Verizon Business Group’s in-venue 5G service enhancement initiatives with big sports leagues are laying the groundwork for a transformation in services and how sports are produced that will impact viewing experiences across the carrier’s mobile and fixed service footprints.
While it comes as no surprise that Verizon intends to be in the thick of the next-gen sports trend, a recent discussion with Business Group executives brought to light fresh details of the far-reaching strategy they’re pursuing in partnership with AWS and sports enterprises. They acknowledged in-venue activities with National Football League and Major League Baseball, but they limited their league-specific comments about the state of progress to what they’re doing with the National Hockey League, which, as reported elsewhere, was publicized at the NAB Show in April.
Nonetheless, descriptions of what’s afoot provided by Verizon executives made it clear there’s a lot more in play than meets the eye. “We’re continually asked by customers about how to build on what we’re doing,” said Leighton Griffiths, Verizon Business Group’s global domains lead for sports and venues. Critically, this includes helping them with internal networking essential to moving production to the cloud.
Which is what has happened in Verizon’s partnership with the NHL. Griffiths said the company anticipates that, as sports owners’ cloud production strategies and in-venue service features are worked out, the external multi-outlet sportscasting plans articulated by the NHL will be replicated elsewhere.
“We’re looking at the broader ecosystem to leverage network connectivity as we work with some of our leading partners in the sports world,” he added, noting Verizon now has a 5G presence in affiliations with 32 NFL stadiums and many MLB parks as well. “We’re now evaluating providing content and features with third parties’ participation.”
Verizon is also helping sports owners equip their stadiums and arenas with advanced distributed antenna systems (DASs) providing Wi-Fi as well as 5G coverage to make in-venue services available to all smartphone users, not just Verizon’s 5G customers. “We’re doing RF modeling for all these use cases,” said Josh Arensberg, CTO of M&E for the business group. “Our DAS technology is our gateway to creating unique, differentiating experiences.”
Venues are paying Verizon to build high-density Wi-Fi environment, Arensberg added. “With high-density Wi-Fi you get much greater participation in the benefits,” he said. “And venues also benefit from the highly granular user data that comes with connectivity, letting producers know how people are moving around the stadium and which apps are resonating.”
The cloud production portion of the Verizon template, as exemplified by the NHL’s strategy, allows sports producers to tweak outputs to fit both the in-venue and multiple external distribution scenarios. Utilizing 5G in conjunction with the AWS Wavelength on-ramp to the AWS cloud is vital to execution at speeds compatible with live production, noted Tom Zimmerman, CMO for global enterprises and the public sector at Verizon. “On the private networks we’re building at venues around the U.S., compute happens very quickly in the cloud. AWS Wavelength is what makes it happen.”
Ultralow latency video roundtrips from cameras to the cloud and back to the venue are enabled in part by Verizon’s use of the AWS Wavelength on-ramp, which allows content to be streamed directly to the cloud through AWS portals co-located with 5G control centers, thereby avoiding latencies induced by multi-hop internet transport to AWS datacenters. With the roundtrip between venue and cloud consuming “seven sixtieths of a second, you’re watching the play on the ice and it’s on your screen,” said Grant Nodine, the NHL’s SVP of technology, who appeared with Zimmerman at an NAB Show press conference.
“By moving production to the cloud we’re able to provide multiple renditions of the content for different audiences with advertising unique to different regions,” Nodine said. Looking ahead, he noted the league is contemplating offering multi-camera viewing along with 4K and, eventually, 8K viewing options, as part of “allowing people to create their own broadcasts.”
Now that the league is in cloud production mode, it can envision a future where, along with compelling new features, it will be able to deliver “alternate broadcasts with different commentators and even creators,” he said.
Similar endeavors are underway worldwide. Other carriers known to be utilizing Wavelength Zones include Japan’s KDDI, SK Telecom in South Korea, Vodafone in Europe, and Bell Canada.
Among these and other carriers outside the U.S. there are many examples of what’s still a nascent movement toward in-venue 5G experiences that will require tight synchronization with live action. In Canada, for example, Rogers Communications has embarked on an initiative leveraging new 5G spectrum capacity in partnership with AWS, Ericsson, software developer Immersiv.io, and venue operator Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. to implement AR-based immersive viewing at hockey games.
