MediaTech Radar is a monthly newsletter authored by IABM’s Business Intelligence Unit. It focuses on a spotlight topic in MediaTech and reflects on a series of past, present and future business developments in the industry. In this edition, our spotlight topic is the upcoming IBC 2025, where we would like to share some insights on how IABM’s business intelligence can help our members and Global Engaged Partners prepare for the show and enhance strategic planning.
MediaTech Spotlight: Leveraging IABM’s business intelligence for strategic planning
A spotlight topic in MediaTech.
Trade shows aren’t just about visibility — they’re milestones in your annual strategy. With IBC 2025 approaching, effective preparation goes beyond booking a booth – it’s about equipping your team with essential industry insights. This edition of our monthly newsletter explores how to leverage the business intelligence resources available on IABM’s MediaTech Vantage™ platform to enhance both your show preparation and strategic planning.
IABM’s MediaTech Vantage™ platform is more than just a publishing hub – it is an interactive, collaborative workspace. Colleagues within the same company can share custom reports, pinned search results, and notes, ensuring teams stay aligned and have the essential data at their fingertips when preparing for meetings at IBC. Users can also access the quantitative data behind our charts by downloading it in Excel format – making it easy to integrate insights directly into presentations and strategic planning. If you are new to the platform, we recommend watching this short video, which provides a quick overview of its key features.
IABM will open IBC 2025 with the IABM Industry Impact Briefing: Leading Successful Transformations in Media Business, where our Head of Knowledge and Insight, Chris Evans, will debut highlights from our forthcoming State of MediaTech report. To get the most out of the upcoming IABM opening session on 12 September, we recommend revisiting insights from the first edition of the 2025 State of MediaTech report, prepared in the lead-up to NAB Show 2025. At the beginning of the year, IABM data showed that industry leaders expected more conservative investment in the year ahead, with AI & ML emerging as the most important and the fastest-growing technology trend in organizations’ roadmaps year on year. Security followed as the second fastest-growing trend in the same time period. Between June and August, we conducted the next wave of our tracking survey to capture how expectations have shifted throughout the year – insights that will be unveiled in the upcoming session at IBC..
Also available to access on MediaTech Vantage™, our Megatrends research series examines themes that are fundamentally reshaping the media technology landscape. In the Business Transformation report, published in March 2025, we explored the key drivers of ongoing industry transformation and outlined strategies to address the challenges they bring. The report features case studies from both end users and technology vendors, with insights drawn from in-depth interviews with industry experts and a survey of more than 50 senior leaders from media and technology businesses.
IABM data confirms that security remains a critical focus for media technology in 2025 – a topic frequently raised in conversations with industry experts. In response to this growing interest, IABM has published the second report in the 2025 Megatrends research series, Security in MediaTech Ecosystems. This report explores new cyber threats emerging from the broadcast and industry’s shift to software-defined workflows, as well as strategies to counter piracy that now increasingly targets streaming platforms.
The 2025 Megatrend report series is included in Platinum, Gold and Global Engaged Partners’ member benefits. These reports are also available to purchase independently.
If your business operates globally or is planning to enter new markets, you will find valuable insights in our GeoTracker™ report, published in June 2025. This report is especially useful for shaping regional sales strategies, with analysis tailored to five macro-regions. Platinum members have full access included in their benefits package, while other members and non-members can contact us for a quote to purchase either the complete report or individual regional chapters.
For more information about our research offering or to schedule a platform demo, please contact IABM’s Business Intelligence Unit at insight@theiabm.org.
MediaTech Watchlist: Canal+, Sony, OBS, ESPN, Paramount, Google…
A watchlist of selected past, present and future business developments in MediaTech.
- The French Pay-TV operator, Canal+ Group, owned by Vivendi, has received anti-trust approval from the South African competition tribunal to finalize its takeover of MultiChoice Group, the South African Pay-TV giant. The acquisition – worth $2bn – will reduce Canal+ Group’s dependence on the French market, including the French-speaking African countries. Its takeover of MultiChoice continues Canal+ Group’s recent series of investments in TV players in new markets such as Viaplay (North Europe) and Viu (Southeast Asia), where Pay-TV penetration is still relatively stable. The acquisition of MultiChoice will strengthen Canal+’s hold over the English-speaking Africa, where limited Internet connectivity, weak payment infrastructure and low ARPUs are causing challenges to global streaming players. The takeover – giving Canal+ the control over MultiChoice’s local OTT platform, Showmax – will also improve its market position in the region, where global streaming giants are yet to establish a dominant presence.
