How Verbit delivers broadcast-ready accuracy in live captions

When it comes to live broadcast TV — whether it’s a championship sports matchup or a breaking news story — accuracy matters. Audiences count on high-quality, accurate captions not just for accessibility, but for trust. And getting the names right, especially in fast-paced situations, is an important piece of that.

That’s why broadcasters turn to Verbit’s AI-powered Captivate™ captioning solution. Built specifically for live TV environments, Captivate isn’t just fast — it’s trained and supported to handle the nuances of real-time captioning, including complex names and terms in sports, entertainment, politics and beyond.

Captions you can count on

Let’s take sports as an example. From player substitutions to scoring changes, the action on the court, ice, pitch and diamond moves quickly, giving only seconds for captions to display information on the screen before the next exciting play. But what happens when superstar names like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Leon Draisaitl hit the screen?

Thanks to Verbit’s proprietary AI training models, Captivate is designed to recognize, spell and accurately display these names and others in real time. Our advanced, proprietary engine is constantly learning from our curated databases containing the correct spellings of athletes, performers, politicians and public figures and features human-in-the-loop refinements, where Verbit’s Global Prep Team and captioning experts help continuously train and fine-tune the model.

This means that names like Florida Panther center Eetu Luostarinen, Oklahoma City Thunder forward Ousmane Dieng or Edmonton Oiler Vasily Podkolzin won’t get mangled or misspelled, even during the final seconds of that live NHL or NBA game.

Bird's eye view of the interior of a hockey arena - flags of the US and Canada are seen hanging from the rafters.

How Captivate learns (and keeps learning)

What sets Captivate apart from basic speech-to-text engines is its ability to learn context and prioritize accuracy under pressure. Here’s how Verbit trains and maintains that level of performance:

AI language models trained on live content

Captivate is built on large language models trained specifically for live media environments, but it doesn’t rely solely on audio. Our Dynamic Domain Dictionary™ searches domain-specific terms and trending topics to create an up-to-date base library to deliver the most customer-relevant and accurate results.

Human quality assurance

Verbit combines its AI with human caption editors and subject-matter experts. These professionals help train Captivate to recognize less-common names and monitor performance trends to flag errors before they become problems.

Customized fit

We provide a customer-centric solution rather than a generic one-size-fits-all ASR. This allows for higher performance on names, niche subject matter, accents, background noise and more.

More than just names

While it’s important to get everyone’s name right, Verbit goes further by supporting:

Speaker identification
Accurate punctuation and line breaks
Compliance with FCC and ADA standards
Multilingual captioning for broadcasters with international audiences

Captivate is designed for speed, precision and accessibility, helping broadcasters meet the demands of modern audiences — whether viewers are tuning in with the sound off, relying on captions for clarity or simply watching in a loud restaurant.

See Captivate™ in action

Learn more about how Verbit can elevate your live captioning accuracy.

Hand pointing a remote control towards a television set.

Trust, access and engagement

In a competitive broadcast landscape, getting the small details right — like names — makes a big difference. Every time a viewer sees their favorite player’s name displayed correctly, it builds trust. Every time a commentator’s rapid-fire dialogue is accurately captioned, it enhances understanding. And every time Verbit’s AI gets it right in real time, it reinforces a broadcaster’s commitment to inclusion and quality.