One of the early moves to commercial offerings of enhanced in-venue 5G experiences in Europe can be found in Germany, where Vodafone reached an agreement with Bundesliga, Germany’s largest soccer league, to establish advanced 5G infrastructure in all the stadiums used by the league. This has allowed Vodafone to offer a multi-view and replay app developed for Sky Sports customers wherever those installations are complete.
France-based Orange is another European telecom with a transnational footprint pursuing development of advanced 5G in-venue user experiences. The company is using Marseille’s Orange Velodrome soccer stadium as testbed for development of apps on the advanced 5G millimeter-wave infrastructure it has installed there. One of several publicized apps tested there employs AR technology in conjunction with AWS edge computing and other partners’ technologies to superimpose game and player data on AR users’ fields of vision.
Similarly, U.K. MNO Three has contracted with the Premier League’s Chelsea club and Stamford Bridge stadium in London to implement 5G infrastructure that will serve as a testbed for app development. A mix of multi-viewing, replay, and real-time displays of stats with AR support is in the offing.
But all this experimentation awaits commercial expansion based on what’s doable under sports licensing rights. As Griffiths noted, the range of applications that can be offered by service providers, both in-venue and beyond, is highly dependent not only on the inclinations of sports producers and their willingness to move to cloud production but also on the boundaries imposed by licensing terms, which can be changed as licenses come up for renewal.
“Every venue is different,” Griffiths said. “Most venues want connectivity, but there are challenges related to broadcast rights and the relationships between leagues and venues.”
So far, Verizon has been far more aggressive than its biggest competitors in exploitation of the in-venue possibilities and with its support for real-time transport capabilities as with Wavelength to enable the shift to cloud production. AT&T and T-Mobile have funded dense 5G deployments at stadiums and other entertainment venues across the U.S. over the past two years. But, with occasional exceptions, they’ve chosen to rely on better coverage as the driver to audience engagement as opposed to offering venue-related feature enhancements.
AT&T, for example, reported that a major upgrade to its 5G presence at the 2023 Super Bowl venue in Phoenix led to an 81% surge in data usage compared to usage at the 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles. But both carriers make clear they have development initiatives underway that are likely to spawn more in-venue special features over time.
So far, AT&T has limited its in-venue 5G enhancements to features that don’t involve fan engagement with live action at the main event. Many of these, like the options available during the days leading up to the 2023 College Football Playoff, involve access to special concerts or other side shows to the main event. And some are AR related, as in the case of the 2023 NBA Allstar game in Salt Lake City, where fans could participate as avatars in an interactive AR game featuring two NBA stars.
T-Mobile has populated many venues with its 5G small cells but has seldom publicized venue-specific apps. Instead, like AT&T, it publicizes the fact that its in-venue deployments provide people with market-high levels of throughput, which mitigates congestion resulting from the massive amount of content users typically generate while attending live events.
The big exceptions to this approach in T-Mobile’s case involve services it delivered with the MLB’s Allstar Week productions in 2022 and 2023 and probably will again in 2024, although there’s been no announcement of its plans this year. Among the features on offer at both Allstar Weeks T-Mobile provided in-venue 5G and Wi-Fi users who had AR eyewear 3D panoramic renderings of the pre-Allstar game Home Run Derby, which allowed them to track a ball’s path and view stats relaying its velocity, distance and hang time. In 2023, the carrier enhanced the 5G version of the feature by delivering ultralow latency audio of the live ESPN and FOX broadcasts in app, which eliminated the delays between broadcast and on-field action.
Verizon has gone much farther on a much broader scale with its feature sets. One of the most popular offers in-venue users the opportunity to switch among several different camera views of action on the field and in the stands. There have also been instances where the service has supported an augmented-reality (AR) element enabling personalized displays of player statistics and merging of selfie images with live stadium footage. For example, in the latter case, people can capture a selfie appearing virtually on a jumbotron and post the picture to social media.
The NHL will be offering whatever features it determines wider audiences want, depending on rights, Nodine said, noting that the multi-view service option is “100% a rights issue.” With multi-viewing high on Verizon’s priorities list, there’s significant progress in this direction. “We’ve done multi-views with other customers,” Zimmerman said. “We think the economics of broadcasting this way is the future.”
