International. LiveU deployed its end-to-end IP remote production solution at Tabcorp – Sky Racing, transforming the way Australia's leading betting and entertainment company broadcasts live horse racing events.
Sky Racing shares its live streams with audiences around the world, including viewers from Hong Kong, the United States and Europe. It covers more than 160,000 live horse races per year (live streaming on 150 channels in a wide range of formats (linear and digital), it also produces its own content.
Thanks to LiveU's IP remote production solution, it now broadcasts horse racing from eight tracks in Queensland (QLD) with high-quality, low-latency and resilient transmissions, managed from its central production centre in Brisbane. The remote production setup has eliminated the need for traditional SNG trucks, Outside Broadcast trucks, and complete on-site equipment, substantially reducing travel, accommodation, and equipment costs.
In its most remote locations, Sky Racing has been able to reduce its costs by almost 80% by eliminating the entire satellite process and using LiveU. They have also reduced the need to ship expensive OB trucks across the state by moving to a model where they have designed a remote modular rack system with LiveU encoders installed at all of their locations.
The rack system can be turned on and tested remotely, and from there, live streams arrive directly to your centralized broadcast center. The production team can log in and support the system from anywhere in the world. Having a centralized center has allowed for even more cost savings, as certain staff can multitask between multiple locations (director, CCU, repeaters, and technicians, for example).
"LiveU's remote production solution has transformed the way we broadcast live racing in Queensland for aggregation and distribution to our domestic and international markets," said Jamie Ford, Queensland Technical Operations Manager, Tabcorp – Sky Racing.
He added that "By deploying their LU810 encoders on our tracks and using our production centre in Brisbane, we have achieved what was previously unthinkable: maintaining broadcast quality while significantly reducing operational costs and complexity. The system's resiliency and low latency, with uninterrupted cellular backup and flexible return transmissions, ensure that we never miss a moment of action while maintaining the necessary transmissions in both directions."
LiveU's solution features LiveU's fixed multi-camera LU810 encoders at each racetrack, supporting the main transmission of between 8 and 16 cameras (or other sources) per location, over a high-speed WAN, sending up to four signals per device. For an additional layer of resiliency, a cost-effective backup solution has been implemented that uses separate LU810 encoders and LU810-M encoders (modem) connected via a cellular network. This setup leverages the public internet for basic reliability and can instantly switch to the cellular network if needed, eliminating the need for expensive SNG backup trucks.
Production teams stay in sync between the field and the operations center using LiveU's remote production tools, including Video Return, Audio Connect, and IP Pipe. From the central production center, teams can monitor up to 36 live camera feeds from eight different racetracks simultaneously with LiveU's Transceiver that allows operators to customize and control return feeds for each track independently.
Ryan Osinga, Tabcorp's Technical Solutions and Services Manager – Sky Racing, summed up: "We've ended up with a product that is cheaper, more reliable and more resilient, has more features, lower latency and has a significant reduction in costs. For us, the LiveU solution met all the requirements we had."
