ETIA 2015: Panel on Live Events over the Web

The conference is drawing to a close with its final panel, on live event distribution, chaired by Eric Grab, from NeuLion, that produced and broadcast over 55,000 events on the web last year. Ole Lutjens, from Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which supports over 400,000 hours of live video streaming each year demonstrated some of the user interface elements it uses to add value to customers, including markers for highlights and statistics overlays that are integrated with the user's remote control for moving around through the broadcast. Luc Dumont, of Dailymotion, showed how how they help content creators with its large, global, audience of 130 million unique visitors per month -- as well as monetize their content for them. Greg Herlein, heads a team at Cisco that is working to integrate Cisco's acquisitions in video delivery technology into solutions for its customers that better enable them to deliver content over the web. He sees the opportunity presented by a 2-way network like the Internet as opening up a new world of experiences and challenges. Mark Kramer, head of digital technology for Pac-12 Networks, which is owned by the 12 member schools of the Conference. They produce and distribute about 850 live events at 90 venues each year. A secondary mission for the group is increasing fan engagement and help increase live attendance.

The panel all agreed that the Internet platform represented a huge advance over traditional event broadcasting. The potential for customized content line-ups, personalized viewing, and interaction is without parallel. This takes shape in custom camera options, personalized fantasy sports overlays, feeds of only sports or teams of interest to the viewers, and many more. The Internet platform also works nearly seamlessly with social media, which is an increasing component of the overall event experience -- especially for younger viewers. In terms of challenges, the biggest is the unforgiving nature of live events. Everything has to work, unlike Video on Demand where the user can often just come back later. Users also don't forgive entertainment on a mobile device just because it is over the web. They expect it to be as reliable as the time-tested TV infrastructure.