Setting the stage - SportsPro€¦ · using the cloud to deliver live sports OTT experiences, ... • 10.3M concurrent viewers watched the Hotstar IPL Cricket match in ... the disruptor

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiencesA GUIDE FOR LIVE SPORTS OTT BROADCASTERS, RIGHTS HOLDERS, AND CONTENT CREATORS

1Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences

Contents

Setting the stage ........................................................................................................................2

What fans want ...........................................................................................................................7

What this means for rights holders, broadcasters, and distributors ...................11

Why the cloud makes sense for delivering great live sports experiences .........15

How the cloud enables live sports delivery ...................................................................19

Use machine learning to enhance the fan experience ..............................................23

Who’s doing it today ...............................................................................................................26

Learn how to get started ......................................................................................................32

Setting the stage


The world of live sports production has undergone immense changes in

the last fifteen years. In a pre-Twitter world, a “tape-delayed” broadcast of

key sporting events was normal, and a live-blogger in a stadium reporting

on the contest in real time was likely to be chased out of the stands by

the broadcast rights holder. Video production required thousands of

dollars in capital expenditures and expertise: Betacams, camera operators,

editors, writers, producers, and a full-fledged production studio to edit,

produce, and deliver a broadcast.

Today, it takes nothing more than a smartphone and a YouTube channel

to become a worldwide broadcaster. And if you’re not one of the upstart

firms delivering that OTT (over-the-top) experience, you’re competing

with them. Live sports broadcasting has made the switch to an agile,

From casual fans to superfans, use the cloud to deliver the live sports experience that keeps your audiences coming back for more.


mobile, “right-now” offering with flexible, world-class technology

accessible to all.

The fan base has changed, too. Today’s sports world is truly

international. A Premier League superfan is as likely to be found

walking the streets of Seattle as sitting in the pubs of Tottenham;

cricket fans span the globe, taking in every bouncer and every

yorker for their favorite national teams; and the whole world stops

for super-events like the World Cup and the Olympics.

Today fans can interact directly with their favorite athletes on

social media, watch replay clips from smartphones while in the

stadium, listen to live postgame press conferences, and much

more. In today’s sports world, there’s a digital relationship

between fans and the game—one that leads to increased fan

engagement and increased revenues. And it’s only going to get

stronger as technology keeps up with fan demands.

With these shifts come both great challenges and great

opportunities. If you’re in the business of delivering live OTT

sports experiences, you know you’re racing against the clock to

Sports viewing on OTT is becoming a fan favorite, allowing for greater engagement and increased viewership.


deliver world-class fan experiences. How will your live sports delivery

organization thrive in this exciting, growing world?

To make the most of your valuable assets, it’s critical to understand

how technology has caught up to the desires of fans who wants to

stay connected to their favorite teams and events 24/7. Making cloud

technologies a key part of your workflow can help.

Bringing your live sports OTT experiences to the cloud can help you:

• Save money with a pay-as-you-go IT model that is right-sized to your

audience, instead of being saddled with large infrastructure investments

before your audience has ever arrived.

• Become more agile with infrastructure that can be spun up instantly,

saving time and resources on IT management so that you can focus on

creating great fan experiences that build your audience, monetize your

offerings, and keep fans coming back for more.

• Take advantage of the cloud’s newest and most exciting capabilities,

such as self-service machine learning, to further monetize and

personalize your offerings.


By designing and delivering great live sports experiences and

delivering them with cutting-edge cloud technologies, you can

capitalize on every aspect of the end-user experience to drive

audience growth and revenues.

In this eBook, you’ll learn how the cloud is helping broadcasters,

rights holders, startups, and every live sports video developer in

between deliver superior fan experiences, while saving money

on infrastructure and maximizing revenues with cutting-edge

technology. You’ll learn about organizations around the world

using the cloud to deliver live sports OTT experiences, as well as

monetize and personalize OTT content with machine learning.

You’ll be introduced to a live sports workflow for delivering

streaming video using the cloud, and you’ll learn how you can find

out more and get started with cloud technologies today.

> 150 MILLION NUMBER OF FANS FOLLOWING THE TOP THREE PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES WORLDWIDE ON TWITTER1

45% and 23%NUMBER OF GEN Z AND YOUNGER MILLENNIAL FANS, RESPECTIVELY, WHO USE SNAPCHAT TO ACCESS SPORTS-RELATED CONTENT2

1 Source: List of most-followed Twitter accounts. Accessed November 19, 2018.

2 Source: “GenZ and younger Millennial sports fans are driving fundamental changes in programming, platforms and purchasing.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Twitter_accounts

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usc-annenbergthepostgame-genz-and-younger-millennial-sports-fans-are-driving-fundamental-changes-in-programming-platforms-and-purchasing-300271545.html


What fans want


Today’s fans want to be in the game, all the time, from the first whistle to the last play, and beyond. They want access to their teams no matter where they live, and they don’t want to be limited by their cable packages or hindered by high prices when looking for the sports content they want to consume.

