In our recent TV Tech webinar on Automation, Highlights, and Real-Time Decisioning in Live Sports Production, the conversation quickly moved beyond technology. The panelists were really talking about a bigger change in how sports are produced, delivered, and experienced.
Fox Sports’ Michael Davies was joined by Abe Apt from AJA Video, Mike Burke from Appear, and Kevin Dresser from Ross Video. Together, they explored an industry trying to cover more events, feed more platforms, and tell better stories without simply adding more people, trucks, or time.
Scaling production without scaling everything else
The first big theme was scale. Live sports production is becoming more distributed out of necessity. For example, Fox Sports’ upcoming World Cup coverage will combine a main production base in Los Angeles with remote studio shows from cities across the country.
Making every fan part of the action
The second theme was immersion. For Fox Sports’ Indy 500 coverage, that means more in-car cameras, more heads-up display graphics, more telemetry, and more aerial coverage. Davies described the in-car camera as something that now does more than capture a dramatic angle. It can also help explain the race. “That your in-car cameras now are not only a camera, but they’re also a data source. It’s a place where you can actually watch the race and understand the context of the race.”
That same idea came up in the graphics discussion. Kevin Dresser discussed how player and ball-tracking data can help production teams build graphics that explain what is happening without getting in the way of the game.
Using AI where it actually helps
The third theme was artificial intelligence, but not in the flashy, science-fiction sense. The panelists kept coming back to AI as something that is already working behind the scenes. It helps with tagging, tracking, asset management, graphics, highlights, monitoring, and other tasks that make a live production faster and easier to manage.
Abe Apt made a similar point and pushed back against the idea that AI is there to replace the production crew. In his view, the most useful applications are practical ones. “I’m very optimistic about AI, as an assistant, not as a magical non-sentient producer, and, as Mike said, the best uses right now are the boring but powerful ones. It’s definitely under the hood; you see the results of it, but it’s not thrown in your face.”
Kevin Dresser spoke about AI as a valuable assistant for graphics operators in live production environments, where teams must create fast-turnaround content while adding rich context to the story.
Designing for new screens and new habits
The final theme was changing viewing behavior. Sports are still produced around a 16:9 canvas, but fans are watching on phones, following alternate telecasts, checking social clips, and expecting more customized experiences. Davies pointed to India as a market that is already far ahead in mobile-first sports viewing. “India is different in that they’re sort of phone-first, mobile-first, so their bet on 9×16 and integration is way ahead of what this industry is doing.”
Apt summed up the challenge neatly. It is not enough to crop a wide shot and hope it works on a phone. The whole production language has to adapt. “The audience just changed faster than the production grammar. This is the best way I can phrase it. And it happened so fast, too, and made me feel super old. But now I catch myself watching live events vertically.”
Frame the game your way
Built for the pressure of live sports, Ross brings cameras, replay, graphics, and automation together in a powerful system that helps you capture more angles, add more insight, and share more live data to keep your audience hooked.
A production model in motion
Altogether, the webinar showed an industry rising to meet bigger expectations with smarter workflows. IP, AI, data, graphics, specialty cameras, and mobile formats are now working together to make live sports production more flexible, more efficient, and more in tune with how fans want to watch.