With the finish line at IRONMAN Portugal-Cascais, our IRONMAN broadcast schedule for the year is complete, which means it’s time we reflect on the season, our improvements, and what the path looks like for next year! How did it all go on our end?
2023 IRONMAN Broadcast Season
Starting with IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside and ending with IRONMAN Portugal-Cascais, this year we produced 31 broadcasts for IRONMAN, not including the finish line livestreams we produce at all the full-distance races in North America. The IRONMAN 70.3 races and IRONMAN Portugal-Cascais were broadcast on Outside Watch while the rest of the full-distance races, panels, and press conferences were broadcast to the IRONMAN Triathlon YouTube Channel.
2023 IRONMAN Broadcast List
In addition to the broadcasts covering the professional races, we broadcast the pro athlete press conferences at all World Championship events this year. Though only the onsite media and press have physical access to the press conferences, broadcasting them online allowed spectators and fans to listen in and engage directly with their own questions. This helped show the depth of the sport to fans new and old while introducing the remarkable athletes at each event to the world.
This year we added a variety of improvements to our broadcasting repertoire from assets on screen to hardware on the ground.
The L-Bar addition to the Broadcast
One of the most visible improvements we implemented this year was the “L-Bar” with integrated real-time data driven graphics, sponsor billboards, and more. From thematic inception to final delivery, we were able to work with IRONMAN to create exactly what they wanted to bring this production up to the next level.
2021 IRONMAN Broadcast Season – No L-Bar
2023 IRONMAN Broadcast Season – L-Bar
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEtOk7_mRz0&t=10263s
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuCXt_j9oSA&t=12499s
What prompted this change? Inspiration from one of the most-watched broadcasts in America: the NFL. The NFL is known to push boundaries in the broadcasting sphere to continuously improve their coverage, commentary, and production value. The NFL’s first broadcast was in 1939 and they have been making strides forward ever since. We are always looking for ways to grow and learn and wanted to create triathlon-specific graphics for our broadcasts inspired by their coverage.
Development
One of our main challenges when creating the L-bar for IRONMAN broadcasts was trying to fit everything that was requested. With limited space on screen, moving things around meant redesigning the whole L-bar. Our goal was to present the information in a concise manner while providing as much information as possible.
With timing splits on the right, sponsor graphics on the bottom, a picture in picture in the top right, and a scrolling initiative ticker in the bottom, any changes required an overhaul. Our team of designers worked tirelessly to make all of these assets fit and function in the L-bar. It wasn’t until our first live production we realized the L-bar would be an ever-evolving product. While consistent changes to the design were resource intensive, the collaboration with IRONMAN brought the best product to light.
Here’s how it went down – we developed the L-bar inspired by the NFL broadcasts with real time timing data on the right-hand side and space on the bottom for whatever we wanted. During the first broadcast of the year, IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside, we noticed the assets we used in the L-bar did not sit correctly when ingesting the feed from Carr-Hughes for the live production. This meant going back to the drawing board to actualize our vision with the new information we had from our first production. Through the production of the first live broadcast ,we found issues we had not predicted in our planning; however, with one show under our belt, we were able to adapt and overcome!
Revisions
It took roughly 10 iterations–maybe 31….–of the L-bar to have a standard variant to tweak elements rather than a complete overhaul. While we are still working on the L-bar and continuing to improve it with more data and automation, we are happy with the live version you see in all of our IRONMAN broadcasts.
Prior to the start of the 2023 IRONMAN broadcast season, I went to BCC with an idea to create an L-Bar squeezeback to use during broadcast coverage. The concept of the L-Bar was to be able to provide viewers with information that was clear, concise, neat, distinct, and overall easy to read and understand. BCC’s creative vision and execution was top notch. The IRONMAN broadcasts provide a consistent flow of information to our viewers that enhances the broadcast and doesn’t cover the live action. The L-Bar creates additional visibility of IRONMAN and partner logos bringing increased and measurable value to our broadcasts.
