Ross Video's Vertex Brings Projection Mapping to Sports and Live Venues

Ross Video, long known for broadcast switchers and production infrastructure, is making a deliberate push into venue-scale experiential AV — a segment where companies like disguise and Barco have been primary players. The ioversal acquisition gives Ross a media server with proven large-format projection mapping credentials and a team that built Pandora's Box, one of the category's foundational products. With Vertex positioned alongside Tesser for LED workflows, Ross can now pitch sports and entertainment venues a combined projection-plus-LED story under one vendor. Watch whether Ross secures marquee sports venue deployments for Vertex in the second half of 2026 — the July 4th Washington Monument projection and NAB demos are proof-of-concept, not contracted revenue.

Ross Video announced the ioversal acquisition on October 2, 2025, marking its formal entry into the experiential AV market. The Cologne-based ioversal team — original creators of Pandora's Box, which they previously sold to Christie — developed Vertex as a unified control platform combining video, audio, lighting, and show control into a single system. Per Ross Video's January 6, 2026 announcement, Vertex made its European debut at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in February 2026, where Ross demonstrated its integration with XPression Tessera and Ultrix routing products. Martin Kuhn, ioversal co-founder, was named Vice President of Experiential Technologies at Ross Video.

The ioversal deal is part of a broader acquisition strategy. In September 2025, Ross acquired Dutch audio software company LAMA, and in January 2025 it purchased EagleEye, a Swiss cable-camera system positioned as a companion to Ross's Spidercam aerial platform. Per the Ottawa Business Journal (late 2025), CEO David Ross described the ioversal acquisition as potentially "one of the most transformative" in the company's history and reiterated a target of $1 billion in annual revenue by 2030 — roughly double current levels. Ross indicated he was exploring private equity investment to fund continued expansion, with an IPO "on the back burner."

At ISE 2026, Christie featured Vertex in its own booth projection-mapping demonstrations, highlighting the continuing relationship between the ioversal team and the projector manufacturer that now owns their earlier Pandora's Box product. Per Sports Video Group (January 2026), Ross positioned Vertex specifically for sports and entertainment venues, emphasizing synchronized audience experiences and streamlined venue operations. At NAB 2026, per Sports Video Group (April 2026), CEO David Ross highlighted projection mapping alongside Spidercam deployments and Carbonite switcher updates as part of the company's most ambitious product rollout to date.

The broader media server market for live events and venues has seen notable consolidation. Ross's acquisition of ioversal removes an independent competitor and gives the company entry into a space where disguise, Barco, and AV Stumpfl have been established players for large-format projection mapping and immersive venue installations. Vertex's support for over 180 video codecs and integration with devices from Christie, Barco, Brompton, and others positions it as a cross-platform control layer rather than a locked-in proprietary ecosystem.