Fox Sports signed a deal to have Google Cloud help it with video production. The deal essentially moves all 25 years of Fox Sports’ video content to Google Cloud, allowing the network’s video producers to search and find content more easily. “This gets us closer to not being called a legacy media company,” said Fox Sports Exec VP and Head of Productions & Operations Brad Zager. “This will put us in position to evolve so much faster. We will be less reliant on brick-and-mortar physical resources.”
The move to use Google Cloud, which was a year in the making, will speed up the sports media trend toward remote productions, Zager said. “If you’re a feature producer and you’re looking for content, you’ll be able to search on your phone for, say, an amazing shot of Tom Brady the same way that someone would search YouTube,” Zager said. “Everything is going to be accessible everywhere. This has been a year process.”
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The tech allows Fox to search through its millions of videos collected over the years in the same way that someone conducts a regular Google search, using search terms that identify everything from player jerseys to specific plays to interviews. “There’s nothing more important to us than being able to manage our media,” Zager said. “The same way people can find anything by typing it into a search box, we need that same exact thought process to our medium. ... Until a company like Google was willing to invest in this world and build this partnership, that didn’t really exist. A lot of companies dabbled in this, but nobody with the power of Google.”
