Film 45, a production agency and an arm of IMG Endeavor, was tasked with extending the live coverage of the TCS New York City Marathon by producing four live streams to cover four professional races (men’s open, women’s open, men’s wheelchair and women’s wheelchair) taking place simultaneously, alongside the general marathon open to the public.
New York Road Runners, organizers of the TCS New York City marathon, planned to stream all professional races on the marathon’s official app, offering a second screen experience to the race broadcast on ESPN 2 and ABC 7 New York.
The Challenge
As an annual one-day event, the TCS New York City Marathon does not have a fixed studio space or infrastructure to produce live coverage on race day, so Film45 created a mobile broadcast compound in Central Park where the production team managed the logistical challenges of implementing the infrastructure, equipment and resources needed to produce the ESPN broadcast feed.
To support extended live coverage, utilizing the compound would be near impossible, requiring significant additional investment in equipment, resources and production space.
In order to scale its output and deliver these additional live streams, Film45 needed to adopt a remote production workflow with minimal equipment that didn’t require space on-site.
The Solution
Using Grabyo, Film45 created a hybrid live production workflow, with minimal complexity and high-quality output.
Each of the four races had one dedicated remote operator, located in New York or New Jersey, producing its live stream in a virtual control room within Grabyo Producer. The remote operators were also supported by one on-site director and one additional producer in Los Angeles.
All four streams were then delivered directly to the TCS NYC Marathon app from Grabyo in SRT format, accessible to anyone for free.
The races were shot using cameras from across the marathon course, which were also used to shoot the broadcast feed, and ingested into Grabyo in SRT format. Three Haivision Pro460s mobile video transmitters were mounted in smart cars to follow the leaders of the men’s and women’s open and wheelchair races, while three Pro360s were attached to electric bikes to contribute video feeds to the live broadcast of the marathon. Seamlessly, 11 feeds were distributed to Grabyo Producer through Haivision StreamHub receivers.
Within Grabyo Producer, each operator managed camera switching with frame-accurate synchronization and audio mixing, including routing specific commentary tracks from SRT feeds and managing dedicated graphic overlays.
This enabled Film 45 to customize each stream extensively to each race.
Additionally, Film 45 provided New York Road Runners with access to each live stream in our integrated service for live clipping and editing. It allowed The New York Road Runners marketing team to rapidly clip race moments for live distribution on Twitter and Instagram, while creating highlight compilations for publishing across all social media platforms.
This seamless integration of Grabyo Producer and Grabyo Studio facilitated not only a tailored, multi-stream experience but also optimized resources and collaboration between Film 45 and New York Road Runners to broaden the scope of distribution channels.
The Results
The in-app race feeds attracted over 200,000 live viewers, a 14% increase from the previous year. With the appetite for fans to access more immersive and extended coverage of live events, the TCS New York City Marathon was able to increase its reach globally.
Alongside the flexibility offered by this cloud-based workflow, cost analysis of a similar production using traditional, hardware-based methods revealed an estimated $12-15K saving for Film45.
Film 45’s use of Grabyo Producer showcased the platform’s capacity to revolutionize live event streaming with unlimited scale. This also highlights the opportunities available to sports federations, leagues and broadcasters looking to augment existing live feeds to deliver more live content to fans in a cost-effective workflow.
“Using Grabyo, we were able to expand our coverage of the TCS New York City Marathon in ways that would have been impossible otherwise. We were able to enhance the viewing experience for our audience and deliver additional, personalized coverage at a fraction of the cost and complexity of using traditional hardware-based tools. Our team was able to build a flexible and reliable remote workflow using Grabyo that could be scaled even further.”
“We’re thrilled to have supported New York Road Runners in extending coverage of the TCS New York City Marathon. This workflow is a powerful example of the potential of cloud production and how it is beginning to redefine and scale live event coverage and believe it will foster more live content and side-streams around events, localize and personalize coverage, and reach more audiences across every platform.”
