Over the years, the relationship between in-stadium technologies, fan engagement, e-commerce, AI, and streaming platforms has become increasingly interconnected, creating a holistic experience for sports fans that transcends the traditional boundaries of watching a game.
Sports and technology have always had a close relationship, but in recent years, the impact of technology on the sports industry has been truly transformative. From in-stadium technologies, to fan engagement to streaming platforms, sports fans now have access to an immersive and engaging experience that goes beyond just watching the game.
One of the key ways that technology is impacting the sports industry is through the use of in-stadium technologies. Teams and leagues are investing in everything from player tracking systems to mass gaming to virtual and augmented reality experiences, all with the goal of creating a more engaging and interactive experience for fans. For example, the NBA uses player-tracking technology to provide fans with advanced statistics and data, while also generating visually stunning visualizations that bring the game to life.
Audio-based technologies, such as shows of light and color, and audio-focused mobile apps, are becoming more important for enhancing the overall fan experience. High-quality audio systems can make fans feel like they're part of the action, while audio-based apps can provide real-time game updates, play-by-play commentary, and interactive trivia games.
Virtual and augmented reality experiences are also becoming increasingly popular in the sports industry. These experiences allow fans to get closer to the action than ever before, giving them a new perspective on the game and the athletes themselves. Teams and leagues are using VR and AR to create interactive experiences that transport fans onto the field, offering a truly immersive and engaging experience.
But technology is not just impacting the in-stadium experience. Streaming platforms are also transforming the sports industry, offering fans access to live games, exclusive content, and historical footage that was previously unavailable. Netflix series like "F1: Drive to Survive" and "Break Point" have had a significant impact on motorsports and tennis, respectively. These series use archive material and interviews with retired athletes to offer fans a deeper understanding of the sports they love, while also creating compelling content that keeps fans engaged and excited about the sport.
The use of archive material and historical footage is playing an increasingly important role in the evolution of sports broadcasting. By leveraging this material, streaming platforms are able to offer fans a deeper understanding of the sport's rich history and iconic moments. In the case of Formula 1 racing, for example, historical footage and documentaries allow fans to learn more about the sport's history and appreciate the incredible feats achieved by drivers in the past.
The importance of technology in the sports industry cannot be overstated. From in-stadium technologies to streaming platforms and historical footage, technology is allowing teams and leagues to offer fans a truly immersive and engaging experience. Teams and leagues that are able to invest in and deploy these technologies effectively are well-positioned to benefit from the changing landscape of sports broadcasting.
In our opinion, the teams and leagues that are benefiting the most from this trend are those that are able to create compelling content that leverages these technologies effectively. By combining historical footage and archive material with live games and in-stadium technologies, teams and leagues can offer fans a comprehensive and engaging experience that is truly unique.
The world of sports has evolved significantly over the years, with the introduction of new technologies that have changed the way we consume and interact with sports. The emergence of new and innovative technologies has allowed for a more immersive fan experience, both inside and outside of the stadium, resulting in increased engagement and revenue for the sports industry. In this article, we will explore the importance of in and out-of-stadium technologies, broadcasting, and streaming in the sports industry.
Source: Ricardo Minari, Vice President of Business Development at Ateme.
Let’s look at the time involved in hiring and training a SDR.
A company with an in-house sales team hires 5 SDRs on average every year
To hire those 5 SDRs they interview around 65 candidates
On average they spend 18 hours on hiring activities per candidate (including searching for candidates, interviewing them, and hiring them)
That’s a total of 1,170 hours spent hiring sales reps. Why waste your time finding and interviewing candidates that may not have the right skills, company culture, and passion for the job?
The average tenure of a sales rep is 15 months, and according to a report by DePaul University replacing a sales rep costs organizations $97,690 on average.
Now, hiring a sales team in-house may cost your company more than $425k per year with salaries and benefits, while working with a managed service company that provides a high-quality sales team, can cost you only $60k per year.
