports. He mentioned the Olympics as an example.
Agarwal noted that any sports match or a sports tournament or a sports person who wants to get themselves pinned is what his company serves.
“And the real challenge in sports is that you’re playing. In Sport you have to design something that is very, firstly, cost efficient, because at the scale at which we operate, costs are the biggest issue. So, how can you properly build for scale? I think that’s the biggest value proposition for us or the use case that we want to solve for.”
He mentioned the importance of personalisation as this is not from a viewer’s standpoint, but for his company it’s from the player’s standpoint. “Because you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of athletes for which you want to create products which are giving them personalisation after their matches are over.
“It just doesn’t end at live streams. You’re giving them analytics, you’re giving them a video profile that helps them get scouted. So, I think for us, the consumer is the athlete or the sports organiser. So, that is the lens that we look at.”
Infrastructure key to enhancing broadcast production with efficiency: Pimprikar noted that the issue is to enhance broadcast production versus efficiency. “So, that’s where we come in, and infrastructure is the way to a solution. So, the way we design our infrastructure is to essentially make sure that we address both the extremes that we have and use technology in a way that it’s redundant, it’s available, and it’s always there. It’s an API call. In fact, what we’re interestingly doing for something like a Formula E is have a mechanism of programmatically invoking these things and even taking that feeds and then play with it.”
This feeds one side of the spectrum. For the other side of the spectrum that is about making sure that it is available at the lowest latency possible.
Olympics: Srikanth said that last year’s Olympics is a great case study because you’re taking all the lessons that you’ve taken from the big-scale cricket production in terms of personalising the experience to a different viewer. Then you take that but do it on a platform and on a canvas that has never used before. In terms of tiering it’s not just about tiering of events, it’s tiering within an event, and that plays a key role.
He noted that OBS was the main Olympic host broadcaster when they were doing rowing or canoeing, they were using cloud-based workloads. For the opening ceremony, both OBS and JioStar were deploying mobile phones all along the river. It’s horses for courses to a large extent. Even for something as relatively niche in India as the Olympics he noted there are different viewers coming in who want different things.
“So, our Hindi feed was very focused on the storytelling, the stories of the athletes, but if you notice, even there, there was some analysis happening, because you’ve set the standard now in sports like cricket and football, where you’re doing analysis for all audiences, and it’s almost an expectation. So, how could we use our technology and work with our partners? So, some of the partners, obviously, DJ and WT Vision did that lovely animation of Neeraj Chopra throwing the javelin, which was really important for viewers who didn’t know what javelin throw was all about.
“So, lots of little elements and things like that, but I think largely for us, the Olympics was an, inflection point, where all of the learnings and working with all of the partners in different ways to make things happen. We were delivering 4K video, 4K streams to all of the viewers, 20 streams. You never missed an Indian event while it was happening, but equally, we were shooting half of that on mobile phones.
But most of the post-match interviews that you saw live on the network were shot on a mobile phone in 4K and being delivered in real time. And that’s kind of where the flexibility and the agility and thinking outside the box comes in, and that’s what a lot of us are going to be doing for the future as well, probably.”
Storytelling In Cricket: Ramachandran noted the storytelling has to be in the center of it all. Everything else just follows. There is the World Test Championship final in about one month’s time. “Now, the demands for that format of the game is vastly different from the Women’s Cricket World Cup, which we’ll be doing in October, November, and the Men’s T20 World Cup early next year.” For the Test Championship the idea is to engage with Test Cricket and it’s designed to introduce Test Cricket to a younger audience as well in terms of storytelling, making it simple, and tools through graphics, through data. The aim is to just make Test Cricket a little more accessible, tell the story of Test Cricket.
“It’s an education piece as well. There’s a vast audience that doesn’t really engage with Test Cricket as much as the other formats, so it becomes about tools to sort of sell that particular format, and obviously our licensees and members do a fantastic job as well.”
Innovations he pointed out are not always just in a technological sense. Sometimes they are about the kind of commentary you do. It’s about the kind of camera cuts you use. It can be a number of things. “For us, it becomes paramount for the Test Championship final to sort of look back at the story of Test Cricket, sort of explain some of the nuances of that particular format. I think it’s a very familiar sport for everyone.
For the women’s cricket events, it’s about the profile of the players.
It’s more of a hero-building project that is in a different phase of its growth. Each format, each tournament has to be dealt with very differently he noted. “All innovations have to follow the storytelling. Everything else just makes it possible to tell the story. That storytelling will be our focus as well.”
