StarLab & Star Sports Bring Home Sports Technology Awards Trophy

Last year, Star won the award of ‘Best use of Technology by a Broadcaster’ for our coverage of IPL 2020 and the technology developed for use in the broadcast. This year we were shortlisted for the same title and the event returned to its physical format, so we went to pick up the trophy and celebrate in person with the other attendees from the exciting world of sports & innovation.

Here is a bit more about what won us the award: We created an experience to meet the need for an engaging & interactive broadcast which overcomes the challenges & limitations of a world class tournament being produced in a global pandemic. It was important to raise the spirits of an audience that can’t attend in person.

We wanted to ensure that a sport which is largely a community-driven experience feels like a community experience on-air with these initiatives which have on any given day millions of fans participating in them. That’s the sentiment of togetherness we want to drive in our broadcast.

We wanted to ensure that a sport which is largely a community-driven experience feels like a community experience on-air with these initiatives which have on any given day millions of fans participating in them. That’s the sentiment of togetherness we want to drive in our broadcast.

We created a unique viewing experience, which meant starting from zero, challenging every convention from camera angles to sound, in order to surpass anything we or any other broadcaster had done in the past. We looked at every element in isolation & onboarded tech not in use anywhere else globally..

We changed the entire camera configuration adding 10 cameras. We dressed up stadiums differently with fan walls, life-size AR graphics & interactive mosaics -a step up from cutouts & static banners. We used AR/MR for analysis & teleportation at venue & studio & world-first VR cricket analysis.

Utilising our OTT platform as a 2nd screen for interactive audio, fan images & live Quiz was a taste of things to come as we move into a new era for scale in interactivity & a blurring of the lines between digital & linear TV.