On top of all this, sales teams need tech tools to interact with clients and maximize revenue. When you outsource this work, you won’t need to invest in licensing and implementing these tools, as they're part of the deal.
What would you do with all that extra dough you save? Huh?
Outsourcing sales is 43% more efficient than generating leads in-house because managed service companies have more expertise. In other words, just over 5 months of working with an outside managed service for B2B sales can bring you the same results as 12 months of in-house sales work.
Let’s be honest. There’s so much we can do with an in-house team, especially if they’re overstretched in their functions. Can they manage selling on social networks, whilst making calls and be available to respond queries 24/7? Probably not.
One big reason to outsource your B2B sales is having a dedicated sales team available to reach customers around the clock through multiple channels: phone, email, live chat, social networks and whatever is required.
Multiple channels do not only involve a varied means of communication: it also means crisscrossing and cross pollinating brands in the market, and on a given vertical. Dedicated, market-specific B2B salesmen are in touch with the pulse of the customer organizations they operate with and talk to, the changes inside those corporations, and keep a mental and digital map of the who’s who in all of them, by reaching out frequently to pitch complementary products.
If your in-house team can take on all the above, great. However, most fast growing tech companies have many fronts to cover, which leads me to the last reason to outsource sales.
English is a cool language: it’s definitely the language of trade shows, contracts and some teleconferences. But if you want to really establish a connection with your potential customers in Latin America, you will need to speak the just one neutral version of Castellano, or the many that exist from Mexico to Argentina. The same is true for Portuguese in Brazil. Language can become a bridge to business, or a barrier.
We prefer to tend bridges.
It would be great if we all had unlimited resources, knowledge and strengths. More likely, you need support in some key areas.
For instance, you may lack expertise and experience in some sales functions, such as lead generation, or lead nurturing. Or you may be introducing a new product that calls for sales skills you haven’t tried so far. Or perhaps, you're entering a new market segment or a new country, and you must adapt to a new environment fast.
What would you do? Take the long way of trial and error until you make it or fail?
Or outsource your sales so you can start profiting right away?
The latter, right?
Basketball players practice non-stop. Their head is always in the game. On the night of the game, they don’t need to worry about the set up of the stadium or the sales of the game tickets. Other businesses can do that work for them, and in doing so this promotes greater performance from the players as they can dedicate their time to practicing and improving their skills.
Similarly, an outsourced sales team can bring a whole new perspective to the table. They can help motivate your staff now that they have the complete time to work on improving your technology or software. Performance across the board will improve.
Your employees are also likely to pick up some expert tips from the outsourced sales team making your company’s sales process more efficient in the long run.
Now, it’s possible that you've never outsourced B2B sales services or you've never heard anyone do that. However, if you've read this far, I’m sure you’re ready to consider it as an alternative.
Source: https://bit.ly/3xoUtbk
Artificial Intelligence, meet Video!
Oovvuu is based on four fundamental truths:
This creates the opportunity for a new way to tell the news with video, at scale and with trust, in a way that satisfies the demands of today’s news consumers.
This is why Oovvuu exists.
The Oovvuu team emerged from journalism, video, business and tech on a single mission to enable publishers and broadcasters to work together on a global scale to tell the news and create a new, sustainable and profitable economy from journalism.
It’s a big vision, and if you really want the big picture, you can read our thoughts on it here, but in essence, we use technology to read articles from publishers all over the world, in real-time, and then we use the tech to watch video from trusted broadcasters, and match them together.
It means we can get any video from any broadcaster, into any relevant article, anywhere in the world, in less than a second – bringing more video news to your readers, in a cost-effective and low-touch manner.
For example, a story breaks in 1,700 news brands about NASA’s mission to Mars. Oovvuu reads all those articles the moment they are published, and then scours our publishers for the right videos.
It finds a host of brand new news clips from BBC News, Bloomberg and Al Jazeera, but it also finds long form documentaries from the BBC on how Man can survive on Mars, a 28-minute Bloomberg interview with Elon Musk, an Al Jazeera doco about Space X and a doco from Dutch broadcaster VPRO on the legals of commercialising space travel.
