Finalists For IBC Innovation Awards Announced

IBC has announced the finalists for this year's IBC Innovation Awards, taking place at IBC2024 in the RAI Amsterdam on 13-16 September.

The IBC Innovation Awards celebrate and honour collaborative initiatives leading to ground-breaking solutions that address real-world media, entertainment and technology industry challenges. This year's awards bring together under one roof IBC's innovation and social impact awards to create a unified celebration of industry advances, with five categories now being judged: Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere, Social Impact, and Environment & Sustainability.

In a year dominated by big sporting events such as the Summer Olympic Games and the UEFA European Football Championship, this year's awards finalists reflect the power of sports as a driver of innovation, with at least one entry in this area shortlisted in four of the five categories. Overall, the broad array of entries from every corner of the globe underlines the truly international nature of IBC.

"This year's entries once again showcased the global reach and appeal of the IBC Innovation Awards with projects of the highest quality received from six continents," said Fergal Ringrose, Chair of the 2024 IBC Innovation Awards Jury. "Meanwhile, constantly evolving delivery methods and audience consumption patterns demand that content producers around the globe must innovate dynamically in order to stay relevant and competitive in the modern media and entertainment technology ecosystem. I would like to sincerely thank our panel of judges for their diligence and ability to adapt, as we brought our three Content categories together with Environment & Sustainability and Social Impact this year for our new-look IBC Innovation Awards."

The 2024 awards will be announced in a ceremony hosted by presenter and former news anchor Sasha Qadri, taking place in the Auditorium Complex at the RAI on Sunday, 15 September at 18.00 CET.

This year's finalists in the Content Creation category include:

• The National Football League (US), ESPN, Disney/Pixar and Beyond Sports for creating the first fully animated, real-time NFL alternative broadcast set in the Toy Story universe.
• Olympic Broadcasting Services and partners for live broadcast production with more than 200 smartphones contributing video for the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony and a sea-based 5G network for sailing competitions in Marseille.
• Aspire for working with Vislink and FocalPoint VR to develop a virtual reality over RF wireless solution for the inaugural season of Aspire’s Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL).

The organisations named as finalists in Content Distribution are:
• Claro for creating a new approach to pay TV in Brazil, integrating streaming channels and applications, delivering entertainment to consumers with a complete pay TV offer.
• NBCUniversal Operations and Technology for its pioneering project to transform the way its TV channels are delivered to consumers worldwide.
• The National Hockey League (Canada and US) in partnership with Verizon, AWS, Zixi, Vizrt and Evertz, for producing a 5G and Edge compute framework for assembly, control and delivery of live broadcast.

The Content Everywhere finalists are:
• LaLiga for working with Play Anywhere and Ease Live to enable true fan interactivity for itself and its worldwide broadcast and streaming partners.
• Red Bull Media House for bringing together real-time GPS tracking, data management and advanced visualisation to transform viewing experience across live broadcast, web widgets and AR mobile app.
• Franceinfo (France Télévisions) for working with PimpMyCompany to aggregate text/audio/video/photo messages from various platforms and broadcasting them live on air.

The Social Impact finalists are:
• Disney Star, Star Sports for working with India Signing Hands to bring cricket to almost 67 million hard of hearing and 34 million visually impaired fans watching IPL 2024.
• CultureQ for a new technology platform developed by indigenous-owned tech company Kiwa Digital that enables indigenous peoples globally to revitalise their language and culture at scale, while retaining sovereignty.
• Sesame Workshop for its Watch Play Learn Distribution Hub which allows government agencies and aid organisations to preview and request videos for children in crisis settings.

The Environment & Sustainability finalists are:
• France Télévisions for reducing CO2 emissions by 300 tons via a pioneering 100% glass-to-glass cloud production and private 5G network.
• GreeningofStreaming for addressing growing industry concerns about the energy impact of the streaming sector, with international reach and over 30 member organisations.
• Anton/Bauer for Salt-E Dog which harnesses the power of sodium chemistry to enable sustainable television production practices.

The Innovation Awards ceremony will also feature the presentation of the IBC International Honour for Excellence, which goes to an individual or organisation that has made an outstanding impact in the industry, and the Best Technical Paper, with all papers being presented at the 2024 IBC Conference that runs 13-15 September in the Auditorium Complex of the RAI.

IBC also released for the first time earlier in the month longlists of the final 10 contenders for each category of the 2024 Innovation Awards, selected from the hundreds of entries that poured in from media organisations and their technology partners worldwide.

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