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Football's Ever Growing Technology: 5G Coverage

Since I am exploring what is a current issue within the media industry, it feels appropriate to tackle (excuse the football pun) topical stories as they happen.

As the technology used to film sport develops, in turn, so do the sports themselves.

 Following my post earlier today regarding TV broadcast's impact upon football, I came across a breaking news story. According to Sports Pro, it has been announced that BT Sport are going to be responsible for producing the world's first live sporting event to be broadcast using a 5G network this coming Sunday.
At 2pm the 25th November 2018, the 5G network will be trialed during the 2018 EE Wembley Cup, which is scheduled to have some popular YouTube footballers facing up to the professionals. YouTube football influence, Spencer Owens, will broadcast the game from his YouTube channel, Hashtag United, which has over 400,000 subscribers.

 With the ever current and ever growing influence of free online viewing platforms such as YouTube, it makes sense that such a popular sport such as football would spread its wings into the realms of the worldwide video watching web.
 BT Sport and EE aim to converge and use 5G to their advantage. They intend for the use of the new network to increase their sports coverage, so they can include more matches along with faster highlight packages - meaning better coverage for the fans, and publicity for the sport itself. Using 5G places BT Sport over and above other broadcasters in terms of remote production. 

This is just one more example of how the sports industry can utilize the media industry, and visa versa: both are very powerful forces, which when on good terms, can work extremely positively as this shows.

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