Fans today interact with their favorite teams and athletes 24/7. More

and more fans are taking the game with them, using smartphones and

tablets to access live sports content no matter where they are. Recent

research demonstrates that sports fans are looking for a great viewing

experience—and they’re willing to pay for it.

• 10.3M concurrent viewers watched the Hotstar IPL Cricket match in

May 20183

• 63% of sports fans say they would pay for an OTT subscription3


• 50% of sports fans watch supplemental sports programming3

• In September 2018, the NFL alone accounted for approximately

3% of all streaming plays and viewing hours in the U.S.4

• 80% of all viewing on American network FOX for the six-

week period between early September (the virtual start of the

NFL season) and Game 2 of the baseball World Series in late

October was sports viewing.5

• 64% of sports fans live outside their favorite team’s region, and

73% do not live where their favorite athlete plays.3


4 Source: Conviva.

5 Source: Michael Mulvihill, FOX Sports EVP of research.



https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/global-live-tv-streaming-up-54-study-says

https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/global-live-tv-streaming-up-54-study-says

https://twitter.com/mulvihill79/status/1055574241599320064


The improved video capabilities of modern mobile devices make

it possible for great live sports content to reach far-flung fan

bases worldwide. Higher quality video capabilities help drive video

consumption on mobile devices. In tandem with video quality,

higher consumption levels also drive the adoption of large-scale,

top-quality video encoding technologies so that video can be

delivered seamlessly and with exceptional broadcast quality to

mobile devices worldwide.

The thirst for instant and consistent connections with the game,

the personalities, and the happenings around fans’ favorite teams

and athletes drive additional opportunities for live sports video

providers. Today, you gain insights into the content your audience

wants so that you can drive audience and revenue growth.

Self-service machine learning solutions can help you deliver

personalized content to specific audiences, meeting fans’ needs

and desires right at the moment when they’re most likely to be

looking for additional opportunities to interact with their teams.

A whopping 86 percent of Americans consider themselves sports fans, and the number is almost even between men (92 percent) and women (80 percent).6




What this means for rights holders, broadcasters, and distributors


The thirst for 24/7 live sports content presents tremendous

opportunities to create great fan experiences that grow both

audiences and revenue. Rights holders, broadcasters, and

distributors can all benefit from using cloud technologies to help

deliver content on OTT platforms.

The cloud has become the great equalizer, so that today you can

spin up IT infrastructure in a pay-as-you-go model to support

worldwide distribution of content—and that has led to the

rise of a new type of video provider, the disruptor. Outlets like

No matter where your organization works in the live sports ecosystem, you want your fan experiences to be supported by world-class technologies with high availability, low latency, and superior quality.


FuboTV make up the ecosystem of smaller, newer, nimbler video

production and distribution companies who are comfortable with

the cloud.

The end result is that both traditional broadcasters and rights

holders, and disruptive cloud-first content providers, can

take advantage of today’s technologies to support great fan

experiences.

Rights holders and studios aim to serve content to fans that

exceeds expectations, from in-stadium content to enhanced video

like postgame press conferences and athlete features. Their value

comes from the brands they’ve created and nurtured to build an

engaged, excited fan base, whether for an exceedingly popular

sport where fans number in the hundreds of millions, or for niche

sports with a comparatively small, but intensely loyal, following.

Rights holders also include sports leagues and teams, where

individual audiences for specific events may be smaller, but add

up with volume-based offerings.

David GandlerCEO and co-founder of FuboTV

[With the cloud] we can

test new monetization

strategies and even

launch new live linear

services in a matter of

minutes without worrying

about infrastructure, so

we devote our time and

resources to advancing the

value of our offerings.

Both traditional broadcasters and rights holders—and disruptive cloud-first cord-cutting content providers—can take advantage of today’s cloud technologies to support great fan experiences.


Broadcast channels partner with rights holders to deliver

compelling sports content and adding additional value through

specialized additional content like commentary, features,

documentaries, and other offerings for loyal fans. They’re

unlocking a new dimension to the viewing experience with real-

time statistics showing the “game behind the game.”

Distributors create the direct connection between the sports

team or league, the fan, and the content distributor. Distributors

today are creating apps to ensure fans can access content

anytime, anywhere, on any device, even when they’re away

from their TV.

