Industry Insights: REMI moves from experiment to operating model

Remote production is no longer a question of whether the technology works, but how broadcasters decide where people, infrastructure and production functions should live.

In part two of this four-part Industry Insights roundtable, broadcast technology leaders examine which sporting events are best suited for centralized and remote production and where an on-site presence still matters. The discussion explores lessons learned from deploying REMI workflows at scale, including the importance of resilient connectivity, redundancy, synchronization and operational planning.

The conversation also looks at the expanding role of IP infrastructure as broadcasters seek production environments that can move signals and resources between venues, centralized facilities and the cloud while adapting more easily to the demands of each event.

Key takeaways from this Industry Insights roundtable

• Hybrid models prevail: Broadcasters increasingly determine which roles need to remain at the venue rather than treating remote and on-site production as an either-or decision.
• REMI demands discipline: Successful remote production depends on resilient transport, synchronization, testing, communications and clearly engineered backup plans.
• Reliability beats latency: Low latency remains important, but contributors repeatedly emphasize predictable performance and redundancy over pursuing the lowest possible delay.
• IP enables flexibility: Networked infrastructure allows signals, people and production resources to be shared across venues, centralized facilities and cloud environments.
• Complexity does not disappear: Moving from dedicated hardware to IP and software-defined infrastructure relocates technical complexity and increases the importance of monitoring, orchestration and interoperability.

Which types of sporting events are best suited for remote production today, and where do fully on-site crews still offer clear advantages?

Sergio Ammirata, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist, SipRadius: Provided minimal end-to-end latency is achieved, it does not matter at all where the director and the replay operators sit. Economically, it makes sense for them to be in a central facility, eliminating the costs and carbon footprints of travel, but ultimately it is down to personal preference. If there is a lot of interaction between the sport, the on-air talent and the production then maybe it makes sense for the director to be on location, but the technology now supports whatever that decision is.

Alistair Horne, managing director, Hornets Tech: It comes down to how predictable the event is. If the venue’s known, the connectivity’s known and the shape of the show doesn’t change much from week to week, remote works well. Where I still want experienced people physically there is anything fast-moving, RF-heavy or creatively ambitious, because those are the productions that change by the minute. The director wants a camera somewhere awkward, or the RF environment starts misbehaving, and you need someone on the ground who can just make a call and fix it, not someone dialling in to find out what happened.

Srividhya Srinivasan, CTO, Amagi: Remote production is now well suited to many league matches, regional competitions and secondary events where cost efficiency and scalability are priorities. Major international tournaments and premium live events still benefit from larger on-site teams because of the complexity of production, the volume of feeds and the need for close coordination around editorial decisions. Increasingly, though, we’re seeing hybrid models that combine centralized production with targeted on-site expertise.

Andrew Ward, business development manager, Cinegy: These are essentially issues of cost and scale and at Cinegy, we have been involved in the creation and operation of the MLB Network, which has changed the way baseball fans follow the game, as well as involved in large sports stadiums in the U.S. adding broadcast capabilities to their existing AV infrastructure. With regard to on-site versus remote, clearly events like the Olympics and the World Cup change venue each time, so on-site is the way to go, with the organizers bearing the logistical brunt. Software-based solutions lend themselves to easy installation in fixed sports venues, as they can either be permanently installed, or easily integrated if desired.

Andrew Lahey, senior manager, solutions services and project management, Ross Video: Remote production is an excellent fit for repeatable events with well-established workflows, such as regular season broadcasts where consistency and efficiency are paramount. High-profile events often introduce unique storytelling opportunities, specialized production elements and a greater need for close collaboration, making a larger on-site presence valuable. For viewers, one element that still carries significant value is having the talent onsite, where they can better capture the energy that makes live sports compelling.

Advertisement

Abe Abt, senior product consultant, AJA Video Systems: Remote production works especially well for recurring events, smaller venues, regional sports, and productions with predictable technical requirements. Larger events, complex productions, and high-profile broadcasts often still benefit from having more creative and technical staff on-site. Many organizations are adopting a hybrid model that combines the strengths of both approaches.

Steph Lone, global leader, solutions architecture, media and entertainment, Amazon Web Services: Every sporting event benefits from remote production because it removes the physical limitations of the venue. Cloud-based production adds instant scalability, so broadcasters have the same toolset whether they’re producing the Super Bowl or a regional qualifier. The real decision becomes which specific roles need boots on the ground for a given production, not whether remote is viable.