He was then asked about catering to local cultures. “We have a very robust sort of relationship with our broadcasters. We have workshops once a year. We look at their priorities, look at what they are trying to achieve as well. Based on that, we make our production plans, per se. There are a number of requests that come in from different broadcasters. It’s like a zero-sum game sometimes, but not always.
“There is a huge degree of understanding and cooperation as well. There is an understanding of what the overall product should look like, at least for the world to be. Depending on what the licensees feedback to us and tell us what they’d like to see, our coverage plans are made largely on that basis.”
Collaboration Key To Success: Srikanth noted that areas like graphics is a collaboration and is an iterative process that followed. There were challenges when the broadcaster first started doing language graphics just before the 2019 cricket World Cup. For the first time the broadcaster was trying to put in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, double ascenders, double descenders, all of these little things. Therefore a robust relationship with the governing body and the World Feed broadcast is really important because you then have that flexibility and that trust that’s built over time.
The broadcaster had asked ICC TV to slightly tweak the way the World Feed used to do the talks. And that was purely to allow all the 19 languages to join seamlessly and make it look like the seamless production that was intended.
“There’s a lot of back and forth that goes on. I think there’s a lot of, the good thing is there’s a lot of ideas and conversations that keep happening as to how we can take things forward. And I think that’s how it works for all of us across the board on the ecosystem.”
Ramachandran added that there is a lot of post-production as well. “We don’t always know the best side of the stuff. So there’s a lot of learnings that we rely on our licensees to give us, our broadcasters to give us. And from a World Feed perspective, you have an idea, you’re starting with an idea, but very quickly, you get a lot of feedback, things that need to be tweaked. And you have to be very nimble and respectful of the process and just give our broadcasters what they want so that everybody wins.
Automation: Pimprikar spoke about a little bit of automation coming in. “What we’ve seen already is remote production where all of these are available at disposal for them to work from home. You have the other extreme.
“But how do you look at hybrid where you don’t really have to bring everything in but do it locally? There is a reason why you have to do it locally because it reduces the latency and also cost-wise you don’t have to bring a lot of things internationally.
“So, having some sort of a capability where you could automate certain things and still some workflows to get that is the next thing that we’re seeing. Especially on Formula E where we use some 26, 27 edge nodes to sort of do that processing. This can be applied to India especially.”
Unlearn and Work With A Blank Canvas: Srikanth spoke about the need to really take a step back, look at how the company is doing things and effectively unlearn. “And the good thing for us at JioStar is from the top down I think that’s pretty much the mandate. Yes, do not risk your live production, do not risk the quality of that channel badge on the top right corner.
“But within that framework, it’s a completely blank canvas and that’s the beauty of it. Ultimately the goal is to give the consumer choice and as much choice as we can offer them. Be it a feed where somebody is talking to you in the language you want. Be it a feed where you’re able to follow a particular player. Be it a feed where you can really immerse yourself into the analytics of it. Where anytime you see a player on the field of play, can you mark that guy out, pull up a stat that’s relevant for him. Just like a parent would want to see their kid as well, right? And that’s the opportunity we have and I think that’s where we’d like to go. Infinite possibilities is the JioStar or the JioHotstar tagline at the moment and honestly, that’s where we are.
“I mean, at this point, our team has just been told unlearn, learn again, don’t be constrained by anything. And that’s the opportunity.
Ramachandran noted that the ICC is risk averse to tinkering with a premium product. But for some of the other events, like the under-19 ones tech has come in like cameras that umpires can wear, but that also tracks the ball.
So there were a lot of tracking points. and as a result of those cameras, plus a couple of sideline low-tech sort of cameras on the boundary line. Doing this the ICC has managed to get all tracking data for the whole match. And that would inform your traditional bonus beehives and pitch, where the ball is pitched, and get that sort of information.
Traditionally you’d need a very sophisticated in-camera plan around the stadium to sort of deliver it. But low-cost versions of that and what that does is make several data points available, accessible, even in lower tier events. “So that’s been an exciting one.
“Another one we’re working on is the conditions, the pitch conditions really matter a lot. Sometimes they have a very big say in the result of the game as well. Like a few years ago, we made that call to get fielding analysed much more than it has before by introducing fair tracking and field positions, like field positions now.
“We’re trying to do something for the pitch, and trying to study pitch conditions better. And it’s again something that influences the game a lot. So pitch scans and pitch floppies are some things we’re working on currently, and hope to get it on board again pretty soon.”