The outcome is that story has been told in greater depth than ever before and your viewers benefit. But so do you, because these videos all generate valuable new premium video ad inventory – the same brand safe, scaled and engaged audiences the agencies are seeking.
That is the beauty of the Oovvuu model. Everyone wins. The public gets access to video it could not previously see. Broadcasters achieve new reach. Publishers receive new trustworthy videos and new revenues from the inventory the advertisers are demanding.
By bringing the broadcast and publishing industries together under a common aim to distribute the world’s best video and journalism we can combat fake news and repatriate billions from Facebook and Google and return it to the brands who make the content.
All this is enabled by artificial intelligence. Oovvuu’s team did not come from technology, we are journalists focused on telling the news in a more compelling way, but we discovered along the way that AI gave us the ability to scale the solution globally for cents.
You don’t need to believe us, but you might want to believe:
Oovvuu is utterly focus is on creating a new sustainable future for the distribution of journalism. We believe our industry is threatened by the growth and ambitions of Facebook and Google and there needs to be a reckoning.
Individually, the world’s publishers are a sea of ants amid the elephants of Facebook and Google. Individually, you have little or no power to fight back, but together you are as big as either of them.
If the four trends at the start of this article are true, your audience, journalists, broadcasters, publishers and advertisers are aligned in a common goal to create great new products and repatriate billions back to those who matter – the content creators.
Oh, and in the nature of great drop intros, you should know our service is free. We provide it all on a revenue share, so you can only profit.
Imagine if you could syndicate a video, to any person, anywhere on Earth, the minute they wanted it. Wouldn’t that be worth knowing more about?
This is how we do it and it’s really, really, very clever.
We have spent the past few years working with IBM’s boffins to teach the world’s most-powerful supercomputer, IBM Watson, to watch your videos and learn what they are about.
That’s just step one.
As we have also taught Watson to read live articles from 100,000 trusted publishers across the world from The Guardian to The New York Times to The Times of India. We track 300,000 news articles every day across more than 26 million topics, in real time.
We do that because every single articles and topic is an opportunity to embed one of your videos. And breaking news is perpetual, free, vast and popular.
The size of the prize is enormous. IBM estimates the global video market will be worth US$105 billion by 2019, and Oovvuu has already distributed 22 million videos in 113 countries over the past year.
The first step is to let us move your video catalogue into the cloud. Once there, Oovvuu and Watson can see it and match it with the global rush of breaking news.
Thirty nine global broadcasters already trust us to distribute their video this way, including The BBC, Bloomberg, ITV, Al Jazeera, VPRO and more.
And we are backed by the immense power of IBM.
Finally, we do not charge you to join our project. It’s free for you. We pay you a revenue share once we have enabled your shows to make more money.
Oovvuu video reaches millions in seconds, as the news break!
More than 50 broadcasters and publishers already trust Oovvuu’s solutions to distribute video to millions of people in 113 countries every day, and we are funded and supported by global tech giants IBM and Amazon.
Oovvuu attracts attention because of its ingeniously different way of getting the right videos in front of the right people.
We do this by using a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence and the cloud to match videos with breaking news.
We have taught IBM’s supercomputer Watson to ‘read’ 300,000 articles every day and work out what they are about. We have also taught Watson to ‘watch’ videos from our 39 broadcast partners, and figure out what they are about too.
We then work with publishers including News Corp and The Guardian to embed the videos into articles read by a billion people daily.
News consumption is exploding, video creation is soaring and video viewing is at an all-time high. Oovvuu combines this with the latest technology in a way that is mind-blowingly powerful, yet cheap, as the AI does the heavy-lifting.
Oovvuu is smashing the old distribution model by being cheaper and more efficient. Put simply, there’s no better way to get video to the right people and make money.
Newstag is good news for the news. To make certain that the news of the world can be told and accessed, the value and funding of professional and trusted news production has to be defended!
