From Live To Highlight: Transforming Sports Media Production With Live Data

Audiences crave up-to-date sports content - the latest goal, a dramatic miss, highlights of the game that’s just finished, all quickly edited, packaged and distributed. But broadcasters often struggle to produce this content at speed and scale, with content producers forced to sift through hours of content to find exactly what they want. There’s got to be a better way…

Powerful data feed integration

The Imagen platform can help find highlights automatically. Real-time data, created using human logging systems or supplied via sports analytics data providers like Opta, can be ingested into the Imagen media archive management platform as a live sporting event is still underway, providing a wealth of enriched metadata for improved search and discovery.

Live metadata ingestion

Many of Imagen's sports federation customers already use Imagen to do this, synchronising official game data from a sports analytics provider to live game feeds. This live data is then collected and assessed by a team of people covering each match, pulling in information about a variety of metrics e.g. what happens every time a player touches the ball, which player it was, and where on the pitch the action occurred.

A wealth of extra data

For a football team for example over 60 player and club statistics can be captured and made available via the data feed, including, but not limited to: substitutions, shots, goals (from penalties, freekicks, headers, etc.), passes per match, long balls, through balls, crosses, tackles, blocks, interceptions, fouls and offsides. Imagen imports the most important data elements, enabling users to search for those tags in real time, even as a match is still in play.

Smarter search & instant clipping

With Imagen’s Live Connect real-time ingestion, all searchable tags are applied to the video timeline as the match plays out and they can be displayed and synchronised with the video file during playback. A sports content producer can then search for a goal from a specific player and take that clip off the live feed to use it in a highlight package or as social-ready content.

Faster media logging

Live sports analytics data has its limitations. It won't tell you whether a player is smiling or crying, or whether the video shot is a close-up or a cutaway to the crowd. It’s why human media logging is also an integral part of the data gathering process. Using Imagen’s built-in Media Logger tool, teams can use a grid of custom keywords, chapters, phrases and participants to quickly generate rich, searchable metadata that, along with live sports analytics data, combines to deliver a superior search experience.

Enhanced accessibility and security

Robust access controls ensure that sensitive footage does not fall into the wrong hands. Imagen holds the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO 9001:2015 certifications from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Content is secure and protected, while system administrators have full control over who can see their media archive and what they can do with the content.

From 'live' to 'archive'

Whether it's searching for a specific player's highlight reel, a goal, interviews, graphics or social-ready content, the combination of live-logged metadata and live sports analytics fact-based searching, has raised the bar for sports media asset management.

“The ability to create an archive on the fly and get the metadata in at the same time is very valuable,” says Tom Blake, Commercial Director at Imagen. “Because the data is being added in an automated way, there is less need for any manual intervention. It’s a powerful workflow.”

To manage all your live and archive content in one place, book a demo.