Live Streaming the ‘Fastest Sport on Ice’ on a Small Production Budget 

Live Production Exposes Viewers to the Sport of Ringette & Helps Athletes Perfect their Craft 

As sports and live production make a big comeback in Canada, it is crucial to have the right infrastructure in place to cover these fast-moving, dynamic sports. But, with budgets tighter than ever and end customers cautious of the spend, it can be hard to justify a big multi-camera production. So production companies face a challenge in capturing these live events efficiently and at the quality that audiences expect, while also doing it cost-effectively. 

LiveU, the leader in live video and remote production, has developed streamlined and simplified live production solutions that meet these very needs. Here’s an example of how the company recently supported the Ontario Ringette AA Championship with a powerful REMI workflow solution that helped the organization expand its viewership, while also helping the coaches and athletes perfect their game by capturing and viewing the matches afterwards. 

The Challenge 

Ringette is a Canadian winter sport that’s been dubbed the fastest sport on ice. To capture the action-packed AA Ringette Championship for the fans and for teaching purposes for the team, event organizers wanted to stream the 3-day coverage. The quality in these venues has typically been subpar due to lack of connectivity. The production team knew one cell connection wasn’t going to cut it. Next, the team needed the ability to get the video back to their network operations so they could ingest it into their REMI suites to add the graphics and make the production look high-quality for the anticipated 70K viewers watching it live online. 

The Solution  

The production team utilized a REMI workflow and LU800 to transmit the multi-camera live feeds to the control room at the company’s production facility. The REMI approach afforded the team more control over the production elements including editing, adding slates and graphics, and distribution. They were also able to send their backup stream directly from the LiveU Central video management platform to their content distribution network. Another perk of using LiveU was the Video Return function, which gave the team the ability to record the 3 days of content for future use. The LiveU solution and partnership with iSiLIVE allowed viewers to see real high-quality live sports production streamed to their devices. This is really a “build it and they will come” scenario. By offering such high quality production to amateur sports, viewership is sure to increase exponentially. 

“We wouldn’t have live streamed the entire three-day championship without the affordability and flexibility that LiveU offered. Thousands of families who couldn’t be at the finals would have missed the chance at seeing their children compete,” said Bengt Neathery, President, iSiLIVE.

Conclusion

REMI Production is here to stay. It has proven time and time again to provide a cost-effective way to produce live content – especially live sports without compromising the quality that the viewers demand to see on TV, online, and mobile devices. For production companies, this workflow offers a highly repeatable method of producing multiple live events in a given day or week without having to send full crews all over the country or the world. Instead you can build a dream team of production members who can work out of a central production facility to produce and distribute the content. To learn more about this innovative production workflow solution, visit https://www.liveu.tv/solutions/sports/remote-production.