Rapid technology advancement is a familiar concept to those involved in sports broadcasting, but what people want to know is how to bridge the gap between technology innovation and practical use cases. Enter Qvest. Headquartered in Cologne, the globally connected systems architect and ICT integrator is using transformative AI, e-commerce and OTT strategies to deliver returns on tech investment to sports organisations and broadcasters alike.
‘What Qvest does is look into technology and apply it to the demand in the workflow,’ says Qvest CEO Peter Noethen. ‘We aim to improve efficiency, productivity, distribution and audience engagement.’
Speaking to Noethen, it becomes clear that Qvest isn’t innovating for innovation’s sake but instead focusing on how technology can address the real challenges its clients face.
The philosophy revolves around delivering measurable value. ‘It’s about giving a return on investment,’ Noethen says. ‘Spend money on technology, and it should give you tangible benefits.’
Engage your OTT engines
One of Qvest’s milestones of 2024 was the integration and rebranding of its OTT services, including solutions provider TeraVolt, acquired last year.
‘Inside Qvest, we are organised into practices, and one of these is our OTT practice – now called Qvest Engage,’ Noethen explains. ‘We’ve integrated OTT into the entire organisation to deliver a worldwide offering of composable OTT services. This approach ensures our clients get a seamless experience when deploying scalable, customisable OTT solutions globally.’
‘The title Engage tells you right away [the intention is] to engage with the audience, which is an important part of the OTT sector,’ adds Noethen. ‘We wanted to bring to market a worldwide offering of OTT experience, capacity and programming.’
The composable tag might be unfamiliar, but it stems from Qvest’s experience in the e-commerce sector. ‘When we design a modern OTT platform, we copy a little bit from that sector through the use of customised programming, based on decoupled applications on a composable e-commerce platform,’ Noethen explains. ‘For more flexible, more scalable solutions in the OTT sector, we have one layer as a backbone, and for different applications for that OTT sector, we mount components onto it and build the necessary workflow.
‘We start with a small, essential package for small broadcasters: a simple OTT platform managed by us and easy to use. Then we have a more advanced package, more customisable, where we have user front ends and social features, and finally, we have an enterprise version where we can be way more customised.’
‘What we achieve with composable OTT is a more flexible model that clients can better adapt to their needs,’ he says. ‘The next step is to combine the OTT sector with the e-commerce sector. We can then have a channel offering able to be monetised in a different way than it has been in the past.’
That’s not just through advertising spend, though Noethen agrees that still plays a role. ‘What we want to achieve is that whoever they are, a platform that has content or hosts content, or distributes content, is also capable of monetising it directly. So in the sports broadcast market, we might have an OTT platform of a sports league, for example. Consider them distributing directly to the fans as viewers, as well as letting them purchase directly from the OTT platform as consumers – buying shirts, say – or engaging with the league in a unique way. All the data is in one platform, personalised. That’s what we are driving towards.
‘We’re already working with brands, such as Red Bull, which have a lot of their own content. We are also ready, especially with our smallest scale offering to support so-called tier-two sports and smaller leagues.’
An example is the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo motorcycle race, which took place in the summer of 2024. In partnership with Red Bull, Qvest Engage enhanced the broadcast of the Austrian enduro event using AR and VR technology, offering real-time data visualisations, providing an interactive mobile app to track athletes, and creating an immersive viewer experience.
Another technology with a lot of potential is Qvest’s enterprise automation software, makalu. Designed for scalability and flexibility, it works across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments, offering compatibility with multiple tech stacks and cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
‘We’ve built makalu as tech-independent software,’ explains Noethen. ‘It enables automation for enterprise, pop-up channels, FAST channels, and disaster recovery – all on one software stack.’
One of makalu’s recent implementations is with German public broadcaster WDR, which adopted the software to control external servers, graphics, and more.
‘It’s about giving our clients flexibility – whether they want on-premises solutions or cloud-based operations that scale up or down as needed,’ Noethen says.
AI in application
Qvest has also moved into harnessing AI for its clients, launching a dedicated ‘Applied AI’ practice in both the US and Europe, focused on tailoring AI solutions to client needs, enhancing workflows and improving content production.
‘We want to have AI components that are customised to the needs of our clients, getting them more efficient, optimising their workflows, and helping them produce and approve content,’ says Noethen. ‘AI functionality provides and structures the data to make it more usable and predictable.’
In sports broadcasting, Qvest leverages AI for tasks such as highlight clipping and scene detection, with an eye towards even more advanced capabilities.
‘In the future, we might even see real-time scenarios where multiple possibilities are presented – like what would have happened if a player made a different move,’ he says.
Qvest’s approach to AI is also based on composability; it uses its Kip backbone platform to integrate various AI layers and third-party applications, ensuring adaptability as technology evolves.
‘We can do a lot with technology, but at the end of the day, is this something people want to pay for? It’s not about technology for technology’s sake. It’s about finding exactly what fits their needs’
‘When it comes to AI, we want composable solutions,’ says Noethen. ‘You may use an AI application today, but in a year, you might need something better. We make it easy to swap or scale elements as needed. Clients today need more flexibility than ever.’
Qvest’s partnership with Nvidia is part of its commitment to innovation in this area. For example, Qvest is exploring real-time streaming content modification using the Nvidia Holoscan AI platform.
‘With real-time capabilities, Holoscan allows us to ingest and modify streaming content on the fly. The possibilities are huge, though many are still untapped,’ Noethen says.
This all comes together in a solution like TVXRAY, an AI-powered SaaS product designed for live sports OTT platforms. It features a multiplatform SDK for interactive viewing, enabling instant replays, live statistics, and interactive graphics. Advanced analytics provide real-time insights into viewer engagement and content performance, while AI-driven tools generate automated highlight reels to capture key moments and enhance fan engagement.
‘There’s a big demand across news, sports and entertainment to streamline workflows and get more output with the same effort,’ says Noethen. ‘AI is key – our goal is to ensure clients see tangible ROI from their AI investments. If you spend half a million on AI, we want to deliver double, triple, or even quadruple that in benefits.’
However, Noethen emphasises that innovation must align with audience demand: ‘We can do a lot with technology, but at the end of the day, is this something people want to pay for? It’s not about technology for technology’s sake. It’s about finding exactly what fits their needs.’
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