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Grant Nodine

SVP of Technology

NHL

play_circle_outline NHL utilizing cloud production to enhance video capabilities and sustainability

play_circle_outline AWS partnership for improved video production and distribution

play_circle_outline Mining insights from hockey games

play_circle_outline SVP of Technology role at NHL

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Grant Nodine, NHL

Grant Nodine

SVP of Technology NHL

At the New York Stock Exchange, the NHL's SVP of Technology, Grant Nodine, discusses the league's use of cloud production for video. The NHL has embraced cloud production to improve the broadcast capabilities, highlight systems, and sustainability of their operations. By utilizing AWS technology, the NHL is able to innovate in video production, offering fans unique viewing experiences and enhanced analytics. The cloud infrastructure allows for greater scalability and efficiency, enabling the NHL to deliver tailored content to different audiences. The integrat... Read more

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What are some advantages of utilizing live cloud production in terms of broadcast capabilities and sustainability? add

What was the benefit of embracing cloud production in terms of having a replay system with all game feeds readily available? add

What impact does data analysis and insights have on increasing interest and engagement in sports broadcasts for viewers who may not initially be fans of the sport? add

What is the current focus of your role at the NHL after 25 years? add

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Grant Nodine, NHL

>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE Studios here in New York City at the New York Stock Exchange. This is our new Cube East location. We're opening up our access point, our point of presence, we call it our super node where we're going to have a subnet of New York content coming in. A lot of AI leaders here, a lot of technology innovation going on in New York. It's the city that never sleeps. Of course, we have the Silicon Valley, Palo Alto studio connecting Palo Alto and Silicon Valley with Wall Street powering business technology is changing everything. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. You see behind me a big IPO today. And we've got a great guest. Welcome into theCUBE here from the NHL, National Hockey League, Grant Nodine, SVP of Technology. What better way to kick it off with the NHL and theCUBE talking technology and video. Grant, thank you for joining me in our new East Coast studios. Not a bad backdrop here in NYSE.

>> Very cool. Yeah, yeah.

>> It's like the Stanley Cup here every day. The action here in NYSC is just like it's always playoff time

>> And I won't even say less violent.

>> It's all good here. Phenomenal studio. You guys at the NHL. Again, I love hockey, just to get that out of the way. So when I watch games, whether it's me going to a game in Las Vegas, which is a game within the game or, the Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden, fan experience is always great, but when I watch that home, I want to get that vibe. Video becomes part of it. The apps are now out there. You're doing a video production. You guys have a deal with AWS, Amazon Web Services, we've got re:Invent coming up. Talk about what you guys are doing on the tech side because video is an innovation opportunity for NHL?

>> Yeah, 1000%.

>> Take us through what you're working on. Lay it out for us.

>> Well, so I think we've been really diving in on live cloud production because I think we think that there are a lot of things that come out of that that are not only about just cutting a live game in the cloud, but also about building components that can be used for a lot of the other parts of the business. So in other words, having a supercharged highlight system that allows you to use 15 different camera angles instead of the standard four that most trucks are recording. We have the opportunity in the cloud to build a scale for a broadcast that it's very difficult to pull off in trucks that are all heading towards that 15-year timeline in their lifetime. A lot of these trucks were built in the HD era and they're getting pushed harder than they ever have before. And being able to really scale in the cloud has been a revelation in terms of the capabilities it gives us. But also the understated thing of making it a more sustainable kind of environment because you're not using all of this energy to power a big truck in the venue.

>> Yeah, what's interesting is that the infrastructure of the truck is a big part of the production. We were just talking about the NYSE here. They have the most state-of-the-art equipment because they get the best production values. But we stream in the cloud. Okay, so what you're doing is you're combining the best front-end operating experience of visual capture with cameras and technology like here and then using cloud to make it faster. Am I getting that right?

>> Yes. I mean we've got about 15 cameras in every venue that are the NHL's specific cameras. Now, some of them are dedicated to goal reviews because they're actually physically in the net and using wireless frequencies to get signals out of. But a lot of them are really meant to serve multiple purposes, both to provide officials with key views of certain areas of the ice, but also to augment the things that the rights holders bring in and use to broadcast the game. I mean, I'm sure you've watched plenty of hockey games over the year and you're used to the idea that you've got that one key game camera that is taking up probably 80% of the broadcast. And we think that there are a lot of options that we can explore in the cloud that bring about different ways to view the game.

>> I did notice that over the past couple of years that the guys been phasing this in because the playoff coverage always was exceptional. Why? Because there's more cameras. And then now we're seeing that kind of playoff quality angles on all games.