Newstag works with the finest news organizations in the world and has licensed every piece of news available on the platform. The long term vision of sustainability includes a proper funding of news production.
We have a broad perspective, covering the whole world and we also give several angles for the same event. The news are both global and local from for instance China, Russia, the United States, Africa and Europe. We also provide news in different languages; English, Swedish, French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and German.
In sum, a win is when you use software to solve a problem that gives your business an unmistakable edge. Also: wins feel good.
At Hexacta, we make wins happen by collaborating closely with your team, staying relentlessly focused on delivering the right outcomes and making your goals our own.
STEP 1
Your customers and market are the best source of information when determining how to develop software that drives results. The challenge: there’s more data, and the market moves faster, than ever before. Hexacta offers access to the people, processes and technology needed to build software not on what you believe — but what you know.
STEP 2
Trust is a key ingredient to our success. We don’t just write code — our team is a trusted partner in product delivery. We work closely with your team to deliver complete software, while sharing best practices on agile development, machine learning, user experience design, DevOps, documentation and more.
STEP 3
When you have a deeper understanding of your market and a trusted partner in full-stack software development, you can deliver high-quality software wins at startup speed.
Big enough to move mountains, small enough to move fast
Responsible for active communication and milestone tracking
Brings user-first design with global impact
Clear documentation to enable consistency and repeatability
Work with a team that adjusts to your process. Our default methodology is a mixture of Lean, delivering high volumes of features consistent with user/market feedback, and Agile, delivering new features experiment with new markets or user sets for engagement.
How many times have you dreamt of not having to send your assets for encoding somewhere else? Well, now you can: introducing On-Premises Cloud Encoding (up to 100 times faster) by Bitmovin!
Sourcing from a local mesh network enables higher bitrates and minimizes rebuffering.
Flat fees break from traditional CDN pricing for predictable costs and profitable growth.
Scale to audiences no matter where servers or viewers may be. Build a truly global platform.
There is an new movement in online video advertising towards an encoding or server-side approach to inserting ads, also known as Server-Side Ad Insertion or SSAI to bypass adblocking software. In contrast to the traditional client-side techniques, like VAST and VPAID, which stitch together the ad content and non-ad content on the client side, server-side ad insertion intercalates ads on a CMS level. The upshot of this is that the client receives a continuous stream arriving from a single source which creates a broadcast-like transition between ads and content.
The concept of inserting ads on the server-side is also aiming to improve video service monetization, as traditional ad-blocking software is no longer able to bypass playback of ad content. As of today, ad-blockers are used by about 25% of users and therefore have a significant negative impact on ad-driven businesses.
Monetizing content via client-side ad insertion (CSAI) is a common tactic in today’s online video streaming industry. There are a number of standards used including: VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0, IMA, VMAP, to name just a few. Depending on the level of interactivity required, one can choose the standard that fit’s the targeted use-case best. All the specifications listed above are well supported in Bitmovin’s Adaptive Streaming Player and are described in the related tutorial, setting up Ads with our player is easy to do.
Nowadays most commonly used standards share one major disadvantage: They can be detected and blocked by the client. Although ad providers have come a long way in skillfully disguising ad content, the ongoing race between them and the manufacturer of ad-blockers has given content publishers many sleepless nights. From their perspective every unplayed ad corresponds to a potentially loss of ad-driven revenue.
The use of ad-blocking software has grown steadily in recent times and it is no longer limited to a small number of “geeks”. More and more average internet users are adopting ad-blocking technology and this is a big threat to ad driven businesses. The common strategy of detecting blocked ad content and asking consumers to whitelist certain sites relies on the goodwill of users and is far from a satisfactory solution.
Besides the blocking issue, there are other shortcomings when ads are ‘stitched’ to the content at the client side. Changing the source from the content videos to an ad clips leads in most cases to resolution changes and a loss of the playback buffer and therefore a decrease in quality of experience. Although the named disadvantages can be overcome by using efficient pre-buffering strategies, at least to a certain extent, latency-related problems, due to additional calls to (multiple) ad routers and then the ad asset itself, will still be present.
