Studio Automated is celebrating her first anniversary! What a start of an incredibly exciting adventure. Who could ever predict what the last 12 months would be like for us and mankind! After a kick-off start, with a great established partnership with Livearena & TNO, we shook hands on finishing the negotiations of a solid partnership agreement within a promising market segment: Sports and Media. Within this segment, Livearena and Sportway closed a big contract with the Swedish Ice hockey federation. They installed our AI software in hundreds of Ice hockey arenas in Northern Europe. At that time, completely unaware of a very nearby started pandemic.

An exciting, but also hectic first few months

One month later, the whole world was facing one of the biggest disrupting and threatening pandemics since the second world war, and suddenly Paul and me owned a tech start-up with a very uncertain future. When corona hit me the first week of march also personally, and our most important customer called me to say that he was unsure if he could pay our invoices, we were really asking ourselves if Studio Automated would survive the coming weeks and months.  

With a strong belief and fine people close by, who had trust in our vision, capabilities and our strategic partnership with TNO and Livearena, we turned it around. Instead of waiting for better times, we did the opposite: investing and work harder to show the world that we could really contribute to automate the production and broadcasting of live events. Due to the fact that fans and parents were not allowed anymore to be on the location of a live event, our software became a “need to have” instead of a “nice to have”.

One-year-old Studio Automated

Studio Automated is now operational at more than 300 locations around the globe. We are very fast growing and are becoming the number one AI-software company for Sports & Media and corporate TV. And this is just the beginning… 

More opportunities in 2020/2021 came across, with two major highlights in our other two market domains: 

• Safety & Health; We started a scale-up partnership in the Johan Cruijff Arena. Together with partners, we developed a solution to detect and track empty positions at the tribune to guarantee the social distance regulations. We tested the first version during the match between the Netherlands and Latvia on the 27th of March. The solution will after Corona still need to have, in order for example to help fans to get their F&B quicker and finding their seats easier.
• Corporate TV; The other highlight is the implementation of several Broadcasting Rooms: inside the main room for business events of the Johan Cruijff Arena, at TNO, the Microsoft Technology Center in Amsterdam, Stockholm and 3 other locations in North America.

A bright future ahead

We started beyond expectations in 2020 and can look forward to an even more promising and bright future for the coming years! We keep challenging ourselves, our partners, customers and suppliers to deliver the best AI software around the globe. We are doing this for every organization that wants to unlock their video content fully automated, affordable and with the highest relevance & quality possible. 

We make content relevant!

Paul Valk and Paul van den Haak | Team Studio Automated