Mark Mosback, Director, Live Production & OTT at The IRONMAN Group®
Broadcast Reception
IRONMAN was thrilled with the addition of the L-bar to the broadcast production. It allowed us to show race stats, timing and placement of the athletes as well as a place for their partners to advertise throughout the entire production, not just through commercial spots, without taking away from the live action.
With the addition of the L-bar, there were also fewer graphical collisions between the feed being sent to us from our production partners, and the feed we were sending out to Facebook, YouTube, or Outside. This definitively increased the value of the production by keeping everything clean and tidy with accurate data, another accomplishment we feel great about.
We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the support from the Vizrt Flowics Team and their incredible developer team who worked with us to specifically modify the platform for our unique needs. Check out our article about Flowics, or what SVG had to say about us. Maybe in the future we’ll do a whole post about HTML5 graphics.
Live U Ecosystem
Introducing the LiveU Ecosystem into our tool belt was another big upgrade this year, and one that we weren’t initially looking into… When we were reviewing the 2022 broadcast season, we established we wanted to improve our coverage of the race and bring the production truly over the top! Teradek was our field unit of choice up until breaking news from Wowza, our cornerstone encoder completing the last step of our program transmission, was released.
If we go back to the beginning of the year, specifically January 25, 2023 with the announcement that Wowza would be ending support for the Wowza ClearCaster, we see the start of our LiveU journey. If you want to know more about the Wowza ClearCaster end-of-life announcement, check out our post on that here. We were truly disappointed support was ending for the Wowza, they were some of the best encoders we had, and were a cornerstone to our production.
The Wowza ClearCaster operated as our final encoder digesting our program feed in and outputting various streams to their final destinations. Replacing this essential piece of hardware was crucial to our broadcasting season. With its announced end of life this year, the hunt was on.
Initial Inquiry
We initially investigated LiveU for their LU610 which provided the same service as the Wowza but promised to be better. However, when we reached out to LiveU, we also learned more about their professional broadcasting backpacks, encoders, and other decoders. Prior to this inquiry, we only used Teradek equipment which could be finicky at times but always got us through our productions.
The LiveU LU800 backpacks have 8 sim radios, 2 Ethernet ports, and 2 WAN ports for up to 12 connections for each production. That is 3x the amount that our Teradek Backpacks have! With more radios we had a stronger connection which was something we learned we needed when reviewing last years productions. While the Teradek backpacks worked, we are always looking to grow in our expertise and delivery, and LiveU’s backpacks were the next logical step in that direction.
With LiveU’s industry reputability and our desire to seek out new opportunities, we decided to take the leap and integrate their ecosystem into our workflow prior to the beginning of the 2023 IRONMAN Broadcast Season. Out of the box, the LiveU equipment just worked, and it worked well. If you want to read more about our opinions on LiveU, check our this article.
We decided to jump in head first into the LiveU ecosystem with our initial purchase. We acquired 4 LiveU LU800 backpacks, 5 decoder channels–the LU4000 and the LU2000, a contribution encoder–the LU610, the LiveU Video Return Server, and LiveU Studio – their cloud based switching service.
Initial Acquisition and our First Broadcast
The initial acquisition was made just before Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas where we deployed a transmitter backpack for the first time at “The Biggest Selfie in the World” on the side of the Resorts World Las Vegas casino. Pretty cool first gig, if you ask us! It was a tight turnaround to get the system up and running, but we made it.
Early on we did have to return our LU610 because it came damaged out of the box. LiveU was extremely helpful with this process and provided a quick turnaround from reporting the damage and receiving the new unit. Things happen during shipment, and we couldn’t fault LiveU for the damaged unit completely, but we were thrilled when the support team was responsive and helped find a fast solution rather than having us jump through hoops for their product.
