The impacts of COVID-19 are already being felt harder by women and girls in many areas of life due to gender inequalities. This reality is also mirrored in sport. The Policy Brief called “COVID 19, Women, Girls and Sport: Build Back Better” clearly points out that “existing gaps between women and men, girls and boys in both elite and grassroots sport may widen if governments, sport organizations, sponsors, civil society, athletes, media and UN agencies do not put women and girls at the centre and address their specific needs in response and recovery plans”.

The MEDIAPRO Group and the Johan Cruyff Institute join forces to present the eSports industry and its business opportunities to companies and professionals. Their first joint project is the launch of the massive open online course (MOOC) "The eSports Industry", an online training for professionals in the fields of marketing, communication, consulting, managers and executives from all sectors which utilizes gamified learning to provide training in the growing business behind the eSports sector. Both partners will work to incorporate eSports as part of the agenda for other academic programs.

ChyronHego’s TRACAB team in Sweden has achieved another important milestone in its latest developments towards a semi-automated offside technology, based upon the Emmy^® Award-winning TRACAB Gen5 optical tracking system. At a June 22 video conference hosted by ChyronHego and attended by FIFA and its Working Group for Innovation Excellence, the TRACAB team presented a demonstration of powerful new capabilities in TRACAB OCT (Offside Calling Technology) (Story on FIFA Website). Exploiting its AI-driven ball tracking for automated ball pass detection, combined with limb tracking and skeletal modeling derived from video feeds, the technology is showing great promise to support referees in the future to make fast and highly accurate offside calling decisions.

Ekstraklasa SA will pay the highest amount ever – EUR 50.6 million – to the clubs for the 2019/2020 season. This is almost 45% more than in the previous season (which was also the highest-grossing season at the time). Legia Warszawa will receive EUR 7 million as the Champion of Poland. This will represent a nearly twofold increase in comparison with the previous year, when the Warsaw club received EUR 3.57 million for finishing second in the table.

The world’s toughest adventure race kicks off the next edition in just over a year - and the tension is already beginning to mount. With each race comes a new route and most importantly, new athletes. Have you got the skills and resilience to hike and paraglide over 1,000km across the beautiful but treacherous Alps? It’s time to find out because the application phase for Red Bull X-Alps 2021 is officially open until August 31, 2020.

Looking to overhaul the traditional eSports tournament format, veteran live event producer and Black Stage Productions founder Steve Suarez created the cross-genre video gaming championship Ultimate Gamer. The series challenges gamers around the world to compete in first-person shooter, fighting, sports, battle royale and multiplayer online battle arena tournaments for a chance to earn the title of “Ultimate Gamer.” For its first-ever “Valorant” LAN tournament, which took place over the course of three days this summer in Miami, Suarez live streamed all of the action to fans worldwide via social media platforms. Using an AJA Ki Pro GO multi-channel H.264 recorder/player provided by systems integrator CineSys-Oceana, his team also captured highlights footage for integration into the three-day stream. 

MEDIAPRO Canada has extended its agreement for the media rights to LigaMX, the top tier of Mexican professional men’s soccer, for two further seasons, through to 2021-22. Live coverage of two games per week will be aired exclusively on OneSoccer, MEDIAPRO Canada’s dedicated soccer  channel, starting from July24 . The coverage begins with the opening weekend of the Torneo Guard1anes 2020, the newly-rebranded Torneo Apertura which runs from July through to December. The new name honours the healthcare workers who are battling the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico, with LigaMX president Enrique Bonilla commenting that the name change represents a “message of unity and solidarity”.

From July to September 2020, 112 games will be played in Suzhou and Dalian in the first stage of the 2020 Chinese Football Association Super League (CSL). Due to the special requirements of epidemic prevention this year, the production of the CSL will be different from the production of traditional competitions. SMT dispatched a total of 40 elite team members, which including S4 broadcast team, B3 broadcast team, and SMT AR Studio, to cooperate with China Sports Media (CSM), the CSL copyright dealer, to provide HD and 4K live production and live feed distribution. Under the high requirements of epidemic prevention, SMT has provided self-developed virtual audience production and virtual sound production services in order to present a "special" and exciting season for the 2020 CSL.

ChyronHego today announced that its Virtual Placement technology is being used by Interregional Sports Group (ISG) to place virtual graphics into live broadcasts of Lega Serie A football matches. Using space in empty stands and other areas on and around the pitch to display team branding, sponsor logos, and promotions, ISG is enabling leagues, clubs, and content owners to open up new revenue streams while enhancing the viewing experience for fans watching at home.

Sports fans have eagerly awaited the return of sport throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the world has started to emerge from lockdown, sports organizations are easing back in with restrictions in place, including the move to behind closed doors matches. With spectators currently not allowed in the stands, live streaming has become essential to keeping fans connected, especially for cricket, which ranks as the second most popular sport worldwide.

The ongoing pandemic has affected sports and live events everywhere, and esports has also had to adapt. The international esports company ESL recently worked with partners Drone Champions League (DCL) to convert a planned series of in-person league events to an entirely virtual format, with both competitors and talent located remotely. To help support and deliver the event, Rocket Surgery Virtual Productions (RSVP), Ross Video’s dedicated virtual productions division, was challenged to convert the physical in-venue DCL world into an eye-catching virtual studio set to be used throughout the broadcast. 

MEDIAPRO Canada has secured distribution agreements for the Semi-Finals and Final of the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s 2020 Summer Series in five Asia-Pacific territories, a move that will bring the key final games of this season’s tournament to a potential audience of millions of Asian sports fans. Leading broadcasters in Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan will show coverage of the crowning moments of the CEBL’s 2020 Summer Series: Fox Sports, the top broadcaster of basketball and other mainstream sports in Australia, will add the CEBL’s final three games in 2020 to its roster of popular sports events this summer, as will Astro SuperSport, Malaysia’s dominant pay-TV sports broadcaster and Singapore’s Singtel mioSports channels.

Proptown (USA) - The second stop of the DCL Virtual Season was the fictional city of Proptown, USA, an environment that took nearly 2,000 hours to create. There, the eight teams faced the first purpose-built virtual Drone Grand Prix tracks in DCL history – two daytime and two nighttime. The pilots had only the 45-minute Qualifying periods to learn the tracks, and APEX came out on top in both sessions, earning pole position for Saturday and Sunday.

The Canadian Premier League is returning to play, and OneSoccer will be bringing you full coverage of the 2020 season, broadcasting every game of “The Island Games” and giving Canadian soccer fans exclusive content from inside the tournament bubble in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  OneSoccer – the home of Canadian soccer – will be broadcasting every single match and providing Canadian soccer fans with unparalleled access to the Charlottetown bubble, including cameras embedded within team training camps. Our Canadian soccer expert Oliver Platt will be reporting from inside the bubble, and OneSoccer will also debut its new, soccer-specific studio sets, programs and an expanded team of Canadian soccer experts who are set to provide unprecedented coverage of Canada’s top tier.  

The UEFA Champions League reaches its final stage as one of the sporting events with the greatest impact and television coverage on the planet. UEFA has selected MEDIAPRO Group as the host broadcaster for the production and distribution of the host signal for the final phase which, after the stoppage due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will bring together for the first time in its history the quarter-final and semi-final matches, in a single-match format, and the final of the competition.