How AI has given Korean handball the upper hand in overcoming COVID-19

For the first time in 17 years, all 149 games of the Taebaeksan handball Competition were broadcast live!

BACKGROUND

While Handball in Korea has its fan base, especially due to Korea’s ongoing success at the Olympic games, it is less popular than football or baseball. Korea’s National Handball Championship, the nation’s most prestigious handball event, held in Taebaek, Gangwon Province was the first competition to be held since the outbreak of Covid19. In all, 85 teams, ranging from elementary school teams to professional teams, took part in 149 games that were played between the 13th to the 20th of July.

OBJECTIVE

With Covid19 imposing strict social distancing regulations and a ban on crowd attendance at games, the federation wanted to ensure that the games would not be canceled as well as meet the needs of parents and fans who wanted to watch the matches in person, but could not attend them at the stadiums.

CHALLENGE

With 149 games in total, spread out at over 4 different stadiums, the costs of covering all the games, especially during these times when no income could be derived from ticket and concession sales would have been prohibitive. In the past, only the semi-final and finals games used to be broadcast, but all the games could be attended by fans. The pandemic made the challenge much greater as Korea successfully contained the spread of the disease by strictly enforcing social distancing. This made things inconvenient for professional sports but made it even more difficult for amateur and semi-pro leagues who did not have the budgets for televising games. The Korea Handball Federation understood this and initiated trials using automated production as a means of keeping fans engaged and teams motivated while at the same time keeping production costs low.

SOLUTION

After several successful trials, the Pixellot broadcast-quality Prime solution was chosen to capture and live stream all 149 games of the tournament. Pixellot Prime offers high-resolution 50-60 FPS video capture, fully automatic production, or the option of augmented production (by a human operator) with additional camera angles and a director suite.

OUTCOME

Instead of playing all of the matches without fan participation, the Korea Handball Federation decided to broadcast all the matches live via their official YouTube channel for domestic and international fans.

Thousands of viewers subscribed to the channel and tuned in live to watch the games. Content generation as a result of automated production has exploded. In six years, a total of 250 games were uploaded for viewing whereas now, in just ten days, 149 additional games were available for streaming. Another side benefit is the access to game footage which can be used by the coaching staff for game analysis. As a result of the increased visibility and accessibility, the public profile and popularity of handball are rising in Korea.

“Pixellot was a game-changer for us. we had a lot of responses from parents and officials from each team to the online broadcasting of the entire game. The number of YouTube channel subscribers increased by more than 1,000 just one day after the opening of the competition. Although other amateur sports have broadcast some of their games online, it is very unusual for all 149 games to be broadcast”

Jaiyoung Hur Director of Public Relation the Korea Handball Federation

“The handball association’s innovative attempt is bringing new changes to the Korean amateur and student sports market. Despite the changes, Pixellot’s stable sports broadcasts are well received by students and their parents. YST Corp. will play a leading role in the development of sports by creating a new service that everyone is satisfied with along with Pixellot”

Yun Jong-hoon, executive director of the online broadcasting service