The broadcast chain, end to end
Seven steps, roughly a dozen stakeholders, and up to forty-five seconds between the moment a goal is scored and the moment a Go3 viewer sees it. This is the system Join in Live has to sit inside.
TV3 almost never sends a camera to the match. They buy somebody else’s pictures, add their own voice and their own graphics in three languages, and push the result down two completely different pipes to two audiences who are not watching the same moment at the same time.
Each step is owned by somebody different. The right-hand column says what the signal actually is at that point, and which column of the TV3 production planning sheet records it.
A host broadcaster, appointed by the rights holder, covers the match: twenty to thirty cameras, a match director cutting live, replay operators, a sound team on the pitch mics. Nobody from TV3 is in the building. For almost every row on the planning sheet, TV3 never sends a person to the venue at all.
Pictures cut by the host director. Natural sound on separate tracks: crowd, pitch, bench. Usually no commentary at all. Often two video versions, one with world graphics burned in and one clean so each market can add its own.
UEFA, the NBA, the NHL, ATP, Matchroom. They own the feed and sell it by territory. They decide who may show it, in which countries, on which platforms, and under what restrictions. Whether streaming is included at all is a separate line in the contract from linear television, which is why some events reach Go3 and some do not.
Nothing technical changes at this step. What changes is permission, and permission is the thing that decides whether an interactive layer is even allowed on top.
Rights / League TournamentTwo ways in. Live: a booked circuit, satellite or fibre, opened before the event and closed after it. The window is deliberately wider than the match, ten to thirty minutes of pre-roll for line-up, audio checks and rehearsal, plus a few minutes at the end. File: anything not live arrives as a finished file days ahead, which is how highlights, magazine shows and episodes get made.
For the first ten to thirty minutes the circuit carries colour bars, a countdown clock or stadium beauty shots. That is why a 22:00 kick-off has a feed start of 21:50. It is also an open window with an arriving audience and nothing on screen.
Origin L / TDFeed Start Feed EndThe feed lands on a physical port in the playout facility and master control confirms it is there, correct and in sync. The values on the sheet that look like HP SDI IN-08 are those ports. They are inputs, where the signal comes in. The same column also holds Sport 1, TV6 and Go3, which are outputs, where it goes out. One column, two opposite meanings.
This is the lowest-latency, highest-quality copy anyone in the building will see. Everything downstream is further behind and more compressed.
Channels inputsThis is where it becomes TV3’s, and it is the heart of the operation. Commentary is off-tube: the commentator sits in a booth in Tallinn or Riga watching the same feed on a monitor, not at the ground. There are four booths, so four simultaneous local commentaries is the hard ceiling on any given night. On top of that go TV3’s own scorebug, lower thirds and branding, in the market’s language.
A name in the language column means a local commentator in a booth. ENG means no local voice: the world feed commentary passes straight through. VO1 to VO4 are the booths themselves.
EE EE VO LVOne feed becomes many services: same pictures, different audio, different graphics, different destination. Linear is Sport 1 to 4 and TV6 Baltics, a fixed schedule where a match occupies a slot. OTT is Go3, which carries the linear channels and also events that never get a linear slot at all. One row on the sheet reads TV6 Baltics, S1: one feed, two destinations, typed into a single cell.
Each output is its own service with its own audio and graphics. Go3 appears on the sheet as a prefix typed into the channel cell, like Go3 HP SDI IN-07, rather than as a field of its own.
S1 S2 TV6 Go3Linear arrives by satellite, cable or IPTV, and everyone watching Sport 1 sees roughly the same frame at the same instant. OTT arrives over the internet in segments, buffered, and every viewer’s delay is different: it changes with their network, their device, and whether they paused to make tea. And the phone is already in their hand. That is the second screen, and it is where we live.
The linear viewer and the Go3 viewer are watching the same match at measurably different moments. Any interaction tied to a live event has to account for that, or it arrives after the answer is already obvious.
Every frame below is the identical video file. What changes is who has added what to it, and which screen it has arrived on. This is what “split into many” actually means.
A goal happens once. It reaches four different people at four different times. A question fired “on the goal” is early for one of them and late for another, and the one it is late for already knows the answer.
The ball crosses the line. This is the only moment that is not an estimate.
The contribution feed on the monitor in front of the commentator and, if we are there, in front of our producer.
Sport 1 through satellite, cable or IPTV. Roughly consistent for everyone watching that channel.
Segmented delivery over the internet. Varies by network, device and player, and differs between two people on the same sofa.
What we should do about it
These numbers are the typical industry shape, not measurements of Go3. The first thing to do, before anything is designed, is to put a running clock on screen and film the producer’s monitor, a TV on Sport 1 and a phone on Go3 at the same time. That is a ten minute test and it turns the most important number in this product from an assumption into a fact.
Grouped by who they work for, because that is what decides who can say yes to us and who cannot.
Reads the feed, the commentary or subtitle text, and the clock. The AI drafts a moment; a human approves it before anything reaches a phone. The person doing that is already sitting in a booth with a monitor, which is why this is an added screen rather than a new job.
The phone beside the television, or beside the Go3 stream on the same device. No download, a code or a link, and the experience has to be obvious with no instructions at all.
Everything between those two taps belongs to TV3 and does not change. We do not touch the feed, the graphics, the playout or the stream.