The Rugby Network – Powering the Growth in North American Rugby.

A 2020 Octagon study commissioned by Major League Rugby revealed that awareness and familiarity with Major League Rugby did not always translate into TV viewership and the primary driver to increase sports fans’ interest and engagement with MLR was making it easier to watch matches in North America.

MLR tackled this issue by partnering with RugbyPass to create a dedicated digital home for Rugby in North America – The Rugby Network. The Rugby Network was built around a succinct vision and purpose: To support the growth of Rugby in the US through a centralized, fan-centric approach to awareness and engagement.

MLR and RugbyPass built an interconnected network of digital properties driving interest & engagement in Rugby, guided by four key principles:
1. Free access (removing all barriers to access and eliminating piracy)
2. An Inclusive network covering all aspects of rugby in North America
3. Content that appeals to all fan segments (from avid fans to prospective fans)
4. Grow the sport and drive the business of Major League Rugby/its member teams

In just its first season, The Rugby Network exceeded all its performance goals via its website and apps on iOS, Android and Roku:
● More than 45,000 registered subscribers
● More than 10.6 million minutes of live and on-demand Rugby consumed
● Seasonal streaming audience increased 383% versus the legacy third-party OTT provider (ESPN+) with the average viewership/match rising an incredible 76% year-on-year
● Despite lower linear TV ratings, Octagon sports tracker revealed a 30% increase in the size of the overall rugby fan base and 21% increase in MLR awareness since the launch of TRN.

DAZN is the first truly global sports streaming platform, raising the standard for the kind of experience that fans expect from an over-the-top platform and leading by way of innovation and disruption.

But, disrupting the sports broadcasting industry in a normal year is challenging, let alone maintaining momentum as an OTT platform during a pandemic. While most of the world paused, DAZN stayed nimble, embracing cloud-based remote production technology to quickly scale on-demand and live content, from the PDC taking fans into the homes of elite darts players for 32 consecutive nights to three days the first-of-its-kind NFL virtual draft.

As live sports returned in full force, DAZN doubled down in core markets, including Italy, where the platform was named primary Serie A broadcaster in a complete domestic coup.

Six months in, pound-for-pound king Canelo faced the chaotic Brit Billy Joe Saunders, becoming the most engaged event in the history of the DAZN platform. DAZN soared to the No.1 sports app in 57 countries. That weekend, DAZN was THE most downloaded and highest-grossing sports app globally as the fight was watched live on DAZN in 177 countries.

In June, when the game changed yet again. Twice. First, DAZN struck a five-year global deal with Matchroom, as the boxing promoter ended a 25-year partnership with Sky Sports in the UK to build on the success and momentum of with new disruptor DAZN. Then, DAZN announced it was the new global broadcaster of the UEFA Women’s Champions League and unveiled a transformative partnership with YouTube that will make the competition live and free for fans worldwide for the first time.

Through it all, DAZN never lost sight of the fundamental belief on which it was founded – that sports should be democratic, enjoyed by anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Game. Changed.

Optus Sport is an OTT-streaming service owned by Optus, which is the second-largest telecommunications company in Australia. Optus Sport is the home of the world’s best football including Premier League,
Barclay’s FA Women’s Super League and J.League, as well as offering a variety of sports drills and fitness
workouts.

Founded in 2016, Optus Sport has significantly grown each year, resulting in an active
subscriber base who are highly engaged with the live and VOD content offering. With world-class apps on both iOS and Android devices, as well as across the most popular set-top boxes and smart TVs, Optus Sport has redefined what an OTT content provider is capable of in 2021.

On top of an extremely strong on-platform presence, Optus Sport also has a large and highly engaged social media following of over 1 million followers, bringing the sports stories to life across live matches, highlights, shows, documentaries, podcasts and social activations.

Optus Sport is entering the Platform of the Year category to showcase the successes across a challenging year for Sport and media consumption.

Optus Sport has achieved a lot in the last year including incredible year-on-year growth across the 2020/2021 Premier League season, a unique lockdown solution keeping families and fans engaged by offering sports drills and a large variety of fitness workouts, and a record-breaking UEFA Euro 2020 event, resulting in over 900k Australians watching the dramatic tournament Final between Italy and England.

The International Olympic Committee is a not-for-profit, civil, non-governmental, international organisation made up of volunteers which is committed to building a better world through sport. Launched by the IOC in May 2021, Olympics.com is the new consumer-facing platform that provides a single, people-centric digital presence that utilises Olympic digital and social media channels to drive engagement and deliver content and communications. Offering a comprehensive source for Olympic information, news and original content, Olympics.com allows for improved, streamlined digital engagement during and between each Games. The platform is the culmination of a historic two-year journey of rebuilding the digital experience from the ground up. The first step was to create a new people-centric brand expression – Olympics.com – to unify three different websites (Tokyo2020.org, OlympicChannel.com, and Olympic.org) and two mobile applications (Olympic Channel app and Olympic app) to create a single Website and App under this new expression. The results of these efforts were also without precedent. More than 178 million unique users visited the Olympics Web & App during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, making it the most digitally engaged Olympic Games ever, more than doubling the results of Rio 2016. The success was not just limited to the Olympic space however. During July 2021, it is estimated that Olympics.com was the most visited sports website in the world, according to Similarweb.

UFC FIGHT PASS is the world’s leading streaming service for combat sports and is available in more than 200 countries and territories.

UFC FIGHT PASS offers subscribers unlimited access to live UFC FIGHT PASS Prelims; live mixed martial arts and combat sports from around the world; original series and historical programming; special features; behind-the-scenes content; in-depth interviews; and up-to-the minute reports on the world of combat sports.

Subscribers also have 24/7 access to the world’s largest fight library, featuring more than 20,000 bouts from dozens of combats sports organizations, as well as every fight in UFC history.

UFC FIGHT PASS was nominated for “Platform of the Year” for being an international product that provides both live and on-demand combat sports content to consumers. In 2021, UFC FIGHT PASS has seen double digit growth in subscribers and has expanded upon its exclusive content offering.

Tennis Channel’s new, digital-first OTT platform, Tennis Channel International, created in partnership with Sportradar and launched in May 2020, offers tennis fans a unique viewing experience. Thanks to a combination of a 24/7 linear-programmed streaming channel, a dedicated instructional channel, exclusive original programming and innovative live tennis productions, Tennis Channel International has grown exponentially and has seen subscriber growth, session time increases, and the rapid growth of our free ad-supported streaming channels. Tennis Channel and Sportradar are honoured to enter Tennis Channel International for the “Platform of the Year” award.

PM Connect’s mission is to make in-demand content accessible to all.

We specialise in mobile distribution for major OTT services – connecting brands to new audiences, growing subscribers and driving revenue.

By plugging in with us, we navigate the complexities of the mobile operator ecosystem.

Founded in 2012, PM Connect now has a global reach of 1 billion consumers in 40+ territories, processing over 100 million mobile payments per month.

We operate across Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, the Middle East – with offices in the UK, Paris, Dubai, Singapore and Johannesburg – pairing global expertise with local support.

PM Connect is entering Innovation of The Year at the 2021 SportsPro OTT Awards because we are changing the game for accessibility of D2C Sports OTT consumption.

Announced in April 2021, our recent launch as distribution and payments partner for the NBA League Pass is the proof of concept we needed to supercharge growth in sports D2C OTT, and accompany sports rights holders on their journey beyond linear TV deals – all via the power of mobile.

The partnership has expanded the reach of NBA League Pass to new fans in Europe and Africa, with PM Connect providing connections to over 300 million consumers across 20 mobile network operators (MNOs) in seven countries.

Fans can now add a NBA League Pass subscription to their mobile phone bill via direct carrier billing (DCB) – without the need of a credit card.

This gives huge opportunity for D2C growth – as NBA League Pass can reach and monetise consumers it otherwise couldn’t, while also giving sports fans access to the world class content they crave. We have already driven over 100k new subscribers in a matter of months.

Our strategy complements other marketing and payment methods – but will disrupt how sports content is paid for and consumed forever.

The NBA has a decades-long commitment to engaging its Brazilian fans and has always adapted to the changing landscape across sports, media and entertainment to meet their needs. Given the shift in viewership trends in recent years, NBA Brazil developed a unique strategy to revamp its live-game and content distribution plan centred on establishing a presence on several digital platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.

To reach fans directly and deliver on the league’s goal of revamping its approach to content distribution, the NBA expanded its marketing partnership with Budweiser, making the beer company an Official Media Partner of the NBA in Brazil. The NBA and Budweiser launched this groundbreaking first-of-its-kind partnership in the country on Feb. 25, collaborating to livestream NBA games and produce original localized content available across a variety of channels and platforms – including NBA and Budweiser’s social media channels – throughout the regular season and playoffs.

The NBA and Budweiser placed a focus on generating a wide range of content for casual and core fans alike, distributing it across a multitude of channels to make it easily accessible and joining forces to create a plethora of basketball-themed shows that bridge the gap between the sport, entertainment and lifestyle. This variety of content complemented regular weekly Budweiser livestreams of NBA games, keeping fans immersed in the developments around the league during and between game action. The NBA and Budweiser aim to disrupt the content creation landscape and push boundaries in terms of how sports partnerships can celebrate their fanbase’s other passion points.

Bleachr elevates the fan experience with its revolutionary CrowdVIEW LIVE platform, a first-of-its-kind interactive streaming platform to engage sports fans. The exciting new platform takes OTT streaming to the next level by changing the paradigm of passive viewing to something genuinely interactive. As a result, fans are no longer simply viewers of content; they can interact around it and even create their own content to upload and share with others.

The CrowdVIEW LIVE platform radically transforms the current sports broadcast landscape, serving as a broadcast studio in the palm of the user’s hand. It empowers both teams and individual streamers with a low-cost solution to build fandom, monetize their audience, and capture valuable data through gamification.

Bleachr’s CrowdVIEW LIVE is real, raw, and authentic. A next-level broadcast platform for the next-generation of fans.

It was a momentous day for Amagi when NBC Sports Group selected the company for the 4K UHD playout of its production of the XXXII Olympiad Games, held in Tokyo, Japan, from July 23 – August 8, 2021, on the Olympic Channel. This partnership reiterates the range of flexibilities and opportunities that cloud-powered technologies afford to broadcasters.

Amagi’s award-winning channel playout platform, Amagi CLOUDPORT, enhanced with UHD live orchestration capabilities, was the foundational technology platform for the Olympics coverage this year on NBC Olympic Channel. Amagi is among the very few in the industry who can facilitate a 4K UHD playout over the cloud. Through the virtualized platform, NBC was not only able to manage their workflows efficiently but democratize it by allowing different functions to operate from different locations remotely.

This partnership brought the inherent advantages of the cloud into the spotlight:
•Circumventing the challenges of managing an on-premise operation (a pandemic induced handicap)
•Provisioning resources based on unique requirements, unlike hardware heavy systems that leave no room for automatic scaling up and down of resources
•Creating variations of live content – live-live, live-recorded, deferred-live
•Feature-rich, high-quality visuals using advanced graphic-enabling technologies.

NBC Sports Group has been able to take the splendour of the world’s most premium, highly anticipated sporting event to the streaming space with Amagi’s cloud-led solutions. With its UHD playout, Amagi was largely able to replicate the feel of a stadium and provide a high-quality, low latency, feature-rich viewing experience for fans.

With this engagement, Amagi has been able to provide greater momentum for the rising cloud broadcast revolution in sports.