Support
LiveU support is on another level. Working with various hardware providers, we know good support when we see it. With LiveU, we had an actual person on support every time we contacted them. Not only were they ready to help in whatever capacity we needed, they are also knowledgeable about the products themselves. We’ve had our fair share our bumps in the road with our LiveU equipment but with their support we were always able to find a solution in a timely manner.
With the support from LiveU and our goal of bringing our production of the IRONMAN World Championships to the next level, we decided to fully commit to the LiveU ecosystem for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships in Lahti, Finland, and the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, France. These productions were the first time we were producing a race, on the ground, internationally so everything had to work… and it did! Clean video, clean audio, video return for our onsite studio – everything just worked.
LiveU Studio
Another facet of the LiveU Ecosystem that just worked and brought the entire production up to the next level was the LiveU Studio. The cloud-based switching allowed one of our team members based in Poland manage and switch the French L’Équipe simulcast. We were able to have the IRONMAN Broadcast in English and French thanks to this added feature.
We loved using the LiveU equipment and relied on it heavily when our team went over to Europe for the IRONMAN World Championship broadcasts. As the season was coming to an end we were thrilled with the purchase and integration of the LiveU ecosystem into our workflow. Here’s to another year with LiveU!
Animated Course Maps
Our map game got way better this year. We went from 2D maps to 3D maps with satellite imagery showing the topography of the course. The animated course maps started in 2022 when we made two-dimensional course maps for all the full-distance IRONMAN races in North America.
These maps provided athletes with a better idea about what the race course would look like, and more specifically, the path of the race course. In the Athlete Guide, the course maps are laid out, but sometimes it’s hard to visualize how you will travel through turnarounds and counterflow areas from a static image. These flat animations really helped iron out those issues for the athletes and gave them a better understanding of where they would go and what to expect on race day.
The IRONMAN broadcast team had already set their sights on three-dimensional maps prior to this year. Their team was able to visualize what they wanted, and we were able to execute and elevate their ideas. Original research and development on the 3D animated maps started in September of 2022 and became our responsibility for the 2023 broadcast season.
Development
Developing and implementing reliable processes for these map assets proved to be challenging. The technology that allows for this real GPS animation is still relatively new and continually developing and growing. With over 30 broadcasts slated for the year, we had to develop a reliable process for creating these maps that met a minimum level of quality–and that level of quality was always increasing as the technology developed.
By the end of the year, we had created asset libraries, development guidelines, and a consistent look that brought a better understanding to the course within the broadcast for all to see. Add in the commentators’ experience with the course and you would be able to understand the course with more detail than ever before as a spectator at home.
3D Animated Maps for Broadcast
Check out the 3D animated map for IRONMAN World Championship Kona with the Hosts input here:
Even over the course of one year, we have developed and improved upon the design time and time again. Looking towards the future, we are excited for the development of the technology for this animation to continue to make it better. We’re expecting a similar leap in quality in 2024.
GPS Integration
As the development of the three-dimensional course maps started to solidify, the idea of integrating real-time GPS data into those maps also started to develop. Imagine having a pro athlete’s exact location depicted on a three-dimensional rendering of the course they are on in addition to their current speed, power, and pace. That was the goal of GPS integration.
This specific integration was more difficult than anticipated – due to the lack of compact GPS devices with the battery life to last through a full-distance IRONMAN. Not only that, but many of the IRONMAN courses go through “dead zones” where there is no cell service and connection in general, making getting accurate live GPS data challenging to say the least.
We are continuing to investigate developing the technology needed to create this for our broadcasts, but for the time being, GPS integration is a limited capability.
We were able to create and API that ingested the GPS data and was able to calculate speeds, distance between athletes, gradient, time between athletes, power and super excited about the potential.
What Worked
Every season there are things that work well and it’s important to give credit where credit is due.
Broadcast Integration
The development of the L-bar was a huge success. Adding more real-time data and sponsor options to the broadcast was a win-win for viewers and IRONMAN partners.
