Earlier this year, National Rugby League (NRL) turned to Quicklink in order to improve and optimise their content offering and production operations. NRL’s webcasts both on their official website NRL.com and on the NRL app have driven digital audience engagement to new heights in 2019. The technology was employed by the NRL’s digital division who creates, produces, archives, and live-streams hundreds of hours of content to their official website (NRL.com) and the NRL app on smart devices. NRL implemented the ST55 (Studio Browser) into their workflow for HD quality, bi-directional audio/video contributions. The Studio Browser solution enables NRL to very easily introduce players and coaches via a simple web browser to their Studio for interviews on their ‘Inside NRL’ weekly feature and other studio shows. The ST500 (Studio-in-a-box) was also implemented at NRL’s head office for the weekly football briefing press conferences. The portable, all-in-one solution has made it very easy for NRL to deploy and is fully remote-controllable from the Quicklink Manager at their Studio control room (in a different location).  
“The Studio-in-a-box is a compact unit with simple inputs/outputs that has made it easy for us to set up almost anywhere. We have been able to facilitate a regular production operation with this technology that was not on our original radar when we procured the technology and it’s been easy collaborating with Quicklink to validate things when required” says Alex Agaciak, from the NRL Media Services team
The Studio-in-a-box incorporates a Panasonic PTZ camera, inbuilt lighting and LCD touchscreen and is ideal for broadcast contributions where there are limited on-site technical resources available. Quanah McBride (Digital Operations Lead at NRL) notes: “The Quicklink solutions have added considerable value to our production capability from the day they were commissioned”. Quanah also explains that NRL envisage using the Quicklink solutions more and more moving forward as they look to improve and optimise their content offering and production operations even further.