One of the most driving innovation fronts at the moment is the mixing of live video and synthetic images, with varying degrees of "storytelling", thanks to Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality.
Without going into the various differences in language and outcome between these three forms of interaction, we are content to emphasize that sports is definitely the area that most benefits from these new forms of tv performance.
Turin Deltatre is very specialized on these fronts and suggests us some concepts to think on.
Andrea Marini tells us: "The center of the content is always "just a a story" that has to be interesting; without this the rest does not make sense. You have to create a context, it is important and significant, and the story can be carried anywhere, thanks to the connectivity that must serve on all platforms and is indispensable."
Deltatre creates stories with and for its customers, on different platforms, with 4K and 8K (in the early work) graphics, as innovators.
Just think of the typical fan who wants to see what happened the night before in a match: he does not want to see a video, and certainly not only the flat results such as numbers on the web. He can now enjoy a true interaction between the presenter and the augmented reality that presents dynamic graphics screens.
Marini continues: "The story is no longer told in B2C style, but B2B style. The contents are now very appealing, cutting edge, "productized" that is tailored precisely according to the television product that you want to offer. So any sports stoy is scaled, and "deliverable", ie they it is finally capable to easily reach the predetermined receivers, "targeted" viewers.
These stories become, in that sense, more useful for broadcasters but also to general content publishers who can pack different types of products to be sold again and again."
Some examples? "In a dead time of a football game, but especially in the post game, some players may appear on the left of the screen as the announcer on the right tells the stories related in augmented reality style on the field, for excellent video interaction of live and synthetic 3D images.
Other interesting moments allow new creativity rather close to "gaming" are when players enter the stadium, but the opportunities are truly many.
Andrea Marini emphasizes: "The main driver for this speech is that we can be so "online" with the content and context that we can give the user exactly what he wants, in a personalized way: the user becomes its program director, he becomes a producer. We give him an application, and he can choose the cameras, the feed, choose to follow all the time the coach, he chooses freely what to enjoy, has available a global live feed, and also feeds of all the cameras; he may choose among all feeds and all data to compose a personal vision at all times."
"In football, for example, he may choose to follow the goals, substitutions, bad fouls. In fact all the cameras in the field are available for him and in the cloud, only 4/5 minutes after the action, the user can open a digital map and choose what to see among all the cameras of the stadium.
This enables him to capture fine details that in live feed are completely lost (because the director is constantly obliged to frame the playing area).
Typical is the example of the recalled eye diagram of who delivers the corner in football, that only the player concerned in the field sees. But even the viewer from home (or on the move) can choose to follow in detail the action in order to understand these details and then decide to resume the overall view."
"This allows to enter into an interaction entirely different and for the first time.
The users choose the contents and the broadcasters in turn choose to propose new revenues models, sponsorships, monetizations, etc."
The new ways of story telling in sports allow to trace an event willfully missing the simple result - which perhaps is known and is not news - but so romancing what is very interesting, everything becomes entertainment, the story, what happened or what could take place. "