Live data integration was another huge win. While we were able to integrate live data in the past, it was limited. This year our development team was able to work with IRONMAN’s timing partner to get full-fledged timing data that allowed for continuous leaderboards to be built and displayed on the broadcast. In addition, and as a result of this, live split data was able to be displayed and calculated.
Equipment Upgrades
The addition of the LiveU ecosystem worked. It just worked well in the field and the studio and allowed us to focus more on the production itself rather than technical issues.
As a helpful bonus, remote-access features on LiveU transmitter backpacks allowed our studio to manage the onsite camera operators’ backpacks for troubleshooting, reducing workload for our onsite team in critical moments. In addition to this, the LiveU backpacks could support 1.2 seconds of delay which meant our entire production became low latency. This allowed us to refine our broadcast process and elevate it yet again to another level.
Creative Developments
This year we were able to use our skillset to add creative insight into the broadcasts. The body marking show in Kona, prior to the official race coverage, was one of the best displays of the competitive field at the IRONMAN World Championship Kona. It included age group athletes in addition to the Pro Field and allowed for all the female voice to be heard. In previous years, we didn’t have the bandwidth to help facilitate this part of the show; however, with our honed experience, we were able to contribute to its monumental success.
We also added in a power meter algorithm that could predict the average power an athlete was outputting at any given time. While it wasn’t 100% accurate, it was able to give a relative estimate of power on the bike for the entire field. For example, in Lahti when we deployed the power meter, it showed women pros pushing over 400 watts. We knew this wasn’t true; however, when compared to other women pros in the field it was relatively accurate showing a difference of 15 watts between leaders.
While a pro women pushing 400 watts wasn’t 100% accurate, it did get lots of traction on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram because of its absurdity. Engagement is good, so we’re going to say it worked as intended! (And we’re refining our power metric algorithm as well!)
International Reach
Lahti gave us necessary information we needed to hone our power algorithm. Big thanks to the pros that worked with us to further develop this algorithm. We got it down to about 10% variability after some tweaks, and our goal is to get it within 5% over the next year. Overall we consider this a win because it developed a lot of conversation between the audience, the pro’s, and us.
Throughout the season, we were a part of broadcast in multiple countries across various continents. One main challenge we were able to conquer this year was working with various production companies in each country to produce the best broadcast possible. In North America we worked with Carr-Hughes, in Europe we worked with ARD, ASO, CMTV, L’Équipe, and OSL, and in Oceania we worked with Next Level.
Technical Development
With so many endpoints both for ingesting and sending we had to be ready to receive and give whatever was needed. Every company has their own transmission standard. We had to be able to work with interlaced and progressive video streams, varying frame rates from broadcast to broadcast, and send our final program feed to multiple locations. While it was overwhelming at first, and took more time than we were expecting, we were able to work to ensure our studio was ready for anything.
In our quest to be able to work with any production company and get our broadcast to multiple end points, we relied on our AJA Live Bridge. The Live Bridge helped us with transmissions thanks to its easy-to-use interface and savable profiles for each provider. We are always looking to learn and grow to become the best we can be and the AJA Live Bridge was an invaluable piece of equipment we not only use for our productions, but have learned an immense amount from.
What Didn’t Work
Every season there are also things that didn’t work, and some that just won’t work. When you work in live production, you never know what is going to happen on the day of the broadcast. You test everything days leading up to the event, but that doesn’t mean the equipment will work on the day of the event.
Equipment
Equipment failure is top on the list. We had a few key pieces of gear have a major malfunctions. One major malfunction with our equipment was the LU4000 dying the morning of IRONMAN California. We were able to reimage the unit with the help from LiveU support. Luckily our team was quick on their feet to find an interim solution until we could get the LU4000 back up and running. On a day like that, it’s reinforced we were only as good as our backup.
