AWS for M&E Blog
NHL breaks the ice with cutting-edge live cloud production powered by AWS
Live sports production has followed the same formula for decades. To send broadcasts out to fans, production teams have relied on massive production trucks to distribute game feeds from arenas to a fixed control room with workstations and production gear. The National Hockey League (NHL), one of the biggest sports leagues worldwide, is shaping the future of live sports production by turning to the cloud to create more dynamic content with greater efficiency and scalability, all in a more sustainable way. Earlier this year, the League turned heads with its execution of the first fully cloud-based live professional sports broadcast in North America for a face-off between the Washington Capitals and the Carolina Hurricanes. To create, manage, and distribute the live production, it leveraged cloud-based technologies from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Milestone matchup
As the Capitals took on the Hurricanes in Capital One Arena in Washington DC on March 22, fans from all over tuned in to watch the action unfold on NHL Network. Unbeknownst to viewers, the NHL fully produced the live broadcast in the cloud on AWS at 1080p, leaning on a largely remote team for execution. Breaking free of the traditional broadcast workflow mold, the NHL’s live cloud production (LCP) workflow set the stage for a new era of innovation in live sports production. Combining advanced AWS technology with significant expertise from AWS and NHL engineers, the NHL’s LCP workflow successfully demonstrated cloud-based operations for video and audio switching and replay and graphics integration with the same functionality as if it was running on physical local hardware.
The NHL was able to use the live game feed and additional feeds running on AWS to create an alternate live broadcast, “NHL EDGE Unlocked”, as a pilot initiative that incorporated NHL EDGE stats technology to drive data-driven storytelling. The pilot program featured dedicated on-air talent, non-traditional camera angles, graphics, and real-time puck and player tracking, and showcased how cloud-based feeds can be repurposed to deliver innovative fan experiences.
Foundational elements
The collaboration between the NHL and AWS started in 2021 when the league named AWS its Official Cloud Infrastructure Provider, Official Artificial Intelligence (or AI) Cloud Infrastructure Provider, and Official Machine Learning (or ML) Cloud Infrastructure Provider. Along with developing NHL EDGE IQ stats together, the NHL and AWS also built a cloud-based encoding and scheduling pipeline using the League’s preferred solutions. This work has allowed the NHL to send feeds from each venue to AWS, where League personnel, partners, and broadcasters can access them. Always one step ahead, they quickly realized that producing a live game in the cloud was the next logical step.
“Establishing cloud encoding and scheduling was by far the most important pillar we built to enable LCP. We built an orchestration layer for manipulating AWS’s media infrastructure so that we’re able to turn on AWS Elemental MediaConnect flows and connect feeds to compute resources to be able to produce a broadcast,” explained Grant Nodine, NHL SVP of Technology. “We’re abstracting the truck from the broadcast and sending camera feeds to the cloud. LCP allows you to have an unlimited number of outputs, just governed by how much compute you want to dedicate to it.”
Dave Lehanski, NHL’s EVP of Business Development and Innovation added “We’re on our way to a true direct-to-consumer model where we’re all going to be able to decide what camera feed we watch, what audio source we listen to, and whether or not we look at statistics, graphical overlays, play games, bet, or talk to our friends – and it’s not going to matter if it’s a big screen on the wall or a little screen in our hand. But we’re not there yet.”
He continued, “We’re at the point where we have the ability to leverage new technology to create custom experiences for audiences and cloud production is the underpinning of how we’re going to do that. We’re going to take one NHL game and create multiple broadcasts to address avid fans, young fans, fans who may be very casual and interested in more of a lifestyle experience or those looking for a stat-heavy production. Cloud production is going to be at the forefront of fan development around the world for the NHL in the very near future.”
Remote collaboration
For the inaugural live-to-air NHL LCP broadcast, a single AWS employee equipped with one small flypack containing network switchers, Appear JPEG XS Encoders, a Matrox Monarch Edge Decoder, and an Audinate Dante Gateway was on-site at the arena to help coordinate game audio and comm feeds and to troubleshoot any technical issues. An NHL live production crew produced the primary broadcast feed from a makeshift control room set up in the NHL Network studios in Secaucus, NJ, while the NHL Studios team cut the stats-enhanced feed with live studio talent from a control room at the NHL headquarters in Manhattan. Whereas production trucks and control rooms often take months or even a year to commission, the flexibility and scalability of AWS enabled the NHL to create and deploy a robust setup in less than a month.
