Whether they’re cheering on their home team at the stadium or watching the game on their supersized TVs at home, fans want unlimited access to enjoy their favorite entertainment. To satisfy heightened consumer enthusiasm and expectations of exciting new 5G-enabled services and enhanced mobile broadband, service providers need to deliver improved and immersive experiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit live events hard, but as it lessens in some areas, easing back into business as usual is critical for the sports industry. As the number of vaccinations rise and pandemic restrictions are eased, many countries and sports associations are already preparing to reconvene large crowds at major sports events.
Sports industry leaders see major opportunities to transform live sports viewing experiences to become significantly richer, immersive, and interactive for fans. 5G rollout in stadiums will create the opportunity for growth in services linked to sporting events and venues. In terms of service provider revenue, the most successful services at events should aim to improve the live experience for fans at venues and bring fans watching from home closer to the game.
Sports associations and event organizers, working with service providers, could capitalize on industry trends, including digital applications, video on demand and engaging immersive experiences such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). With this strategy, they can start to bounce back and recover some lost revenues.
The Bringing the heat to stadiums: Monetizing 5G immersive experiences eBrief investigates the 5G stadium immersive experience use case, including its associated business model and implications for BSS. The use case focuses on enriched video streaming delivered over a dedicated network slice to consumers for in-stadium and out-of-stadium experiences.
The CSP acts as a solutions integrator and partner of “Sports League” to deliver an AR rendering service in the 5G stadium for fans, providing statistics and data during the game for an engaging in-stadium experience. Users watching the event virtually from an off-site location can also benefit from video-on-demand replays and statistics before, during and after the game for an engaging and immersive out-of-stadium experience.
Distribution of enriched video content
The solution focuses on distributing video content taken from multiple angles during the in-stadium event via 5G-enabled cameras positioned throughout the venue. The video is captured by a video production house and sent through a dedicated network slice to a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) site for AR processing. Names of the players, statistics, and game analysis are added to the video stream as an AR overlay. The enriched video is then sent back in real time to visitors in the stadium, showing data about players and their performance through the app, whether they’re using 5G-enabled smart phones or AR glasses.
Using Ericsson’s use case design-based approach, the use case is defined by its engagement model, the position of the CSP in the value chain, the various stakeholders’ interactions and how the service is fulfilled to end customers.
In this use case, the CSP will interact with many suppliers who will deliver the different building blocks of the solution, including the financial transactions: AR application provider, video production house, device provider and AR glasses provider.
Live experience requirements
To fulfil this 5G consumer use case, various BSS capabilities need to be in place, including 5G charging and billing, network slicing and partner management. This way, live fan experiences at sporting events can be enriched by:
- Putting fans at the heart of the game at sport venues
- Providing 360 degrees fan experience and giving fans view of the game from different camera angles while in the stadium or at home
- Providing in and out of stadium experience with before, during, post event streaming and video on demand experiences
- Transforming event experiences with immersive AR/VR over enriched video streaming
- Delivering 5G rich services to fans through network slice technology for in stadium and out of stadium viewers
5G BSS capabilities
The BSS requirements for this use case can be summarized as follows:
- 5G connectivity forces an evolution in charging systems with the 5G Core updated architecture that defines an evolved and cohesive BSS monetization approach
- Anticipate support of new parameters that can be used in new charging rules and prepare network slicing support providing differential charges based on network slice type for premium services
- Consumer IoT charging and billing in a complex partner ecosystem with enhanced billing capabilities to charge and bill partner services and perform revenue share
- Centralized product catalog for agile launch of 5G rich services, helps get new services to market (and to revenue) quickly and opens catalog information through standard APIs to third-parties for co-creation
- Scalable partner management functionalities to maximize monetization on partner solution ecosystem when it comes to content and event management and revenue sharing scenarios
- Flexible billing capabilities to mitigate risk of financial exposure for high value services; such as threshold-based billing and on demand billing
Operators are investing heavily in 5G, modernizing their networks, buying spectrum, and searching for use cases to enable monetization of their investments. Network slicing is the lead use case that will allow them to ultimately benefit from their investments and promote a ROI.
Network slice monetization is implicit in the consumer use case described above. However, as CSPs begin directing their solutions to enterprise customers, they will be able to directly monetize and price the network slice.
SLA management also comes into play to guarantee availability and QoS over the slice for communication services as it applies to the business relationship between the CSP and its enterprise customers.
As part of our 5G BSS Monetization use case series, we will tackle network slicing monetization and SLA management and their potential impact on BSS capabilities through enterprise use cases detailed in a future eBrief.
For insight on 5G business models for consumer use cases, please read the eBrief: Getting creative with 5G business models (ericsson.com):
For info on the Ericsson new 5G Charging Function, please read the eBrief What is the 5G Charging Function?
For insight on 5G in sports and how it will enhance fan experience, please read our blog on: Here's how event experiences will transform
For info on 5G stadium and Vodafone POC with SKY and Ericsson for 5G Stadium, please read our blog on the reference Case –Football mad: enhancing the fan experience with 5G and Augmented Reality - Ericsson