>> Yeah. Well, the thing is that during the playoffs the rights holders are bringing in multiple trucks to support their broadcasts. It's gotten to be like playing Tetris, getting them parked in the truck bay area of the venue. But it's really interesting how they've solved some of their challenges in having a bigger show by just adding more gear to the situation. We think we can really make that bigger show happen in the cloud at a much more economic way.

>> I want to get to the clouds because that's really fascinating because I think this is really, one, agility and cost savings because there's just all the physical costs. But real quick on the NHL, you've got all the cameras, you've got reviews, you got to have the cameras. Are you guys mounting all the cameras? You got to go into the arenas and then-

>> Well, so generally speaking, most of the cameras that we have in there are either fixed in the net and we put a fresh battery in the transmitter in the net, and we have fixed wireless for getting those signals. I have fixed cameras that are hung up in the rafters over top each net. We do have cameras on each blue line that we put out on game nights. But we try to avoid having fixed camera systems that can't be permanent that we have to take up and down every game.

>> Got it. So it's part of the deployments like when they change the ice, you had basketball one day, hockey the next. So you guys are very modular?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay, cool. I want to get that out of the way. Make sure I got that on the record.

>> Yeah, I mean I'm very excited right now about looking at higher resolutions like 8K. I think if you see hockey footage that's natively 8K, you will finally have a TV experience that reflects what you see at the arena.

>> And with my Ray-Ban glasses on while I'm walking down Madison Avenue, I mean this AR is coming. We could go on a whole thing there. Video sets the table. Let's get into the cloud production. Okay, so you got AWS. Take us through how that progression went. What was that workflow like?

>> Yeah, I mean honestly it was a story that was several years in the making really, because the initial part of embracing the cloud for doing anything is really a lot of work about orchestration and basically deciding what infrastructure it is you want to stand up in the cloud and being able to control it programmatically. So that was a solid year or 18 month journey, getting that system set up so that on any given game night we have a schedule driven automation system that brings all of this cloud infrastructure up and takes it all down. Now right now, initially that was meant to just move all of the traditional broadcast signals that were coming out of trucks in all of the venues to different distribution partners. And to really enable both capturing those as streams for internal use, but also being able to make those available to the partners that we have around the world to actually take them to air or create streams out of them or whatever it may be. And so one of the benefits that we saw initially when we embraced cloud production was I have essentially a replay system that has every other game feed sitting there in the cloud ready to be used. No truck in a venue can really replicate that without paying a significant amount of money for occasional use fiber to get feeds from other venues.

>> And that's good for subscriptions too when you start getting into user behavior, right?

>> Yeah.

>> I want to watch the game, but I'm a little bit late. Start from the beginning. Jump to the... I mean is that some of the areas we're seeing? I mean, linear TV is-

>> Well, I mean-...

>> I mean to me, streaming is just linear TV on the internet. I mean, what does even linear TV even mean?

>> Well, I mean Amazon Prime has just started streaming a coast to coast show in Canada this season that is really born out of that idea that we have all of these feeds already resident in a cloud in a way that it's a lot easier to imagine building out a system like the NFL Red Zone channel and building that entirely based in the cloud and being able to really offer the fans a whip around show around hockey that just is really compelling.

>> Do you have that now?

>> Yes, that's a new thing season.

>> Is that a new feature this year?

>> Yeah, right now it's in Canada because that's where Amazon Prime is.

>> Okay. I have to change my VPN then, get the Canadian VPN. I want that service. That is a great product. Love the whip around. Show me all the highlights, nifty moves and goals. Are you kidding me?

>> I'm really looking forward to seeing after a month or two what the fan reaction in Canada is to that.

>> I'm sure it'll be pretty strong. The Red Zone's proven-

>> I'm sure it will....

>> that people really want to come in. If they don't have lot of time, they'll put stuff on demand, they'll see the goal, watch the games.

>> Yeah, I mean that's what I think is the greatest power of the cloud is that we can actually now go meet the audience where it is, right? Because the audience keeps fragmenting itself along generational lines and technology lines and things like that, and so being able to deliver content that's tweaked to really be able to meet the goals of a particular audience or the desires of a particular audience, it's pretty powerful.

>> I've interviewed Andy Jassy many times. We're still friends. It's like we go to a Kraken game every year. He's part owner of the Kraken, Seattle.

>> That's a very fun building to watch a game in.

>> It's fun to shoot the breeze with. But he's always said one of his tenants as a manager is you got to do experimentation. And having that agility in the cloud to me is huge. So just so I wire this up right, you guys built your own stack on AWS technology stack. That took some time. It's now up and running and you're doing video-

>> So we are-...

>> editing is the play out system. Take us through what is in that step.

