GigaOM Radar Edge Platform Leader & Outperformer 2024 | 
“Streaming TV shows, movies, and other types of video over the Internet to all manner of devices, once a fringe habit, is now a squarely mainstream practice. Even people still paying for cable or satellite service often also have Netflix or Hulu accounts.” said Walt Mossberg former principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Nielsen’s June 2024 report of The Gauge reveals that time spent streaming soared to 40.3% of total TV usage. This surpasses the previous record held by cable in June 2021, marking a historic shift in TV consumption.* This shift in the last three years shows how quickly the TV landscape is rapidly evolving, with streaming services increasingly dominating audience share.
In sports streaming, the numbers are amplified. There are now over 50 niche OTT services sports like chess, pickleball, and surfing-specific OTT services in the U.S. alone, leading to increased competition among providers and confusion for consumers when deciding where to watch sports.
For those of you immersed in the industry, hold on tight!
From the latest college football game to Wimbledon to an esport league game to a FIFA World Cup soccer game that garners the attention of the world stage, people can watch all kinds of live streams anytime and anywhere. Streaming can be complicated, with many interconnected dependencies that all need to be wrangled at the time of the broadcast. Whether broadcasting to 1,000 viewers or 1 million plus, users now compare internet streaming performance to traditional television experience, meaning they do not tolerate interruptions or technical difficulties. With so many choices available to consumers, squandering the attention you have attracted with an unreliable experience is a negative brand experience you might not recover from.
This multi-faceted process leads to diverse needs, and that’s where the challenges can lie when charting the right plan for customers.
The Challenge
Challenges abound from start to finish when it comes to streaming–from making sure your content is high quality and secure to ensuring it gets delivered to your desired audience in a timely manner…and everything in between.
Below, we dig a little deeper into the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure successful streaming:
- High Demand Peaks: Viewer traffic often spikes during major sporting events, championships, and finals, which can lead to buffering issues or a compromised streaming quality.
- Security: Piracy and unauthorized access to content are a big threat to your bottom line. Plus, additional measures may be needed to ensure compliance with rights agreements.
- Delivery: Ensuring efficient file delivery can be challenging, especially when larger file sizes associated with HDR, High-Definition, and 4K+ content are warranted.
- User Experience: A seamless and intuitive user experience, including easy navigation, quick load times, and minimal buffering, requires top-notch, continuous management.
- Geographical Distribution: Due to varying internet infrastructures and connectivity speeds, delivering consistent and high-quality streaming across different regions or countries is difficult.
The Solution
So, what’s a company to do? Facing all these challenges can be overwhelming, but we have built an innovative solution that can fit seamlessly into your plan. We heard you loud and clear when you said you needed flexibility. Offering an end-to-end platform to customers who want and need that, but also addressing the industry’s challenges head-on by offering flexible, tailored solutions. Whether a client needs just one piece of our tech stack or a more comprehensive package, we’re committed to finding the right technical solution to meet their needs. An example is our modular Smartplay offering, allowing customers to continue to use their encoding and still get all the best-in-class features in Uplynk.
“Customers are coming to us with specific needs, and we’re utilizing the Uplynk Platform to meet those demands by offering modular solutions,” said Senior Director, Software Development Engineering Shahar Mor. “We’re excited to roll out these new features with partners and customers. Today’s clients need from clients are to make streaming easier by creating a new ecosystem or improving the existing ecosystem.”
Bringing 20 years of proven success, Edgio offers flexible, streamlined, lower-cost solutions in one simple, powerful environment that allows you to acquire, manage, monetize, and deliver your content. We’re meeting the requirements of the most complex workflows, saving time, and maintaining the highest video quality.
In addition to our flexible, top-notch technology, we also listened to what the market needs are, making sure we understand what clients and customers need.
“Through market research, we’ve received an overwhelming amount of feedback from customers who value the core components of Uplynk but don’t need an end-to-end solution,” said Edgio VP Product Management Kyle Faber. “Uplynk is ahead of the curve when it comes to manifest technology. Our manifest generation allows for a true 1:1 experience versus group ad targeting, significantly boosting advertising opportunities, which is what everyone is looking for.”
Find out more key details below:
- Teamwork & Trust: Our Live Ops team, who orchestrates over 35,000 live events each year, does the pre-planning, game time execution, and post-event management. Uplynk is routinely tested up to 10M concurrent viewers with the ability to scale higher.
- Security: Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls access to copyrighted material and lets content creators manage user interactions, including device limits and sharing permissions. Since broadcasters invest millions in these rights, DRM failures pose risks not just to rights holders but also to leagues and their partners, who rely on these secure measures.
- Low Latency: We are committed to bringing you the latency you need. Learn more in this podcast.
- Scalability and Infrastructure: Unlike TV distribution, the internet was not originally built for massive events. But new mediums can help with data offloading and provide solutions for future broadcasting, reducing network and CDN strain while delivering precise digital monetization.
- User Experience: The bottom line is that users want to find content easily and seamlessly, without thinking about the technical aspects. That’s where we come in and make you shine.
- Quality and Connectivity: As streaming becomes the primary way to consume content, the demand for high-quality streaming turns it into a utility. Edgio Delivery provides the last mile. However, technological advances in streaming are crucial for infrastructure and connectivity speeds.
Proof is in the Pudding: Hear how we transformed streaming for others
- Canadian Hockey League: “High-quality viewing experience is critically important to us. With Edgio, we were able to move from an on-prem solution to a fully cloud-based solution without losing any control.” – John McCauley, VP Marketing & Media
- Managed acquisition, live management, and syndication: When EverPass Media a live sports streaming service for commercial establishments needed help with its goal to acquire, monetize, and deliver content to bars, restaurants, hotels, and certain other commercial venues, the team turned to Edgio. Uplynk acquired content from broadcast networks and the NFL, monetized the relevant ad pods, and managed the events from start to finish every Sunday during the NFL’s regular season.
- Monetization on CTV across 2,500+ screens in 90+ airports: “We wouldn’t be able to monetize the NFL or our other live sports without Edgio. Many other providers promised they could deliver but couldn’t. Edgio was able to deliver.” – Lynnwood Bibbens, CEO & Founder, ReachTV
Edgio is always looking around the corner for the next best thing, and just because we have created what we think is a major problem solver for streaming, we’re not going to stop looking around the corner for ways to make it even better.
In the immortal words of Vince Lombardi, “Perfection is not attainable; but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
Learn more about our powerful Uplynk.
*The Gauge’s first publication was May 2021
