5 Takeaways from IBC 2025

Every September, IBC turns Amsterdam into the beating heart of the broadcast and streaming world. It's equal parts spectacle and strategy, dazzling stands, endless demos, and the behind-the-scenes deal-making that shapes the next 12 months of television. But 2025 felt noticeably different. The buzzwords that usually echo across the halls were replaced by something rarer: proof.

With around 44,000 attendees and a conference programme stacked with real-world case studies, the dominant theme wasn't hype but adoption. AI moved from eye-catching demos to production-ready tools. Operators and content owners showed how they're working faster, cutting costs and delivering more personalized experiences.

Here are five of the biggest takeaways from IBC 2025 for anyone building, running or selling TV services.

1. Practical cloud-native and monitoring advances reduce time-to-value

Alongside AI and automation, there was a clear emphasis on ship-and-measure approaches: cloud-native deployments that can be instrumented and iterated quickly, and monitoring stacks driven by smarter automation. From automated QA and virtual NOCs to live-source-to-screen monitoring, the tools on display are all about reducing the operational overhead of streaming: fewer manual checks, faster issue resolution and clearer KPIs for business owners. That moves conversations with C-suite buyers from "why move to cloud?" to "how fast can we launch and measure ROI?"

2. Anti-piracy is back in the spotlight, especially for live sports

Live sports remain the single highest-risk category for piracy, and this year the industry doubled down on operational anti-piracy measures. Panels and vendor announcements focused on real-time detection, takedown orchestration and coordination between CDN, platform and rights holders. For telcos and platform operators this reinforces the need to bake protection into delivery (monitoring, watermarking/forensic tools and multi-layered enforcement) rather than treating it as an afterthought.

3. AI moved from "cool demo" to measurable operational value

AI wasn't merely a booth banner. It was embedded in workflows. Vendors demoed agentic and generative systems that actually automate editorial tasks (transcription, translation, metadata enrichment), accelerate QA and testing, and assist with monitoring and operations. The message from multiple sessions: AI is increasingly being used to speed up repetitive tasks, free editorial time for higher-value creativity, and improve discovery through richer metadata. Not to replace people, but to make teams far more productive.

4.Snackable and super-aggregated content is a distribution priority

Operators are reacting to shifting viewing behavior by planning platforms that combine long-form, live and short-form "snackable" experiences. The focus at IBC was less on a single magic product and more on pipelines that let you ingest social-first clips, create fast channels, and serve personalized micro-experiences inside the same service. That means more investment in fast ingestion, automated repurposing, and UX patterns that keep mobile-first audiences inside operator ecosystems.

5. FAST channels meet full automation

FAST is no longer the shiny new experiment; it's fast becoming a mainstream product strategy. But what really stood out at IBC this year was how automated it's getting. Instead of teams hand-crafting line-ups, vendors were showing end-to-end systems that can ingest content libraries, automatically schedule programming, match ads to audiences and even spin up entirely new channels at the push of a button.

For operators and rights holders, that changes the game: a back catalogue, some live feeds or UGC clips can be transformed into fully fledged, monetizable channels with minimal manual lift. The takeaway is clear: the future of FAST isn't just about free, ad-supported TV; it's about using automation to launch and refresh channels at a pace and scale that simply wasn't possible before.

IBC 2025: From Vision to Action

IBC 2025 felt like a turning point, the moment when AI, cloud-native workflows and FAST channels stopped being abstract concepts and became tools operators and content owners are actively building with. Across the show floor and conference sessions, the message was clear: the future is no longer a distant "what if." It's happening now.

For anyone still penciling in AI or automation for next year, the reality is stark: competitors are already piloting the workflows, channels and tools that will set the industry standard tomorrow. The opportunity isn't just to keep up; it's to lead by embedding these innovations into your operations today, whether that's automating editorial pipelines, deploying AI-driven metadata and discovery, or spinning up new FAST channels at scale.

The question is no longer if these technologies matter, but how quickly you can turn them into practical, revenue-generating solutions. The organizations that succeed will be the ones willing to experiment, iterate and integrate, turning the trends of IBC 2025 into tangible advantage.