Though each team was co-located, the LCP workflow has created new possibilities for collaboration. For example, when testing LCP through a shadow deployment for an Anaheim Ducks vs Seattle Kraken game, the technical director was based in Wisconsin, and two replay operators were in discrete locations in Canada. Rather than losing crew availability to travel days, this approach provides the NHL with more flexible access to staff based on skill set.
Sustainability at scale
Along with enabling remote collaboration, the LCP substantially reduced the amount of on-site personnel and gear needed to produce the broadcast, helping to lower carbon emissions and travel costs. A live sports production of this size would typically require at least one production truck and at least 20 people to manage a single broadcast, generating an estimated 2.05 metric tons of carbon. That environmental impact compounds with each additional truck as well as for international exhibitions.
The minimized footprint of LCP is particularly beneficial for high-interest NHL events, such as the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Each year, the Playoffs require feeds to be produced in English and French, as well as an International feed and the NHL Network broadcast. Delivering all these feeds requires on-site energy consumption along with ample logistical planning to find space for all the trucks. LCP would provide rights holders the opportunity to access live feeds and all camera angles from the cloud, thereby minimizing on-site energy and associated requirements while gaining more content options for their productions.
Personalized viewing experiences
Though the ongoing fragmentation of content viewing platforms has created more competition for viewers, it has also opened opportunities for sports leagues like the NHL to grow their fan base. With the flexibility of an LCP workflow, the NHL can make high-quality content easily available and customizable for targeted viewing, addressing passionate fans and casual viewers with tailored broadcasts.
“Hockey has really been a difficult sport to develop in-game statistics and analytics for because it moves so fast. We’ve got 60 minutes of actual play, and very few stoppages, so storytelling must happen as an overlay on the game, which means we need really good technology,” Lehanski noted. By bringing together LCP and advanced analytics, the NHL is able to enhance the fan experience—providing more insight, information, analysis, camera views, and statistics during the broadcast to more closely replicate being in-venue.
Since sports are inherently unpredictable, spontaneous magical moments can make any media asset manager scramble for clips. Using the cloud, however, ensures replay editors have quick and easy access to archive footage and create timely highlights; it also shortens time to air for alternative broadcasts and opens the door to fan-tailored highlights.
“LCP has come so far in a short period of time. This was our fifth cloud broadcast and the first one that went to air, so we’re super excited about that,” Nodine said. “It enables us to break down the components of a broadcast and some of the ancillary benefits we can get out of them, particularly replay. There’s no reason I can’t have a very intelligent system that gives me the capability to cut near-live melts and have them available instantly to anyone from the cloud.”
“We can produce a crafted highlight for each game that is shared on every platform, whether it’s digital or social or broadcast,” he added. “We can make content available on one platform and have all of these components talk to each other in near real-time, without having to buy most of the actual hardware that does this. We just use it when we need it.”
Solutions replay
In executing the Capitals vs Hurricanes broadcast, feeds from ten on-site cameras operated by Monumental Sports Network were encoded using 12 channels of Appear JPEG XS and Matrox Monarch Edge encoders. The NHL team then sent the content as JPEGXS to AWS Elemental MediaConnect via 2022-7 over diverse on-demand AWS Direct Connects provided by AWS telecommunications Partner LUMEN. Once in the cloud, AWS Cloud Digital Interface (CDI) supported uncompressed video transport to a virtual production environment where video was converted into NDI using Sienna NDI processor engines to connect all live production elements and production regions.
The system’s core harnessed Vizrt Vectar Plus for production switching, Vizrt Trio for graphics, and Evertz DreamCatcher for replay, as well as TV Graphics for the clock and scorebug components, Solid State Logic for audio mixing, and Audinate’s Dante Connect for underlying audio transport within the production environment and between production sites. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) powered the editorial operators’ workstations. Once produced, the feeds were sent directly out of AWS to rights holders with a round-trip latency of seven frames, meaning fans in-venue could comfortably watch the live broadcasts and not experience a jarring delay.
Pioneering next-generation live broadcasts
By leveraging AWS for live cloud production, the NHL can sustainably produce live games with more agility, scalability, and flexibility, and deliver immersive viewing experiences for fans worldwide. Bridging production silos—with editing, distribution, and archiving done in the cloud, LCP can eliminate geographic and technical barriers to live broadcast innovation, further broadening opportunities for the league. On the cutting-edge of sports broadcast technology, the NHL is poised to continue elevating the fan experience with help from AWS.