Revolutionizing Sports Broadcast: Viaplay’s Innovative Use of Zero Density’s Virtual Studio Solutions

Viaplay has revolutionized studio production by putting virtual production at the core of their expansion strategy. This allowed Viaplay to increase production value while gaining full control over their brand, ensuring channel consistency, and optimizing studio floor utilization, all while significantly reducing physical set production costs.

Viaplay is a Nordic streaming video provider specialized in premium sports and entertainment. Every day, millions of viewers enjoy high-quality content, including an unrivaled line-up of premium live sports.

Reliable, Scalable and Flexible

Zero Density’s Reality Platform gave Viaplay the tools to enhance the storytelling during sports shows, giving viewers a unique experience. The high-quality virtual content that is used in their shows is produced centrally in Denmark and Sweden and distributed to the local outlets. This adoption of the ‘create once, use many’ philosophy created a highly efficient graphics workflow.

Revolutionizing Sports Broadcast in Europe: Viaplay's Innovative Use of Reality Virtual Studio

“At the heart of our sports production is the Look & Feel team overseeing 20 conventional and virtual studios.” says Hannes Reneby, Visual Director at Viaplay Group Sport, “The team is responsible for studio design, physical and virtual, including screens, lineups, on-air graphics and more in each of them”.

The day to day management of all this is a big operation. Viaplay uses a combination of a internal team and partners to achieve their goals. Roughly, the process looks like this:

  • Studio designs are envisioned by the Viaplay creative team together with local set designers.
  • NEP the Netherlands sees through the technical integration of the design and delivers the graphics.
  • The Viaplay team works further on the designs, adding functionalities and optimizations for each production. Functionalities include animated audience, 3D lineups, statistics, studio extensions and more. These graphics are completely integrated with real-time data with statistical providers, enabling the generation of dynamic augmented reality (AR) elements.
  • Then, the team sends the designs to multiple studios across Europe ready to press ‘play’.

Reneby says,“By designing studios that align with similar rights, we streamline the asset delivery process to our various editorial departments.” and there are numerous benefits Viaplay receives in such a process. By centralizing virtual asset production, Viaplay maximizes efficiency and brand consistency, distributing high-quality visuals to multiple studios, saving time and slashing production costs.

As a result, Viaplay can create engaging and informative content, increase the ROI, and deliver amazing coverage to sports fans all over.

The Visual Impact of Virtual Production

High-quality is another pillar in Viaplay’s production goals. “We want viewers to feel as what they are seeing is a genuine physical environment, moving away from an excessive futuristic ambiance often associated with virtual sets. The viewer should enjoy the show and should not think about if the set was physical or virtual” says Reneby, “and this is something that we, together with our partners, are proud to have achieved”.

Zero Density enables just that by providing broadcasters with access to the features of the Reality Platform like the only real-time 3D compositing pipeline, the 3D pixelperfect keyer and the native feature of Unreal Engine (UE). The combination of the best in class virtual graphics of UE and the compositing capabilities of the Reality platform create an image that is convincing and where physical and virtual blend in a unique way.

Future of Sports Broadcasting

Viaplay’s innovative use of the Zero Density Reality Platform demonstrates that the future of studio operations lies in the strength of using virtual production technology to increase production value while reducing the cost base.

If you have more questions about how virtual production can revolutionize your production approach without a massive impact on day to day operations, reach out to us our experts would be happy to brainstorm with you.

About Zero Density
Zero Density is a global leader in real-time graphics and virtual studio technologies for the broadcasting, live events, and esports industries. As the leader in gaming technology in broadcasting, Zero Density offers innovative and user-friendly products that have been adopted by some of the world’s largest companies for covering elections, news and major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics. Headquartered in Turkey, the company also has a US office and serves clients such as The Weather Channel, RTL, Fox Sports and Warner Media.