How Ginx+ is expanding the world of esports

Recently launched as a catch-up service for all GinxTV video content, the Ginx+ app aims to provide a centralized point of contact for the publisher’s gaming and esports audiences. Understanding the demographic was a driving factor in developing the app. As GinxTV’s head of production Rob Mackenzie explains, the esports audience has grown and matured alongside GinxTV, and changes in both technology and demand have created a need for the company to expand its offering.

“We know that a lot of our audience is moving to digital markets rather than linear TV, but we’re already well-established as a TV channel,” he says. “Now we need to find new ways to reach younger people, and we want to give people the opportunity to watch their favorite shows. The app gives them a place to come and consume all of our content.”

Building an audience

The company has ambitious plans to grow its audience. Ginx TV now reaches around 22 million homes worldwide, with a presence in around 25 countries. The UK, Canada and Germany are currently its biggest markets, but, says Mackenzie, “We had a really big audience in South Africa and a few other territories, so we’re quite well-known internationally.”

The app is part of a strategy to reach more users, especially between tournaments. Providing content year-round will fill the gaps, as MacKenzie explains, ““Esports is an industry that has many pillars throughout the year, and there are many different gaming titles that people will be very familiar with. But they won’t be familiar with all of them. For example, if someone is a fan of Counter Strike, they might have a big event that they attend every two or three months. In those downtimes, we can provide them with content that will keep them entertained. We want to create that home and be that destination for esports and gaming content.”

GinxTV produces a lot of what Mackenzie calls “traditional content in the gaming space—daily news shows, game reviews, documentaries, video essays.” The company also produces exclusive entertainment content, such as its First hour the show features comedians playing the first hour of new game releases. Given the international nature of its audience, GinxTV is looking to increase the amount of content it produces remotely. It already has staff from overseas who write, produce and edit locally.

Gameplay content is typically captured using OBS Studio. “You can almost have a one-person team running a full broadcast, rather than a whole gallery crew,” says Mackenzie. “We’ll have someone running a mix of traditional broadcast technology, but also streaming technology to run things like Elgato Stream Decks. Then, as we’re doing things from the gallery, we’ll use vMix and more traditional vision mixers, graphics operators, audio engineers, etc.”

Technology customization

While esports represents the cutting edge of innovative technology, GinxTV’s methodology is driven by the type of content being produced. More camera-centric productions, like podcasts, are played back to the gallery. “We’ll be mixing live. We’ll have separate microphones and stuff, and we’ll run everything through vMix and then send it to the post-production team,” MacKenzie says.

The team uses a variety of camera rigs, again depending on the content. For in-studio work, Canon C300s are used, along with a Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema camera. For outdoor work, Panasonic GH5s are used, as well as Razer Kiyo webcams. “The benefit of using webcams for us is that each individual computer can run OBS on its own,” says Mackenzie. “So you can run a webcam and capture the game on one computer, and we can have four different people playing at the same time, and each IBS feed can be sent to our main computer, and we can mix between different players locally.”

Latency is a top priority. The massive amount of data being transmitted and downloaded simultaneously during live gameplay streaming is an ongoing challenge felt across the esports content industry. The company is actively looking for a solution to this problem. “We’re looking at third-party options, looking at what options are available, other than having to send LiveU units to other locations or sending engineers to other locations, we just want streamers to join us live,” MacKenzie says. “We’re working on it.”

Predictably, graphics play a key role in GinxTV and the Ginx+ app. In addition to title cards, lower thirds, and stingers, in-stream graphics are used for merchandising and calls to action during live events. All graphics are created in-house using After Effects, with vMix re-implemented in the gallery for live production and OBS for gameplay. The AI ​​development is proving “hugely beneficial,” allowing the company to generate a large amount of assets with fewer designers and operators.

Working smart with AI

Like many in the media and entertainment industry, AI is expected to play an increasingly important role in GinxTV’s future. The efficient use of technology is empowering the company, allowing it to achieve “huge opportunities.” AI enables GinxTV to automate several processes, freeing up staff and fueling creativity. The company is exploring automated vision mixing in post-production. Multi-format short-form video versions can be quickly produced for a variety of platforms, including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, reducing the need for editors to perform laborious, repetitive tasks.

GinxTV has also successfully implemented AI-powered audio cleanup solutions, recently recording an esports event at Wembley Arena. “(When) you have hundreds of people, you have a lot of background noise, but the ability of this software to remove so much of it and still have very clean audio is fantastic. It saves a huge amount of man-hours,” says MacKenzie, another enthusiastic convert to the technology that seems to be changing everything.

The world of esports is growing. With its new app Ginx+, the company believes it has the right product at the right time. But MacKenzie is aware of the competitive nature of the market, with companies competing with influencers for audience share. As AI capabilities improve, he says, it becomes a tougher battle. “We’ll see what happens, but content will be king. And if we’re creating the best stuff, we’ll be at the top.”