The sports broadcasting industry is undergoing a significant transformation as it embraces cloud-based, remote workflows. This shift, far from experimental, is becoming the operational standard, as evidenced by the convergence at IBC 2025 in Amsterdam. While offering reduced costs, increased scalability, and global talent access, the transition presents new operational hurdles regarding reliability, timing, and integration.
The economic impact is undeniable. "Cloud-based and remote workflows have transformed live sports production by enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-efficient operations, reducing the need for massive on-site crews and infrastructure," notes Paul Calleja, CEO of GlobalM. "They allow broadcasters to spin up resources on demand, centralize operations, and integrate global talent without travel."
This democratizes high-quality broadcasting. Ian Wagdin, VP of technology and innovation at Appear, highlights how World Archery's adoption of Appear’s X Platform allows in-house production: "With edge encoding and IP-native media transport, even mid-tier or regional sports can now bring production in-house without sacrificing quality. The sports federation now has full control of its content delivery, significantly improving the quality and consistency of its live streams."
Environmental benefits are also substantial. Russell Johnson, director of Hitomi Broadcast, observes a reduction in carbon footprint due to streamlined workflows and reduced equipment transport. The industry favors hybrid approaches, combining on-premises and cloud environments for flexibility and performance guarantees. "Hybrid production environments have moved beyond transitional, they are fast becoming the operational standard," confirms Wagdin. "Broadcasters no longer want to choose between on-prem or cloud; they expect seamless integration across both."
Containerization and orchestration of microservices for media transport, encoding, and monitoring enable customized workflows. Wagdin emphasizes this modularity: "Media transport, encoding, and monitoring are now being containerized and orchestrated as microservices, allowing broadcasters to spin up tailored workflows based on event needs. This is enabling the coverage of more events at reduced overheads."
However, challenges persist, particularly regarding reliability on game day. Paul Calleja points out issues with legacy systems, latency, and network congestion: "On game day, gaps remain around legacy systems still in use that cause things like long latencies, reliability under peak loads, and the dependencies on stable connectivity in stadiums where networks can be congested. Operationally, engineers still face challenges with tool fragmentation, interoperability across vendors, and maintaining the same level of control and immediacy that a traditional on-site setup once guaranteed."
Timing discrepancies, insignificant in traditional workflows, pose significant issues in IP-based environments. "The critical gap we see on game day is timing verification across these complex, multi-location setups," explains Johnson. "What might seem like minor misalignments in traditional SDI workflows can become significant issues in IP environments, where multiple buffers and network paths introduce unexpected delays."
Robotic camera systems present further difficulties. Paddy Taylor, head of broadcast at MRMC, notes infrastructure limitations: "The quality of delivery on Game Day is largely dependent on the broadcast infrastructure, requiring a low-latency, stable connection, something not all stadiums can provide. Automated tracking can struggle when the play becomes unpredictable or players are obstructed, requiring manual intervention."
AI plays an increasing role in content creation and real-time processing. Kathleen Barrett, CEO of Backlight, highlights AI's impact: "Editors can now cut highlights from anywhere in the world, while AI systems automatically detect key moments — goals, touchdowns, game-changing plays — and generate clips in real time. Content is instantly adapted for different platforms, from vertical video to traditional broadcast, enabling teams to scale output efficiently and cost effectively." However, Barrett acknowledges the limitations: "AI still falls short when it comes to capturing nuance — emotional beats, evolving storylines, and context that experienced producers bring to the table. The next phase isn’t just about automation — it’s about closing the gap between speed and storytelling."
Advanced technologies like speech-to-text, automated translation, and voice cloning enhance content accessibility and global distribution. Infrastructure performance is critical, especially with multiple 4K or 8K feeds. Duncan Beattie, market development manager at Tuxera, points to potential bottlenecks: "Sports broadcasting represents some of the most demanding workflows we encounter. When you’re dealing with multiple 4K or 8K feeds, real-time graphics rendering, and the need for instant content delivery across multiple platforms, every component of your infrastructure stack needs to perform flawlessly. During peak production moments, when multiple teams need simultaneous access to the same high-resolution assets, these protocol bottlenecks become critical failure points. In live sports production, you can’t ask the match to pause while your files transfer."
Protecting content from piracy is paramount. Eric Gallier, vice president of video solutions at Harmonic, stresses the need for advanced anti-piracy measures: "Fighting piracy continues to be an uphill battle for live sports streaming; however, sophisticated anti-piracy measures such as forensic and dynamic watermarking, geo-blocking, and CDN-level authentication and access control services can help content providers to quickly identify piracy sources and stop content restreaming."
The industry's focus at IBC 2025 will be on refining cloud production workflows, addressing reliability, timing, and integration issues. While the technology is capable, ongoing innovation is crucial to ensure flawless performance for millions of viewers.