This Saturday’s hockey game between longtime rivals the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens will look different than those that have come before. It will mark the introduction of the NHL’s first 4K broadcast via Rogers Sportsnet.
Executives from Sportsnet and Rogers (which owns Marketing magazine) discussed the benefits of being a first-mover in the use of 4K (vaunted as the next TV standard with a horizontal resolution of 4,000 pixels, compared to the 1,080 of current high-definition TV) with reporters on Monday at the company’s Toronto headquarters.
“Advertisers are absolutely looking at it and they’re starting to recognize they need to develop content for it,” said Rick Brace, president of Rogers Media, who suggested viewer demand for 4K will skyrocket this year following announcements at CES 2016 and elsewhere about new products and content based on the technology.
“When you’re talking about a better, clearer picture, there’s never been a time in history when consumers haven’t leapt on board for that.”
Rogers announced last summer that it would broadcast more than 500 hours of 4K broadcasting in 2016, though there have been questions in the industry about the high costs for companies to make the transition. Although Brace said upgrading every camera the company owns would certainly be in the hundreds of millions, what’s being announced today is more of an evolutionary move forward.
“This is a learning experience for us, and we’ll build from there,” he said.
Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties at Rogers, added that while 4K also means “four times the bandwidth,” it is in some ways a less arduous step than earlier migrations from SD to HD several years ago. When Sportsnet’s studio equipment reaches its natural end of life, “we’ll make that just part of the upgrade,” he said.
In some respects, having an integrated company that not only produces content but distributes it gives Rogers an advantage to move faster, said Dirk Woessner, president of Rogers’ consumer business unit. On the other hand, market share for 4K TV sets is already increasing, which means any window of opportunity to lead the market could close quickly.
“If you’re buying the equipment, you also want the content for it,” he said.
Hockey Night In Canada will debut the 4K experience to Rogers Sportsnet customers on its Channel 999 on Jan. 23, although customers will need a NextBox 4K to enjoy the advanced broadcast quality.