Buzzer is a new, mobile-first platform that connects fans with the most exciting moments in live sports.

Buzzer is submitting for Innovation of the Year because the platform is advancing the sports media industry by simplifying and improving access to live sports where and how next-generation fans are watching. Buzzer not only aligns with trends in the evolving consumption habits of Gen Z fans, but also simultaneously helps rights holders engage with these new and younger audiences that are mobile-first.

DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH
The Bundesliga is the premier professional association football league in Germany and the football league with the highest average stadium attendance worldwide.
The DFL is responsible for connecting and inspiring football fans around the globe. One core task is to drive internationalization by driving passion for the Bundesliga with contagious content, using the highest technical innovation standards.
https://www.dfl.de

TeraVolt GmbH
TeraVolt GmbH  is specialized in the development of innovative and pioneering digital TV experiences in a transforming TV economy. TVXRAY is the foundation of the Bundesliga Interactive Feed.

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2. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed by the DFL and TeraVolt is a new innovative product, designed for a mobile digital-first TV world, facing new usage requirements and a highly diversified device world.
The idea is based on three principles: orientation, de-linearization, and personalization.
All data of a matchday at the push of a button. The timeline shows the structure of the broadcast, all important statistics are synchronized with the course of the game. Everything is on the first screen, where it is consumed.
All important Highlights are presented at the push of a button, immediately switch to a parallel game and get an overview there or subscribe to it´s
video alerts.

3. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed is a B2B(2C) product offer from DFL to its domestic and international media partners. The multi-layer format can be implemented within the media partners’ OTT platform through software development kits. The product is built and designed on top of the TeraVolt´s SaaS product TVXRAY.
Key elements  are a personalized conference mode for simultaneous matches with video alerts, real-time highlights for each match, clickable TV graphics, and live statistics. The experience is a first screen experience for all common devices.

Zixi has spent 15 years perfecting one thing: Live broadcast-quality video over IP at scale. The Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) is used by media companies to source, manage and distribute live events and live linear channels over any IP network, any protocol, any cloud provider and any edge device. The SDVP is the unique integration of four components (Protocols, Video Solutions Stack, the Intelligent Data Platform, and ZEN Master) that enable broadcast-quality live video delivery workflows to be intelligently and centrally provisioned, deployed, managed and monitored using software and integrated devices, regardless of the underlying network infrastructure.

Over the years, Zixi has enabled broadcast quality delivery of high-quality, live sports programming across the OTT ecosystem at ultra-low latency. Zixi’s SDVP helps sports content producers and distributors address the challenges of live video distribution including transitioning from traditional hardware-defined legacy distribution models to software-based solutions; adopting more economical public networks for transport; maintaining broadcast-quality continuity with remote production and engineering; and delivering content across an increasingly complex supply chain to a myriad of endpoints. Enabling top tier content delivery for organizations around the world including NBC sports, NHL, fuboTV, EA Sports, NFL, Willow, Imagica Live, Fox Sportes, K League, TUDN, J. League, Indian Premiere League and more, Zixi helps sports content providers deliver premium viewing experiences across a wide range of connected devices and applications.

StreamAMG provides end-to-end OTT to content owners and rights holders across sport, enabling them to deliver and monetise live and on-demand video on their own terms. Our OTT technology, solutions and expertise are giving clubs, leagues and governing bodies the power to reach fans directly with reliable live streaming and top-quality direct-to-consumer platforms.

In the last twelve months StreamAMG has been a lynchpin of the sports industry. In the first (and hopefully only) full season impacted by Covid-19, we have handled record levels of demand for live streaming and delivered a huge number of live events with unmatched reliability, bringing live sport to fans locked out of venues and securing vital revenue for our clients. In a year where sports OTT moved into the mainstream, we have equipped our clients with the tools they need to adapt and thrive in the new landscape.

Sportradar is a leading global provider of sports betting and sports entertainment products and services. Established in 2001, the company is well-positioned at the intersection of the sports, media and betting industries, providing sports federations, news media, consumer platforms and sports betting operators with a range of solutions to help grow their business.

Over the last year, the Sportradar OTT team have been busy, with the industry reaping the benefits. We launched a game-changing OTT monetisation product, that is set to revolutionise the way live streams engage fans and drive revenue. We worked with Tennis Channel to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, using the latest in remote production to provide original digital-first content. We launched a new and innovative OTT platform for French Basketball’s LNB and doubled the number of live streams we are delivering.

Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery solutions, enables media companies and service providers to deliver ultra-high-quality video streaming services to consumers globally. Harmonic leads the industry in making live sports streaming smarter, faster and simpler through technology innovations in software and cloud-based streaming solutions.

Harmonic is entering the SportsPro OTT Awards in the Best Tech Company category for its contribution to the sports streaming industry through groundbreaking technology innovations, market-leading solutions, and global deployment expertise that enable outstanding live sports streaming experiences for fans everywhere. Harmonic empowers sports content owners, service providers and broadcasters with innovative software and cloud solutions that help them provide superior quality, low-latency streaming experiences to viewers, state-of-the-art personalization, and increased monetization opportunities through targeted advertising.

Through Harmonic’s VOS360 cloud streaming platform, Emmy-Award winning EyeQ AI-based encoding technology, and the XOS edge media processing solution, service providers in the sports environment can deliver incredible live sports streaming experiences, while scaling in real-time to address spikes in viewership and achieving unparalleled simplicity, flexibility, cost and operational efficiencies. Harmonic’s SaaS streaming and software solutions have been rapidly adopted by global service providers in the live sports streaming market. Today, Harmonic’s VOS360 offerings power millions of simultaneous streams, thousands of live channels, countless VOD requests and streams hundreds of petabytes for leading service providers around the world.

Blackbird is the world’s fastest, most powerful professional cloud native video editing and publishing platform. A fully-featured editor accessed through any browser and needing only 2Mb/s bandwidth to use, Blackbird provides instant access to video content for the easy creation of content to multiple devices and platforms.

Blackbird is spearheading the revolution in remote production and the total flexibility to create video content by anyone, anywhere, anytime. The platform was conceived around the concepts of resilience and freedom – freedom from location, freedom from proprietary systems and hardware and the resilience to continue to operate with very little resource.

With Blackbird there’s no need for heavy editing infrastructure, expensive bandwidth or lots of hardware and storage. Users can create content collaboratively from any location and since no source media is moved, content ingress and egress is negligible which delivers significant energy and cost efficiencies. Indeed independent research has evidenced that Blackbird generates up to 91% less carbon and is 35% lower cost to run than cloud based and traditional on premise editing systems.

Blackbird’s unique and compelling advantages of speed, freedom, lower cost and reduced carbon emissions are rapidly disrupting the video editing space. Growing revenues by 45% in 2020, sports organisations choosing Blackbird over traditional editing platforms over the past 12 months include NHL, EVS, BT Sport, Tata Communications, Arsenal FC, Athletes Unlimited, Whisper and Riot Games.

Committed to a clean and just society, Blackbird recognises the urgent focus on the societal impact of businesses. We believe that the foundation for effective ESG management is robust and transparent governance and integration of these factors into the way we do business.

Deltatre is the global leader in fan-first experiences, providing technology solutions to sports federations, leagues and media companies, including OTT services, digital and social media applications, content production and data and broadcast services.

Our client portfolio includes Major League Soccer, National Football League, European Tour, Major League Baseball, Sinclair, DFL, DAZN and WWE, and many others.

Over its thirty-five-year history, Deltatre has helped deliver some of the most viewed sporting events in history into the homes of millions of consumers around the world, including numerous World Cup Finals, European Football Championships and Olympic Games.

Over the last 12 months, Deltatre has augmented its trusted reputation across OTT, solidifying its position as a reliable, pioneering, and collaborative tech partner. As such, we believe we have strengthened our claim as the Best Tech Company in this space.

Sceenic is an innovator and leader in understanding today’s customer behaviours and their expectations. In 2013, the company created the Watch Together software solution, adding value to fan engagement and keeping the conversation within their clients’ platforms: BT Sport, PCCW, T-Mobile, NPO, ScreenHits TV, NDR (Eurovision Song Contest), YLE, LaLiga, Virgin Connect Russia, WeLoveGaming eSports, and others. Sceenic provides turnkey SDK’s to deploy services for clients. Sceenic was recently named the Top Industry Performer and the Game Changer in the Sports Innovation Lab Power Play Index for Co-Watching.

Watch Together has made a positive impact since the start of the pandemic, allowing not only the users unable to meet their loved one but everyone ( now at home) to gather with others to share those moments and get closer together.

Clients of Sceenic have enabled their users to keep inside their platforms and have the conversation in one place, #BeInTheMoment. The technology developed by Sceenic since 2013 has brought on a high-quality audio, video and synchronized screen seamless experience to users able to watch the match with friends and family, meet celebrities during the Tour de France 2020 to get insights. Be closer together despite physical distance and have the possibility never to miss a moment again.

ITS ALL ABOUT THIS: https://twitter.com/Duke_0611/status/1355641739890077697

It goes without saying that the pandemic has affected the industry globally. During the first stage of lockdown in 2020, we found ourselves without matches and with our players confined to their homes. Once matches returned, we played in empty stadiums, with no ticketing revenue at all throughout the entirety of the 2020/21 season.

We had to come up with a creative solution to keep our fans engaged, to remain close to them as a club. Without matches and with the players at home during lockdown, we had to drive all of our content production efforts toward a solution that made the most of a bad situation. We came up with RM Playground, a ‘space’ where our fans, players and sponsors came together. It was in this ‘space’ where our players showcased their most intimate and personal side, a side that our fans may not have seen before. And we harnessed the fact that we had already opened an account on Twitch (we subsequently streamed RM Playground on our Twitch account) in order to forge a closer relationship with our fans through content.

As of today, we are the world’s leading football club on Twitch. We’ve streamed more than 370 hours on the platform, with a user base in excess of 200,000. On average we stream for two hours day, with five hours watched each day by our fans on the platform. This illustrates that the decision we took and the strategy we adopted during lockdown have provided a new platform of content for our fans, as well as a valuable source of revenue and digital engagement for the club.

Grabyo is the leading cloud video platform. Grabyo’s browser-based services are the future of broadcast – equipping partners with the tools to manage agile video distribution strategies across all major digital, OTT, broadcast and social platforms.

Delivered as a SaaS platform and accessed through a web browser, the platform has strategic partnerships across OTT, social media and broadcast including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch and Snap. In 2020, Grabyo partners created over 850,000 clips and 21,000 live broadcasts, generating more than 17 billion video views.

Grabyo has been put forward for the Best Lockdown Solution award as the company provided the sports industry with a flexible and scalable platform for live video production, enabling teams to work collaboratively and remotely from anywhere in the world.

Throughout 2020, Grabyo took meaningful steps to enhance its platform to meet the specific needs of the sports industry, working with many of the major broadcasters, media rights holders, leagues and clubs. Grabyo pivoted its product roadmap to ensure that its partners and the industry as a whole had a solution available to continue producing live video content for fans.

From new platform features, such as a new browser-based multiviewer and audio mixer tools, to enhancements to its remote contribution app and vision switching capabilities, Grabyo’s platform developments powered much of the outstanding content and efforts from the sports industry during a trying 18 months. Grabyo has worked closely with its partners to form its short and long-term roadmap to shape the future of video production and realize the potential of the cloud.

