2023 Predictions: Quantum’s Skip Levens Offers Up Three Content Predictions for the Year Ahead

It’s no secret that content is being generated at an astronomical rate. In fact, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day in 2020, and that number has only increased since. When it comes to sports media, the video captured during events must not only be stored safely – but also be easily accessible when it’s needed once again.

This steady stream of content is not slowing down. As the world gets back to live sporting events post-pandemic, sports broadcasting companies will place a renewed focus on effectively managing, storing and repurposing their content.

As we look at content trends in 2023, we anticipate a more widespread adoption of AI/ML, the rise of “content” lakes, and a revelation that data holds more value than we ever thought possible. Here are three predictions for what we can expect in the new year.

The Rise of Content Lakes

The notion of ‘data lakes’ is often heard – a massive data repository that an organization can tap into for review and analysis. A variation now becoming popular is the notion of a ‘content lake.’ Media-rich companies with multiple sites, often spread across wide geographies, have long struggled with shuttling content—like video and imagery—and its metadata between locations to speed content production. Businesses will lean on Asset Management Systems to natively index content in object-based archives and help shift and consolidate content in a shared content lake, resulting in even large global organizations gaining a ’single view’ across their entire operation.

The AI/ML Arms Race is Already Here

Mastery of deep content libraries used to require massive teams of highly-trained and experienced loggers – those able to quickly distinguish what’s truly important and relevant for producers and editors to craft finished content. But frankly, teams of loggers and content experts are expensive to support, train, and focus on important but repetitive work. To help augment those teams so they can focus on higher priority work, the largest sports content brands and leagues are implementing AI and ML tools to get ‘out of the box’ results such as object recognition, audio transcription, and video and audio up-res and cleanup. Now, with AI and ML libraries integrated into their content production and archive workflows, in-house solutions will evolve into AI-powered engines specific to their content domain providing massive time advantages over manual methods, propelling users to find interesting, relevant content instantly, quickly produce unique content, and leave competitors racing to catch up.

Serving Content Like Code

Everyone’s familiar with the need to deliver finished content in multiple formats for different platforms, but a new and intriguing possibility is emerging. While custom workflow actions can make the creation of those formats more programmatic and repeatable, edge web services are pointing the way to another option. Imagine if you could serve a single piece of content on the web and personalize it on the fly based on the user’s location or other preferences, then entice the user with more content influenced by their location? It’s possible with a new class of tools from content caching services. As your content moves to caching servers, you can embed simple, ‘if/then’ logic to personalize content, adapting to the users’ location to serve different audio, a different UI, and more. The line between content workflow and code will keep blurring in the race to get more efficiency and productivity.

Final Thoughts

Content generation is not going away – on the contrary, it will skyrocket. As a result, sports broadcast companies must find a way to better manage, repurpose and make value of the data they’re collecting – whether that be through AI and ML or other technology solutions. Ultimately, organizations that don’t acknowledge the need to be flexible and nimble in their content and data management, will fall behind in the long-term.

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