Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races at America’s Cup last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In Part 1, I wrote about the design thinking and material science which has gone into the AC yachts. In Part 2, I discussed the extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews. Here I cover the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world. Next I will cover the data science which went into the analysis of mountains of data before, during and after the races.
We had great seats near the finish line of the races and Oracle offered us an opportunity to get on a spectator boat on the perimeter. Honestly, though the best views were on the big screen TV and on my iPad. America’s Cup has made considerable progress in moving to stadium type viewing, and Bermuda’s Great Sound was a fantastic setting, but even with high resolution cameras and binoculars it is tough to keep up with a race in a “stadium” which covers roughly 8 square miles (image below courtesy The Telegraph of London)
While TV covers bicycling events like Tour de France over longer distances, covering AC over water and where the yachts zig and zag frequently poses a unique challenge. Sailing added a few million fans worldwide with Team USA’s unbelievable comeback in AC34 in San Francisco in 2013. And with the two teams competing again this time and revenge thick in the air, the interest in the broadcast was even higher, and you could see early signs of how sponsors will get their logos on many of the frames.
What makes AC viewing on TV particularly enjoyable is the LiveLine augmented reality on the screen. Wind speed, yacht speed, number of tacks and gybes completed on a leg by each competitor, “wattage” generated by the grinders and cyclists, and their heart rates superimposed made the broadcast so much more enjoyable. Accurate to an inch, and updated several times a minute, it has also made the race refereeing much more accurate.
Credit for the AR goes to Stan Honey, an accomplished navigator, but better known in sports TV circles for inventing technology which makes hockey pucks glow, the first down line in the NFL show as yellow and for the real time “player cards" in international soccer.
Most of the coverage was from 2 helicopters that hovered the course, supplemented with footage from a drone, chase boats and cameras aboard the competing yachts.
In this AC, it was also impressive to see the progress drones have made, contributing to the broadcast, but even more importantly in helping competing teams get plenty of video coverage during their practices. Here is a video of how the Softbank Japan team benefited.
In New Zealand, an American, Nick Bowers is being hailed as a hero for helping their team win the AC with his sailing drone video expertise. It was fairly hush-hush for competitive reasons, but today drone battery life is also a constraint while streaming high-quality video over long distances at high speeds. Today, they last less than 10 minutes before needing to return to be recharged. Their role should be much more impactful in the next AC.
The day after the AC ended I met the pilot of one of the helicopters which provided the live footage.
The Cineflex V14HD, gyro stabilized aerial camera and other gear had been shipped off and the helicopter itself was waiting to be put in a container and shipped back from Bermuda.
It hit me the event had been live televised to millions of fans around the world from a remote island in the middle of an ocean. They had to ship all kinds of equipment to make the telecast possible.
Made me go wow. We have come a long, long way since Thomas Edison first filmed the 1899 AC!
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