Also from a development point of view CSAI increases effort and expenses. It is not uncommon to make use of ad SDKs, like Google’s IMA SDK, which have to be integrated and tested on every target platform. Achieving common functionalities across all devices can be costly and managing the different versions across platforms increases complexity.
In summary it can be said, that CSAI approaches come with major disadvantages, which makes the Server-Side alternative even more attractive.
The general concept behind SSAI, as already indicated by the name, is stitching together the content and ad clips on the server side during the encoding phase. This is in contrast to CSAI, where the client application handles the ad insertion. As the ads are part of the content video stream itself and proxied from the same server/CDN, there is no obvious indication to the client that the video content has been replaced by an ad. For traditional ad-blocking software it will be impossible to detect and prevent playback of the ad clips.
As ads and content video are one continuous stream, latency problems and rough transitions between ads and content will be avoided. From a developer’s perspective (speaking only about the playout application), handling advertising scenarios will be much easier, as only ad tracking has to be covered by the client. Of course, there are many optimizations available to further enhance the viewer’s experience, such as disabling seeking or trick modes. In general, SSAI tends to move complexity from the client to the server/encoding side. Clearly, this step introduces new challenges for encoding systems, as addressed later on.
As stated in SSAI scenarios, advertisement clips are stitched to the content video itself. The below figure shows an overview of involved components and their interaction.
The content video is fed into the encoder either from a content store or a live ingest. The ad break markers—e.g., inband SCTE-35 triggers or programmatically inserted triggers via the API—are recognized by the encoder and the information is forwarded to the manifest service. The encoded segments are then written to a storage or to a CDN directly, and stored alongside the ad content.
When a client starts a streaming session, the manifest file is requested from the content storage or CDN. The request contains personalized custom data about the viewer and is forwarded to the manifest service. Based on this information, gathered from cross-site tracking and other personalization techniques, the manifest service creates the appropriate playlist (including ad content) for the specific streaming session.
Once playback starts and an ad break is reached, the ad content is presented to the viewer in a smooth and transition-free manner. Using signaling mechanisms, like ID3 tags in HLS, or EMSG data and MPD Events in case of MPEG-DASH, ad-related reports (e.g., ad started information, 10% played, etc.) will be sent to tracking servers from the player.
Bitmovin enables SSAI, using Bitmovin’s Cloud Encoding System and Bitmovin’s Adaptive Streaming Player in combination with third-party ad providers, in an end-to-end scenario. For video delivery, both MPEG-DASH and HLS, as well as progressive download, can be used, as shown in the below demonstration. The content video is interrupted by a short mid-roll ad sequence, starting at around 30 seconds.
As it can be seen, ad assets are presented with Bitmovin’s Adaptive Streaming Player in the same way as the video content itself to ensure smooth and transition-free playback. Therefore user experience will be improved and thus engagement will be increased.
To signal ads to the encoder, ad markers can either be set using inband techniques like SCTE-35 triggers or via a RESTful API. For ad tracking, inband as well as out of band events are detected by Bitmovin’s Adaptive Streaming Player and can be sent to tracking servers.
Although the concept of SSAI eliminates the thread of client-side blocked ads, there are other challenges to face. One of them is interactivity. Nearly every third ad in today’s online video ecosystem is delivered as rich interactive media or executable ad (well-known as VPAID standards). These kind of ads are usually a small application itself (either based on JavaScript or Flash), allowing user interaction with the aim of more engagement. If and how to enable similar possibilities with SSAI will be an upcoming challenge.
Looking at live scenarios, it is obvious that the demand for SSAI will vary over time. To cope with these fluctuations, a highly scalable architecture that handles just-in-time ad insertion is required. As manifests must be created according to the inputs (around personalization) from ad providers, a virtualized solution (hosted either in a cloud infrastructure or in a managed on-premise setup) capable of immediate auto-scaling will be needed.
