The choice for viewing and engaging with sports content just gets better and better. Not only can we all consume different perspectives on the same sporting events from different broadcasters, we can now get almost real-time updates and commentary in almost any form we want when we’re on the move. This shift to consuming streamed media on our phones or other devices via the major social media platforms isn’t so much a revolution as a natural progression from traditional broadcasting, and it gives those who want the near-live highlights and insights exactly what they want.
Getting clipping workflow to work well, though, is as much art as science, and there’s a developing best practice to this. Sure, there’s a degree of technical automation that can be built into the clipping process to get action online within 60 seconds of it happening, but it takes the human touch to spot, create and promote the real stories behind a clip. An AI system might spot a goal, for instance, but did it see the sequence of passes that led to it, or did it understand that the key substitution five minutes earlier was what enabled the outcome? There’s also a growing capability to incorporate user-generated content in the mix. Just as we’re all commentators on events as they occur via social media, we can add to the richness of sports action as well because from a live-audience perspective, we can see things that an official broadcast stream might not.
At Input Media, we already have our leading reputation for live and fast-turnaround programming and post-production, so it comes naturally to us to flex those same skills to create engaging digital content for social platforms. A lot of that skill comes in the editing and packaging of content with additional material – logos, messaging and even subtitles – quickly. Our work also has to align very closely with what our sports federation clients and sponsors are seeking to do. Mostly that’s about targeting and global reach, which for us means getting the right coverage and stories to the right people – wherever they may be – as soon as we can. That way we stay known as the place to come to for engaging sports content that keeps everyone happy. The other great thing about accessing this short-form content via social media is that the numbers speak for themselves – you can count the views, and they’re in the millions. We’re all used to the world of hits and likes now, so it’s easy to measure who’s watching what, and whether it hits the spot – all of which is rich data for potential sponsors and advertisers.
Just recently, we had the chance to share our views on this emerging world of fast-turnaround clips in sports broadcasting at a ‘Sports Clipping and Highlights Creation Masterclass’ sponsored by Wildmoka at Sport Tech 2019. Click here for a highlight clip from that session.
