Sponsored Content: Ross Innovations in Esports | A Customer Case Study
Ross Live | 2020 esports week featured a live case study presentation featuring James Dean, Founder and CEO at ESL UK, and Andrew Wagnitz, Director of Broadcast and Technology at Next Generation Esports (NGE). Cameron Reed, Esports Business Development Manager with Ross Video, sat down with James and Andrew to discuss how esports productions have been able to achieve “more with less”. The group also discussed how the industry has had to cope during the COVID-19 pandemic and where esports is headed in the future.
Watch the case study presentation On-Demand
Historically, esports production budgets have been modest compared to traditional broadcasts. Despite the limited resources, the industry has evolved and there is now an expectation to deliver a world-class show on par with traditional broadcasts. As a result, esports production teams have had to find creative and innovative ways to deliver quality productions.
As part of the in-depth conversation with two industry leaders about all things esports, Andrew Wagnitz began by explaining how RossTalk has allowed his team to be more efficient with their productions while remaining cost effective.
“When you look at the RossTalk function and how it allows for all the devices within the Ross family to talk to one another, that has been a huge plus for us since we don’t need to hire custom programmers to enable our productions” he said.
Speaking more broadly about how esports productions have been elevated, James Dean discusses the use of augmented reality (AR) graphics. Specifically, Dean credits Ross for working with ESL “from the ground up to make this feature more accessible” for the esports industry.
Another common thread throughout the discussion was the constant evolution of the esports industry. This was most apparent when Wagnitz spoke about the ways that his team had been coping during lockdown restrictions.
“When we were forced to shut down our studio, we had about twelve hours to come up with an alternative production solution for a scheduled show the next day. We quickly went to the drawing board and decided to pick up our Ross mobile flight kit and brought it to someone’s residence to deliver the show”
While the outcome of the remote production was unknown at the time, Wagnitz added, “We were able to set up our Carbonite, our Mira, our XPression, and our observer stations at home and deliver our show remotely without missing a beat”
To wrap-up the discussion, Dean provided his thoughts on the future of the industry and predicted that esports productions will continue to push the boundaries with fan engagement. More specifically, he imagined a scenario “where every viewer’s graphic overlay is personalized to them, which would be made possible through products like XPression.”
Dean also highlighted the need for esports productions to continue pushing the boundaries on interacting with a younger audience that now expects to contribute to the show through social media and chat rooms.
Learn more at about Ross Video’s esports workflows.
