Live coverage of the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships will be available on mobile devices in the United States for the first time. Ericsson is providing the Ericsson Networked Event, and Agama Technologies will monitor and assure the next-gen, interactive viewing experience.
Ericsson will use its existing solution on top of its Service Enablement Platform plus Mediaroom Reach TV Anywhere solutions to make live broadcast feeds from the event in Falun accessible via the Live Arena Falun2015 app. The Ericsson Networked Event collects data and information from and around the championships. The information is made available to developers through APIs that make it possible for third-party developers to create apps and interactive webpages.
Together with the US Ski Team, the broadcasting rights owner in the US, Ericsson can now offer this experience to the North American market. While viewers in Sweden will also have the option of watching the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships on broadcast TV, the Live Arena Falun2015 app will be the only means of watching live TV coverage of the event in the US. Viewers in the US will also be able to catch up with events they miss by watching video on-demand on the US Ski Team website. A link available in the Live Arena Falun2015 app will allow viewers to switch between the app and the US Ski Team website.
“We envisage a Networked Society in which connectivity is the starting point for new ways of innovating, collaborating and socialising,” said Cecilia Atterwall, head of strategy, marketing and communications at global services, Ericsson. “As the digital experience partner for the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, we’re excited about the opportunity to demonstrate – together with the US Ski Team – a very practical example of the Networked Society in action.”
“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of how the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships will be viewed in the United States is the fact that what we normally call the ‘second screen’ will in fact be the primary screen. This supports one of the ten hot consumer trends that Ericsson announced at the end of last year, and we predict that 2015 will be the first year in which more people watch streamed content than watch broadcast TV.”
Mikael Dahlgren, CEO at Agama, added: ” We’re proud to be a part of the next-gen event-based service enablement platform that Ericsson is debuting at Falun2015. We are a vendor in the technical forefront and these kinds of innovative TV services are an emerging and exciting segment for us to explore going forward.”
The Live Arena Falun2015 app will also allow users to follow their favourite skiers as they compete and take a virtual tour of the ski stadium. In the United States, the app also incorporates all TV streams – meaning the user can choose from a variety of different camera angles.
This year’s championships take place in Falun, Sweden, from 18 February to 1 March. At the event, around 700 athletes from more than 50 countries will compete in cross-country skiing, ski jumping and Nordic combined events.
