LiveU enables Australia’s Sky Racing to cut operational costs & complexity

To deliver live racing action to sports fans around the world, Australia’s Tabcorp – Sky Racing has implemented LiveU’s IP remote production solution.

Covering over 160,000 live horse races per year, Sky Racing broadcasts live on 150 linear and digital channels and also produces its own content. Using LiveU’s IP remote production solution, Sky Racing now broadcasts horse races from eight tracks in Queensland (QLD) with high-quality, low-latency resilient transmissions, managed from its central production hub in Brisbane. 

The remote production set-up has eliminated the need for traditional satellite newsgathering (SNG) trucks, outside broadcast (OB) trucks and full on-site crews, thus substantially reducing travel, accommodation, and equipment costs.

At its more remote locations Sky Racing has been able to reduce its costs by almost 80% by removing the whole satellite process and using LiveU. They have also reduced the need to send expensive OB trucks all over the state by moving to a model where they have designed a remote modular rack system with LiveU encoders installed in all their venues. 

The rack system can be turned on and tested remotely and from there the live feeds come directly into a centralised broadcasting hub. The production team can log in and support the system from anywhere in the world.

Having a centralised hub has allowed further cost savings with certain staff being able to multitask between multiple venues.

Jamie Ford, Technical Operations Manager, QLD, Tabcorp-Sky Racing, said, “LiveU’s remote production solution has transformed how we deliver live races in Queensland for aggregation and distribution to our domestic and international markets.

“By deploying their LU810 encoders across our tracks and using our production hub in Brisbane, we’ve achieved what was previously unthinkable — maintaining broadcast quality while significantly reducing operational costs and complexity.

“The system’s resilience and low latency, with seamless cellular backup and flexible return feeds, ensures we never miss a moment of action while maintaining the feeds needed in both directions.”