Nowadays commonly used ad standards are build on the concept of inserting ad clips into content video purely on the client side. So called, Client-Side Ad Insertion does not seem to meet the requirements of online video streaming anymore and especially the increasing number of blocked ads is a major disadvantage. A novel approach, called Server-Side Ad Insertion, or SSAI promises to overcome these issues and even increase user experience and engagement of viewers.
We are happy to announce the introduction of full VP9 support for our HTML5 video player and our video encoder, both in the cloud as well as for containerized deployments that can run on-premise or in your own cloud account with Docker and Kubernetes. VP9 has recently gained popularity as there is still an uncertain royalty situation with HEVC which is the main competitor for VP9. Similar to HEVC, VP9 can perform up to 50% better, as a compression format, than H.264/AVC, especially for UHD or 4K resolutions. This results in higher quality video that can be delivered to the users, or help saving on bandwidth and thus reduce CDN costs by up to 50%!
VP9 is a royalty free codec that is developed by Google as an alternative to the commercial video formats. YouTube has been successfully using VP9 to deliver video content to their users for several years already and claims to deliver the same quality at half the bandwidth used by H.264/AVC. This is why YouTube prefers to stream VP9 on browsers/devices that have support for it, delivering better quality with less bandwidth. When streaming UHD and 4K content, VP9 is getting even more efficient. YouTube has chosen to deliver 4K resolutions only with VP9 and thus locking out Safari users to consume 4K content via YouTube.
This rise in popularity of VP9 is not only caused by the uncertain situation with the HEVC royalties, but also because of the ongoing development of AV1, a royalty-free video coding format developed by the Alliance for Open Media, which can basically be seen as a successor of VP9.
Looking at the range of supported browsers, VP9 is well ahead of HEVC. As of early 2017, VP9 is supported by roughly 75% of the browser market. This includes Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and also Microsoft Edge since summer 2016. On the other hand, HEVC is only supported in Microsoft Edge in cases where hardware decoding is available.
The Bitmovin encoder produces segmented VP9, which is perfectly suited for VoD streams as well as live streams. Furthermore our Live-to-VoD workflow fits perfectly with this format and allows you to generate VoD streams out of the live stream right after the stream has finished or even while the live stream is still running.
Live events have, and probably always will be one of the most marketable video experiences on any screen. Whether it is a football match, a rock concert or a live election speech, people want to watch it as it happens. “Live” is a great selling point but the very nature of live video creates a few weaknesses. For example, what if a user wants to rewind something to watch it again? What if they want to hit pause, so they can grab a beer from the fridge? What if their computer crashes and they miss the event completely?
In many livestreaming implementations, the data is lost as soon it is delivered, making the experience very one dimensional for the user. At Bitmovin we have just enabled our Live-to-VoD API for all customers, which not only allows you to give your customers control over their experience, but also creates a number of extra monetization opportunities that will help you to increase your ROI on live events.
Bitmovin live streaming was designed with the VoD workflow in mind from the very beginning. That is why generating VoD streams out of your live stream is as simple as making a few calls to our API. That means that as soon as your live event has finished you can monetize and deploy the VoD stream to your website and allow viewers to start watching the replay. It also creates opportunities to reuse the content while the event is still running, for example, promotional highlights for social media marketing, or “latest news” snippets.
With the Bitmovin API you can already create VoD clips from your live stream while it is still running. That is useful if you already want to share specific scenes before the event is finished. Another common use-case is that you have a linear program and want to extract specific shows as VoD assets. The workflow for creating VoD streams out of your live stream while it is still running is exactly the same as discussed above. Just provide the start segment and end segment number when creating the manifest and you are done.
The fastest way to get started with Live-to-VoD using the Bitmovin API is to request an API key and review our tutorial section for instructions. Our live streaming tutorial will provide you everything you need to get up and running quickly. If you are looking for an enterprise or customized solution, please contact us to arrange a demonstration or meeting to discuss your specific needs.