Suzana Brady, VP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: Regional or collegiate sports, recurring or multi-venue events, and high-volume productions are well suited to remote workflows because they can efficiently leverage centralized resources. Major championship events and productions requiring extensive specialty cameras or complex coordination still benefit from on-site crews who can react in real time – although hybrid productions continue to gain in popularity.

Dave MacKinnon, VP, product management, Clear-Com: The bar is changing quickly. Remote production used to be reserved mostly for tier-two and tier-three events, but with sports rights fees as high as they are, broadcasters are looking for savings everywhere, including tier-one productions. Keeping more production resources centralized and reusing infrastructure across events are practical ways to reduce overhead without compromising the final broadcast.

What lessons have broadcasters learned from deploying REMI workflows at scale over the past several years?

Francesco Scartozzi, VP, sales and business development, Matrox Video: REMI has proven that remote production can deliver high-quality live coverage while making better use of personnel and infrastructure. Success depends on resilient IP networks, low-latency transport, and open standards that ensure reliable interoperability between systems.

Tim Jackson, senior director of sales and business development, North America, Techex: The clearest lesson is that cloud and remote production can meet the demands of major live sport, but only when broadcasters treat them as a new operating model rather than a direct replacement for existing equipment. Resilience has to be designed in, workflows need to be tested under real pressure and staff need time to become confident in a different way of working. The proof is now public and at scale: Sky Sports+ launched in summer 2024, delivering more than 50 percent more live sport at no extra cost to viewers, made possible by cloud production.

Peder Boberg, product owner, Intinor: The biggest lesson is that the public internet is a fully viable option for primary sports contribution if you manage the traffic right. Relying on a single network provider is simply a single point of failure during a live broadcast. Real operational security comes from using transport protocols with network bonding to tie multiple cellular and fixed networks together, ensuring that the video stream remains stable even if an individual connection fails.

Alistair Horne, managing director, Hornets Tech: Mostly that REMI punishes sloppiness. If the timing’s off, the links are fragile, the comms is messy or nobody’s thought about what happens when something fails, remote production will find that weakness and expose it live, in front of everyone. When people treat it properly, as a live production that happens to be split across two locations rather than a video call with nicer cameras, it works brilliantly. The problem is when it gets treated as the cheap option rather than the engineered one.

Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear: Broadcasters have learned that reliable remote production depends on consistency more than chasing the lowest possible latency. Stable timing and accurate synchronization give production teams the confidence to work across different locations without affecting the viewer experience. Another clear lesson is that there is no single production model that fits every event. 

Doug Price, global head, commercial & operations, broadcast solutions, Hawk-Eye Innovations: The biggest lesson that the broadcasters have learned from deploying REMI workflows at scale is that remote production works. They are no longer scared of the “what ifs” and understand that the technology allows them to produce the same way they always have, just without personnel in the truck or venue.  Decentralization is the new way forward and the cost savings from reducing on-site personnel are being applied to further technology enhancements for the broadcasts.

Costa Nikols, executive-team strategy advisor, media and entertainment, Telos Alliance: As production shifts towards virtualized, software-based infrastructure, there is a growing need for standards-based, interoperable workflows that allow different systems, platforms and production teams to work together seamlessly. Standards such as Media Exchange Layer (MXL) are helping enable this flexibility, making it easier to move content and metadata efficiently across increasingly distributed production environments. In addition, MXL integration dramatically reduces latency, which helps improve some of the operational drawbacks of REMI productions.

Suzana Brady, VP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: The biggest lesson learned from deploying REMI workflows is that success depends less on saving travel costs and more on reliable signal transport, low latency, and maintaining operational confidence across distributed workflows. REMI workflows must work across various locations, so they are only as good as the connectivity behind them. The adoption of interoperable standards like Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) has enabled state-of-the-art transport of live video over unmanaged networks.

Advertisement

How are broadcasters approaching connectivity, latency and reliability challenges when producing live sports remotely?

Nicola Milburn, technical sales manager, Hitomi Broadcast: One of the biggest lessons is to stop treating latency as a single number attached to a remote production. Different buffers, processing stages and network paths can all add delay, so you need to measure at multiple points if you want to know where delay is actually being introduced. Otherwise, you risk compensating at the end without ever fixing the real problem.

Peder Boberg, product owner, Intinor: Broadcasters are replacing traditional satellite links with advanced network bonding and proprietary transport protocols built specifically for the public internet. These specialized protocols handle jitter and packet loss across multiple connections to keep latencies exceptionally low and predictable. For critical live sports, teams can aggregate cellular, LEO satellite, and fiber to create a stable point-to-point connection, even when the underlying networks are unpredictable.