Disruptors provide custom content to superfans who are

motivated to unplug from traditional cable providers because

technology has finally caught up with sport-specific fan bases.

As just one example, customized ad content can be served

to fans to increase monetization using cloud-based machine

learning technologies.

Why the cloud makes sense for delivering great live sports experiences


The cloud provides both an infrastructure backbone and

media-specific services that lets you focus on creating,

packaging, and distributing top-quality live sports content

to your audience. Both experienced content providers and

sports clubs and leagues taking control of their fan content

from the ground up can benefit from the ease of working with

cloud solutions and service providers when building out their

content delivery workflows.

Consider the impact to the fan experience when you have

the time and resources to focus on what you do best, while

leaving the infrastructure maintenance requirements to your

cloud provider.

From scalability to low latency to machine learning, the cloud is a great option for delivering live sports OTT experiences.


• Scale up or down effortlessly to allow for surging audience sizes

(think the last set of a Grand Slam tennis final, or the final two minutes

of the Super Bowl) without having to take on the long-term costs of

provisioning and maintaining hardware.

• Pay only for the services that you need at any one time, taking

advantage of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing instead of maintaining

physical racks that require expensive, specialized IT teams and long-

term licensing and support agreements.

• Provision infrastructure anywhere in the world, so that you can stay

closest to the specific audiences you want to reach with low-latency,

high-availability video offerings that stream smoothly on all devices.

• Bring cloud-based media services into your workflow to save time and ensure you’re providing the most up-to-date video codecs to your

streaming platform.


• Have access to continually-evolving technologies that

can help you understand your audience’s preferences, test

concepts quickly, and serve personalized content (such as

targeted ads, captions, and localized content) to specific

subsets of your audience.

Cloud technologies are the key to these opportunities. Amazon

Web Services (AWS) has developed purpose-built media services

and solutions that can deliver the performance, reliability,

and video quality of broadcast-grade hardware infrastructure,

while unlocking powerful new capabilities to enhance the

user experience—and that means delivering live sports OTT

experiences becomes easier, less expensive, more reliable, and

higher-quality with the use of the AWS cloud.

The cloud can help you

with every aspect of live

sports OTT production,

including:

• Live acquisition, content creation, and post-production

• Digital asset management and supply chain

• Machine learning and analytics

• Monetization, ad insertion, and personalization

• Content distribution (OTT, broadcasting, and publishing)

How the cloud enables live sports delivery

Example workflow


A live sports OTT workflow simplifies and automates many aspects of

the process of collecting, encoding, backing up, and distributing a live

video feed. One method for utilizing the cloud to cost-effectively deliver

live video content to a global audience is to combine multiple cloud

services to build OTT solutions for live video streaming.

Here’s just one cloud workflow example for a broadcaster gathering,

packaging, and distributing live sports content—from the stadium to the

fan device.

Step 1: Gather footage via live channel. Collect live footage from the

source via live cameras on the ground.

Step 2: Live video encoding via an on-premises appliance connected to

the live video source.

Step 3: Live video processing. Ingest the live feed and transcode into

multiple bitrate HLS.

Step 4: Origination and JIT packaging. Just-in-time packaging of

output into HLS, DASH and MSS streaming protocols.


Step 5: CDN (content distribution network). Global distribution for the

HLS, DASH, and MSS versions of the live stream.

Step 6: Delivery to devices. Playback for the live stream supported on

multiple devices.

What makes the cloud especially exciting is that the product doesn’t end

here: cloud solutions can be used to incorporate machine learning and

monetization into the delivery pipeline.

Live ChannelSource

AWS ElementalMediaPackage

Origination andJIT Packaging

AWS ElementalMediaLive

Amazon S3

Live Video Processing

Multiple OTT Devices

Just-in-Time package of theMediaLive output into HLS,

DASH and MSS

Global Distribution for the HLS, DASH and MSS versions

of the live stream

Playback for the live stream

supported on multiple devices

Ingest the live feed andtranscodes into multiple

bitrate HLS

Dual IngestSupport

Demo HLSSource Stream

AmazonCloudFront

Demo PlayerPreview

Content DeliveryNetwork

Amazon S3


To maximize the number of different devices you can target, encode your source at high quality (resolution and bitrate) and transcode the stream into multiple playout resolutions and formats in the cloud. This allows your content to be viewed on computers, set-top boxes, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, and connected TVs.

Use HTTP-based adaptive bit rate (ABR) formats to let each device continually negotiate the highest quality bit-rate stream available. ABR formats automatically adjust the quality of the delivered content to match the bandwidth available to each client device. This greatly reduces buffering, provides a fast start time, and provides an optimal viewing experience for a customer’s available bandwidth.