- Sony has launched the PXW-Z300, a 4K 3-CMOS XDCAM camcorder, which has a dedicated AI-processing unit capable of authenticating video. The camcorder – targeted for news gathering – can embed digital signatures directly into video files, making it the first camcorder to support the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) standard for digital content provenance and authenticity. The launch aligns well with IABM’s latest survey data showing that the importance of provenance and authenticity in media businesses’ technology roadmaps has increased from 5% in Q1 to 10% in Q3 2025. Moreover, a few weeks later, Sony reported that the company’s profits increased by 23% in Q2 compared to the same quarter of the previous year, noting that recent changes in trade policies and US tariffs had translated to less of an impact on its global sales than initially expected.
- Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has announced its ambitious plans to produce the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics and Paralympics with fully IP- and IT-based infrastructure and cloud-based production workflows, allowing OBS to leverage new technologies such as AI-driven content processing, 5G and wireless systems for camera operations. Sustainability was mentioned to be a central component of the virtualized production plan. In comparison, at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, 66% of booked remote services were already using OBS Live Cloud, which enabled media rights holders to run live production at scale at a reduced cost through hybrid setups.
- Amagi Media Labs has filed Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) in India to prepare for an initial public offering (IPO). Amagi’s AI-enabled cloud platform, enabling media businesses to stream content to Connected TVs and smart devices, is already widely adopted by its three major customer segments: content providers, content distributors (e.g. OTT platforms, telecom operators and CTV manufacturers) and advertising platforms. According to the India-based company, its revenue grew by over 30% between FY2023 and FY2025, driven by the growth in the US market, now accounting for nearly 70% of the company’s revenue. Baskar Subramanian, CEO and Co-Founder of Amagi said: “The world is becoming streaming and all of us are only watching on IP, internet devices. This has changed things for our customers. It’s the fragmentation of viewership. In the early days of cable, you could go to one channel and always watch the content. Now there are so many places where people are consuming content, be it YouTube, Netflix, Prime, social platforms, connected TV devices to everywhere else and this is becoming a big challenge for the broadcasters and TV channels.”
- ESPN and the NFL have entered an agreement, in which ESPN acquires NFL Network and other media assets in exchange for the league taking over a 10% stake in ESPN. Moreover, ESPN and the NFL agreed on media rights and content distribution for ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer app, which will be launched on August 21st in the US. The deal will also enable ESPN to sell and bundle NFL+ Premium with its own DTC service, catering for fans with more niche content (e.g. NFL RedZone). The agreement highlights the growing importance of live sports in streaming services’ content offerings, owing to the fact that the ARPU of live sports’ subscribers tends to be significantly higher than that of subscribers paying for entertainment and non-sports content.
- Paramount and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have entered a seven-year media rights deal worth $7.7bn, which will bring all UFC events to Paramount+ streaming service as well as to CBS from 2026 onwards. The agreement substitutes the previous deal with ESPN, which was worth $550 per year, confirming the growing value of niche sports rights. Becoming available for Paramount+ subscribers in the US, the UFC matches will be made more accessible and affordable to fans than through the current pay-per-view model, and likely attract new subscribers to the streaming service.
- In late August, Google revealed that its new AI filmmaking tool, Flow, has generated 100 million videos since its launch in May. The tool, including Veo 3, has the capability to generate text to video, create video extensions, and 1080p upscaling. Elias Roman, Senior Director of Product Management for Flow in Google Labs, said: “What Veo 3 [Google’s newest AI video model] allowed was a much wider set of people to create very compelling videos, engaging all the senses out of the box. You didn’t have to stitch together a toolkit.”
Thank you for reading this newsletter. If there are topics you would like us to cover or if you have information/ideas that you would like to share, please get in touch with us.
The IABM Business Intelligence Unit