Blackbird is the world’s fastest, most powerful professional cloud native video editing and publishing platform. A fully-featured editor accessed through any browser and needing only 2Mb/s bandwidth to use, Blackbird provides instant access to video content for the easy creation of content to multiple devices and platforms.

Like so many sports organisations, the NHL was forced to suspend the 2019-20 season in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than running idle, the League used the pause to prepare a Return to Play action plan which included a revamped remote production workflow designed to create compelling live and behind-the-scenes content while respecting social distance measures.

The most technologically-advanced solution the NHL deployed was using Blackbird to enable its production team to perform professional-grade editing in the cloud during the live game. Since Blackbird needs only a fraction of the bandwidth of other professional edit systems it providing the production team rapid access to video content while the editor or producer was working remotely.

The sophisticated editing tools support up to 12 video tracks and 36 audio tracks while powerful logging and review capabilities enable lightning-fast decision making and content publishing to the NHL’s widely followed digital and social outlets. This includes 6.2 million followers on Twitter, 4.5 million on Facebook and another 1.5 million subscribers to the NHL’s official YouTube channel.

Blackbird was also used for fast distribution of video content to the league’s own internal production personnel, NHL teams and media partners for re-purposing.

The energy, the noise and the excitement of NHL crowds may be irreplaceable, but the League ensured that fans continued to receive the most entertaining and compelling experience at a speed that feels like part of the game.

BitFire is a fully managed IP video transport provider that intelligently combines innovative technology, advanced network management, and concierge-level support unlike any provider in the market. The BitFire Transport Network comprises many points of presence (PoPs) across the internet and around the world, with servers ranging from physical appliances collocated in data centers to cloud instances in geographically diverse areas. Our specialized transport technology recovers lost data at multiple points along the source’s path and has its own set of parameters for FEC and ARQ. All built and designed with the intent of providing broadcast-caliber video transport over nothing more than a standard internet connection.

We are entering the category of “Best Lockdown Solution” as the events of the past 12 months have forced rights-holders and vendors to find alternative solutions to their content aggregation, production, and distribution workflows. Given travel restrictions, the demand for high-quality and engaging content was as high as ever, thus the genesis of BitFire. Our ability to properly conduct a multi-source, multi-location production at broadcast-quality levels with low-latency between the disparate sites is what makes our platform fundamentally different from any solution built to-date…enabling productions the ability to cost-effectively scale without sacrificing the integrity of the end broadcast.

Having been one of the few entities to support the transmission demands of three major North American professional league drafts in the past 12 months (2020 NHL Draft, 2021 NHL Draft, and the 2021 MLB Draft), we wanted to share our experiences from both the 2020 and 2021 NHL Drafts for our submission. The technical, logistical, production, and distribution workflows implemented across each instance truly showcased what makes BitFire uniquely prepared to handle the challenges of the OTT industry now and into the future.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, The IRONMAN Group was faced with the challenge of finding a way to keep athletes connected, involved, and engaged while the world ground to a halt. The company had an expectation of operating more than 180 triathlon events in over 50 countries around the globe in 2020, welcoming more than a million athletes. Without in-person races, The IRONMAN Group was tasked with drastically shifting strategies to adapt to the pandemic in an effort to provide the triathlon community with a physical and mental outlet that allowed them to stay connected to one another, set goals, and celebrate their achievements. Just as an IRONMAN triathlon requires agility, the company applied the same principle to its business truly showcase thy this platform is worthy of Best Lockdown Solution.

The IRONMAN Group owns and operates a variety of endurance events including the IRONMAN® Triathlon Series, the IRONMAN® 70.3® Triathlon Series, the IRONMAN® Virtual Racing™ (VR™) Series, the Rock ‘n’ Roll® Running Series, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Virtual Running™ Series. Since the first race in 1978, IRONMAN has grown to now offer hundreds of races around the globe and become the largest operator of mass participation sports in the world providing more than a million participants annually the benefits of endurance sports through the company’s vast offerings.

Constantly looking to grow its digital landscape to improve the overall athlete experience, the company has striven to develop innovative and compelling content to make the sport more accessible than it has ever been. Through compelling content, The IRONMAN Group Production team has been able to showcase the stories of athletes and communities who make IRONMAN racing so uniquely captivating and powerful.

Highlighting this new content is the A Fighting Chance Series. The new series has proven successful by leveraging a network of longtime endurance sports industry professionals to create truly original content. The IRONMAN Group Production team relies on the established trust and credibility of the team to gain an all-access pass to the professional athlete’s inner circle. Candid interviews with some of the top professional athletes in the sport bring the personalities and nuanced training approach to the forefront while providing wildly entertaining content that drives the live event coverage and creates a bond with the viewer.

Tennis Channel’s new, digital-first OTT platform, Tennis Channel International, launched in May 2020, and offers tennis fans a unique viewing experience thanks, in part, to a 24/7 linear-programmed streaming channel with exclusive original programming available nowhere else. Our digital-first original content is one of our key offerings and has proven to be a successful strategy. Despite being only one year old, we have used our robust line-up of original programming to grow our subscriber base, increase session times, and drive rapid growth of our free ad-supported streaming channels. We are excited and proud to enter our company for the “Best Original Content” award.

DAZN is the leading global sports streaming platform available in 200+ markets, giving sports fans worldwide access to sport anytime, anywhere. DAZN is living up to what fans expect from an over-the-top platform with a robust combination of exclusive sporting events paired with world-class original programming that takes fans to the heart of their favourite sports.

DAZN has entered ‘Ronaldo: El Presidente,’ a blockbuster six-part docu-series launched in May 2021 exclusively on the platform for Best Original Content category. It chronicles the experience of Brazilian football legend Ronaldo Nazário as the president of Spanish club Real Valladolid, with unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, giving fans worldwide a never-before-seen look at ‘O Fenômeno’ (the Phenomenon) through a businessman and entrepreneur lens. From spending quality time with players in Ibiza and being hands-on in training to handling a match-fixing scandal, it sheds light on the human behind the football persona.

The global response indicates worldwide interest in the content and its long-term value. The docuseries garnered a total of 176 articles across a dozen markets in a single week, including Spain, United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Germany, and Canada – generating heightened consumer awareness of the brand. Notably, 44% of “Rest of World” articles came from Brazil, where the series has not yet launched. As for engagement, in the first three months, the trailer received two million views off-platform, and approximately 12% of DAZN’s global subscriber base has watched the series, which is significant as it happened during a small window of maximum engagement potential in football-first markets and because the audience split across all territories.

In the second half of 2021, the series will be a central pillar of DAZN’s season restart plan in major markets, playing a role in affirming the platform as a leading sports entertainment destination

Football Belongs was an Optus Sport Originals production, led by executive producer Richard Bayliss and producers and directors Ben Coonan and David Davutovic. From conception, the series was focused on authentically connecting with our European communities, as we approached UEFA Euro 2020, commencing with a 16-part short-form series, and culminating with a long-form feature. The series delved deep into these often-misunderstood communities and provided a platform to tell their unique stories, incorporating football, food, folklore and culture. The hour-long feature film, also titled Football Belongs, was released on the eve of Euro 2020, which Optus Sports covered exclusively in Australia. It explored the fact that multiculturalism is not black or white, and enabled often marginalised communities to be proud of who they are and where they come from.

The feature film also explored the deep and unheralded role played in football helping Australia’s First Nations People assimilate, during a lamentable era in the country. Proud Indigenous man John Moriarty, who was part of the Stolen Generation, revealed how football and its European clubs embraced him and his Aboriginal brothers when other sports, and most of Australia didn’t. The authenticity, extensive research, high production values and celebratory tone all combined to make a hugely successful series, which was almost universally acclaimed. Football Belongs had a reach of more than five million across our OTT platform, plus Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. The groundswell of positivity it created amongst the European communities was enormous, which was evident during Optus Sport’s Euro 2020 coverage, when we were inundated with positivity whilst visiting the many social clubs. The Football Belongs series enabled unparalleled sentiment and exposure for Optus Sport, which culminated in record OTT broadcast ratings and subscription numbers.

“All Around” is an unprecedented original series produced by the Olympic Channel for the International Olympic Committee’s Olympics.com platform that followed three of the world’s top gymnasts from China, the United States and Russia as they balanced life as teenagers with dreams of winning gold at Tokyo 2020. Through extraordinary access on a global scale never before attempted, “All Around” shined a light on the challenges and dedication that elite female gymnasts face on their journey to reaching the top of the Olympic podium.

The goal of the series was to feature topical storylines in real-time from across the globe, weaving together the experiences of the three main characters to demonstrate that there’s more that connects these countries than drives them apart. During the course of the epic, two-and-a-half year production, we filmed in eight countries, on four continents, at 14 different major gymnastics competitions – including the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games this summer.

After a global premiere in August 2019, new episodes were released online on a monthly basis on Olympics.com and the Olympics app. The episodic nature of the production was structured in a way to drive returning users to the OTT platform in order to achieve efficiency and scale.

Total viewership for the first 10 episodes – which were not distributed on social media – accounted for nearly 2.5 million views in the lead up to Tokyo 2020, while “All Around” became the most-watched original series during the Games. Across social media, extras and exclusive content also drove viewership and engagement: more than 8 million views and 25 million post impressions since launch. For these reasons and more, we humbly submit this entry to the award category of “Best Original Content” for your consideration.

Established in 2018, NEO Studios is a production company specialising in the creation of original sport and lifestyle programming. Between 2018-2020, NEO executive produced the behind the scenes football documentary ‘Take us Home: Leeds United’ for Amazon Prime Video – a documentary that charts Leeds’s journey back to the Premier League after 16 years away. The show was shortlisted for the Sports Pro OTT awards in 2020.

NEO is part of the Aser Ventures sports and media investment group together with Leeds United, the sports broadcaster Eleven Sports, the streaming platform LIVENow and others.

NEO’s most recent show is The Giants, which is the focus of this entry into Best Original Content, produced for Rakuten TV.

Rakuten TV is the first Video On-Demand platform in Europe combining TVOD, AVOD and SVOD services and boasts a wealth of sports and entertainment content. The AVOD service is home to the Rakuten Stories original content series, which is where The Giants sits.

NEO Studios set out to tell the little-known story of four Hawaiian sumo-wrestlers, who travelled to Japan as outsiders, became icons and changed the face of the country’s national sport. Their remarkable journeys of triumph over adversity, alongside a unique in-depth look into one of the world’s oldest and least understood sports gave the audience an amazing untold sports story.

Origins Digital: An innovative “interactive video player” for a unique experience

Inspired by the gaming industry and based on user-experience, ORIGINS Digital (ex On Rewind x Netco Sports) brings simple but effective tools and interactive solutions to meet the growing digital needs of broadcasters, sports federations, Clubs and event organisers.
The ORIGINS digital team designs and develops multiplatform applications, OTT solutions and digital tailor-made solutions across 5 continents for more than 120 clients.
The company is headquartered in Paris and has offices in Biarritz, Milan, Sydney and Minsk.
We are focused on the user experience, thanks to our knowledge of sports fans, their habits, their uses, their consumption patterns and their expectations in terms of digital experience. But also our knowledge and mastery of the best practices to offer to users during their journey on our solutions. It is therefore logical that we apply in the user experience category.
Origins Digital partnered with Belgian telco Proximus and with data provider iDalgo to provide its all sports customers a new and innovative experience on Proximus Pickx apps and website. The experience started for Proximus subscribers with the beginning of the UEFA Champions League games in 2021.
With our solution, users don’t have to watch a game passively: they can engage directly with the content and, most importantly, watch and re-watch the best moments at any time, easily.
The users feel like they are playing a video game thanks to this interactive layer and have full control over the content to personalize their viewing experience

Optus Sport is an OTT-streaming service owned by Optus, which is the second-largest telecommunications company in Australia. Optus Sport is the home of the world’s best football including Premier League, Barclay’s FA Women’s Super League and J.League, as well as offering a variety of sports drills and fitness workouts.

The user is at the forefront of every experience decision on Optus Sport. The product has increased customer love and engagement through offering significant personalisation, a content offering including five different match length cut downs, and features like spoiler alert, match centres and picture in picture functionality.

Maestro is an interactive platform that combines content, commerce, and community into one seamless storytelling experience, designed to convert passive followers into active customers. Maestro has powered video experiences for major sports brands including Sky Sports, NBA, CBS, Turner Sports, PGA, Golden State Warriors, Dallas Cowboys and many more.
Maestro has entered the User Experience category because of the way its platform has become a pivotal element in the fan engagement strategy for some of the world’s biggest sports brands and organisations. At a time when fan in-person engagement has been restricted due to the pandemic, Maestro has enabled these brands and organizations to create unique experiences for their fans worldwide.

This entry focuses on the ways Maestro creates incredible new experiences for viewers of sports.

Phenix is a 7-year old company based in Chicago, IL, USA built to develop game-changing streaming video technology. We have raised over $40m and employ 50 people across the USA and Europe.

We are the only company that’s been able to solve the many issues plaguing the streaming industry: real-time, scale, high quality video and synchronous viewing across all devices. The potential this creates for media and entertainment is huge – for online betting (especially micro-wagering, defined as betting on EVERY play), e-gaming, broadcast media, music, and entertainment.

At The Cheltenham Festival, we set records for real-time streaming to 500,000 concurrent users – no one has come close to streaming to this number in real-time. The user experience we created was second to none.

Aura is the future of immersive and interactive entertainment – across mobile (iOS & Android), web (including mobile and desktop), CTV and VR. It allows the user to do a variety of different things that you can’t do with traditional video platforms – that’s because it’s not a streaming platform that has interactive and engaging features built-in, but rather it’s a video game that streams content. That’s the most logical way to think about Aura, and it’s often why people look at our tech and they can’t work out what we’ve done, or more importantly, how we’ve done what we’ve done.

Through experimentation, we have developed a UX approach for the Aura platform that marries data with live and on-demand content like never before. This transitions the OTT experience from being a passive way to watch content into a highly engaging and personalised way to experience live events. Allowing users to find things like micro-betting moments or allow the user to see non-primary broadcast feeds during the game, an experience that is often only available to those who attend the event in person. Aura allows people to choose their own adventure…what they want to engage with. Everything is there when they want it, and not there when they don’t, and so we empower people to play and enjoy their experience on their own terms.

Our patented interface dynamically switches with a double-tap from a 2D linear feed to a 3D extended environment that we can populate with a range of different features that allows the user to interact and engage in a more immersive way.

Combining all the elements into a single experience is the power of Aura. Rather than users jumping between an OTT platform, betting app, eCommerce, NFT solution or a stats aggregator, all of this can be handled from inside Aura. Our tech has resulted in a ‘stickier’ experience, where the user can spend more time getting the most out of their experience rather than jumping between platforms or devices. This approach to UX is a key pathway to growth for the OTT industry as it will result in highly adaptable and customisable options not available in traditional broadcasting and is why Aura will help usher in a new era for OTT.

DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH
The Bundesliga is the premier professional association football league in Germany and the football league with the highest average stadium attendance worldwide.
The DFL is responsible for connecting and inspiring football fans around the globe. One core task is to drive internationalization by driving passion for the Bundesliga with contagious content, using the highest technical innovation standards.
https://www.dfl.de

TeraVolt GmbH
TeraVolt GmbH  is specialized in the development of innovative and pioneering digital TV experiences in a transforming TV economy. TVXRAY is the foundation of the Bundesliga Interactive Feed.

Home

2. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed by the DFL and TeraVolt is a new innovative product, designed for a mobile digital-first TV world, facing new usage requirements and a highly diversified device world.
The idea is based on three principles: orientation, de-linearization, and personalization.
All data of a matchday at the push of a button. The timeline shows the structure of the broadcast, all important statistics are synchronized with the course of the game. Everything is on the first screen, where it is consumed.
All important Highlights are presented at the push of a button, immediately switch to a parallel game and get an overview there or subscribe to it´s
video alerts.

3. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed is a B2B(2C) product offer from DFL to its domestic and international media partners. The multi-layer format can be implemented within the media partners’ OTT platform through software development kits. The product is built and designed on top of the TeraVolt´s SaaS product TVXRAY.
Key elements  are a personalized conference mode for simultaneous matches with video alerts, real-time highlights for each match, clickable TV graphics, and live statistics. The experience is a first screen experience for all common devices.

Sportradar is a leading global provider of sports betting and sports entertainment products and services, while Tennis Channel is is the only 24-hour, television-based multimedia company dedicated to the sport of tennis and has been one of the fastest-growing sports networks in the United States.

Tennis Channel’s brand new, digital-first OTT platform, Tennis Channel International, created in partnership with Sportradar and launched in May 2020, offers tennis fans, for the first time, a unique viewing experience thanks to a combination of a 24/7 linear-programmed streaming channel, a dedicated instructional channel, original programming available nowhere else and innovative localized productions.

A year on and we’ve seen subscribers up 40% in certain countries and digital-first productions such as our coverage of Tennis Bundesliga resulting in a 200% increase in viewership over Tennis Channel International’s average, with a massive 15+ minutes increase in user session times.

Virtually overnight Triller Fight Club has disrupted the combat sports industry, grabbing a “white space” opportunity to return boxing to its culture setting roots by updating how and what boxing should look like to next-generation audiences. Formed by Triller, the globally popular AI-driven short video and music discovery app, in partnership with the iconic Snoop Dogg, Triller Fight Club aggressively produces boxing matchups that matter to die-hard fans but also court new fans to the sport. The inaugural April 17 Triller Fight Club event truly redefined boxing as sports entertainment, fueled in large part by the YouTube star-turned-boxer Jake Paul vs. MMA champion Ben Askren fight, a must-see bout that headlined a fight card designed for boxing purists along with the world’s top music stars in all combined in a mega-event sports and entertainment extravaganza. The visionary behind this is Triller’s co-controlling shareholder Ryan Kavanaugh who has worked tirelessly to bring the biggest names into the Triller tent and create the kind of match ups that fans want to see, in a unique and daring new setting. As the events have been geared to next-generation audiences who are themselves largely digital-first, Triller Fight Club event are aimed at streaming audiences through FITE, which Triller recently acquired as part its vision for the future of sports and where the audience is heading. The success of the April 17 Triller Fight Club event marked an inflection point in the sport of boxing, and earning a SportsPro OTT Award in the category of Best Digital First Production would be an important acknowledgement of Triller’s contribution to the sport.

StreamLayer has created a next-generation Video Engagement Operating System (VEOS) that will forever change the way we watch live sports on our smartphones and connected TVs. The Company’s proprietary technology gives media companies and OTT services the ability to seamlessly transform their content into highly-engaging interactive viewing experiences. This results in more users, more engagement, more analytics and most importantly, more revenues for our clients.

Utilizing our deep experience in live streaming, digital media, technology, and sports, StreamLayer has developed an API-driven solution that will fundamentally change the global video ecosystem. For the first time ever, users can hyper-personalize their viewing experience by engaging with friends and accessing a near limitless world of features and functionality such as watch parties with friends, social media, stats, e-commerce, gamified interactivity, and online sportsbooks…all without having to exit the main video.

With the core product completed and StreamLayer’s operating system successfully integrated into its launch partner’s mobile applications, StreamLayer is poised to help forward-thinking clients transform how their audiences view live programming. Integrating StreamLayer’s operating system into their existing apps will: facilitate fan interactivity and customized viewing experiences; increase audience size and streaming time; gain unparalleled audience insights; and unlock new revenue opportunities.

StreamLayer is very honored to submit this application to the Sports Pro OTT Awards for recognition as the “Best Digital First Production.” We believe our solution significantly enhances the consumption experience around live sports and represents a major step forward beyond the traditional linear broadcast.

The 2019/20 football season in the Dutch Eredivisie was terminated prematurely due to the COVID 19 pandemic. There was no champion and no relegation.

Not for the German licensee Sportdigital FUSSBALL. The Hamburg-based pay-TV operator developed an innovative broadcasting format using a mix of match data, virtual reality and real archive match images and simply continued to play the cancelled season. How did it work?

For this innovative “Predictions Eredivisie” format, Sportdigital FUSSBALL cooperated with 2 specialist companies. The sports simulation company AccuScore provided the exact match data to realistically simulate the further results of the Eredivisie up to the last match day. The video game manufacturer Konami supplied the virtual match images for the highlight summaries of the remaining match days via the football simulation “Pro Evolution Soccer”. These virtual clips were skilfully mixed in post-production with the real archive match images from the Eredivisie and absolutely new and unique highlight summaries were created of the outstanding matches at the time – which had never actually existed in this form.

Who was champion in the Eredivisie 2019/20? The answer was only available in the innovative studio broadcast format “Predictions Eredivisie” on Sportdigital FUSSBALL!

Spiideo delivers astonishingly simple, powerful, and innovative solutions to the global sports community that shape the future of sports video production, analysis, and streaming.

With a lack of platform, finances, or appeal to broadcast games, those further down the sports pyramid typically rely on revenue trickling down from the top through transfer and signing fees, affiliate payments, and infrastructure rental deals.

Automated production, however, is beginning to eliminate these barriers to entry and unlock the untapped potential that all sports, at every level, hold. Using an automated solution such as Spiideo Play, clubs and organizers of all sizes have the opportunity to broadcast their events, attract new sponsors, and generate additional revenue at a minimal cost to finances and resources.

Spiideo Play is helping teams, organizations, and leagues have a Digital First approach; helping to quell the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic where most revenue streams were cut off over night. By adding live streaming – with automated production – they are opening up new ways to make money, engage with their fans, and grow their sport.

DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH
The Bundesliga is the premier professional association football league in Germany and the football league with the highest average stadium attendance worldwide.
The DFL is responsible for connecting and inspiring football fans around the globe. One core task is to drive internationalization by driving passion for the Bundesliga with contagious content, using the highest technical innovation standards.
https://www.dfl.de

TeraVolt GmbH
TeraVolt GmbH  is specialized in the development of innovative and pioneering digital TV experiences in a transforming TV economy. TVXRAY is the foundation of the Bundesliga Interactive Feed.

Home

2. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed by the DFL and TeraVolt is a new innovative product, designed for a mobile digital-first TV world, facing new usage requirements and a highly diversified device world.
The idea is based on three principles: orientation, de-linearization, and personalization.
All data of a matchday at the push of a button. The timeline shows the structure of the broadcast, all important statistics are synchronized with the course of the game. Everything is on the first screen, where it is consumed.
All important Highlights are presented at the push of a button, immediately switch to a parallel game and get an overview there or subscribe to it´s
video alerts.

3. The Bundesliga Interactive Feed is a B2B(2C) product offer from DFL to its domestic and international media partners. The multi-layer format can be implemented within the media partners’ OTT platform through software development kits. The product is built and designed on top of the TeraVolt´s SaaS product TVXRAY.
Key elements  are a personalized conference mode for simultaneous matches with video alerts, real-time highlights for each match, clickable TV graphics, and live statistics. The experience is a first screen experience for all common devices.

Sportradar is a leading global provider of sports betting and sports entertainment products and services. Established in 2001, the company is well-positioned at the intersection of the sports, media and betting industries, providing sports federations, news media, consumer platforms and sports betting operators with a range of solutions to help grow their business.

In October 2020, with our partners at LNB (Ligue Nationale de Basket), we launched LNB.TV, a brand-new OTT platform letting fans watch live and on-demand streams from France’s top-tier men’s professional basketball league, and which already has over 110,000 subscribers across the globe.

LNB.TV provides a unique viewing experience for fans thanks to the combination of video and data, with highly engaging statistical graphics and the highest quality live streams thanks to industry leading automated production technology.

The Rugby Network – The New Home for Rugby in North America

A 2020 Octagon study commissioned by Major League Rugby revealed that awareness and familiarity with Major League Rugby did not always translate into TV viewership and the primary driver to increase sports fans’ interest and engagement with MLR was making it easier to watch matches in North America.

MLR tackled this issue by partnering with RugbyPass to create a dedicated digital home for Rugby in North America – The Rugby Network. The Rugby Network was built around a succinct vision and purpose: To support the growth of Rugby in the US through a centralized, fan-centric approach to awareness and engagement.

MLR and RugbyPass built an interconnected network of digital properties driving interest & engagement in Rugby, guided by four key principles:
1. Free access
2. An Inclusive network covering all aspects of rugby in North America
3. Content that appeals to all fan segments (from avid fans to prospective fans)
4. Grow the sport and drive the business of Major League Rugby/its member teams

In just its first season, The Rugby Network exceeded all its performance goals across the website, social channels and its iOS, Android and Roku streaming apps:
● More than 45,000 registered subscribers
● More than 10.6 million minutes of live and on-demand Rugby consumed
● Seasonal streaming audience increased 383% versus the legacy third-party OTT provider (ESPN+) with the average viewership/match rising an incredible 76% year-on-year
● Despite lower linear TV ratings, Octagon sports tracker revealed a 30% increase in the size of the overall rugby fan base and 21% increase in MLR awareness since the launch of TRN

The International Olympic Committee is a not-for-profit, civil, non-governmental, international organisation made up of volunteers which is committed to building a better world through sport. Launched by the IOC in May 2021, Olympics.com is the new consumer-facing platform that provides a single, people-centric digital presence that utilises Olympic digital and social media channels to drive engagement and deliver content and communications. Offering a comprehensive source for Olympic information, news and original content, Olympics.com allows for improved, streamlined digital engagement during and between each Games. The platform is the culmination of a historic two-year journey of rebuilding the digital experience from the ground up. The first step was to create a new people-centric brand expression – Olympics.com – to unify three different websites (Tokyo2020.org, OlympicChannel.com, and Olympic.org) and two mobile applications (Olympic Channel app and Olympic app) to create a single Website and App under this new expression. The results of these efforts were also without precedent. More than 178 million unique users visited the Olympics Web & App during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, making it the most digitally engaged Olympic Games ever, more than doubling the results of Rio 2016. The success was not just limited to the Olympic space however. During July 2021, it is estimated that Olympics.com was the most visited sports website in the world, according to Similarweb. For these reasons and more, we humbly submit this entry to the award category of “Best New Platform” for your consideration.

Ekstraklasa TV is an innovative direct to consumer live-streaming service, designed for fans of the premier football league of Poland- the PKO BP Ekstraklasa.

The service is a key part of the League’s international media rights sales strategy. It has certainly helped raise awareness of the Ekstraklasa brand and, as counterintuitive as that may sound, build TV exposure in 23 territories, around it. Since 2019, Ekstraklasa.TV has built a subscriber base of nearly 180.000. In July 2021, the League have managed to migrate most of the existing clients to the re-launched, upgraded version of the service and currently own a subscriber base totalling 235.000 users (with the vast majority of users being active). This result has been achieved without any promotional campaigns whatsoever.

On July 23rd, 2021, the League have re-launched Ekstraklasa.TV, which was built in partnership with Red Bee Media, part of Ericsson. The new release is still carrying 306 Live transmissions of PKO BP Ekstraklasa matches per Season, outside of Poland within the European Union; and free Match Highlights as early as 10 minutes after the Final Whistle, as well as short-form content available globally after registration. On top of the existing desktop version, the iOS and Android apps, October will see the release of the Samsung Tizen Smart.TV app – something the League has never seen before, whilst the end of the year will bring the launch of the LG Smart.TV app – again, a complete novelty for the PKO BP Ekstraklasa League.

As opposed to the previous version, Ekstraklasa.TV has significantly advanced in terms of look&feel, as well as the available features. The registration process has been simplified by adding social media logins. Users can now also follow their team and instantaneously access that content by going straight into the Club tab. Their favourite videos can also be found in the Favorites tab, with related content visible right underneath. Navigating the service is a smooth experience, with the videos adapting their quality to the user’s internet speed.

We hope to grow further thanks to the recognition the SportsPro OTT Award may bring to us.

Buzzer is a new, mobile-first platform that connects fans with the most exciting moments in live sports.

Buzzer is submitting for Best New Platform because the company is advancing the sports media industry by simplifying and improving access to live sports where and how next-generation fans are watching. Buzzer not only aligns with trends in the evolving consumption habits of Gen Z fans, but also simultaneously helps rights holders engage with these new and younger audiences that are mobile-first.

Discovery’s new global streaming service, discovery+, launched in January 2021. At unprecedented speed just over 7 months later, discovery+ had integrated live and on-demand sports content in key international territories and delivered every moment of Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 on the new streaming product.

discovery+ is a markedly differentiated offer within the sports OTT market, designed to serve a broad cohort of casual audiences and hardcore fans. Sitting perfectly within a household’s line up of subscriptions, its sole focus on non-fiction – including the world’s biggest library of real-life entertainment – offers sports audiences even greater value. This depth and variety of content offering for the whole household is set to keep viewers nourished and engaged for even longer.

Bringing the Olympic Games to discovery+ was an unparalleled streaming success. It broke viewing and engagement records across the board, as well as meeting objectives such as growing mass awareness of the new product and driving subscriber growth.

Almost 3 times more people signed up to discovery+ and Discovery’s subscription services compared to Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 – its only previous Olympics. The new users supported discovery+’s overall growth to more than 18 million global subscribers (announced in Discovery’s Q2 Earnings in August 2021).

With Tokyo 2020 subsequently dubbed the first streaming Olympics by the IOC, discovery+ led the way in more than 1.3 billion minutes of content consumed across Discovery’s digital subscription platforms. Over 21 times more minutes compared to PyeongChang 2018, with viewers on average consuming 60% more minutes (per user) for Tokyo 2020.

And this is just the start of the story. discovery+ is set to launch in more international territories and become the ‘streaming home of the Olympics’ in even more countries with Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 and Olympic Games Paris 2024 on the horizon.

Unlocking fan engagement by tackling the OTT workflow – The National Rugby League finds a winning team in Dalet and Bitmovin.

Dalet empowers media-rich organizations to transform their production and distribution workflows – accelerating media operations, maximizing collaboration and creating higher value from content. As a leading media technology and service provider with over three decades of innovation, Dalet’s software solutions enable greater control, enhanced visibility and increased productivity for content professionals and storytellers around the globe.

In collaboration with the National Rugby League (NRL), the premier rugby league competition of Australia and New Zealand, we are entering the “Best in Fan Engagement” category to highlight how the NRL optimized its OTT strategy, resulting in deeper engagement with millions of fans and winning new subscribers from around the world.

Leveraging a partnership between Dalet and Bitmovin allowed the NRL’s staff to build ad-hoc workflows that processed, encoded, published, and distributed more rich content faster across 30+ websites, apps and streaming platforms for immediate fan engagement.

Working with video content, images and metadata from varying sources meant every workflow, metadata layer and media processing step added time and complexity hurdles in the path between the NRL and its audience.

By combining the advanced media logistics of Dalet Flex with Bitmovin Encoding API in a cloud environment, the league could achieve the flexibility and automation they needed to overcome their inefficiencies and dramatically accelerate their online delivery workflows. Leveraging open B2B and B2C APIs from Dalet Flex and Bitmovin’s high-speed encoding, player and analytics offerings, the integration delivered the flexibility and agility NRL needed to support their OTT workflow strategy.

ELEVEN Belgium launched in 2015 and is now the leading sports platform in the country, with an award-winning OTT platform at the centre of its offering.

In 2020, ELEVEN Belgium secured the domestic football rights to the Belgian Pro League for 5 seasons and committed to working with the league to create a new ‘Home of Belgian Football’ for fans throughout the country.

ELEVEN’s mission was to build a fan centric, dynamic service that championed Belgian football to fans in a fresh and innovative way.

The Eleven Sports Dream Team activation was an important part of delivering on this goal, and truly delivers on the Sports Pro OTT’s ‘Best in Fan Engagement’ category.

The YES Network, the most-watched regional sports network in the US, launched its self-built live-streaming mobile app, the YES App, in March 2021. The new YES App provides subscribers with a live stream of the YES Network, which included New York Yankees, Brooklyn Nets, New York City FC, and New York Liberty games. The YES App, which replaced the FOX Sports GO app as the official destination for YES’ streaming content, has seen a year-over-year increase of unique-per-game viewership of 236%. The YES App also provided users with personalized notification features, an alternate feed, and game highlights.

The recently added YES Edge feature takes the fan experience to another level by engaging fans with dynamic storytelling content on top of the live stream. Fans have an interactive graphical overlay on the live stream that provides live game stats, polls, quizzes and facts without leaving the app. The YES design team emphasized colourful logo- and headshot-filled designs in the interactive graphics to reflect the overall branding of the linear YES Network.

Built using Evertz Ease Live SaaS (software-as-a-service), the YES Edge also provides in-depth user analytics, which allows the YES Network the flexibility to enrich the fan experience based on consumption habits. With the frame-accurate synchronization of the overlays and the broadcast production, the YES Edge provides unique opportunities for additional revenue including gamification and personalized content for users.

LiveLike has created a pioneering platform that helps media companies and sports organizations transform passive audiences into engaged communities. From social and interactive features like watch parties and fan chat to a wide array of gamification tools, LiveLike provides a customizable, plug-and-play toolkit to partners looking to keep audience engagement on their own apps and sites, rather than third-party platforms. LiveLike is a true partner; rather than handing off its tech to partners, the company works closely with them every step of the way, from ideation to integration, through launch and beyond — iterating as needed, and ensuring that they are getting the most value out of this comprehensive solution.

Star TV Network, Indian media conglomerate and a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company India, is entering the ‘best in fan engagement’ category for their ‘Star Sports Cheer@Home initiative’ a world-first interactive dynamic audio product that enabled IPL cricket fans to cheer from their homes during lockdown via our OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar.

Since the advent of Covid, we’ve seen broadcasters experiment with artificial sound to fill the void of absent crowds. At Star, we saw things differently. While select fans in stadiums had lost their voices, millions at home never had one. This was an opportunity to democratize broadcast audio & bring back real reactions to sound design, swapping ‘fake’ for ‘interactive & authentic’.

Users responded to action via emojis within the social feed of our streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar. Data triggered real-time custom-created audio in the broadcast feed. Audiences could cheer from their homes, and actually hear that player’s name being chanted back on OTT/television.

We wanted to ensure that a sport that is largely a community-driven experience feels like a community experience on-air with these initiatives which have on any given day millions of fans participating in them. That’s the sentiment of togetherness we want to drive in our broadcast.

The product has huge potential as a long term solution beyond covid to add a new layer of interactivity to broadcast audio & visuals and enable editorial storytelling on the mood of the world’s fans, their rivalries, favourite players and moments.

Users reacted at an unprecedented scale – 13m users clicked > 720m emojis in the first 4 matches! 4.8 Billion Emojis were sent in 59 matches!

With this tsunami of reactions, we are set to move into a new era for scale, interactivity & a blurring of the lines between digital & linear TV.

Sport Buff Gamification & Fan Engagement is delivering the Best Fan Engagement. A business built around the sports fan and their viewing experience, we transform every-single-genre of sports content, including live, library & archive, making an interactive experience, revenue generator and data capture engine for partners, whilst tailored directly for the fans, their friends, and the world.

This is the best-in-class proprietary broadcast overlay technology delivering the next generation of sports fan engagement. The interactive technology layer sits directly over broadcast, enabling gamification and fan engagement through live predictions, trivia, voting, polls, purchasing, real-time betting, social media, messaging and more – these are “Buffs”.

Our fully managed service (the Buffstream) curates and combines all Buff content around the fans and their personalisation: automated from live stats and data, timed for game events, pre-set from templates, or even ‘in the moment’ Buffs – all localised to the audience. All of this is backed up with Buffalytics to surface the most engaging, best performing Buffs.

The results are 10M+ engaged fans, across the globe, across 100+ channels, in 14 languages, that are closer to their sports, delivering Sport Buff partners up to 10x audience retention, exclusive and insightful data, and significant monetisation.

FITE’s Affiliate Marketing program, coupled with its aggressive earned media push, allowed the PPV platform to expand rapidly into new sports verticals and new regions during a precarious pandemic year for live events. In the end it helped the platform grow across every metric, delivering more content to more fans in more countries, and growing engagement, awareness and revenue for its core combat sports business as well.

Fifty-Three Six is a multi-award winning full service sports marketing agency that specialises in digital strategy, performance marketing, and creative production and design.

This entry fits into best marketing strategy for a number of reasons:
– Firstly, the team identified opportunity in the OTT rugby space in the US market, a key growth market for the sport.
– The team launched and marketed The Rugby Network from scratch to build sizeable audiences and customers.
– A bespoke conversion pathway was developed across digital channels to drive signups at scale.
– Throughout the project the team built a database of first party consumer data which can be used for future monetisation strategy.
– Finally, the results of this marketing strategy exceeded targets set by RugbyPass and MLR and delivered exponential growth in a key strategic market.

Synopsis:

Major League Rugby (MLR) launched a free streaming and digital content network, The Rugby Network, in advance of the 2021 MLR season, which ran from March 20th to August 1st. Fifty-Three Six worked with RugbyPass and MLR to drive awareness of The Rugby Network and bring subscribers to the new OTT platform. Based on historical campaign data, industry trends analysis and consumer research, we devised a holistic digital strategy to drive awareness, scale and OTT sign ups across key global markets. Through rigorous market research and a deep-dive into Rugby Pass’ existing website and subscription data, we found success by developing a bespoke conversion pathway from awareness, to consideration, to onsite sign-up.

As a result, Fifty-Three Six’s paid digital campaign delivered over 56,000 visitors to The Rugby Network’s website with 6,190 sign ups at a £6.19 CPA, 200% over our initial target set by RugbyPass and MLR. Working in tandem with an above-the-line strategy, we have supported RugbyPass to double its targets for 2021, and achieved over 50,000 accounts to be created by end of the season.

ELEVEN Belgium launched in 2015 and is now the leading sports platform in the country, with an award-winning OTT platform at the centre of its offering.

In 2020, ELEVEN Belgium secured the domestic football rights to the Belgian Pro League for 5 seasons. ELEVEN committed to working with the league to build a fan-centric new hub for Belgian football.

Its Home of Belgian Football campaign was the focal point of this effort. The campaign established ELEVEN as the ‘go to’ home for Belgian football and engaged fans across the country at a time when they were unable to attend games in person.

Home of Belgian Football was a cost-efficient and impactful multi-platform campaign and a worthy winner of the Sports Pro OTT Best Marketing Strategy award.

No other sport has helped propel DAZN, the first truly global sports streaming platform, to worldwide recognition like boxing. And, no other event by the broadcaster has dominated the boxing scene, international headlines, and fan buzz quite like when pound-for-pound king Canelo continued his quest to unify his division against Billy Joe Saunders on May 8, 2021.

From the very beginning, DAZN knew there was something special to showcase about this matchup – Canelo, the Mexican hero and a master of his craft, blowing away any opponent standing before him vs. Saunders, a new challenger and chaotic British fighter ready to leave everything inside the ropes.

The “FACE THE FEARLESS” marketing campaign brought to life how this appeared to be a matchup between a king and a gypsy with differing backgrounds. However, two men were about to see an almost identical reflection of their determination and fearlessness standing before them in the ring. The second the fight was announced, a tremendous global marketing push was unleashed.

The result? A record-breaking evening that ended up being the most engaging event in the history of DAZN. In the U.K., the U.S., and New Zealand, DAZN was the No.1 app and further earned the No.1 sports app title in 57 countries. That weekend, DAZN was THE most downloaded and highest-grossing sports app in the world across both Apple and Google.

In total, Canelo vs. Saunders was watched live on DAZN in 177 countries, a thrilling event capturing the attention of sporting fanatics and proved to be a riveting spectacle worthy of the promotion leading up to the historic evening. Ultimately, not only did Canelo face the fearless on May 8, he overcame his foe to walk away victorious while DAZN went the distance and cemented itself as the global home of boxing.

WSC Sports has developed ‘WSC Stories’ a new, highly-effective, user acquisition solution for OTT providers, using real-time content through Google search.

WSC Stories is a dream for marketers. It provides rights holders with an automated, end-to-end, sports highlights storytelling product. Developed directly with Google, WSC Stories are published directly to Google’s OneBox making rights holders’ content more discoverable and accessible than ever before.

As stories are updated during live events, marketers can promote their OTT offering to the largest group of targeted users (top search result for relevant search terms on Google) during the peak of emotional engagement, with a truly engaging format that is built for interaction and conversion.

The ability to create rich, compelling, engaging story experiences provides a new vertical for rights holders, away from their usual channels (social media, apps or websites), to expose their content to more people, while also creating new monetization opportunities and driving subscribers to OTT platforms.

The WSC Stories solution is flexible to match whichever monetization KPI is most interesting for the marketing teams that we work with. They can tailor the offering to promote Call to Actions (CTAs) across the story that can help user acquisition, or run Ads that appear throughout the story, or Sponsorships ‘brought to you by’ content, with the goal of getting more eyeballs on the sponsored content.

WSC Stories are a proven success which is backed up by the compelling data in this entry. Our clients have been blown away by the number of views and level of engagement their stories have received, with high story completion rates and very high number of clicks on CTAs.

WSC Sports’ automated WSC Stories puts rights holders’ content in the number one place where most people go to search, Google.

NFL Game Pass is the NFL’s premium subscription streaming service which, outside the USA, Canada and China, offers live NFL games, NFL RedZone, NFL Network and a catalogue of original programming. It is available across a range of platforms including connected TV, games consoles, web and mobile.

Sports marketing and data technology company Two Circles is responsible for marketing and driving subscription sales for NFL Game Pass (International) across 181 markets. In 2020/21, the ultimate objective was to use personalised marketing and messaging to increase existing Game Pass International subscribers’ engagement with the platform, and data-driven customer targeting to bring record numbers of new subscribers into the funnel.

In 2020/21, despite disruption to the regular season and the cancellation of preseason – key content for NFL Game Pass International subscribers – the platform had its best season on record. This included a record level of paid subscribers and record paid subscriber acquisition (+31% year-on-year); record consumption (+25% year-on-year); record subscriber retention (+16% year-on-year); and a record number of new subscribers (+25% year-on-year), with 70% of new subscribers to the free NFL Game Pass International product new to the NFL.

Central to this was a highly effective season-long focus on data-driven personalisation, underpinned by fan behavioural insight and marketing technology. The depth of the data used, and the sophistication of resulting marketing tactics to both increase engagement with current subscribers to drive retention and efficiently bring new fans into the marketing funnel is a step-change in D2C sports streaming.

GeoComply is a global leader in geolocation, compliance and fraud detection technology to the media and entertainment, iGaming, and fintech sectors. Its VPN and proxy detection solution, GeoGuard, is used by sports rights owners, OTTs and broadcasters worldwide, including the BBC, beIN Sports and Amazon Prime Video, to protect their territorially restricted content from geo-piracy and geolocation fraud.

GeoComply has entered GeoGuard for the Best in Anti-Piracy category. The surge in casual and for-profit pirates using VPNs and DNS proxies to bypass territorially restricted live sports streams threatens rights values, revenues, jobs and the entire professional sports ecosystem.

The industry’s gold standard – and the only solution independently rated by Kingsmead Security as 99.6% effective in VPN/DNS proxy detection – GeoGuard is fully integrated with leading CDNs and can simply be “turned on.” It’s the only solution to be fully integrated with Akamai’s CDN, powering their Enhanced Proxy Detection (EPD) service.

It’s also the only fraud detection solution to combat proxy over VPN attacks, which are increasingly common and far harder to detect. These double-spoofing attempts by VPN providers targeting specific streaming services can be detected by GeoGuard, which is updated frequently, resulting in a faster, agile and more sophisticated response.

By detecting geo-piracy, GeoGuard ensures OTTs/broadcasters meet their contractual obligations with sports rights holders on content distribution, while blocking freeloading pirates. It also frees up infrastructure capacity and cuts CDN costs.

As soon as MultiChoice went live with GeoGuard in 2021, it started blocking tens of thousands of illegal viewers each month, many attracted by its premium sports offerings. Another customer has reduced credentials sharing by 66%, and another is able to block 87% of its proxy over VPN traffic, up from 1% previously.
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Viaccess-Orca (VO) is a leading global solutions provider of OTT and TV platforms, content protection, and advanced data solutions for live sports streaming. VO is entering its Anti-Piracy Center for the SportsPRO OTT Awards in the “Best in Anti-Piracy” category based on its unique, top-down approach to content protection.

VO’s Anti-Piracy Center solution features dynamic watermarking technology, developed in collaboration with b<>com, that allows pay-TV operators and content owners to fight illegal streaming during live events faster than ever. By employing a unique, top-down approach that supports both client and contribution use cases, the technology enables operators to protect content on broadcast, IPTV, and OTT networks. After identifying the source of piracy, VO’s watermarking technology takes down the source within seconds.

VO’s dynamic watermarking technology has undergone and passed a series of stringent robustness tests carried out by Cartesian, a testament to its proficiency in solving the inherent security challenges that exist in today’s digital TV and OTT environments. In addition, VO’s dynamic watermarking technology has been successfully deployed in the real world by service providers globally for live sports streaming, including during the FIFA World Cup.

VO’s dynamic watermarking technology deserves to win the SportsPRO OTT Award because it provides complete protection for the content value chain, keeping live sports content safe from pirates on any screen and protecting operators’ revenues.

Having grown one of the industry’s most advanced anti-piracy softwares, Content Protection (part of LaLiga Tech) has continued to innovate this year by designing new products to tackle online counterfeiting, while creating a global commercial proposition that allows other organisations across the industry to protect the value of their content. With a number of high profile agreements around the world, Content Protection has built a compelling technical offering that is successfully removing millions of illegal articles while supporting wider legal processes to remove this threat from the industry.

Piracy is an ancient problem in all walks of life, and today, is one of the largest threats to content owners, broadcasters, and operators. It is not something that can be easily stopped, and in fact, there is no silver bullet to stop it. Also, it does not make sense to fight piracy with an all-a-once, “throw everything but the kitchen sink” approach. Instead, piracy is best fought with a rational, incremental, data-driven approach.

At Irdeto, our approach is unique in that we go beyond just implementing technical solutions to fight piracy. We partner with our customers to conduct threat risk assessments, investigate pirate activities, steadily build the right protection for their content, one step a time, as required, and continuously monitor for threats and breach detection, and respond using flexible, effective countermeasures to rapidly disrupt pirates’ revenue streams (including legal and police enforcement).
Our services rely on:
• A multi-disciplinary team of anti-piracy and cyber security experts, including Investigators, legal specialists, law enforcement specialists, cryptography experts, forensic analysts and security software engineers.
• Award-winning “from lens to screen” solution suite, including conditional access, multi-DRM, forensic watermarking, online piracy and detection, and cyber security services.
• Law enforcement partners (local, regional, and global level) to the help us track down pirates

Irdeto has a successful track record in rapidly identifying and disrupting piracy while leveraging established networks to track down pirates and their supply chains to help our customers safeguard their valuable assets.

Irdeto is the world leader in digital platform security, offering solutions and services that enable customers to protect their revenue, create new offerings and fight cybercrime effectively.

In today’s media ecosystem, Social Piracy is the most dominant type of piracy, caused mainly by the ease-of-access of the social platforms. It is rapidly growing at 40%+ Y/Y rate and creating a need for a breakthrough type of technology that can manage the scale of the problem and the massive loss it is creating.

Videocites developed a proprietary video-AI fingerprinting technology that automatically tracks all copies of content multiplying across social networks, enabling Discover – a complete, automatic content protection and monetization service for VOD and Live content, which performs instantly at any scale and is immune to all manipulations.

Videocites Discover is the only technology with the scale, speed and accuracy required to detect all copies immediately and removing them before they create a real loss for the rights holders, pushing viewers towards conversion on legitimate platforms.

Having previously become the first sports team in the world to reach the milestone of 100 million followers on Facebook back in 2017, it was imperative for us to do the same on Instagram too. And more than four years later, we managed to do so, with the 100m follower barrier surpassed on June 29. In addition to becoming the first sports team worldwide to reach this milestone on Instagram, we also became the first Spanish brand and football team to break this barrier.

This incredible achievement was secured thanks to an adherence to an ever-evolving policy of following best practices on the platform since the creation of our account back in 2013, as well as implementing a strategy based on interaction, content and products, which allow us to continue to set the benchmark in an increasingly competitive digital world. With regards to our use of content, we have never used a ‘one size fits all’ approach across our various social media accounts. As such, we have always placed great importance on ensuring that the content we post on Instagram is adapted perfectly for the platform, based on a deep understanding of our followers’ preferences and the ability to swiftly adapt to ever-changing platform trends and best practices.

Reaching and surpassing 100m followers on Instagram confirmed our club’s universal nature and all-round popularity, as well as reiterating the wonderful commitment of our millions of fans across the globe.

Little known to the rest of the world, The Philippines is likely the most fanatical basketball fan country on the planet, and nowhere is this better illustrated than their fandom for the NBA where every game generates millions of live views on TV and up to 40% of the population can tune in for The Finals. This fandom has existed for generations, but recently someone asked us this: “The Philippines loves the NBA and has done for decades, but does the NBA love The Philippines?” And we decided to answer, by launching an exclusive Philippines Shelf on our global YouTube channel, the first time ever that NBA had tried anything like it.

Titled “Republika Ng NBA” meaning republic of the NBA and designed in the bright and inspiring tones of the Philippines national flag, this was the place where Filipino fans could finally feel truly at home. A place that was 100% NBA, but also 100% Pinoy (Filipino). When pulling together this new Republika, we wanted it to touch every aspect of Filipino basketball fandom, from local players featured on our Republika Huddle armchair discussion show, to rich stat and fact-laden ‘Taglish’ commentary in our slick graphics and highlight driven NBA On Fire show, to “swag, style and sauce” on our fashion and collectables show Republika Drip. All hosted by locally respected NBA experts and featuring a huge range of guests who love different aspects of the NBA from rappers, to stylists, to famous actors, travel bloggers, top PBA Players and even the world’s largest sneaker collector.

The project was an enormous success. Over the course of 8 weeks and 28 episodes, it drove 4.5 million views with an average view-time per video handily beating the global average at 5 mins 47 seconds.

Our goal since day 1 is to share positive and fun content. We want to send a message that volleyball never stops. It’s a sport that brings people together and even closer in this given time.

With no events, this season has stretched the creativity of our content team. So we made it our goal to leverage organic content to drive engagement and awareness. Facebook has enabled us to become more agile to quickly pick top-performing content and repurpose it for paid campaigns, which was critical to achieving our engagement goals.

With the Volleyball Nations League done in a bubble due to Covid-19 restrictions the competition was held without spectators – but these 40,698 rallies were viewed live by fans around the world over a total broadcast hours of 744. The aggregated digital watch time was 4.8 million hours.

Aggregated Engagements across the competition were 73,533,032 with a total Digital Reach of 512,026,143.

In addition during Tokyo 2020, with the campaign #TokyoHereWeGo generated over 8.2 Million engagement in the course of 3 weeks between volleyball and beach volleyball.

Optus Sport is a sports and content streaming platform. Available across iOS, Android, web & connected TV apps, as well as dedicated channels on Fetch TV, Optus Sport gives access to world-class football and fitness content to all Australians.

The entry for Best Social Media Strategy comes as Optus Sport is an industry leader in Sports Broadcaster Social Media and has built a hyper-engaged community across multiple social platforms. Optus Sport’s innovation-led editorial strategy has provided the perfect top of funnel model to build awareness and desire for the OTT product offering across social media. OTT strategy and social strategy need to collide. Engagement, Revenue, Subscribers are KPIs of both worlds. So how do they complement and not compete? Optus Sport has found the secret sauce. What works on Facebook doesn’t work on TikTok. What works on TikTok doesn’t work on Twitter. Made for Twitter? Well, that won’t work on YouTube, and what you make for YouTube isn’t for Instagram. Audiences are nuanced, and so are the platforms. 1×1, 4×5, 9×16, or 16×9? Video, graphic, poll, or go live? Shorts, Stories, Guides, Fleets or Moments? The options are endless, but Optus Sport understands its audience and how and why Social Media platforms are valuable. As social platforms compete to be everything for everyone, Optus Sport knows where the audience likes to engage, and what tools are at their disposal to achieve success.

In its continuous adaptation to new digital formats, the MEDIAPRO Group has taken a further step in its commitment to creating content to reach new audiences. Last February the group launched an official GOL channel (Sports free to air channel / OTT in Spain) on the Twitch platform to generate different streaming content and impact new audiences.

Thanks to a pioneering initiative by MEDIAPRO and LaLiga, last April the Basque derby between Real Sociedad and Athletic Club was made available via streaming on the official Twitch channels of GOL, LaLiga and Ibai Llanos, the popular Spanish-speaking caster. A historic broadcast after becoming the first LaLiga match offered via Twitch in Spain. The game registered an audience of 1 million views through the streaming platform.

In addition to this activation, GOL has regularly offered Twitch broadcasts of the commentary of LaLiga and LaLiga Smartbank matches from the commentator’s booth, interviews with players or reactions from influencers and streamers including ByDiegoX10 or WuaJordi for Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona matches.

MEDIAPRO is competing in the ‘Best Social Media Strategy’ category given that GOL’s strategic plan on Twitch and its integration into more traditional formats has enabled it to reach 2 million followers on Social Media, increase traffic on the web / OTT by 40% and considerably increase the channel’s audience on TV.

Cinfo is a Spanish technology company specialized in video processing, that offers simple tools supported by cutting edge technology to solve problems such as real-time video processing, content management and distribution, and AI applied to video.

In the last 15 years, Cinfo has developed user applications and high-performance system architectures for OTT platforms, Smart TV, digital television, mobile apps, artificial vision systems and video processing in the cloud.

Our two main products are Tiivii and Tiivii OTT:
Tiivii is a solution that allows you to broadcast high-quality matches, classes, shows and events automatically. It encompasses all phases: recording, realization and video production of any type of audiovisual event to broadcast live or on demand through various different platforms. Tiivii can produce any live event automatically using Artificial Intelligence and moving and mixing the cameras through an algorithm; or provides a cloud-based studio for the remote production and enhancement of all kinds of event with graphics, videos, replay, live commentary and much more.

Tiivii OTT (web and app) is a next-generation scalable OTT platform with management, distribution and publishing capabilities of high-quality live video, VOD and 360 / VR; powerful CMS designed with customization in mind to provide each client with easy-to-use tools to create the perfect platform, flexible front end management and module-based architecture, our OTT platform allows for easy scalability for maximum end consumer satisfaction.

TEXEL is a cloud-based video technology company directed towards the booming streaming video services market, including Entertainment, Sports, Live, and VOD. Our unique Engagement Cloud™ instantly enables leading streaming services to offer their viewers an individualized, multi-feed, highly social, and interactive viewing-experience across their devices in perfect sync.

Online streaming has gained popularity in all genres of media and entertainment. Viewers want to interact, play, bet, and shop with their friends and favorite communities, in sync and in real time with their chosen content in a viewing experience personalized to their preferences.

TEXEL brings streaming platforms the opportunity to use this new form of media consumption to their advantage, enabling them to offer their viewers a unique, immersive, personalized, and socialized experience. With TEXEL, OTTs can increase engagement and expand the user experience through shared-viewing, watch parties, live betting, live shopping, and more.

Features like Live Commentary allow viewers to watch a game at a private viewing party or with thousands of fans at live events while getting live commentary from their favorite influencers, all in perfect sync with the game. Shared Viewing and Live Sports Betting create new revenue streams for OTTs while increasing viewer engagement. Online Feeds allow viewers to add their favorite feeds on top of the OTT’s streamed content – in sync with their mobile device, which also mirrors the TV as a second screen and serves as an additional remote control. Personalized Screens gives the viewers control to choose their favorite angles and PoV for a truly customized sports-viewing experience, and even design their viewing setup by moving elements around. Throughout the viewing experience, TEXEL’s patented Total Sync technology ensures that video and interaction remain synced, and viewers’ experiences are not compromised by latency.

TEXEL’s powerful video cloud engine allows OTTs to add a set of engaging and personalization capabilities on top of their great content – all in real-time, perfect sync, and at an unlimited scale. TEXEL has turned what was once a passive viewing experience into an interactive and social event for viewers, opening up new avenues of revenue for OTTs based on user engagement.

Founded in Norway in late-2017, Joymo enables those involved in sport participation to broadcast their content and sell access to passionate fans to stream live or on-demand via its OTT live streaming: Joymo Arena.

Joymo’s proposition was developed to empower everyday athletes performing at all levels of events – from large scale international competitions to grassroots games – levelling the long tail playing field by removing the cost and operational barriers.

