Live event coverage growing rapidly

by Rob Kothe & the Sail-World Team on 13 Jul 2015 Technology and sailing experience is delivering quality, low cost regatta coverage.

In recent years the amount of live coverage of major events has grown exponentially as technology advances have delivered major cost saving that brings live coverage into sensible sponsorship budgets. And applying this technology are some serious sailors.

The last example of low cost live coverage was the 49er Europeans which finished last weekend.

The racing was well covered by the Live Broadcast streamed on YouTube.

Anchored by International 14 sailor and top sailing journalist Andy Rice along with three times European champion Marcus Baur the commentators were were greatly aided by on-board cameras and an excellent analytics and tracking system from SAP.

While SAP tracking has been around for a while, its now become a mature and pretty reliable product.

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The combination of the video and commentary plus graphics and SAP Analytics make a compelling viewing package. It would seem that the 49er class have managed to crack the vexed issue of how to cover fleet racing in Olympic classes, at least, without requiring America's Cup budgets.

Quite how this model is carried over to the other classes, and World Cup events by the International Sailing Federation remains to be seen - but serious congratulations to the 49

Overall for events, vision transmission from the water is getting easier, cameras are getting better and cheaper but more importantly gimbals for the cameras are becoming viable. Mixing and editing equipment is now a lot cheaper, probably down in recent years by a factor of ten.

Sail-World talked to the 49er class, while the fleet waited for the fog to lift at the 49er Europeans in Porto Portugal.

Ben Remocker, 49er Class Managing Director, who represented Canada in class at the Beijing Olympics has been pushing for better coverage for a long time –‘the 49er class have been working hard to deliver value to sponsors over recent years. Overall live coverage for the 49er class is less expensive by an order of magnitude, if not two, smaller than some of the big budget regatta coverage operations.

‘For the 49er class Icarus Sailing and Sail Tracks are doing the live coverage this year for both the Europeans and the Worlds in Argentina in November.

‘Sailtracks have been focused on making their video coverage less expensive, it’s been their primary goal, knowing that there's a niche audience for this stuff. They have been focusing on just the things that are necessary and eliminating the things that aren't.

‘Additionally we also have SAP Analytics, a new sponsorship for the class. Obviously they are delivering excellent tracking and results, they certainly have a bunch of hardware and software and a bunch of know how.’

Sailtracks Marcus Baur, sailed 49ers in Athens and Qingdao, he has been commentating with Andy Rice on this event and he is very much a technology whizz– ‘We're using a lot of 4G network now, using public networks to beam signals back to shore. Much less expensive than having to set up RF Radio frequency transmission) for everything.

‘We've got two on water cameras and two on board cameras, plus a studio camera that is five overall. ‘The on board cameras are really leading edge stuff.

‘In terms of coverage, overall the core piece of technology is the tracking and live results. That really helps us tell the story.

‘Looking ahead I'm a big fan of drones and expect they will become part of the standard vision equipment soon.

‘Cameras on motorboats are not good. They don't film from good angles, they're hard to position and all that. I like drones. Obviously they're a whole lot better than helicopters in terms of effect on the fleet. And they are really unparalleled in terms of positioning the cameras.’

So the future is bright. Overall with sailors running the ever improving technology and costs coming down, the live coverage packages will deliver better and better coverage, better for events, sponsors and sailors world-wide and that kind of win win is exciting.