>> We haven't done master control play out, so we haven't done the full-on Nielsen decorations and things like that necessary to go to air. We've traditionally had a partner that we work on for that for ad hoc things. Generally speaking, most of the RSN's, the traditional RSN's have their own play out scenario and they don't need that from us. But ultimately it really was this summer we really bolted on the ability to bring up and down replay systems, graphic systems, a cloud-based switcher. And it really gets interesting because you start to see, hey, I've got a replay system in the cloud. And you could start to see how you could reimagine how replay works league wide. So each venue goes and puts a replay system in to run clips on their Jumbotron. Each of the trucks has their own discrete replay system. Now most of the trucks are operating with an EVS that's got six channels, four of which are records and two of which are playback, and they literally only have about four angles that they can cut highlights off of. We found in the cloud that all of a sudden when we're pushing all of these isoed cameras into the cloud to do a cloud production, the other benefit we get out of is I now have a replay system-

>> You're scaling your replays....

>> that could cut highlights with 16 angles.

>> Yeah, well as many angles you can get. I mean auto-scaling is one of the best features of the cloud.

>> Well yeah, but you can also start to see how you can cut highlights for multiple distribution venues all in one pass with one operator. And you start-

>> Now that's a game changer right there.

>> Yeah, because you start to see-

>> Now, they're just-

>> Well, I mean think about what the average sports league looked like 10 years ago. You had a digital highlights guy and you had a social highlights guy and then you had a broadcast highlights guy and you could flatten that infrastructure and create a more efficient operation if you wanted to.

>> The labor and the mechanics of doing it. I mean scope that alternative, no cloud, you just laid out the labor assembly line basically. What's the back end? What's the mechanism? Truck is limited. Capabilities.

>> Yeah, so generally speaking, as I said, most trucks have six channels of video record and two of them they use for playback. So usually they're only capturing the primary game camera and then three isolated handheld cameras or rocker cameras, whatever they may be. And you end up with a scenario where the highlights are very consistent across the league because everybody has the same tool to use. But we think that with the advent of AI, that we can use AI to help automate the process of cutting highlights.

>> You're in the merchandise business right now. You're video merch, you're merchandising highlights. You have multiple highlights.

>> I mean, and think about how you can have that system treat each output differently for different outlets so that you have a syndicated highlight that's targeted to an international audience. You can have a syndicated highlight that's targeted towards stats crazed guys. You can have-

>> Betting's huge right now too. I mean data is data.

>> Yeah, I mean-

>> Well, let's good in the analytics EdgeIQ, you guys got data. We are living in a data starved environment from the micro gambling to fan experience to stats. I mean I love stats.

>> Well, always the challenge there is-

>> FanDuel is a listed company in NYSE, by the way....

>> how do they drive the latency down so that the data and the video is roughly arriving at the same time. Because what would happen is in the past you would have the data actually be a lot faster than the video arrived.

>> You're like a high-frequency trading platform now, you got to watch the data latency because the arbitrage, I could move right-

>> Exactly....

>> see that light? I go right to the goal. I got it first.

>> Well, yeah, because what was happening initially is the gaming companies were paying somebody to go sit in the arena with a phone and live log the game and get data faster than they were getting it from the official systems.

>> Your job is to make that latency window zero.

>> I want the official systems to be as small a latency as possible so that I'm not worried about guys sitting in the arena with a little phone logger beating me.

>> Well, there's a lot of noise going on right now. The closing bells coming up, so it's going to come on very shortly in about five minutes. Great stuff. On the analytics side, what's going on there? What are the systems you got in the cloud share? Because this is I think a use case that, one, I want to learn because we are in the cloud. NYSE is on premises, because close. I'm sure they'd be interested in that. Other people are interested in video. Video is the story telling mechanism. Sports are iconic.

>> Very much so.

>> You guys are the center of the action. I mean who would've thought we'd talk about high-frequency trading meeting high-frequency gambling technical challenges here? Because this wasn't a technology conversation for sports.

>> Right.

>> Now you have it. And then you have all these apps out there.

>> There's been so much added to the number of statistics that we keep now based on the addition of the tracking system, both the chip based, and this year there's some new tools in that that we'll reveal as they get a little more dialed in. But it's really interesting how the amount of data about what's happening on the ice has exploded.

>> So video production converging in with analytics becomes a big deal.

>> Well, and then also what happens on the back and that all of these systems, because they're all in the cloud and they're all sharing those same video assets that are being streamed there at near live, is that the content portal that we provide to our licensees and rights holders is able to eat the tail of any of the content creation tools that we put in the cloud. And then we get great user analytics for what resonates with our licensees and our rights holders in terms of what content they search for within that portal so that they then go and surface that to their viewers.