Joymo maintains that sport organisations should have the opportunity to monetise their individual IP and generate revenues that can help sustain themselves, especially during a period where grassroots sport has never been under greater threat, for a multitude of reasons.

In the last year, Joymo has solidified its position as an emerging force in the long tail OTT streaming sector, resolving the challenge for sports federations, teams and clubs with an ambition to stream but without the means to build an in-house proposition.

Joymo not only removes the cost and operational barriers, but also integrates industry-leading safeguarding standards and the all-important micro-payment capability that can help sport organisers and performers generate revenues that help to sustain themselves in the long-term.

Only Joymo has a proposition that delivers for grassroots sports, all the way up to elite level, allowing content producers to:

– Film safely and securely
– Stream live and store for on-demand viewing
– Provide ownership of everything they film and all the user data
– Sell digital tickets/passes
– Enable users to sell advertising to sponsors

This innovative and holistic approach is filling a huge gap in the market, especially for grassroots sport, levelling-up the playing field and democratising the streaming industry for long tail sports.

Aura is the future of immersive and interactive entertainment – across mobile (iOS & Android), web (including mobile and desktop), CTV and VR. It allows the user to do a variety of different things that you can’t do with traditional video platforms – that’s because it’s not a streaming platform that has interactive and engaging features built in, but rather it’s a video game that streams content. That’s the most logical way to think about Aura, and it’s often why people look at our tech and they can’t work out what we’ve done, or more importantly, how we’ve done what we’ve done.

Through continued successful experimentation with partners such as Rakuten and Riot Games we have built a dynamic OTT platform that marries data with live and on demand content like never before. Rather than a user having to jump between the OTT platform, a separate betting app, an external eCommerce site, NFT solution or platform to view live stats, all of this can be handled from inside Aura. Aura results in a ‘stickier’ user experience, where the consumer can spend more time getting the most out of their experience rather than jumping between platforms or devices.

These features have the potential to transform how the OTT industry evolves over the coming years as it transitions from being a passive way to watch content into a highly engaging and personal experience for live events. Aura can create micro-betting moments, or see non-primary broadcast feeds during the game, creating an experience that is often only available to those who attend the event in person.

Aura allows people to choose their own adventure – what they want to engage with. Everything is there when they want it and not there if they don’t, and so we empower people to play and enjoy their experience on their own terms.

Sceenic foresaw the co-viewing trend 8 years ago when the behaviour of fans started changing. Watch Together was created for people that were separated by distance to their loved ones; a feature for those looking to be close together to their loved ones

The 2020 covid-19 pandemic made this need global and for everyone when we went onto lookdown, making more than ever before the vision of Sceenic relevant to the industry looking to bring to people the feeling of closeness and connectivity.

Two important factors that gave rise to co-viewing and will keep it relevant:​

1. Even before the pandemic, younger generations already preferred to socialize online over meeting up in real life, and watching content together is a big part of online hangouts. #GenZ ​
People always had group chats, and video calls over skype/facetime/WhatsApp/others to talk with friends about sports, reality shows, etc.

2️2Organizing a virtual viewing party from the comfort of your couch is far easier than planning an actual get-together, and user behaviour tends to follow the path of least resistance.​

Co-watching is a behaviour that people have cultivated over this pandemic that will sustain as part of our digital socialization. Reports and research on users and fans behaviours have shown how much the engagement increases when they can share, interact and be together with others around the content they consume and, most importantly, inside the platform they are watching from making it easier for everyone.

Brand marketers need to understand its ongoing development, its potential impact on content consumption, and its marketing implications. ​The potential is big, and the rollout has just started.

During the Tour de France, 2020 NPO took their NPO Samen = Watch Together to the next level. Inviting to join the Dutch former professional road bicycle racer, Michael Boogerd to virtual knock on people’s rooms to have a chat, meet them, share insights and take a selfie.

Singular.live is on a mission to make live broadcast graphics better, more accessible, affordable and easy to use. Created by multiple Emmy award-winning innovators, Singular is revolutionising and democratising graphic overlays for live production. Our team have worked in live production for over 25 years on everything from Super Bowls, F1, MLB and Bundesliga and with clients including ESPN, BBC, Sky, Riot, Facebook, Blizzard, CBS, BeIN and many more. One of our founders was an original founder of Vizrt and the team who wrote Viz Engine. We live and breath graphics and knew there was a better way than what we in our industry have been using for decades, especially during a time when OTT platforms are breaking away from the traditional linear model of content production and distribution.
As new partners and clients continue to join, our Singular For Good program expands and our sign ups accelerate, we felt that now was the perfect time to put ourselves forward for the SportsPro OTT Emerging Tech Platform award. To bring wider awareness of our platform and the benefits it can offer to our industry alongside prestigious industry recognition.
Singular is built as a new modern standard for our industry, designed to help all content creators and anyone working in production and broadcast deliver a better viewing experience at lower cost and with less environmental impact.
A platform built to deliver on the changing needs of our evolving industry, with partners and collaboration an essential part of our offering. Singular provides everyone with the opportunity to enhance the quality of their own product, platform or production, increasing viewer engagement and delivering on the promise of personalised content, at scale.

Buzzer is a new, mobile-first platform that connects fans with the most exciting moments in live sports.

Buzzer is submitting for Best Start Up Tech Company because the company is advancing the sports media industry by simplifying and improving access to live sports where and how next-generation fans are watching. Buzzer not only aligns with trends in the evolving consumption habits of Gen Z fans, but also simultaneously helps rights holders engage with these new and younger audiences that are mobile-first.

Sponix Tech is an award-winning technology company that provides solutions and services which help leagues, clubs, broadcasters, and advertisers increase viewers and enhance the fan experience.

With the SPov technology, Sponix Tech assists its clients to acquire more viewers, enhance their fan engagement and experience by producing immersive content.
With the SPboard technology, we help sponsors increase their engagement with fans. It creates a new era of sponsorship in the sports industry.

Today, the production of similar outputs requires huge investment in infrastructure installed within the stadiums, including special cameras, sensors, servers, and billboards. As a result, just a few stadiums worldwide have this installation with millions of investments.

Sponix Tech has developed purely software-based technologies that can produce these outputs without even a single hardware installation in stadiums. Our solution is unique, much more affordable, scalable across different sports, different regions, different arenas, and channels without any need for CAPEX or physical installation.

Both technologies can produce outputs remotely and won’t interfere with current production processes. Also, there is no need for any integration in stadiums. Both technologies are unique worldwide and could be performed in downstream.

1. We live in a world where every millisecond counts, yet when you watch live streams over the internet you are 40secs behind what is happening at the arena. We at Eon Media reduce this 40-sec lag to net-zero sec.

Our Founder, Ashish Agrawal has worked in the media and the telecom industry for 14+ years, we know it’s imperative to provide an extremely fast video streaming experience for viewers worldwide so they see key moments in real-time, avoid switching platforms for faster service and less user churn due to latency.

Now, each month telecom and media companies refresh their video content catalogues, Eon Media reduces the content processing time significantly and provides cost savings of almost 60-70%.

Our biggest value is, we provide a whole new monetization opportunity by detecting every single occurrence of the brand logo in real-time during gameplay. – from all the discussion we are having this can be huge.

Would you be interested in hearing more about how Eon Media can potentially impact future strategic offerings and disrupt the video streaming industry?

2. We are a purpose-driven startup company that truly believes in changing the status quo and helping passionate members truly be intrapreneurs and innovators.

3. We are a bootstrapped Canadian startup, that since day 1 believes in empathy, diversity and enabling opportunities for members who are extremely passionate to solve problems by any means and do something good to make a small impact to the world. We believe that technology should simplify and enrich experiences for everyone. Let’s do something good and be the change!!!

Founded in 2018, Recast is a highly innovative sports video platform that brings the best of social media, sports broadcasting, on-demand video and micropayments together in one, and is currently revolutionising the sports media and rights landscape for fans, brands and rights owners.

Within 3 years Recast has gone from concept to now delivering a real-time OTT solution which allows rights holders to set up and run their own direct-to-consumer, non subscription channel in minutes at no cost. Recast is already helping athletes, organisations and National Governing Bodies, of all sizes, realise their digital potential.

The game-changing platform, which has recently raised $8.2 million (£5.9m) in its Series A round of investment and saw the company valuation grow to $29m (£20.9m), provides the ability to watch premium sport content on an entirely subscription-free basis, allowing fans to access personalised videos and live sports using in-app credits called ‘Casts’.

Fans earn and/or purchase credits, and make micropayments directly to rights holders by watching only the sports they want. Fans can earn credits for free by watching ads on the platform (they choose when and what ad), inviting friends to join and by sharing content. The monetary value derived from these day-to-day activities is rewarded through our in-app credits, which they can use to watch their favourite content. This allows our platform to be self-sustaining and affordable, while enabling rights holders and athletes to maximise value from their video and live content – without the upfront costs of building their own OTT platform.

Recast offers complete control over content, including the ability to adjust the price, geo-restrict and geo-price content. This allows rights holders complete control over their global distribution. They can specifically target different audiences in different regions and monetise their content effectively in each.

Video content creation, acquisition and distribution is costly, and often publishers and broadcasters end up with a less-than-optimal ROI when it comes to video content. Video, however, is still one of the most impactful content formats.

Minute.ly helps OTT publishers and broadcasters optimise their users’ video experiences and generate (more) revenue from their video content. The core of our offering is an ability to automatically identify the most captivating moments in a video. Our products compile these moments together in different ways to increase user engagement, monetization opportunities and content distribution. How? Our technology is based on a patented, AI-based deep video understanding that indexes any video content, of any genre.

Some examples of what we do:
– Video previews to boost CTR on videos
– Showreel recommendation components that increase consumption & generate new revenue streams
– Mobile-first, tappable stories that attract new users, boost SEO & generate new revenue opportunities

Our monetization capabilities allow publishers to advertise using their high quality content, ensuring that the customer experience is not negatively impacted.

Our offering is entirely automatic, and is suitable for any content format or framework. All a publisher needs to do is focus on creating high quality content once – and we do the rest.

Sport Buff Gamification & Fan Engagement is the choice for Best Start Up Tech Company. An early stage business that transforming every-single-genre of sports content, including live, library & archive, making an interactive experience, revenue generator and data capture engine for partners, whilst tailored directly for the audience, their friends, and the world.

This is the best-in-class proprietary broadcast overlay technology delivering the next generation of sports fan engagement. The interactive technology layer sits directly over broadcast, enabling gamification and fan engagement through live predictions, trivia, voting, polls, purchasing, real-time betting, social media, messaging and more – these are “Buffs”.

The tech delivers a fully managed service (the Buffstream) that curates and combines all Buff content: automated from live stats and data, timed for game events, pre-set from templates, or even ‘in the moment’ Buffs – all localised to the audience. All of this is backed up with Buffalytics to surface the most engaging, best-performing Buffs.

All of the tech is fully owned and developed in-house, made a diverse and inclusive team of different genders, ethnicity and ability.

The results are 10M+ engaged fans, across the globe, in 14 languages, that are closer to their sports, delivering Sport Buff partners up to 10x audience retention, exclusive and insightful data, and significant monetisation.

This start up tech company is relentless, with revenue generation from Day 1, it never stops and is constantly investing in the technology, team, and features. Winning multiple awards and accolades, achieving extensive press coverage and adding new features including NFTs, mobile payments, pay per view, and connected TV content.

And we’re just getting started!