While it comes as no surprise that Verizon intends to be in the thick of the next-gen sports trend, a recent discussion with Business Group executives brought to light fresh details of the far-reaching strategy they’re pursuing in partnership with AWS and sports enterprises. They acknowledged in-venue activities with National Football League and Major League Baseball, but they limited their league-specific comments about the state of progress to what they’re doing with the National Hockey League, which, as reported elsewhere, was publicized at the NAB Show in April.
Nonetheless, descriptions of what’s afoot provided by Verizon executives made it clear there’s a lot more in play than meets the eye. “We’re continually asked by customers about how to build on what we’re doing,” said Leighton Griffiths, Verizon Business Group’s global domains lead for sports and venues. Critically, this includes helping them with internal networking essential to moving production to the cloud.
Which is what has happened in Verizon’s partnership with the NHL. Griffiths said the company anticipates that, as sports owners’ cloud production strategies and in-venue service features are worked out, the external multi-outlet sportscasting plans articulated by the NHL will be replicated elsewhere.
“We’re looking at the broader ecosystem to leverage network connectivity as we work with some of our leading partners in the sports world,” he added, noting Verizon now has a 5G presence in affiliations with 32 NFL stadiums and many MLB parks as well. “We’re now evaluating providing content and features with third parties’ participation.”
Verizon is also helping sports owners equip their stadiums and arenas with advanced distributed antenna systems (DASs) providing Wi-Fi as well as 5G coverage to make in-venue services available to all smartphone users, not just Verizon’s 5G customers. “We’re doing RF modeling for all these use cases,” said Josh Arensberg, CTO of M&E for the business group. “Our DAS technology is our gateway to creating unique, differentiating experiences.”
Venues are paying Verizon to build high-density Wi-Fi environment, Arensberg added. “With high-density Wi-Fi you get much greater participation in the benefits,” he said. “And venues also benefit from the highly granular user data that comes with connectivity, letting producers know how people are moving around the stadium and which apps are resonating.”
The cloud production portion of the Verizon template, as exemplified by the NHL’s strategy, allows sports producers to tweak outputs to fit both the in-venue and multiple external distribution scenarios. Utilizing 5G in conjunction with the AWS Wavelength on-ramp to the AWS cloud is vital to execution at speeds compatible with live production, noted Tom Zimmerman, CMO for global enterprises and the public sector at Verizon. “On the private networks we’re building at venues around the U.S., compute happens very quickly in the cloud. AWS Wavelength is what makes it happen.”
Ultralow latency video roundtrips from cameras to the cloud and back to the venue are enabled in part by Verizon’s use of the AWS Wavelength on-ramp, which allows content to be streamed directly to the cloud through AWS portals co-located with 5G control centers, thereby avoiding latencies induced by multi-hop internet transport to AWS datacenters. With the roundtrip between venue and cloud consuming “seven sixtieths of a second, you’re watching the play on the ice and it’s on your screen,” said Grant Nodine, the NHL’s SVP of technology, who appeared with Zimmerman at an NAB Show press conference.
“By moving production to the cloud we’re able to provide multiple renditions of the content for different audiences with advertising unique to different regions,” Nodine said. Looking ahead, he noted the league is contemplating offering multi-camera viewing along with 4K and, eventually, 8K viewing options, as part of “allowing people to create their own broadcasts.”
Now that the league is in cloud production mode, it can envision a future where, along with compelling new features, it will be able to deliver “alternate broadcasts with different commentators and even creators,” he said.
Similar endeavors are underway worldwide. Other carriers known to be utilizing Wavelength Zones include Japan’s KDDI, SK Telecom in South Korea, Vodafone in Europe, and Bell Canada.
Among these and other carriers outside the U.S. there are many examples of what’s still a nascent movement toward in-venue 5G experiences that will require tight synchronization with live action. In Canada, for example, Rogers Communications has embarked on an initiative leveraging new 5G spectrum capacity in partnership with AWS, Ericsson, software developer Immersiv.io, and venue operator Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. to implement AR-based immersive viewing at hockey games.