>> And you guys can really do a lot with that beachhead position technically. You got digital twin opportunities to simulate some stuff and provide digital experiences that extend beyond the game.

>> Yeah, well, I mean I think obviously immersive is going to be a thing eventually and certainly there's going to be that. I just think you have such a tremendous opportunity in the cloud, and by not being in the cloud, you limit your opportunities. Think about what TV looked like 20 plus years ago when you wanted to do a proof of concept of a new technology. It took you four months to get the hardware that you needed installed in your facility, get all of the cabling done and you stand it up and a month later you're like, okay, I need to ship that back now and we're done. And every-

>> CapEx cost, OpEx cost....

>> year, what are you pulling off? Four proof of concepts with different technologies? It's just the pace of innovation was a snail's pace then compared to this.

>> Two final questions. What have you learned in this process besides this benefits there? And then what are you excited about? So what did you learn in the cloud play and then what are you excited about going forward?

>> I mean mostly I'm excited about having all of these areas where we can really start to innovate and being able to actually go and use that video to discover more about the game as time goes by. Really being able to mine it for insights that we weren't getting previously. Because let's face it, a hockey game is a hockey game, but there is so much going on within that game that, even if you're pretty close to it, you don't realize. And being able to expose that to people. And seeing how it impacts people that are maybe not big fans initially but get sucked into the-

>> Little things like the moves they're making, some pivots or shifts.

>> Interestingly, one of the technology vendors that we work closely with on the live cloud production initially admitted to me on the side, "I'm not really a hockey fan, but I watched the data centric broadcast," that we did and he's like, "I was in. I was fascinated." That sucked him in. But he admitted he wasn't a hockey fan.

>> Closing bell. We got the closing bell going on. BMO closing the market. They'll hit the bell and then hammer the gavel.

>> All right, we're in.

>> Closing the bell. NHL in the queue, closing the bell, closing the market today. Keep excited. Like I said, it's always the playoffs here. It's always the Stanley Cup.

>> Always the playoffs, right?

>> Always the playoffs. Playoff time. I'm not going to shave for a week here. Great to have you on. Again, going forward, what do you oversee? What's your job? Explain real quick what you do. What is your purview at the NHL? What does SVP of Technology mean? And What do you-

>> Well, I mean, I've been at the NHL for 25 years, so over the years my role has been a constantly evolving thing. Right now, my goal is really to work very closely with our key technology and innovation partners to really start stretching our legs and being able to really go and supercharge what we're able to deliver to fans. Because I mean, getting fans closer to the game is the one passion that's been underlying all of it.

>> And you deserve a lot of credit. Over the past two decades, hockey's moved from regional to national. I mean, I was just in North Carolina playing in a pro-am in at the SAS Championship and people are just there hungry for their Carolina Hurricanes. I mean, they're just going crazy down there.

>> Well, I mean, I think you saw it in the playoffs last year, how much the sports fan base, not even just hockey fans, but generally sports fans in general really gravitated towards the Stanley Cup Final and how just special it was from a competition standpoint.

>> People love hockey and then certainly the playoffs, like I said, it's playoff time every day. What's next? What's on the horizon? Obviously you're in the clouds, you're merchandising the comp, you got new workflows. What's the next big thing? You got the little test market in Canada, which is probably going to come to the US, my prediction because that's a no-brainer in my mind.

>> I mean, I would say we're getting close to being halfway through, migrating the entirety of our historical archive into the cloud and being able to make that available to licensees and rights holders initially and then hopefully eventually to fans. And I think-

>> So I can watch all those seventies games where Guy Lafleur beats the Bruins and Gerry Cheevers and then the Islanders take the ring off their finger every time. I mean, come on, there's too many highlights. Give me the good ones.

>> Well, there could be-

>> Lowlights, I should say....

>> well, I think there's going to be a lot of ways that people discover the history of the game that way.

>> Yeah, that's great.

>> And it's great to be able to expose them to that because let's face it, not everybody was watching hockey on UHF know when the-

>> The rabbit ears in tennis.

>> Exactly.

>> Single blade skates, no helmets.

>> Right.

>> Almost no shoulder pads, right? Grant, great to have you on theCUBE.

>> You too. Great to talk to you.

>> NHL here on theCUBE East at the NYSC. The innovation in the cloud, again, cutting edge video, running a multi-franchise operation at global scale in the cloud, but also serving the distinct stakeholders. Hyper-personalization will be one of the big super agile things that will come out of this AI revolution. Video is now coming into that era, of course theCUBE brings that to you. We have our cloud, NHL has their cloud. Thanks for watching here. Again, QB, Silicon Valley, Wall Street together. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching.