Arqiva implements all-cloud solution for North American multi-platform broadcaster

Challenge 

In what can only be described as a ‘traditional’ model, Arqiva had been delivering full time channels and events for this OTT platform for a number of years. The live sports feeds were acquired from the BT Tower, brought into Arqiva’s infrastructure by fibre, before being processed on dedicated hardware. Distribution to the customers OTT service (and a little more processing) happened in the public cloud. The whole process was robust, reliable and it worked. But, as Arqiva’s technology evolved, it spotted an opportunity to bring a new level of agility to the relationship.

Solution

In the mature and competitive US sports market, the international and European events that our customer offered could be considered a little ‘niche’ by NBA or NFL standards. To ensure solid returns, the broadcaster needs to walk a fine line between keeping operating costs low and audience choice and quality high.

By leveraging its new all-cloud Virtual Connect contribution and distribution solution, Arqiva knew it could continue to deliver for our customer as it always had – just do it a whole lot better.

Virtual Connect’s cloud-native workflow brings the live feeds directly into the cloud, where they’re processed and distributed to our customer’s OTT platform. It’s fast and resilient. And, because there’s no need for local infrastructure or dedicated hardware anywhere in the chain, it’s supremely flexible.

With this solution in place, it’s now a simple task for our customer to adapt to audience trends: spin up full time channels, test the audience and then, if the demand drops after a period of time, take the channels down again. All in record time and without any commercial penalties.

There’s no need for the broadcaster to invest in its own infrastructure (a key objective from the beginning of the relationship), and they aren’t tied into to a long-term deal because Arqiva is investing in hardware on its behalf.

Having helped the customer take this evolutionary step, Arqiva will continue to provide assured delivery today, and help it embrace new innovations, technologies and approaches tomorrow.

Results 

• On-demand live sports full-time channel delivery in the cloud
• Ability to spin up and shut down full time channels
• Agility to quickly align to changing consumer/market trends
• Eliminates commercial barriers and reduces cost
• Ensures profitable content delivery
• Ongoing partnership embraces new technologies and models

Contact Arqiva

If you need a trusted and adaptable partner to take the complexity out of delivering live sports and events content to new audiences, get in touch. We’ll explore your options together.

To discuss how we can support your single or multi-event sports programme, speak to our experts.