Supercup 2024: A look into the future of football broadcasting
30 August 2024 – The Supercup 2024 not only offered top-class football and a thrilling match. The DFL also presented and tested a number of innovations during the match. These included developments in the media product, which were shown during the live broadcast in over 200 countries, as well as ideas for the possible football experience of the future.
Emotions through closer proximity to the protagonists
New camera angles were used in the broadcast of the Supercup, which will be permanently included in media production from the 2025-26 season: A camera travelling on the team bus and a camera in the players’ quarters. In addition, there were interviews with starting eleven players before kick-off after they arrived at the stadium on the team bus, as well as interviews conducted on the pitch immediately after the final whistle. In addition, a RefCam, attached to the referee’s headset, took spectators onto the pitch. This additional perspective was available live during the pre-match warm-up, the teams’ run-in and the selection of the two captains.
Immersion in the gameplay
The DFL was the first football league in the world to produce the 2024 Supercup in 10K resolution as a live stream for mixed reality glasses. For comparison: the current standard for high-definition television is Ultra High Definition, or UHD for short, which equates to a resolution of around 4K and therefore almost 4,000 pixels in picture width. Those who tested the application on site were able to take in the perspectives of several 360-degree cameras on the edge of the pitch and enjoyed the virtual all-round view in maximum picture quality. Together with the start-up Softseed Technologies, around 1 terabyte of data were processed per minute for this vision of the future.
In-car entertainment
Bundesliga highlight clips and selected live broadcasts on vehicle screens: last season, the DFL became the first major professional football league in the world to test Bundesliga content for in-car entertainment systems in collaboration with BMW. For the Supercup 2024, the DFL presented the live match in the Bundesliga in-car app together with BMW. A few days later, it was announced that the successful pilot phase would be extended for a further season and would be available to BMW customers with appropriately equipped vehicles until May 2025.
The Supercup 2024 provided a glimpse into the future of DFL media production, which is characterised by professionalism and innovation and is being further developed in close cooperation with the clubs and media partners.