Communication
Communication on the ground between camera operators, producers, studio switchers, and other studio support is always challenging. This year we really felt the challenge of live communications with our mobile camera operators and finish line production. Anytime we are in loud environments like riding on the back of a motorcycle or at an IRONMAN finish line, it is too loud to have useful communication. Not only is it hard to hear, it is hard to speak. We want to be able to make this better for next year…so if you have any ideas let us know!
International Troubles
Telling time in other countries is hard 🙄 We had several races that either overlapped due to time zones or we had the date wrong on our end. While those are not great, we were able to stream two broadcasts at the same time with two different teams of hosts in two separate parts of the world in our Boulder studio. So while it falls under what doesn’t work, it was a success in the end. Side note: we don’t speak all the foreign languages we broadcast in, so that is a challenge by itself.
In addition to not being able to tell time, we also are unable to speak all of the languages we broadcast in. Most of our team only speaks English, with a few speaking Spanish. Throughout pre-production meetings, and the live show it was difficult to navigate the language barrier in certain areas. While the end product worked, we wish we were able to communicate better to make the production even better. Who knows, maybe we’ll all become Duolingo experts over the next year.
Looking to Future Broadcast
With this season completely closed out we can only look to the future. So… what is in store for next year’s broadcast season?
First and foremost, we are looking forward to keeping what we have implemented this year working for next year and refining it even further. What good are added features if they are unsupported for years to come? Zilch. Experience can’t be taught, and with that refinement can’t happen without experience.
As IRONMAN expands its World Championship series into the international realm, we continue to look forward to having the opportunity to participate in these world class events, in studio and on the ground. We can’t wait to grow our broadcasting equipment arsenal and support more camera operators on the ground to capture the up-and-coming talent that is starting to change the sport!
Technical Developments
GPS integration is another facet of the broadcast we are looking forward to continuing to develop. Whether this integrates into our graphics refinement or a new asset added to the production, we know we are capable. This also ties in with the idea we can take any real time data and integrate it into the broadcast for a more analytical viewing experience. Imagine GPS location, heart rate, power, cadence, and speed, all being calculated and displayed for any athlete onscreen. What a comprehensive broadcast that would be!
Another aspect of the broadcasts that we are excited by is getting more of our operations team involved in the studio production of the races. This year, Cate and Ryan both started getting more comfortable in the studio during the broadcast season, and more of our team is gaining the skills necessary to rotate into our broadcast production schedule.
IRONMAN Pro Series
Recently, IRONMAN Released an announcement of their Pro Series. Read the full announcement here. We are ecstatic to see how this changes the dynamic of the pro field. It will undoubtedly increase the stakes of each broadcasted race with a $200,000 prize purse on the line at the end of the season. Hopefully we get to continue collaboration with IRONMAN on developing onscreen graphics to help keep the pro series in the front of everyone’s minds.
With IRONMAN Broadcasts continuing to grow we cannot wait to see where cloud services for broadcasting will go. This year we heavily relied on the LiveU Studio cloud system for our productions, and can definitively say broadcasting in the cloud is a real thing. This year we were able to utilize HTML5 into our cloud broadcasting workflow and it is a game changer. HTML5 and cloud based broadcasting is coming fast, and we’re ready for it!
Eyes Set Ahead
Lastly, we are looking forward to the stories that we will be able to cover and share through the broadcasts. The live drama that unfolds during a race is always exciting and no matter what you think is going to happen during a race, you never know until everyone crosses that finish line.
A Small Note about the IRONMAN California Broadcast
IRONMAN California was a formidable day for us in terms of broadcasting. If you want to read the full story check it out here.
We were set up and ready to broadcast the swim start, swim finish, and bike turnaround for the spectators at this event because they were not allowed to physically be at these locations. Unfortunately, we had technical difficulties and we had to quickly adapt to the situation to produce a broadcast.
Our broadcasting season, while a little bumpy at times, was the best it’s ever been this year ending the day before IRONMAN California. Truly cosmic irony to have these issues after our studio season has ended–but it was another opportunity to learn and grow.
Keep your eyes set on next year’s season – it will be the best one yet!