Erik Otto, CEO, Mediaproxy: The shift to IP is now well underway and continuing. As part of this, broadcasters are installing redundant fiber connections based on the low-latency and lower bandwidth JPEG-XS codec to get signals from venues to the broadcast facility or cloud. From the operational perspective, low latency monitoring tools, such as WebRTC and SRT, are now being increasingly used for multiviewing.

Sergio Ammirata, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist, SipRadius: We have to move from a science experiment to an everyday normality. The most complex remote production operation, with many tens of feeds each way, has to be plug and play or operationally and economically it fails. New initiatives like SipMX aim to use proven open standards and add a super-layer for media orchestration, security and latency management.

Colin Moran, VP, production products, LTN: Broadcasters are increasingly using low-latency, managed IP transport technologies to move live video from venues into and out of production environments with minimal delay. And they’re demanding high SLAs on availability and network performance. Advances in formats such as JPEG-XS support high-quality transmission while keeping latency low. At the same time, not all IP transport protocols are equal. Alongside managing first- and last-mile latency, we’re seeing an increased need for error recovery and routing protocols deep inside the network that manage the complexities of global IP delivery.

Alistair Horne, managing director, Hornets Tech: The broadcasters doing this well are planning for the venue as it actually is, not the tidy version on a site plan. Sports venues are crowded, unpredictable and full of things competing for the same spectrum and network capacity, so you have to build resilience in from day one rather than hope for the best. And I’d say people spend too much time worrying about latency when reliability is the thing that actually matters. A slightly delayed signal is still usable. A missing one is worth nothing.

Srividhya Srinivasan, CTO, Amagi: Reliable connectivity remains fundamental to remote production, which is why broadcasters continue to build resilient cloud and IP-based workflows with redundancy designed into every stage of production. Evolving low-latency IP workflows, including standards-based approaches such as VSF TR-07, are becoming important because they help preserve stream quality while keeping remote teams closely synchronized during live events. The focus is shifting from simple transporting signals to creating architectures that can scale while maintaining broadcast-grade reliability.

Alex Zambelli, director of product, Bitmovin: While sub-second latency remains a challenge, some broadcasters have been using low-latency variations of HTTP-based streaming protocols such as HESP, LL-HLS and LL-DASH, which when combined with precise CDN configuration and well-tuned ABR ladder decisions have enabled them to deliver genuinely low-latency experiences at scale. Emerging transport protocol Media Over QUIC (MOQ) is also currently generating a lot of interest, precisely because it solves the challenge that live streaming faces over having to compromise between scale and sub-second latency.

Martin Lindsay, head of networked solutions, Sony Electronics: The industry has moved beyond asking whether remote production is viable and is now focused on achieving broadcast-grade reliability at scale. Broadcasters are combining IP transport, private/public 5G, redundant contribution paths, and orchestration platforms to manage latency and maintain resilience, allowing production teams to extend REMI workflows to more high-profile live sports while preserving the responsiveness operators expect from traditional on-site productions.

Doug Price, global head, commercial & operations, broadcast solutions, Hawk-Eye Innovations: Redundancy is a key element, and moving to ST 2110 has empowered many to build robust systems that eliminate or reduce the latency and connectivity issues. Not only do they have a red and blue connection, but some also use bonded cellular as a secondary option to maintain a picture if the primary connection fails. 

Advertisement

Abe Abt, senior product consultant, AJA Video Systems: Broadcasters are using a mix of dedicated networks, managed IP services, and secure internet-based transport depending on the importance and budget of the event. Redundant signal paths, monitoring, and backup workflows are essential, because no single connection should be treated as failure-proof. Low-latency encoding and reliable transport protocols are also making remote production practical in more locations.

Jimbo Haneklau, VP, sales, sports and live events, Imagine Communications: Broadcasters are moving toward resilient IP-based architectures that combine high-bandwidth connectivity with built-in redundancy, allowing remote production workflows to remain reliable even as events become more distributed. Built around SMPTE ST 2110, these workflows support the low-latency transport and precise synchronization that live sports production demands, while orchestration and unified monitoring give operators real-time visibility into signal health and system performance so issues can be identified and resolved before they affect the broadcast. That evolution will give broadcasters the operational flexibility to meet growing audience demands without proportionally increasing production resources.

