Streaming Ivy League Rowing with LiveU and Drone Video

Learn more about live sports streaming at the next Sports Streaming Summit at Streaming Media East 2020.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Ben Gabrielson: I specifically work in the of college and university ranks within LiveU. We work with a lot of schools--Oklahoma being one-- a lot of the Power Fives, but specifically the Ivy leagues is what we'll of talk about today, and the way they utilize it. They've done everything from the Olympic sports, which are so big at that kind of level in collegiate athletics, to the skiing and rowing. On the rowing side, they'll have a drone going. They've got some cams on the boats, on the finish line. So they've kind of got them sporadically tossed around there as well.

Troy Dreier: So, when you're doing Harvard rowing, what does the full setup look like? I mean, where are the cameras, and how many operators do you have?

Ben Gabrielson: They do four-packs. One is on the drone itself, one on the boat, one at the finish line, and then one at the very start of the race. They actually have a really cool setup because they to kind of do the at home or remote production style where all of their directors and producers and graphics and all that actually back on campus. So they'll bring it all back to campus, obviously dirtied up there. They actually have a really cool alumni boathouse I think on onsite as well. So they bring it back, produce it, stream it out to ESPN+, but then they also, then we'll send that feed back to the boathouse for those that are viewing--the alumni that are onsite watching and tracking the race as well. So, they not only stream it out live to someone like an ESPN, but they also, kind of bring it again back in-house for those to see the production as well that are there.

Troy Dreier: For something like this, is latency crucial as it is for like the major league sports?

Ben Gabrielson: Yes and no. I mean, it depends. Is in this specific case, not as much. I mean, especially that program that's going out to ESPN+, there's only a few people that are actually on site for that event. So there's no real social media spoilers in that case, so they can bump that latency up to 10, 15 seconds. But we've seen a couple of schools that will go in the one-to-three-second range and obviously that puts a little bit more stress in our case, on the cell modems obviously that are bonding together. But you can go anywhere from sub-second to 20 seconds. Usually they'll live about the 10-to-12-second range in that case.