16
STRONGERTOGETHER EMBRACING INNOVATION
Chief executive of NEP Group Brian Sullivan is all too aware of the effect the pandemic has had on the sports and live events side of his business, but he has also learnt that big disruptions can sometimes drive innovation
BY MICHAEL BURNS
“A lot of companies have had a very hard time during the pandemic, but the marketplace is going to move whether we like it or not,” says Brian Sullivan, NEP Group CEO. “It’s going to be a series of progressive steps, but I think they will happen a lot faster than everybody was expecting. I do not mean to dismiss how hard it has been. But I’m excited about [innovation] and I’m going to make sure that NEP is positioned to be able to help everybody who wants to go down those paths in an as effi cient and effective way as possible.”
NAVIGATING CHANGE
Sullivan joined NEP in the middle of the pandemic, having previously spent time at McKinsey & Company, Fox Networks Group, Sky Deutschland and Sky UK. “Similar to many other companies, it’s been probably the hardest time in all of our working careers, both professionally and personally,” he says. “It is always worth reminding yourself that this is not just a business impact event. This is a global event and has as much if not more impact on people as it does on the business and industries that we work in.”
Sullivan says NEP has managed to navigate through to the latest stage of the pandemic in quite a strong fashion. “In large part [this is] because of the people that we have, and because of the diversifi cation of the company.” He uses the Broadcast Services division as an example, which has a lot of business in global sport. “This has responded to disruption in ways that are almost unimaginable,” he says. “The amount of innovation that’s happened over the past 18 months is probably more than the previous 10 years. Some of the innovation that’s happened is going to stick with us for a long time and will drive the progress of sports coverage even faster than it would have done naturally.” But, he admits, it’s also been a tough time. “Every major event is just that much harder. To do the same thing takes twice as many people, twice as much time, and in some cases a lot more equipment because you’re doing things differently. It’s been almost a case study in the resilience of human beings to be able to get things back on track that fast.”
Sullivan sees an opportunity to overlay the traditional OB truck, infrastructure and capabilities, with a whole new layer of centralised production, cloud production and connectivity. “We’ve been in this space in a pretty large-scale way and we’re now focusing on the remaining markets, which includes the United States,” he says. “We’ll be building up hubs and spokes for centralised production work. That will eventually all be networked. Clients will be able to tap into it no matter what they’re doing and where they’re doing it. We’re 25% of the way down the path there, but the pace has accelerated rapidly during the pandemic. In part that’s how we were able to actually solve the problems for our clients when they were faced with these new challenges overnight.”
#IBC2021
Sullivan: “We’re trying to move a little ahead of the market” “It’s been almost a case study in the
resilience of human beings to be able to get things back on track that fast,” Brian Sullivan, NEP Group
NEP’s Live Events business was rapidly growing prior to the pandemic. “It suffered a larger hit, because so many live events, particularly corporate events, had to be cancelled because of the risk of exposure to Covid,” Sullivan says. “That has actually come back strong over the course of the past six months. In the meantime, there have been all sorts of new businesses that have come to us. A lot of these events didn’t want to disappear, they didn’t want to disconnect with their customers and audiences. So they pivoted into a virtual [space]. With the experience we have across all the different types of media production, the availability of technology, and the fl exibility that our scale gives us, we were able to pivot very fast. We already had a number of studios dotted across the globe, but we spun up just as many more over the course of the fi rst few months of the pandemic. “We had our clients in the studio doing productions that were much more than just a Teams call or a Zoom call. They were super-interactive, very multi-layered and highly engaging. We think that virtual hybrid component will stay because it allows clients to [massively] extend their audience versus what they can have in an arena or an event space.”
The pandemic period also saw the formation of the
Virtual Studios group. “We leaned into a combination of our scale and expertise on the deployment of LED technology, which already existed on Live Events. We combined that with work that we had started to do with a number of clients, using media servers and the Unreal
Engine to do virtual production in corporate,” Sullivan explains. “We’ve now spun up a whole group that is focused specifi cally on the TV and fi lm business. We acquired the leaders in this space [Lux Machina Consulting (LuxMC), Halon Entertainment and Prysm Collective], and it’s being run by Cliff Plummer, who’s the former CTO for ILM. That group is actually going into a completely new category and completely new space.” Just prior to this interview, NEP Virtual Studios and
Trilith Studios announced a partnership to set up one of the world’s largest virtual production stages in Atlanta, Georgia. “We also do work specifi cally for clients like Netfl ix, Apple and Warner Brothers,” says Sullivan. “So we will have client-specifi c virtual production projects and we will have stages where clients can come in and utilise it on an as-needed basis. We’re super-excited about it.”
WORKING TOGETHER “There have been very big challenges for people to work through, and they’re going to continue through the next year,” he predicts. “Providers and clients need to work more closely together than ever before; the suppliers are under the same pressures. I actually think the partnerships are going to get closer. I certainly hope that they do because that’s also a place that [drives] innovation.” “The way we are approaching this at NEP is we’re trying to move a little ahead of the market, maybe even a little faster than our customers are ready to move,” he adds. “We want to make sure when they do want to adopt new technologies and capabilities, that we are already there so that we can make that change quickly and seamlessly.”
Watch the full interview on IBC Digital
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