Kevin Wittnebert, senior director, public venues, sports and entertainment, Extreme Networks: Broadcasters have embraced a remote connected model that enables specialized directors and engineers to collaborate in real-time from centralized locations, eliminating travel requirements and driving greater talent retention. This approach demands high-availability cloud infrastructure, IP bonding, and advanced protocols like Secure Reliable Transport to minimize transmission delays and ensure dependable signal delivery. At its core, the model relies on a secure, resilient network foundation engineered to adapt to diverse remote production requirements while maintaining broadcast-quality performance under any conditions.

Suzana Brady, VP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: Redundancy has become the default rather than the exception; broadcasters are building in backup paths with comprehensive signal monitoring and processing that preserves quality while minimizing latency from acquisition through delivery. Precise timing and synchronization across IP infrastructure is equally critical, which is part of why open, interoperable standards have gained so much traction: they give broadcasters confidence that equipment from different vendors will behave predictably together.

Dave MacKinnon, VP, product management, Clear-Com: We have seen broadcasters get very creative about connectivity. Larger organizations are working directly with cellular providers, Starlink or terrestrial fiber providers, while tools like Dejero help bond available paths and improve reliability in the field. At Clear-Com, our job is to ride those paths reliably, securely and with the lowest latency possible, because communications cannot be the weak link in a live production.

What role is IP-based infrastructure playing in creating more flexible and scalable sports production environments?

Nicola Milburn, technical sales manager, Hitomi Broadcast: IP has given sports production much more freedom in how signals are routed and resources are shared, but it has also made timing less predictable. In SDI, teams generally understood the timing behaviour of the path; in ST 2110 environments, multiple buffers and network routes can introduce delays that are difficult to spot by eye. The next stage of IP maturity is not simply moving signals onto a network, but being able to verify what is happening inside that environment.

Russell Trafford-Jones, industry engagement manager, Techex: IP infrastructure has already reduced the physical scale of many deployments and given broadcasters far more freedom over where production functions can sit. The ultimate expression of this is the Dynamic Media Facility direction that the EBU and AMWA are driving through their joint task force, where configuration is flexible and automated by default and production functions become interchangeable software that can be deployed, retired and repurposed on demand. Taken to its conclusion, much less of the production environment needs to be tied to dedicated physical infrastructure, which creates real flexibility across the truck, the gallery and the cloud.

Peder Boberg, product owner, Intinor: By turning video feeds into routable network packets, IP infrastructure removes the geographic limits of sports broadcasting. A central control room can handle a soccer match in the afternoon and switch to basketball at night without moving any physical hardware. That scalability allows media companies to maximize their production capacity using the exact same physical footprint

Erik Otto, CEO, Mediaproxy: IP is the long-term future for TV infrastructures and workflows in general. But it is essential for sports production because SDI is too rigid a format to support the remote operations that are increasingly utilized in this sector.

Sergio Ammirata, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist, SipRadius: No one questions any more that IP connectivity and software-defined architectures have replaced legacy bespoke technology. The key is to ensure that the new environment performs at least as well as the old, in terms of very high availability, low latency and security. There are widely recognized standards for each of these, and managing these to build precisely the workflows you need for each event is the new secret sauce.

Colin Moran, VP, production products, LTN: Purpose-built IP networks make it easier to move content from venue acquisition through production, distribution and end user delivery within a connected environment. The shift away from rigid distribution models and traditional rights agreements is equally important. Rights holders are now serving more partners and more platforms than ever before. IP-based workflows provide the flexibility to customize content versions, support new markets, and scale operations without dramatically increasing resources.

Alistair Horne, managing director, Hornets Tech: IP has genuinely opened things up, there’s a lot more freedom to move signals, people and resources around intelligently across remote and centralized workflows than there used to be. What I don’t buy is the idea that IP makes things simpler. It doesn’t remove the complexity, it just relocates it, and if you’re not careful that complexity ends up sitting somewhere nobody’s properly engineering, monitoring or taking responsibility for.

Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear: Standards such as SMPTE ST 2110 and SRT continue to improve interoperability across production environments, while newer software frameworks are helping connect applications running across on-premise and cloud infrastructure. These changes are also giving leagues and federations whatever their size and resources more control over their own production. World Archery is one example, which uses an IP based workflow to centralize production and deliver content to partners around the world.

Srividhya Srinivasan, CTO, Amagi: IP infrastructure is giving broadcasters the flexibility to move from fixed, one-size-fits-all distribution models and create workflows that are far more dynamic. This makes it much easier to create regionalized feeds, localize content and support multiple rights holders or platforms from the same live event. That flexibility is becoming increasingly important as audiences expect more engaging and consistent viewing experiences across platforms and screens.

