The broadcast technology sector is undergoing a significant transformation driven by escalating production costs and the need for innovative solutions, according to Appear CEO Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen. Speaking at the 2025 NAB Show, Jørgensen highlighted two key trends: the demand for cost-effective solutions and the diversification of services among connectivity providers. “As production value goes up, production costs go up,” Jørgensen said. “Much more technology needs to be deployed to create that value… At least in the broadcast rights holder side of the market, I see a need for cost-efficient solutions.”
The evolving landscape of sports broadcasting, with leagues increasingly adopting direct-to-consumer strategies, has presented expanded opportunities for technology providers like Appear. “They produce their own content and they deliver it,” Jørgensen noted. “They acquire the signals, they produce the content and they deliver it in addition to selling rights to broadcasters and cutting up the cake in the normal way.” This shift has broadened Appear’s customer base beyond traditional broadcasters. “It expands the market for technology because you don’t just have the traditional broadcasters investing in infrastructure, but also the rights holders,” said Jørgensen.
Virtualization is facilitating a “democratization of production capabilities,” allowing smaller sports leagues to produce professional broadcasts. “A lot of the new virtualized production workflows are pay-per-use, and the vendors and suppliers provide the workflow support and user interface that will simplify the entire production value chain,” he explained. “That democratization of production and workflows is helping drive lower costs into Tier 2 or Tier 3 sports.” This is evident even at the grassroots level, with Jørgensen citing an example in Norway where a company has installed cameras in sports venues nationwide, enabling subscription-based streaming access to various competitions.
Appear has solidified its position with Tier 1 players, leveraging its X Platform, described by Jørgensen as “by far the market leader in providing low latency, high density.” This platform offers the efficiency larger broadcasters require for live streaming. “Our platform scales extremely well with volume,” Jørgensen said. “The bigger productions you have, the cost goes down.” The company is also expanding its offerings to Tier 2 broadcasters with a new, award-winning, smaller solution.
Appear’s future strategy is centered on VX, a “pure compute, fully virtualized, containerized software solution.” Jørgensen envisions a 3-5 year plan to develop “a fully virtualized suite of production applications,” acknowledging that some specialized functions, such as graphics, might remain outside their development focus. “Hopefully we can democratize the use of our technology into the Tier 2s and the full virtualized sources,” he said. Jørgensen describes Appear as “the fastest-growing company in this industry by far,” emphasizing significant market share gains, particularly in North America, where they’ve secured the trust of major players in sports production and broadcasting. Their customer base also includes streaming giants like Amazon and Netflix.