IBC continues to solidify its status as an innovation hub, bringing together the brightest minds in media, entertainment and technology to develop ideas. As the media landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, industry leaders recognise IBC as an essential platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and breakthrough advancements.
From practical new AI advances to pioneering 5G applications to innovations cutting the industry’s carbon footprint, IBC2025 is poised to showcase the latest tech trends shaping content creation, distribution, and audience engagement. As IBC prepares to accept its latest Technical Paper submissions (deadline 14th February) and its Accelerator Kickstart Day (12th February), four of its experts weigh in on the event’s role in fostering innovation, the technological shifts on the horizon, and why sport remains a key driver of industry change.
Is IBC becoming more of a hotbed for innovation than ever? Why?

Fergal Ringrose, chair of the IBC Innovation Awards Jury: Innovation in the media content supply chain and the content consumption landscape is accelerating. Content providers are in a battle to retain audiences, whether broadcasters or streamers or social media platforms, and that competition for eyeballs is increasing each year – so the role of IBC as the Innovation Hub becomes more compelling, more essential. It’s the one global forum where the industry comes together to share knowledge as a community for innovation.
Paul Entwistle, chair of IBC’s Technical Papers Committee: The breadth of technology that impacts media and entertainment continues to grow. If you look at the complexities around delivering across all the different devices and platforms – from HD to smartphones to VR – the hybridisation of IP technologies and television continues to grow. You see that in the personalisation, targeting and data mining. On top of all that, operational efficiency, sustainability and regulation are also driving innovation.
Mark Smith, co-lead for the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme: I’d echo all that. In the Accelerator Programme, we’re right in the middle of all the ideas that come in, seeing firsthand how collaboration is really the fuel for progress in the industry.
Muki Kulhan, co-lead for the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme: The innovation trajectory goes up and up every year, and the IBC audience knows they learn something new when they come to Amsterdam – whether through the Accelerator Programme, a new hall, new demos, or an emerging vendor. Many are coming to IBC just to be in the middle of that hotbed.
What are some of the big innovations and technical trends you expect to see at IBC in 2025?

MS: AI is still a big trend. But we’re going to see a lot more practical, very specific integration of AI into different processes. It will be more about the actual specifics rather than some of the big-picture, more hyped AI stories we’ve seen.
MK: AI is everywhere but increasingly it’s about how it’s being used as a tool to help with automation and to collaborate better – whether that’s in production, post-production, distribution, emerging media, or newer technologies.
PE: Clearly AI is a hot topic. Within technical papers, we have seen it expand from a niche metadata extraction tool to across the board: encoding, advertising, production. But last year, only a third of the papers were AI related, so there is still a very large proportion of innovation going beyond AI.
FR: Another area is IP-based production, where media facilities running on cloud platforms enable the continuing innovation we’re seeing in remote, distributed and virtualised production across the content chain. HDR is another innovation becoming established as a high-quality staple across production, and mobile devices now account for an increasingly large share of content consumption – with private 5G networks and mobile edge compute potentially powering AR and VR experiences.
More than ever, sport appears to be a huge driver of the industry innovations we are seeing at IBC. Why?
FR: The bottom line is that, as audiences continue to fragment across all other areas of consumption, live sport is the one linear area retaining viewership and driving revenues. The pandemic forced the sports industry into innovations that they weren’t widely adopting before, moving beyond the traditional model of everyone going to venue and producing out of trucks. Connectivity and cloud have become key to new remote and distributed workflows, with SMPTE 2110 and SRT enabling ultra-low latency while reducing the need for equipment and personnel – and the carbon footprints as well

PE: Sport has always been at the heart of TV, particularly pay-TV – and competition for money drives innovation. It has led the way in areas such as HD, 4K, HDR, VR and more. Previous years’ technical papers have shared the challenges of implementing HDR, compelling use cases for VR in sport, the live streaming of 8K VR from the Olympics.
MS: We saw some real leaps forward in terms of the award-winning Olympic coverage last year, which brought a new kind of visual experience to viewers. Olympic Broadcast Services were using mobile phone cameras and uploading high-definition video from the Opening Ceremony as every team went down the Seine. Sailing, windsurfing and other cool sports on the water showed just how 5G could bring completely different views and perspectives through smartphones. Through the audio, you were able to hear the skippers on the boats shouting instructions. It was a much more immersive experience than we’ve seen before.
FR: Five Innovation Awards last year were for sports projects from the Olympic Broadcasting Services innovations Mark mentioned and the National Hockey League with Verizon and AWS to La Liga for enabling true interactivity and France Télévisions for reducing CO2 emissions by 300 tons. I don’t think there is any question that sports projects will continue to dominate the short list for the Innovation Awards.
MK: We can always rely on sports to test and trial innovation. And innovation is now applied not only to the fan experience, but also to the athlete experience and enhancing sport itself.
In what ways is IBC acting as a catalyst for innovation?
MS: The Accelerator Innovation Programme, the Innovation Awards, the Technical Papers, and many other IBC initiatives are key platforms for industry innovation. The Accelerator Programme itself is unique. There’s nothing else out there that is about collaborative learning, experimentation, the kind of trials being run. Everybody in the industry learns around these things.
MK: The Accelerator Programme is the only one of its kind in the world, bringing together the high calibre of broadcasters, studios, academia, vendors and suppliers that make up the project teams, and it is so great to see these Accelerator projects really lead the way. IBC as a trade show also has a great legacy of innovation and of creating new business relationships – both of which will continue to evolve and grow.
FR: I agree. IBC drives innovation because the Partnership Board has held the line of ‘by the industry, for the industry’. If you look at the awards, IBC is not selling sponsorships or tables – it is about the spirit of collaboration and cooperation, which are good for the whole industry.
How much crossover are we seeing between the ideas and solutions being developed for the Accelerator projects, the Technical Papers and the Innovations Awards?

MK: There have been occasions where teams developing a tech paper go through to the Accelerators and bring their papers to life with tangible learnings that could be developed and deployed – and then win an Innovation Award. For others, the Accelerators could become a catalyst for a tech paper too. A great example is Strathclyde University and Neutral Wireless conceptualising the standalone 5G network from hands-on R&D through the Accelerators – then converting those tangible learnings to paper. This led them to a double win in 2023 for Best Technical Paper Award and an IBC Innovation Award with the BBC when they deployed this knowledge on the ground via a 5G setup at the coronation of King Charles III. In 2024, they continued this R&D as an Accelerator, then as a partner in Olympic Broadcasting Services’ Innovation Award win, snagged for a new, sea-based version of the private 5G network that covered the fast-moving sailing competitions and athlete’s POV live on the water.
MS: That’s it exactly. There is a definite linkage between the Accelerator Programme, the Technical Papers and the Innovation Awards.
PE: The IBC Technical Papers reflect what the industry wants to talk about. And for those that come to the IBC Conference, they also get an opportunity to meet and debate with those authors and inventors and their peers on whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, or how they can build upon that. We also show papers that are novel case studies of a technical integration – what, typically, the Accelerators would then cover.
MK: I love it when I see these tie-ins. Every year we see Technical Papers come out that are so related to the topics and themes that are being developed in the Accelerator Programme – with an outcome that might eventually go on to the Innovation Awards.
IBC2025 takes place at the RAI, Amsterdam from 12th-15th September.