When the America’s Cup was first televised, it was virtually impossible to tell what was going on.  

As TV graphics entrepreneur Ian Taylor puts it, you could watch some of it at lunch, then wait till dinner before anything exciting happened again.  

But these days, anyone watching the Cup on TV has enjoyed the handiwork of his ground-breaking Dunedin business.

 Since 1992, Animation Research Limited has made the graphic overlays to help us all understand what’s happening on the water.  Taylor founded the business in 1989 and wanted to help bring the tournament to life after seeing how little of the action could be seen on TV.  “It was as boring as batshit.  This was not a sport designed for television.  (I thought) can we make this interesting?  Can we tell the story?”

As it turns out, Taylor could do just that, and he’s worked on every America’s Cup since.  The business now also provides graphics for many other major tournaments, and until Covid, 2020 was going to be their biggest year yet. 

They were getting ready to work on every major golf tournament in the world as well as the 3,000 games of Major League Baseball a year. Then Covid hit hard, and everything was cancelled within 24 hours.

Thanks to Taylor’s insistence no-one would lose their job, the business figured out how to work without anyone leaving their homes, let alone Dunedin.  “Working remotely was on our radar in the longer term, because our carbon footprint for travel was horrendous.  The idea was maybe, one day, we’d be able to do it remotely.  Well, Covid turned up and accelerated that thinking, and it happened in 6 months.  Nobody has to fly anymore; no-one has to travel.  It’s just been a huge game changer and has put a rocket under everything.”  

Their technology is so good, that for Major League Baseball, all the data they need is arriving 400 milliseconds after it’s captured.  “So we’ve got data of the ball leaving the player’s hand, before it gets to the bat.”

The business adapted to Covid fast, and that’s allowed them to retain the entire workforce, and the business is now working towards repaying the reduction in salary that some staff took.

For more on how Ian Taylor continues to thrive despite the challenges of Covid,  listen to the latest episode of HP Business Class here.