Live Sports Production Scales Up, Gets Smarter, And Moves Closer To Fans

A TV Tech webinar on Automation, Highlights, and Real-Time Decisioning in Live Sports Production highlighted a broader shift in how live sport is produced, distributed and experienced. Fox Sports’ Michael Davies, Abe Apt of AJA Video, Mike Burke of Appear, and Kevin Dresser of Ross Video discussed how to serve more events and platforms and tell richer stories without simply adding more people, trucks or time.

A key theme was scale through distributed workflows. Fox Sports’ forthcoming FIFA World Cup coverage will blend a central base in Los Angeles with remote studio shows from multiple US cities, an illustration of centralised control paired with nationwide contribution. Michael Davies – Executive Vice President – Fox Sports – said: “We connect with remote studio shows across the country – Seattle, New York, Dallas, and all over, depending on where the action is. So, it is centralized and distributed all at the same time with a massive, massive scale.”

Immersion was another focus, with data-enriched pictures helping fans follow the action. For the Indy 500, Fox Sports pushed further with more in-car cameras, heads-up display graphics, telemetry and aerial coverage. Davies added: “That your in-car cameras now are not only a camera, but they’re also a data source. It’s a place where you can actually watch the race and understand the context of the race.” Kevin Dresser – Director of Business Development, Graphics – Ross Video – said: “Data is king. Most leagues now have systems in place that track players and the ball with incredible accuracy. Our focus is helping the production teams harness all that data to create new contextual graphics and experiences for fans.”

Artificial intelligence featured prominently, not as a spectacle but as quiet infrastructure that speeds up production. The panel noted that AI is already assisting with tagging, tracking, asset management, graphics, highlight creation and monitoring – the “under the bonnet” jobs that make live shows faster and easier to manage. Davies noted: “AI right now is mostly under the hood, not necessarily presented on the screen, with some very significant exceptions. You don’t always see it, and you don’t always see what exactly it’s doing. However, you do see what it lets us do,” Abe Apt said: “I’m very optimistic about AI, as an assistant, not as a magical non-sentient producer, and, as Mike said, the best uses right now are the boring but powerful ones. It’s definitely under the hood; you see the results of it, but it’s not thrown in your face.” Dresser said: “AI can help with the preparation of content to allow production teams to dive in, start adding effects and work on the storytelling … If we can automate some of those repetitive tasks it allows operators to be more effective under tight timelines”.

Viewing behaviour is also reshaping production design. While most broadcasts are still built around a 16:9 canvas, audiences are consuming on phones, sampling alternate feeds, and expecting more personalised viewing. Davies observed: “India is different in that they’re sort of phone-first, mobile-first, so their bet on 9×16 and integration is way ahead of what this industry is doing.” Apt reflected: “The audience just changed faster than the production grammar. This is the best way I can phrase it. And it happened so fast, too, and made me feel super old. But now I catch myself watching live events vertically.”

Taken together, the discussion showed a live sports sector meeting higher expectations with smarter, leaner workflows. IP connectivity, AI, data, advanced graphics, specialty cameras and mobile-first formats are converging to make production more flexible, more efficient and better aligned with how fans want to watch.


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