Does Sports Streaming Cloud Migration Require Restaffing or Reskilling?
When Sweden-based SVT (Sveriges Television) leveraged cloud-based workflows to stream the Olympics, how did it impact staff, and did it require retraining or new skills? According to SVT Group Manager, Production Development Madelen Ottosson in this discussion with Eyevinn Technology’s VP Sales and Business Development and Media Solution Specialist Magnus Svensson at Streaming Media Connect 2026, cloud-based sports streaming at scale demands fundamental changes to the way streaming producers work in a control room today. Ottosson goes on to detail the types of reskilling that can be particularly difficult for producers with long histories in the business and experience with more traditional workflows, and LiveSports, LLC’s Executive Director and President Jef Kethley affirms many of her points about the challenges of expanding existing production skillsets.
The Importance of Embracing New Knowledge
Svensson opens the conversation by asking Ottosson to talk about SVT’s streaming of the Olympics. “How do you work with the staff, and what new skills are needed to be able to produce Olympics in the new way?”
Ottosson says that new skills are definitely involved because her team had to keep track of not only the operating side, but also the support and monitoring sides. “Everything is just one role nowadays,” she notes. The team members need to be able to ask the right questions to help solve inevitable problems that occur. They must be open to learning new things, she adds. Changing the way a control room works in terms of new feeds—such as going from SDI to SRT—can be scary.
Ottosson believes this shift could be more difficult for someone who’s been in the business for years than a newcomer. “But what we can see is that we have people all around the company who’re not used to being in the production side, who’re actually curious and want to be a part of it. So we have a few people coming in from … different parts of SVT that want to learn, which is really cool,” she shares. “So it’s really a matter of, embrac[e it] and keep trying.”
Encouraging New Entrants to the Business to Be Multifaceted
Svensson turns to Kethley to note that Kethley was nodding along with Ottosson’s answer. “You also mentioned that you like to have the same crew regardless of technology, but are there any new skills or any new adoptions that you have made across the years here?” Svensson asks.
Kethley admits he’s been in the production business for more than 40 years, and he never imagined how much would change in that time. He now considers his job “online broadcasting” because he approaches streaming from a broadcasting standpoint. When he brings new people into the business, he says, “I find that it is challenging to invigorate younger people so that they understand that this is a fun job where, ‘Hey, we can jump into this. Don’t you want to work 40 hours in the first three days of the week? I mean, that sounds like fun, right?’ So it takes a little bit to get them into the flow of things.”
After new employees understand how to leverage the technology, they’re more comfortable. “So they are able to approach it from, ‘Oh, I can do the audio here. Oh, I can do the video here. I can do the graphics here. Oh, okay, no problem. It’s not a big deal.’ Whereas with some of the older—I would just say more in their ways—folk, it’s their job. … [They’re] like, ‘No, I just do audio. I don’t know … that video stuff. It’s a new fad. It’ll die.’ But when we’re trying to bring new people in, we want them to be multifaceted. So I’m looking to hire IT people. I’m looking to hire people that I never thought … would be the ideal person because they do need to understand that,” Kethley explains. “So it’s a continuing challenge. I would call it a challenge.”
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