Maximize Coverage, Minimize Resources: How SpaceLabs Leveraged Remote Production for the Malaysian Football League
For over 20 years, SpaceLabs has supported live sports content production as a leading host broadcasting service around the world. Over these same years, SpaceLabs continued to innovate, finding smarter ways to manage sporting events through both technology and skill. Effective game management is crucial in the world of live sports and requires a suite of applications that aid in everything from registration to integration with sports-specific devices to real-time data graphics. Over time, SpaceLabs expanded its expertise in host broadcast services to be able to effectively manage contribution, management, distribution, and transmission.
D. Brandon Ching
SpaceLabs’ Managing Director,
Broadcast & Technology portfolio
When SpaceLabs began its work for the Malaysian Football League, it was one of its largest projects to date. Previous to the league, SpaceLabs had used low latency Makito video encoders and decoders to deliver high-quality video streams, initially trusting Haivision for its development of the SRT protocol. But new high-profile and international events combined with the added layer of constraints from pandemic restrictions accelerated remote production for SpaceLabs, which in turn called for a new solution that offered even more versatility and efficient use of resources.
D. Brandon Ching
SpaceLabs’ Managing Director, Broadcast & Technology portfolio
The Malaysian Football League contracted SpaceLabs to produce approximately 432 matches a season comprising two leagues, three knock-out challenge cups, and one charity season-kickoff event cup. Traditionally, host broadcasters would send 60 to 100-person crews days ahead, mobilizing OB trucks to capture the action – but with several concurrent matches a night, this was no longer feasible.
SpaceLabs was able to reduce its field crew size from between 60 to 100 people right down to a minimum of 10 crew members – leaving behind satellite and OB trucks for a flexible, cloud-supported workflow. In doing this, SpaceLabs still maintained a reliable, low-latency stream while better maximizing resources and minimizing costs.<?p>
On the contribution side, the 5-camera crew is supported on-the-go by Haivision Rack300 and Rack200 mobile video encoders which can transmit streams over IP and satellite links as well as over mobile networks including 5G with Haivision Quad CellLink active antennas and the Safe Streams Transport (SST) protocol for cellular bonding. Having adopted a remote production model, SpaceLabs relies on Haivision StreamHub to receive, decode, and distribute live video streams at the production facility.
Brandon described how StreamHub supported multiple stages of their remote production to allow them to send content to other agencies for redistribution: “We use StreamHub for not only decoding to SDI, but also for distributing IP-based feeds to rights-holders and partners.”
With a thoughtfully constructed live broadcast workflow, SpaceLabs was able to bundle the entire digital package – audio and video – and deliver it to the broadcast center.
Additional StreamHub features support the behind-the-scenes communication required between crew members: “Haivision’s SRT and mobile video solutions combined allow us to also support intercom feeds and tally lights. Two-way communications are crucial to us because the crew is on the ground, while our directors are back at the SpaceLabs broadcast center,” Brandon explained. “It enables us to have that flexibility and helps us to create the entire package of produced content for the rights-holding broadcasters.”<?p>
The Malaysian Super League had more than 77.9 million total viewers from the rights-holding broadcaster’s YouTube channel alone, more than four times the previous views, plus another 35.8 million views from the IPTV Linear Channel. For SpaceLabs, a stable, low latency remote production model that reduced crew size was critical to its partnership with the Malaysian Football League. Not only did it allow SpaceLabs to produce more content while using resources more efficiently, but its stability offered extra peace of mind to the team.
“Malaysia tends to have a volatile infrastructure in terms of the bandwidth, so public internet in stadiums is not fully reliable and can really fluctuate,” Brandon shares. “Bandwidth can fluctuate with tremendous drops. That’s why we trust Haivision to handle the heterogeneous networks from high priority to low priority cells that we’re working with the multi-SIM cellular bonding technology, and, lastly, the redundancy of having a KU band as our third option – redundancy to the redundancy.”
The real success was being able to deliver a high-quality audience experience. “We want people to be able to shout “goal!” from the stadium at the same time as those back in the sports bars and cafes or at home so that everyone can enjoy the experience of being there in the stadium, in person or virtually.”
With a successful season under its belt, SpaceLabs looks forward to harnessing a remote production approach using Haivision technology to support an expansion of its capabilities for even larger leagues.
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