Live Sports is undoubtedly the most competitive form of television broadcast. Sports and channels have always had to compete for viewers and find new and innovative ways to attract, engage and retain them. It is the live sports broadcast arena that drives the relentless pursuit of improvements in almost every aspect of production; superior image quality, high speed capture to deliver super smooth slow motion, wire cams, miniaturized cameras, elegant instant replay, the list is long. When it comes to production, graphics has long been a key tool, both in the delivery of in-game statistics, and in ways to enhance and augment pre-game, half-time and post-game analysis.

For many sports the use of real-time statistical data has become an inherent part of the fan experience. Whether it is car data and race statistics in motor racing, tracking player speeds and performance, or helping to analyze tactics and plays, live sports and data driven graphics are now synonymous.

This series combines research and expert interviews to explore two distinct aspects of sports graphics production; Part 1 looks at how real time data is captured, processed, distributed and fed into graphics packages to deliver visualizations.

Part 2 looks at how sports has embraced Virtual Production and Augmented Reality, the challenges of designing for live production and operational demands in the heat of the live production studio.

Part 1 is available to download here.

Part 2 is available to download below.

Part 2 - Design, Production, VP & AR

Part 2 is a free PDF download which contains three original articles:

Article 1 : The Rise Of The VP-AR Sports Studio
Live Sports Production has widely embraced Virtual & Augmented Reality techniques. Here we discuss the challenges of creating studio environments with a focus on camera motion tracking.

Article 2 : Designing Sports Graphics
Industry experts discuss how the discipline of designing graphics for VR/AR studios and data driven visualizations is often about translating brand expectations into what works in live production environments.

Article 3 : The Sports Graphics Operators Perspective
In the cut and thrust of live production the sports graphics operator is responsible for bringing all of the technology elements of the system into glorious harmonious alignment - and it is not an easy ask.