Bandwidth block sends Cup web sites overseas

By Keith Newman

The Louis Vuitton Cup web site for the America's Cup challenger series will be hosted at multiple locations around the world because New Zealand does not have the bandwidth available, says Terrabyte managing director Craig Meek.

Mr Meek is to meet with TWI Interactive producers later this week to determine what will be involved in building the showcase site.

He says streaming video and audio is planned in conjunction with US-based Fast TV.com. However, there is only about 100Mbit/sec capacity out of the country, severely limiting our ability to support a large overseas audience.

"You have to have gigabit per second speeds if you plan to seriously service video from New Zealand to mass numbers," he says.

London-based TWI interactive is a sister company to television rights holder TWI and a member of the IMG Group, one of the world's largest sports management organisations.

Initially the company, which won rights to build the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series web presence, will do the development work in Auckland.

Then it will be split off to be hosted on farms of computers in San Francisco, the east coast of the US and in Europe. There will also be a dedicated video server in Los Angeles.

Mr Meek says a conflict with broadcasters over "live" video coverage is unlikely, as TWI Interactive's parent company sold them the rights in the first place. For example, North American broadcast rights holder ESPN will have streaming video available as a "click through" item.

"They're not going to do anything that compromises that arrangement. Every time they show a piece of video on the internet it will point toward the local broadcaster in that area," said Mr Meek.

TWI Interactive and Terrabyte are working on a "race viewer" which will allow the public to access streaming video and audio free of charge. There would also be a 15-minute highlights package at the end of each day's racing.

Terrabyte has the contract to provide technology for the Louis Vuitton Media Centre and through a joint venture company with Dunedin-based Animation Research will establish live animated coverage to allow journalists to keep track of racing.

The Virtual Spectator package, which contains most of the graphics on a CD-ROM, will track the event using global positioning equipment for viewing on the internet. A limited edition public version will be available to the first 100,000 internet users. A second generation version is being built to provide real-time video.

"We will be using the America's Cup Regatta as a showcase to get live video from sports events over the internet," says Mr Meek. There had already been several inquiries to use the locally developed breakthrough technology at other major sporting events.

The Louis Vuitton Cup site is expected to be completed in mid-August. Virtual Spectator has rights to data off the boats for the challenger series and is able to provide continual coverage to the media through the Virtual Spectator package. However, it is uncertain whether rights for coverage of the America's Cup racing will be granted by official web site producer San Francisco-based Quokka, which also has the rights for the Sydney Olympics.

TWI Interactive has most recently built the World Cup Soccer, Wimbledon and British Open Golf sites. Representatives from TWI Interactive and Fast TV.com are expected in the country later this week.