Mitico Pilots Community-Based Livestreaming at World of Dance Hong Kong

On January 22, 2026, World of Dance Hong Kong became the first global event to pilot Mitico’s community-based livestreaming model. The idea is simple: rethink how live competitions are shared in a digital-first world.

Instead of relying on a single official broadcast, the event was produced as one centralised live feed. It was then distributed across multiple creators and influencers, each hosting the stream for their own audience.

This gave creators room to add their own commentary, adapt the language and bring in cultural context that suited their communities, while the production remained consistent behind the scenes.

“Dance is a universal language”, said David Gonzalez, President of World of Dance. “Our collaboration with Mitico to produce an international, creator-led livestream in Hong Kong allowed a regional competition to reach a global audience. With personalised commentary from hosts in different languages, we can begin to see how regional events may connect through global communities”. This approach points to a shift away from traditional broadcaster-led distribution and toward creator-led amplification.

A dance crew performs on stage as the audience watches. PHOTO: WORLD OF DANCE HONG KONG

Mitico’s approach begins with a familiar industry challenge: the high cost of production and licensing, which often makes it difficult to livestream cultural and sports events at scale.

“Many cultural and sports competitions are never livestreamed because traditional broadcasting is too costly and complex”, said Chengcheng Li, Founder of Mitico. “By distributing a centralised production feed through creators and community hosts, regional events can reach global audiences while maintaining a unified production workflow”.

World of Dance (WOD) offered a natural test environment. It started as a global dance competition platform before entering a television partnership with NBC, which later produced four seasons of the World of Dance reality series. While the television programme concluded in 2021, the competition business has continued to expand through an international network of partners. Today, World of Dance competitions are represented in more than 72 countries, producing nearly 100 events each year, with a digital audience of more than 34 million followers across platforms

Despite that scale, many competitions are not livestreamed due to the high production costs and technical demands associated with traditional broadcasting. The Hong Kong event was selected to assess whether a community-led distribution model could offer a more scalable alternative for live coverage.

While no changes to World of Dance’s broader distribution strategy have been announced, the Hong Kong pilot offers an early indication of how global competitions may rethink livestreaming in an increasingly creator-driven media environment.

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Ecosystem Spotlights

Startup HyveGeo: Can Desert Soil Be Made Productive Again?

HyveGeo’s approach to restoring degraded land stands out at the FoodTech Challenge

Ventureport Media Team

Updated

February 7, 2026 2:18 PM

Clusters of sandstone buttes in Monument Valley, Colorado Plateau. PHOTO: UNSPLASH

HyveGeo, a climate-focused startup, has been named one of the global winners of the FoodTech Challenge, an international competition designed to surface practical technologies that strengthen food systems in arid and climate-stressed regions.

The FoodTech Challenge (FTC) is based in the UAE and brings together governments, foundations and agri-food institutions to identify early-stage solutions that address food production, land degradation and resource efficiency. Each year, hundreds of startups apply from around the world. In 2026, more than 1,200 teams from 113 countries submitted entries. Only four were selected.

HyveGeo stood out for its approach to one of agriculture’s hardest problems: how to make desert soil usable again. Founded in 2023 by a group of scientists and researchers, the Abu Dhabi-based company focuses on regenerating degraded land using a process built around biochar, a carbon-rich material made from agricultural waste, enhanced with microalgae. The aim is to accelerate soil recovery in environments where water is limited and land has been heavily stressed.

What caught the judges’ attention was not just the technology itself, but the way it links several challenges at once. The system turns waste into a usable soil input, reduces the time it takes for land to become productive and locks carbon into the ground instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. In short, it addresses land degradation, food production and climate pressure through a single framework.

As a winner of the FoodTech Challenge, HyveGeo will share a US$2 million prize with the other selected startups. Beyond funding, the company will also receive support from the UAE’s innovation ecosystem, including research backing, pilot projects, market access and incubation services to help move from testing into wider deployment.

The team’s plans focus on scaling within the UAE first. HyveGeo aims to work across Abu Dhabi’s network of farms and gradually expand into other arid and climate-stressed regions. Its longer-term target is to restore thousands of hectares of degraded land and contribute to carbon removal through soil-based methods.

Placed in a broader context, HyveGeo’s win reflects a shift in how food and climate technologies are being evaluated. Instead of chasing dramatic breakthroughs, competitions like the FTC are increasingly backing systems that connect waste, land, water and carbon into something usable on the ground. Not futuristic agriculture, but practical repair work for environments that can no longer rely on old farming assumptions. If that direction continues, the next wave of food innovation may be less about spectacle and more about quiet, scalable fixes for places where growing food has become hardest.