Live streaming best practices

Choose a streaming solution that complements your company’s existing processes. This will streamline your live streaming video workflow and reduce operational complexity for developers and operators.

Clearly define an end-to-end workflow with a specific and well-understood design for redundancy and failover. Ensure transcoding, packaging, and origination software and settings are optimized for troubleshooting and management at scale.

Use machine learning to enhance the fan experience


Today’s technologies can extend an OTT offering to support exciting new

enhanced fan experiences with self-service machine learning services and

solutions. These offerings are immersive, intelligent, and personalized,

allowing fans to receive personalized content based on their preferences,

viewing habits, and interests.

From personalized ads, to instant replays, to post-game content and opportunities to interact with favorite teams and players, use self-service cloud-based machine learning solutions to create a 360-degree fan experience.


Enhance value through machine learning generated metadataMachine learning (ML) and analytics help you create customized

fan experiences and personalized content that offers additional

opportunities for revenue growth and for building fan loyalty.

Offer relevant content recommendations based on user

analytics. Serve viewers with the right ads at the right time to

maximize revenue. Build brand loyalty by augmenting the

sports-viewing experience with tailored experiences, such as

enhanced coverage.

Machine learning can help you:

• Improve the searchability of your assets.

• Generate value from previously under-utilized content.

• Combine content insights and consumer targeting for

improved monetization.

FAN ENGAGEMENT

PERSONALIZATION

MONETIZATION

Who’s doing it today


Cloud-based live sports OTT delivery is happening all over the world—from smaller markets with limited fan bases to the world’s biggest showcase events. Here’s just a small sample of who’s already in the game, and what they’re doing with cloud technologies to create awesome fan experiences.


TVNZ, New Zealand’s leading free-to-air TV provider, used the cloud to provide coverage of the XXI Commonwealth Games in 2018 on TV, mobile, and connected devices—an undertaking that demanded 24/7 live event, delayed live, and on-demand coverage, with multiple simultaneous live streams. Cloud technologies were utilized to encode channels, and to prepare and distribute live streams to multiple platforms.

Pac-12 Networks is one of the largest live sports producers in the United States, offering coverage of 850 sporting events from 12 of the largest universities in the western region of the United States. Pac-12 Networks uses the cloud for end-to-end delivery of content for web and consumer-facing digital experience apps. Today they enjoy live, linear encoding for 7 linear channels for Pac-12 Now and standardized workflows for consistently high video quality delivered to any device.


MLBAM (MLB Advanced Media) Statcast is using the cloud to give fans, broadcasters, and teams a better understanding of the dynamics and athleticism of the game of Major League Baseball in real-time. MLB Advanced Media is the internet and interactive branch of Major League Baseball.

NFL NextGen Stats enhances the user experience with analytics to provide deeper insights into the game. They’re using the cloud to capture a variety of data like real-time location, speed, and acceleration. In the future, they’re looking to machine learning solutions that can predict formations, routes, and key events in games.


Odds Ballklubb is one of Norway’s premier European football clubs. Instead of selling its broadcast rights, the club decided to create its own OTT infrastructure. The club uses Crystallize, a cloud-based platform for building and managing subscription-based video services from Norwegian product developer Snowball Digital to deliver both video processing and delivery technology, and e-commerce capabilities, all powered by AWS services. The club used cloud services to launch a new subscription-based live and on-demand video service, Gullpila, bringing the service live in only six weeks from project kickoff.

FuboTV offers more than 35 streaming sports channels for “cord-cutters” moving away from traditional cable TV packages. They’re using machine learning to monetize unused ad inventory from a diverse array of network content to keep subscription fees low by automatically inserting targeted, personalized advertising into live video streams.

https://snowball.digital/

https://gullpila.no/


Live sports providers use the cloud to scale seamlessly, encode and deliver live video streams with low latency, and create consistent underlying technologies to replace far-flung on-premises stations and studios.

Learn how to get started


Learn more about how your organization can get started building

live sports OTT workflows on the cloud. Amazon Web Services

(AWS) provides both the scalable, highly available infrastructure

required to build live streaming workflows, and packaged services

from AWS Elemental, the video processing arm of AWS, to help

automate all aspects of the live sports OTT production experience.

Learn more about Live Sports Workflows on the cloud.

https://www.elemental.com/applications/live-sports-workflows

https://www.elemental.com/applications/live-sports-workflows

© 2018, Amazon Web Services (AWS).AWS Elemental is a registered trademark of Amazon Web Services.

All rights reserved.

Documents

Setting the stage - SportsPro€¦ · using the cloud to deliver live sports OTT experiences, ... • 10.3M concurrent viewers watched the Hotstar IPL Cricket match in ... the disruptor