One of the early moves to commercial offerings of enhanced in-venue 5G experiences in Europe can be found in Germany, where Vodafone reached an agreement with Bundesliga, Germany’s largest soccer league, to establish advanced 5G infrastructure in all the stadiums used by the league. This has allowed Vodafone to offer a multi-view and replay app developed for Sky Sports customers wherever those installations are complete.
France-based Orange is another European telecom with a transnational footprint pursuing development of advanced 5G in-venue user experiences. The company is using Marseille’s Orange Velodrome soccer stadium as testbed for development of apps on the advanced 5G millimeter-wave infrastructure it has installed there. One of several publicized apps tested there employs AR technology in conjunction with AWS edge computing and other partners’ technologies to superimpose game and player data on AR users’ fields of vision.
Similarly, U.K. MNO Three has contracted with the Premier League’s Chelsea club and Stamford Bridge stadium in London to implement 5G infrastructure that will serve as a testbed for app development. A mix of multi-viewing, replay, and real-time displays of stats with AR support is in the offing.
But all this experimentation awaits commercial expansion based on what’s doable under sports licensing rights. As Griffiths noted, the range of applications that can be offered by service providers, both in-venue and beyond, is highly dependent not only on the inclinations of sports producers and their willingness to move to cloud production but also on the boundaries imposed by licensing terms, which can be changed as licenses come up for renewal.
“Every venue is different,” Griffiths said. “Most venues want connectivity, but there are challenges related to broadcast rights and the relationships between leagues and venues.”
So far, Verizon has been far more aggressive than its biggest competitors in exploitation of the in-venue possibilities and with its support for real-time transport capabilities as with Wavelength to enable the shift to cloud production. AT&T and T-Mobile have funded dense 5G deployments at stadiums and other entertainment venues across the U.S. over the past two years. But, with occasional exceptions, they’ve chosen to rely on better coverage as the driver to audience engagement as opposed to offering venue-related feature enhancements.
AT&T, for example, reported that a major upgrade to its 5G presence at the 2023 Super Bowl venue in Phoenix led to an 81% surge in data usage compared to usage at the 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles. But both carriers make clear they have development initiatives underway that are likely to spawn more in-venue special features over time.
So far, AT&T has limited its in-venue 5G enhancements to features that don’t involve fan engagement with live action at the main event. Many of these, like the options available during the days leading up to the 2023 College Football Playoff, involve access to special concerts or other side shows to the main event. And some are AR related, as in the case of the 2023 NBA Allstar game in Salt Lake City, where fans could participate as avatars in an interactive AR game featuring two NBA stars.
T-Mobile has populated many venues with its 5G small cells but has seldom publicized venue-specific apps. Instead, like AT&T, it publicizes the fact that its in-venue deployments provide people with market-high levels of throughput, which mitigates congestion resulting from the massive amount of content users typically generate while attending live events.
The big exceptions to this approach in T-Mobile’s case involve services it delivered with the MLB’s Allstar Week productions in 2022 and 2023 and probably will again in 2024, although there’s been no announcement of its plans this year. Among the features on offer at both Allstar Weeks T-Mobile provided in-venue 5G and Wi-Fi users who had AR eyewear 3D panoramic renderings of the pre-Allstar game Home Run Derby, which allowed them to track a ball’s path and view stats relaying its velocity, distance and hang time. In 2023, the carrier enhanced the 5G version of the feature by delivering ultralow latency audio of the live ESPN and FOX broadcasts in app, which eliminated the delays between broadcast and on-field action.
Verizon has gone much farther on a much broader scale with its feature sets. One of the most popular offers in-venue users the opportunity to switch among several different camera views of action on the field and in the stands. There have also been instances where the service has supported an augmented-reality (AR) element enabling personalized displays of player statistics and merging of selfie images with live stadium footage. For example, in the latter case, people can capture a selfie appearing virtually on a jumbotron and post the picture to social media.
The NHL will be offering whatever features it determines wider audiences want, depending on rights, Nodine said, noting that the multi-view service option is “100% a rights issue.” With multi-viewing high on Verizon’s priorities list, there’s significant progress in this direction. “We’ve done multi-views with other customers,” Zimmerman said. “We think the economics of broadcasting this way is the future.”