11 YOUR TAKE Simplestream
to remember a week in which a network or studio doesn’t announce the launch or expansion of a video service – 60 of which were introduced last year. Yet despite the rise of SVOD, there have already been some casualties. If we look at services such as Fullscreen, Vimeo SVOD, Seeso and Cox’s o erings, Flarekids and Flareme TV, we see big companies spending huge amounts of money on content, infrastructure and ongoing support, but in the end they have been wound down. This back-pedalling has been due either to a change in strategy or, in Cox’s case, because the operational running costs were too high to make a viable business – even with more than 300,000 subscribers. This demonstrates that the OTT market is not a video delivery utopia, as online engagement increasingly fragments. The incumbents make it di icult for new entrants to gain – and keep – a foothold in a market that continues to evolve. MIDiA research found that SVOD accounts for 10.5% of all online video engagement with much of the growth in video consumption being routed through messaging apps that account for 6.5 billion monthly active users – over twice the number of website users at 3 billion and social network users at 2.6 billion. successfully. However, niche services providing very specific, bespoke content have a much better chance by providing something that is either not available on mainstream services or is much more di icult to find. In an increasingly sophisticated digital marketplace, niche services provide the opportunity for platforms to monetise underserved consumer interests. However, it’s critical that these operators can tackle issues including monetisation, e ective asset management, e icient turnaround time to market, multiplatform delivery and content licensing fees, which all combine to make it challenging for niche platforms to launch and prosper. NWSL Media is one such niche platform that is prospering. As a worldwide sport, women’s soccer has a huge fan base in the US and this is growing globally. The US National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) realised that new strategies were needed to cost- e ectively improve its outreach and give viewers more power in where and how they watched games. Having previously used YouTube to stream games, NWSL simply wasn’t getting the best out of It’s therefore di icult for new mainstream services to launch
leveraging agile strategies that can adapt to rapidly reflect market demands. TRACE is another such example. Urban music and entertainment- focused broadcaster TRACE is a niche operator known as a voice for young African talent and a global driver of afro- urban entertainment. Attuned to evolving video industry shifts, the content owner and provider decided the time was right to invest in a global, all-encompassing, multi-device platform. Partnered with Simplestream, TRACE built a content o ering of 21 paid TV channels, four FM radio stations and over 30 digital and mobile services online. The key to building a successful niche service is to deliver unique content with a reliable user experience through e icient tech. Streamlining the ingest, storing, editing and layout of content through a single unified cloud-based workflow enables content providers to deliver high-quality and diverse video services to millions of consumers flexibly, at low incremental cost and at scale. The cloud brings many benefits, including improvements in scalability, QoS, OPEX, streaming quality, ad insertion, deployment speeds across multiple territories, minimising upfront costs and creating more personalised channel o erings. This then paves the way for more investment to be redirected to licensing, marketing and content development. The cloud enables niche operators to launch services quickly and e iciently with premium content at a fraction of the cost of legacy broadcast solutions.
its broadcasting potential – both in its outreach and monetisation. A+E Networks saw the potential in NWSL’s fan base and invested in the league in January 2017, creating a joint venture called NWSL Media. With A+E’s breadth of experience, the new venture would handle the broadcasting rights, production, website and sponsorship of its properties. However, A+E wanted to bet on the league at a time when women’s soccer had the potential to really take o . With a growing fan base nationally and internationally, one of the biggest issues A+E had was how to ensure this interest was being met through services that fans could seamlessly access and engage with. The result was that Simplestream built a multiscreen streaming service that now enables fans to watch over 120 live matches per season in high definition with synchronised scores, line-ups, play-by- play and box score data. Companies need to be dynamic, forward-thinking and embrace change by THE CLOUD ENABLES NICHE OPERATORS TO LAUNCH SERVICES QUICKLY AND EFFICIENTLY
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