Spain growing their Winter Olympics delegation with technology
One of the great stories of the 2018 Winter Games is Spain improving as a Winter Olympics threat.
The Spanish Ice Federation was founded only 10 years ago and has sent a delegation of five athletes to the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. It is chaired by Frank González, a former ice hockey professional with an ambitious agenda to make ice sports more popular on the Iberian Peninsula. The results in 2018, have been impressive.
Federación Española Deportes de Hielo (Spanish Ice Sports Federation) has deployed Pixellot systems to broadcast ice hockey, curling, and figure skating. The events will be streamed on the Federation's website with highlight clips on some of the most relevant Spanish media platforms like Marca (the largest Spanish national daily sport newspaper), or Teledeporte (the Spanish sports channel owned by TVE). Pixellot offers fully automated sports production systems that provide live, high-quality event coverage without any production team or camera operators. Pixellot democratizes the sporting world by allowing all types of sports to be streamed to fans. Its technology is fine-tuned using sports-specific algorithms, allowing it to professionally cover all types of ice sports, as well as soccer, football, basketball, and volleyball. More than 2,000 systems around the world are streaming 16,000+ hours of live sports every month.
"We had seen Pixellot in action elsewhere and immediately reached out once we were ready to expand our operations," says Xavier Cherta, General Secretary of Federación Española Deportes de Hielo. "Figure skater Javier Fernández - two-time World champion and a six-time consecutive European champ represented the Federación at the Olympics, along with other winter athletes. We believe his exposure will further strengthen the interest in ice sports in Spain, which will in turn be reinforced by the availability of video streaming."
Fernández earned a bronze. Pixellot systems are already in place at venues around Spain, with plans to eventually provide coverage at all sites that can hold official games. And this is just the start.
"Pixellot brings sports to fans that are generally not available on traditional broadcast outlets," says Alon Werber, CEO of Pixellot. "The production and streaming technology makes it economically viable to produce sports at any level. For more niche sports, our technology opens new opportunities to gain exposure and engage with fans, especially as the system makes it easy see instant replays and share clips with other fans."