Andrew Ward, business development manager, Cinegy: True IP (that is, real IP not the misleadingly-named ST-2110) has now reached the point where it can provide both production and distribution connections. The SRT protocol permits the transmission of full-quality broadcast content across standard internet infrastructure, which represents a revolution in both plant and carrier costs. DVB over IP has grown over the last three decades to become a mature technology in both hardware and software and all that is necessary for sports production these days is a reliable broadband internet connection; these can be found almost everywhere where large-scale sport takes place.

Sarah Hackforth, director, international sales, Big Blue Marble: When production resources are tied to specific hardware and locations, every event requires its own physical setup, its own crew in the same room, its own signal path from venue to broadcast. That is what is driving broader interest in IP among broadcasters. Live cloud production gives organizations the ability to serve the main feed, streaming platforms, social formats, club channels, and direct-to-consumer services from the same environment without rebuilding the operation around every event.

Martin Lindsay, head of networked solutions, Sony Electronics: IP-based infrastructure provides more flexible and scalable sports production by allowing broadcasters to move resources, signals, and personnel beyond the physical limits of a single venue or facility. By leveraging standards-based IP networks, organizations can centralize production, dynamically allocate resources across multiple events, and more easily integrate cloud and remote production workflows while reducing the need for dedicated hardware and on-site equipment. As sports coverage expands across broadcast, streaming, and digital platforms, IP infrastructure also enables broadcasters to scale operations more efficiently, launch new productions faster, and adapt resources in real time to meet changing audience and business demands.

Francesco Scartozzi, VP, sales and business development, Matrox Video: IP-based infrastructure, particularly SMPTE ST 2110, has fundamentally changed how sports production environments are designed and operated. By combining traditional broadcast workflows with modern IT infrastructure, broadcasters can scale resources more efficiently, simplify system integration, and build software-centric environments that are easier to adapt as production requirements evolve.

Costa Nikols, executive-team strategy advisor, media and entertainment, Telos Alliance: IP-based infrastructure gives broadcasters more flexibility by allowing audio, video, and metadata to move more easily between different production locations. It also makes it easier to centralize operations while deploying production resources wherever they’re needed.

Abe Abt, senior product consultant, AJA Video Systems: IP infrastructure allows video, audio, control, and data to move across shared networks instead of requiring separate systems for every signal. This makes it easier to add sources, connect remote locations, and scale production resources up or down as needed. Hybrid tools are especially important because most facilities still need to work with both IP and traditional baseband equipment.

Jimbo Haneklau, VP, sales, sports and live events, Imagine Communications: IP-based infrastructure is giving broadcasters the flexibility to allocate resources where they’re needed most, whether that’s supporting remote production, scaling coverage for major events, or launching temporary workflows for a single competition. By replacing fixed, hardware-centric architectures with software-defined systems, broadcasters can reconfigure production environments more quickly, integrate best-of-breed technologies, and adapt to changing production requirements without rebuilding their infrastructure. As live sports operations become more dynamic, that flexibility will make it easier to support a wider range of productions without dedicated infrastructure for every event.

Paul Pastor, chief business officer, Quickplay: When production runs on a cloud-native, orchestrated architecture instead of siloed hardware systems, a broadcaster can manage live channels, clipping, scheduling and distribution through one framework rather than stitching together separate tools for each output. That’s the difference between reformatting content after the fact and producing it correctly for every screen from the start. We’re talking about a shift from days to minutes. We saw this firsthand consolidating more than 1,300 digital touchpoints, spanning 113 markets, onto a single architecture in our work with Gray Media.

Kevin Wittnebert, senior director, public venues, sports and entertainment, Extreme Networks: Sports production systems are no longer hardware-bound but instead rely on software-defined, scalable standards-based platforms. By replacing specialized cables with standard ethernet, production teams can route high-quality content from any camera to any control room connected to the network. Software patches have now replaced the physical patchbays of old, enabling rapid deployment without infrastructure changes and delivering far greater flexibility.

Suzana Brady, VP, worldwide sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital: As IP continues to gain momentum, emerging standards such as IPMX have the potential to drive interoperability, helping simplify integration across increasingly diverse production environments. IPMX greatly simplifies the operation of a pure IP network, reducing both CapEx and OpEx costs, without proprietary lock-in.

Dave MacKinnon, VP, product management, Clear-Com: Most new facilities are now moving almost entirely to IP. The ability to use commodity network infrastructure and make changes more easily is very attractive for broadcasters, especially in sports where requirements can shift from event to event. As productions become more decentralized, sports broadcasters need to move more sources to more places and make more vendors work together, which creates a real opportunity for flexible Clear-Com solutions.