Established in 1992, AE Live is a global leader in innovative broadcast graphics and data solutions for live sports events. Having first made its mark with its work on the 1996 Cricket World Cup, AE Live now boasts over 250 employees in multiple offices across the globe including the UK, USA, South Africa, India, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia.
Renowned for its expertise in live sports data visualization, augmented reality, and virtual studios, AE Live serves major clients including FIFA, UEFA, BBC Sport, Premier League Productions, the International Cricket Council (ICC), World Tennis Association (WTA), Sky Sports and World Rugby, covering over 3,500 sports events annually.
The company’s commitment to innovation and its robust global infrastructure have made it a trusted partner for broadcasters and sports federations worldwide, consistently enhancing the viewer experience across various platforms and events. For 25 years, AE Live has been a trusted partner of Vizrt, helping some of the world’s biggest broadcasting names create cutting-edge sports broadcasts with Vizrt technology.
A history of sporting excellence
In 1999, AE Live’s CEO, Nick Baily, became one of the world’s first Viz Artists, having been introduced to the tool and trained by Robert Schmidt of TV 2 Norway. It was a leap into a new realm of graphics possibilities, moving from page-based template systems to geometric 3D graphics worlds. “Robert came to visit us in December 1999 to give us training”, shares Nick. “We then embarked on our first project using Viz Artist, which was with Sky Sports.”
UEFA Champions League Draw
This introduction to Viz Artist marked the start of what continues to be a long-established, trusted partnership between Vizrt and AE Live that has always looked to push the boundaries of visual storytelling. “In April 2000, we developed a graphics package for Sky Sports’ cricket season using Viz Artist. The graphics were of a very square-looking style at the time because of the limitations of anti-aliasing on the SGI hardware, but crucially, we were able to animate the logo, so it tumbled in 3D. Everybody was in awe of the real-time capabilities. Everybody wanted 3D animations, and we did it,” adds Baily.
Since its early beginnings with Sky Sports, Vizrt and AE Live’s partnership has grown from strength to strength, with the two organizations joining forces on a range of advanced proof of concepts, innovations and new projects that have won premium, global contracts with broadcasters.
A collaborative focus
Central to the success of Vizrt and AE Live’s long-running relationship has not only been innovative technology, but the collaboration between the two organizations. “We always know we can get support,” shares Nick. “We do things that are out there and push the boundaries, and we sometimes need Vizrt to join the party. We have always found that the Vizrt team is willing to support us on large and technically challenging projects and will collaborate with us when we need something out of the ordinary.”
It is this approach that has underpinned the success of more recent large-scale projects, including AE Live’s ongoing work with Premier League Productions. Across 380 games per year, Premier League Productions utilizes a mix of real-time graphics engine Viz Engine, advanced playout application Viz Trio, and Viz Artist database solution, Graphics Hub, to power data-driven graphics on its world feed, delivering content pre-match, during the match, half time and post-match.
As AE Live’s primary graphics platform for Premier League Productions’ match broadcasts, the AE Live team regularly consults Vizrt to collaborate on further innovation and production future proofing, working together to provide the client with roadmaps of new creative possibilities.
“We are largely technology agnostic and work on a range of graphics systems depending on our client’s needs,” comments Nick. “But the core of what AE Live does as a business involves demanding live sports environments and big tournaments that demand the use of split-second data. Ultimately, among the graphics tools available, Vizrt has definitely been a key supplier for us. The UI for Viz Artist is intuitive, and we can program on top of it to create a layer between our own software and Vizrt, enabling us to work efficiently.”
AE Live’s ability to innovate and push Vizrt solutions in new ways is one of the key attributes to the mutual success of the relationship over the last 25 years.
“Our relationship is highly collaborative. This isn’t just a vendor/buyer relationship,” shares Andy O’Neil, Head of Sports at Vizrt. “We share wins and challenges regularly so we can support each other and learn, and I think this level of relationship, coupled with the culture clearly nurtured across the global AE Live teams, has meant the best is yet to come from this partnership.”
The partnership between the two organizations also spans several standout global sporting events, ranging from the ICC World Feed, WTA World Feed, and World Rugby, to Channel 9 Australia’s coverage of the Paris Summer Games.
“The fact we’ve done so much on Vizrt is often because our clients are also using Vizrt,” concludes Nick. “In many cases it’s been the graphics engine of choice for our customers too. It’s another reason for our longstanding relationship.”
