The 2021 Dakar Rally is now well and truly underway as competitors were set a punishing 277-kilometre route on Stage One. Rising to the challenge were Cristina Gutiérrez, Carlos Sainz and Toby Price who all bagged victories.

Racing got underway at the 2021 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia as some of the biggest names in rally-raid took part in today’s 11km prologue stage. Holding an early lead in the car race is Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah, while Ricky Brabec took first place in the bike category.

We announce that the prestigious Monaco World Sports Legends Award, the Oscars of Sport, cannot be held this year due to the current international situation but we are already working on the 2021 Edition with the presence of many world-renowned sporting stars! The Monaco World Sports Legends Award - the Oscars of Sport - aims at promoting sport’s ethical and moral values in order to inspire the new generations. The Awarded gain entry to the Pantheon of World Sporting Legends by leaving their hand prints.

wTVision and MEDIAPRO Canada joined forces to provide an Augmented Reality (AR) Solution throughout the final rounds of soccer's Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League, which concluded yesterday with the final between Tigres UANL of Mexico’s LigaMX and Major League Soccer’s LAFC at the Exploria Stadium in Orlando, Florida. AR3 is an augmented reality (AR) solution that generates high-quality virtual placements on the soccer field. Designed and developed by wTVision, AR3  was implemented in the final seven games of the Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League, from the quarter-finals to yesterday’s final, to create virtual placements, providing the two finalists, the sponsors and CONCACAF itself with added visibility and brand enhancement in front of a global television audience of millions.

Augmented Reality technology has developed impressively in broadcast industry on an international level, sportscasters can be regularly seen walking through virtual line-ups of teams, moving in and around players, kicking virtual balls across the field and other seemingly unbelievable things. The technology that's driving this change is a tremendous improvement in the speed of computing and the integration of different aspects of visual graphics, including on-the-fly graphics generation, positional tracking of cameras, and keying technology.

The prologue takes place on January 2 with the start proper the following day on its second running in Saudi Arabia following its switch from South America for the 2020 edition.A star-studded Red Bull Desert Wings squad will be chasing glory in the various categories over the course of the 7,646-kilometre course.  Here is all you need to know: - Carlos Sainz begins the car class as reigning champion and once again will be driving a MINI JCW Buggy as he attempts a fourth victory in the prestigious event. Also driving the same machinery will be 13-time Dakar champion Stéphane Peterhansel.

Real-time graphics development company RT Software has just released a major update to Tactic, its acclaimed sports analysis graphic product. The company says this is its most important release to date. Version 5.4 includes many new and exciting features, the most important of which is the Player Detect function, which is free for existing users of its flagship product Tactic Pro. Using state-of-the art Machine Learning and AI, Player Detect provides automatic assisted keyframing of multiple players in parallel.

To step up their digital footprint, American football team the Pittsburgh Steelers brought in Brooklyn, NY-based KMH Integration to consult with their production team on a major facility upgrade. The task was to evaluate the team’s TV and radio production and propose facility designs and workflow changes to improve them. According to KMH Integration President Kevin Henneman, this was a typical case of the end-user’s requirements outgrowing their current systems and workflows. “Like many organizations, the Steelers started their digital efforts in social media, connecting with their fans. But they realized that the time had come to expand their digital content capabilities,” he notes. “They had a large studio space but no control room, so they literally could not do radio and TV at the same time. It was a pretty major redesign.”

The 2020 League of Legends World Championship has a duration of 5 weeks and it is divided in 3 stages: Play-Ins Stage, Groups Stage and Knockout Stage. Only the Grand Final will be at Pudong Stadium, the rest will be held at SMT, in a studio with no audience. XR (Extended Reality) is the main focus of this event. It is known that this will be the first time using XR in competitive scene.

EVS’ video assistant referee (VAR) solution Xeebra has been chosen by NEP Denmark to provide exclusive VAR capabilities to the Danish League for its top football tier the 3F Superliga. Built on EVS’ industry-standard replay technology, the system has been deployed since the start of the season and will be used in all matches throughout the 2020/2021season. The deployment is being managed locally by NEP Denmark, a longtime EVS partner that has extensive experience in producing live coverage of Danish football. For this project, NEP is deploying custom-built VAR vans, each equipped with a Xeebra. Each multi-camera review system from EVS supports up to 16 cameras, including Super Motion cameras, and all camera angles can be accessed instantly during a match. This setup enables the VAR, assistant VAR, and replay operator – who are all stationed on-site– to accurately assist the on-field official in their decisions.

Today, EMG sports technology company On Rewind won an
International Sports Awards in the category “Best of Fan Engagement” with its work on the
Proximus Pickx app & website. Celebrating the finest sports work in the world – the
INTERNATIONAL SPORTS AWARDS (ISA) celebrates these individual, group and company
achievements with honor and recognition on an annual basis. On Rewind was rewarded this
year for developing a gamified live video streaming platform, to provide subscribers of
Proximus’ All Sports TV pack a new and innovative experience on its Proximus Pickx app and
website.

Deltatre, the global leader in fan-first experiences, has extended its partnership with Indian Super League (ISL) for 2020/21, providing its best-in-class broadcast graphics service throughout the season. Deltatre’s multi-platform graphics solutions give content owners the tools to deliver cutting-edge on-screen visualizations. For the 2020/21 season, Deltatre will design, develop and deploy ISL’s world feed match graphics and studio graphics – in English, Malayalam and Bengali – including touchscreen and augmented reality solutions for data rich analysis.

Chase Center, our home, is a new facility that opened for the 2019 season. The technical infrastructure is built on SMPTE ST 2110, with Imagine Communications as our video routing and processing technology partner. Remote working is really helped by a modern IP and IT infrastructure, but even more through having software-defined functionality.

The Finnish Sports Museum housed at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki has recently reopened to the public with a completely revitalised permanent exhibition after extensive renovations closed the venue for five years. The new exhibitions celebrate Finnish sport using the best of what modern technology has to offer, including a state-of-the-art Genelec Smart IP audio solution. All audio, video and control technology was supplied by AV integration specialists Studiotec Oy, with AV and sound design by building services engineering experts, Granlund Oy.

BLAST TV, the global esports media network delivering world class entertainment experiences, has selected EVS’ market-leading VIA and Media Infrastructure solutions as the backbone of its new esports production flypack. The mobile solution is designed so that BLAST TV can produce its own live gaming events in-house. With the Covid-19 lockdown impacting mass gatherings, the flexibility of the EVS live production workflow is enabling the esports giant to put on online-only events instead.