Use the cloud to deliver

great fan experiences

A GUIDE FOR LIVE SPORTS OTT BROADCASTERS,
RIGHTS HOLDERS, AND CONTENT CREATORS
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

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 1

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

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,

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 3

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; Sports viewing
cricket fans span the globe, taking in every bouncer and every on OTT is
yorker for their favorite national teams; and the whole world stops
becoming a fan
for super-events like the World Cup and the Olympics.
favorite, allowing
Today fans can interact directly with their favorite athletes on
for greater
social media, watch replay clips from smartphones while in the
stadium, listen to live postgame press conferences, and much
engagement
more. In today’s sports world, there’s a digital relationship and increased
between fans and the game—one that leads to increased fan viewership.
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
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 4
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.
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 5
By designing and delivering great live sports experiences and > 150 MILLION
delivering them with cutting-edge cloud technologies, you can NUMBER OF FANS
capitalize on every aspect of the end-user experience to drive FOLLOWING THE TOP
audience growth and revenues. THREE PROFESSIONAL
In this eBook, you’ll learn how the cloud is helping broadcasters,
ATHLETES WORLDWIDE
ON TWITTER1
rights holders, startups, and every live sports video developer in
between deliver superior fan experiences, while saving money
45% and 23%
on infrastructure and maximizing revenues with cutting-edge
NUMBER OF GEN
technology. You’ll learn about organizations around the world
Z AND YOUNGER
using the cloud to deliver live sports OTT experiences, as well as MILLENNIAL FANS,
monetize and personalize OTT content with machine learning. RESPECTIVELY, WHO
You’ll be introduced to a live sports workflow for delivering USE SNAPCHAT TO
streaming video using the cloud, and you’ll learn how you can find ACCESS SPORTS-
out more and get started with cloud technologies today. 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.”
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 6
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

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 8

• 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

3
Source: “GenZ and younger Millennial sports fans are driving fundamental changes
in programming, platforms and purchasing.”

4
Source: Conviva.

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

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 9

The improved video capabilities of modern mobile devices make A whopping
it possible for great live sports content to reach far-flung fan
86 percent
bases worldwide. Higher quality video capabilities help drive video
consumption on mobile devices. In tandem with video quality,
of Americans
higher consumption levels also drive the adoption of large-scale, consider
top-quality video encoding technologies so that video can be themselves sports
delivered seamlessly and with exceptional broadcast quality to fans, and the
mobile devices worldwide.
number is almost
The thirst for instant and consistent connections with the game, even between
the personalities, and the happenings around fans’ favorite teams
men (92 percent)
and athletes drive additional opportunities for live sports video
providers. Today, you gain insights into the content your audience
and women (80
wants so that you can drive audience and revenue growth. percent).6
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.
6
Source: “GenZ and younger Millennial sports fans are driving fundamental changes
in programming, platforms and purchasing.”
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 10
What this means for rights holders,
broadcasters, and distributors
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.

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

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 12

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 [With the cloud] we can
holders, and disruptive cloud-first content providers, can test new monetization
take advantage of today’s technologies to support great fan strategies and even
experiences. launch new live linear
Rights holders and studios aim to serve content to fans that services in a matter of
exceeds expectations, from in-stadium content to enhanced video minutes without worrying
like postgame press conferences and athlete features. Their value about infrastructure, so
comes from the brands they’ve created and nurtured to build an we devote our time and
engaged, excited fan base, whether for an exceedingly popular resources to advancing the
sport where fans number in the hundreds of millions, or for niche value of our offerings.
sports with a comparatively small, but intensely loyal, following.
Rights holders also include sports leagues and teams, where David Gandler
CEO and co-founder of
individual audiences for specific events may be smaller, but add
FuboTV
up with volume-based offerings.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 13

Broadcast channels partner with rights holders to deliver
compelling sports content and adding additional value through
specialized additional content like commentary, features, Both traditional
documentaries, and other offerings for loyal fans. They’re broadcasters and
unlocking a new dimension to the viewing experience with real- rights holders—
time statistics showing the “game behind the game.”
and disruptive
Distributors create the direct connection between the sports cloud-first cord-
team or league, the fan, and the content distributor. Distributors
cutting content
today are creating apps to ensure fans can access content
anytime, anywhere, on any device, even when they’re away providers—can
from their TV. take advantage
Disruptors provide custom content to superfans who are of today’s cloud
motivated to unplug from traditional cable providers because technologies to
technology has finally caught up with sport-specific fan bases. support great fan
As just one example, customized ad content can be served experiences.
to fans to increase monetization using cloud-based machine
learning technologies.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 14

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

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 16

• 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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 17

• Have access to continually-evolving technologies that The cloud can help you
can help you understand your audience’s preferences, test with every aspect of live
concepts quickly, and serve personalized content (such as sports OTT production,
targeted ads, captions, and localized content) to specific including:
subsets of your audience.
• Live acquisition, content
Cloud technologies are the key to these opportunities. Amazon creation, and post-
Web Services (AWS) has developed purpose-built media services production

and solutions that can deliver the performance, reliability, • Digital asset management
and supply chain
and video quality of broadcast-grade hardware infrastructure,
• Machine learning and
while unlocking powerful new capabilities to enhance the
analytics
user experience—and that means delivering live sports OTT
• Monetization, ad insertion,
experiences becomes easier, less expensive, more reliable, and and personalization
higher-quality with the use of the AWS cloud.
• Content distribution
(OTT, broadcasting, and
publishing)

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 18

How the cloud enables live
sports delivery
A live sports OTT workflow simplifies and automates many aspects of
Example workflow
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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 20

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.

Ingest the live feed and Just-in-Time package of the Global Distribution for the
transcodes into multiple MediaLive output into HLS, HLS, DASH and MSS versions
bitrate HLS DASH and MSS of the live stream

AWS Elemental AWS Elemental Amazon

MediaLive MediaPackage CloudFront

Live Channel Live Video Processing Origination and Content Delivery

Source JIT Packaging Network
Multiple OTT Devices
Playback for the
live stream
supported on
multiple devices
Amazon S3 Amazon S3

Demo HLS Demo Player

Source Stream Preview
Dual Ingest
Support

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 21

Live streaming best practices
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.
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 the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 22
Use machine learning to enhance
the fan experience
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.

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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 24

Enhance value through machine
learning generated metadata
Machine learning (ML) and analytics help you create customized
fan experiences and personalized content that offers additional
FAN ENGAGEMENT
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.
PERSONALIZATION
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

MONETIZATION
improved monetization.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 25

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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 27

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.
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.
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 28
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.
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.
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 29
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.
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.
Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 30
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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 31

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.

Use the cloud to deliver great fan experiences 33

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