What Wowza Brings to the Sports Streaming Table: An Interview with SVG

Gothia Cup, the world’s largest youth football (soccer for us Americans) tournament, livestreams all of their games with cameras designed to track movement on the field. And we’re not just talking about a few games here and there. According to the organization itself, they’re anticipating 2500 matches will be live streamed from 50 different pitches worldwide. Each match can be viewed online or via their app and will include a post-game highlight reel made form repurposed footage. In short, Gothia Cup is reimagining how the world can access and appreciate youth sports – and they are riding Wowza’s wave to get there.

It’s no wonder then that Wowza’s Chief Product Officer, Ashique Anwar, mentioned them when talking with Sports Video Group’s (SVG) Joe Hosken at the 2024 Sport Production Summit in advance of IBC. Gothia is a prime example of how niche and youth sports are competing in the streaming space alongside professional sporting organizations. They also exemplify how Wowza’s technology answers the call where sports streaming needs are concerned.

Watch the video to learn more about Wowza’s strengths and recent developments that benefit the sports streaming industry or read on for a summary of highlights.

   

Live Transcoding

Let’s start with what Wowza does best. Live transcoding and packaging of video files has been a Wowza strength for over 17 years. At present, Wowza transcodes an average of 30 million hours of live video each month (and with an SLA uptime of 99.95%). In other words, we can handle scale reliably.

Why does this matter to sports broadcasters? Put simply, when it comes to a sports stream’s audience, the more the merrier. Larger audiences lead to more revenue, greater visibility (which also leads to more revenue), and a stronger community around fan engagement. But larger audiences won’t do any sports broadcaster good if their streaming infrastructure can’t handle the scale. That’s where having a partner with proven ability to delivery real-time video at scale without sacrificing quality comes in.

Learn more about transcoding and why it’s important.

 

Flexible Deployment Models

Wowza’s flagship product, Wowza Streaming Engine, is builder-friendly media server software that can be deployed on-premises. Several years ago, Wowza released a cloud-based option, Wowza Video, which was hosted on Wowza servers and offered an easy-to-start option to those who just wanted to start streaming. Now, Wowza offers a hybrid option for those who want CDN-access, analytics, and best-in-class Wowza Flowplayer associated with our cloud-based solution without sacrificing the flexibility afforded by Wowza Streaming Engine.

No two sports streaming solutions are alike. Some sports broadcasters want more control over platform features and integration. Others want access to an expansive global video CDN that can be used for broader and more reliable reach. Still more want to make sure that the online video player through which their content is viewed is as viewer-friendly and high-quality as possible. Wowza’s flexible deployment models and flexible features make it a good fit for a wide range of needs.

Learn more about Wowza’s deployment options.

 

Tech Partnerships

At this year’s IBC, Wowza went all out promoting long-standing and new tech partnerships. Specifically, we demoed in the Zixi, MainConcept, and v-Nova booths. We also demoed integrations with Maestro, LiveLike, Spyrosoft, Applicaster, and more in our meeting rooms. We have long recognized that a successful streaming solution can often really be a complex ecosystem of integrated technologies, making it challenging for many publishers and broadcasters to build exactly what they need. Thanks to our network of partnerships, we can provide a wide array of vetted combinations.

Sports broadcasters rarely stop at just live event streaming (and if they do, they are falling behind). More and more of these streaming platforms look for ways to engage fans through interactive chats, live betting, live-to-VOD highlights, and more. Standing out in the sports streaming space means thinking outside of the box. As Ashique puts it in our interview with SVG, interoperability is key for a lot of sports broadcasters looking for complex solutions.

Learn more about Wowza’s tech partnerships.

 

High-Density Transcoding

Included in our many tech partnerships are AMD and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Last year, we announced our collaboration with AMD over the Alveo U30 accelerator card (now Xilinx). The combination of this card with Wowza Streaming Engine made for truly high-efficiency transcoding for high-density streaming use cases. In other words, we helped companies send more streams faster without losing quality or reliability. More recently, we combined forces with AWS, announcing Wowza Streaming Engine’s compatibility with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) VT1 instances. This uses the same technology while reducing server demands and benefitting from the AWS EC2 VT1 price performance.

That’s a whole lot of words to say that Wowza has been working hard to continue our legacy as the best transcoding solution in the business – technology that is essential for successful scaling and reliably delivery. Sports broadcasters can take advantage of adaptive bitrate streaming to maximize quality without risking buffering or other delays, meaning viewers can see all of the action in close to real-time.

Learn more about Wowza’s collaboration with AMD and AWS.

 

New VOD Capabilities

Live streaming has long been Wowza’s core strength. However, we’ve been expanding our VOD capabilities to offer a more holistic streaming solution to our customers. This started with basic content storage and management, including live-to-VOD recording. However, we’ve more recently worked to significantly improve our platform’s user-interface and functionality. Updates include enhanced end-to-end analytics, including player-specific analytics; AI-enhanced metadata for content libraries; playlist creation tools; improved monetization capabilities like ad-insertion, and more.

When most people think of live sports streaming, they’re likely thinking of live events. However, the pressure to stand out among streaming platforms means a lot of sports broadcasters and content publishers are looking to VOD to supplement their offerings. This could mean repackaging once live streams for viewing on-demand. It could also mean repurposing content into highlight reels, bloopers, and more to make evergreen content. Finally, some sport streaming platforms will create on-demand content via training footage, interviews, fan content, etc. It’s essential that these platforms can easily capture, organize, and store live and on-demand content in order to capture viewers with versatile offerings.

Learn more about Wowza’s VOD capabilities.

 

Conclusion: A Platform Built for You

Ashique’s message to SVG (and the sports streaming community as a whole) is simple. When you are building an effective live streaming platform, you need to think beyond the basics. Yes, you want a high-quality reliable and scalable transcoding solution. However, you also want a streaming platform provider that will grow with your needs, helping you to build a streaming solution that covers all your basis through robust partnerships, that actively innovates to improve the user experience, and understands that a good live streaming option necessarily includes a little VOD.