Hawk-Eye Launches Game-Changing Broadcast Replay Solution Exclusively at NAB

Basingstoke, United Kingdom (April 24, 2022) — Hawk-Eye Innovations, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony and the sports tech leader in officiating, broadcast enhancement technologies, has launched the first iteration of its new solution Hawk-Eye Replay; a product that serves as a high-performance, yet cost-effective, remote replay and highlights suite.

Following the success of ‘Every Shot Every Hole’, Hawk-Eye’s award-winning golf production technology, the company has continued to build upon this product suite alongside broadcast partners to redefine broadcasting production workflows and outputs.

Today’s new offering combines Hawk-Eye’s optical tracking capabilities and data platforms to create a new powerful production solution.
Hawk-Eye Replay’s first iteration is already a proven solution in remote production and has already been used by high-profile networks and leagues at major sporting events around the world.

Remote First Clipping & Highlights
Hawk-Eye Replay allows replay operation from anywhere, allowing for flexible remote production models. Operators can also access the system from anywhere over public internet connections allowing for flexible remote production models.

Data-Driven Broadcast
A key pillar of Hawk-Eye Replay is utilizing real-time data to help automate & augment live sports workflows. This can automate tasks that feed the media supply chain, allowing operators to focus on what they do best – creative storytelling.

Scalable Capture, Processing And Playout
Processing nodes can be clustered together to offer an open, centralized ingest model. Both replay workstations and processing nodes can also be added with little overhead to meet changing production requirements. This provides ultimate scalability and flexibility to cover any shape of live event. Operators have ultra-low latency access to any stream on the network providing unmatched speed and efficiency.

Modular, Fit For Purpose User Interface
The next-gen UI provides a streamlined approach to live broadcast. Users are presented with an intuitively built modular UX that allows for customizable workspaces and configuration over multiple desktops. This provides a focused toolset that is tailorable to different sports and applications.

Sony Integrations
Hawk-Eye Replay can be fully integrated with remote and cloud production tools, including Sony’s Ci Media Cloud. Sony’s Ci works seamlessly alongside Hawk-Eye Replay in live sports production allowing broadcasters and rights holders to enrich, manage and distribute media with partners across the world. Hawk-Eye Replay also offers ingest and ultra-smooth variable speed playback with the Sony Broadcast camera range.

Delivering Live Sports Workflows in the Cloud!
Hawk-Eye recently delivered its first 100% cloud-hosted replay solution at a large scale with 80 video feeds, 120 audio channels and 36 TrackMan graphic tracers captured on AWS instances so that no onsite hardware was required for Every Shot Live! With a team of 38 operators working remotely in Basingstoke, UK (Hawk-Eye HQ) and Atlanta, GA, the team successfully provided up to 32 concurrent high-quality streams and graphics to OTT
and online broadcasters.

Dan Cash, Managing Director of Hawk-Eye North America stated: “What the last few years have taught us is that we must listen and adapt to our customers’ needs as they evolve and change. With our extensive experience within sports broadcast, and by leveraging our learnings from working with our partners in golf, we’ve worked hard to understand what our clients need, and what a truly impactful and innovative broadcast replay solution should look like for sports! We’re thankful to our partners who have provided their experiences and valuable feedback on what will be a game-changing production tool.”

What You’ll See at NAB
Making its first appearance at a major trade show, Hawk-Eye Replay will allow visitors to experience first-hand the highly flexible and scalable feature set of Hawk-Eye’s new replay system. They will join Sony at booth C10901 where demonstrations will be available. Hawk-Eye Replay currently provides easy to use clipping and playback tools with a roadmap to a richer replay feature set, to be released in autumn 2022.