The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is opening a new technology hub in Madrid to support its business services which will transfer to a new subsidiary, Eurovision Services SA, on 1 January 2019.
The business arm of the EBU, known today as Eurovision Media Services (EMS), delivers thousands of hours of sports, news and cultural events around the world each year.
“The media market continues to change at a rapid pace. Madrid is known for attracting innovation. It has a number of incubators and a massive pool of software engineering talent. Therefore, it was a logical and strategic choice for us to establish our new technology hub, Eurovision Labs, in this city,” said Noel Curran, Director General of the EBU.
The new technology hub will be led by Albert Marti as Head of Eurovision Labs. The international team located in Madrid will be focused on innovation and software engineering related activities to power the next generation and most advanced media products and services of EMS.
“What’s clear from talking to content owners and broadcasters is that what is most needed at this time of change and disruption in the media landscape is the ability to be agile in order to be able to try out new ways to create value from their content and to reach audiences, said Marco Tinnirello, CEO of EMS.
“What Eurovision Labs brings us is the ability for us to quickly and cost effectively develop new services in software that allow our customers to have that agility, and so allows them to focus on what’s important to them,” said Oscar Teran, Head of Technology & Solutions at EMS.
