SVG Europe Tech Webinar – ‘Winner takes all: Unlocking the opportunity in video games and esports’.

‘Winner takes all: Unlocking the opportunity in video games and esports’ took place online on Wednesday 9 December 2020.

During this 80-minute recording of the session, leading video games and esports experts will help you better understand how traditional media is being complemented and disrupted by the rapid growth in competitive gaming.

Produced in association with Telstra and Telstra Ventures, discussions centre around how video games and esports content can help grow and engage audiences, the changing workflows for content creation and distribution, and how network demands, costs and regional complexity influence the production, testing and public release of games globally.

The session is moderated by SVG Chief Editor Jason Dachman.

Panellists include:

Daniel Ahmad, Niko Partners, Senior Analyst
David Harris, Guinevere Capital, Managing Director
Steve Jalicy, ESL Gaming, Global Head of Streaming
Anna Lockwood, Telstra Broadcast Services, Head of Global Sales
Yash Patel, Telstra Ventures, General Partner

Unlocking The Esports Revenue Opportunity

Yash Patel, General Partner at Telstra Ventures

When we announced back in 2018 that we had made an investment in the parent company of US esports team Team SoloMid (TSM), it raised a lot of eyebrows. It was a little different to our usual investments, plus esports was still seen as a niche interest and its participating teams not considered comparable to traditional sports franchises.

But that perception has changed – today esports is a key growth area in the interactive media space.

This trend can also be seen in another of our esports investments, Skillz, which in December became the first publicly-traded mobile esports platform. Skillz is poised to capitalise on the massive growth in mobile gaming, which it expects to more than double in value by 2025 to be worth $150 billion. It is planning new monetisation models and international expansion opportunities that will allow it to dramatically expand its addressable market.

Skillz is democratizing esports for everyone. Traditional esports has always been associated with PC and console gamers and more hardcore, first-person shooter and Battle Royale games. But it turns out that mobile esports is a massive opportunity, magnitudes larger than PC and Console gaming and with a more diverse user base. We are huge believers in the growth of esports for everyone, and investing in the platforms and digital brands that drive this acceleration to the mainstream.

In December I took part in a webinar hosted by SVG Europe, supported by Telstra and Telstra Ventures, which examined the state of the esports industry: how it was unlocking new revenue streams and attracting new players and fans at a rapid rate.

On the webinar, Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners provided data on the phenomenal recent growth of esports. The sector now generates more than $1 billion in revenue per year with Asia accounting for about half of this total. According to Niko, five of the top ten highest-grossing mobile games in Asia in 2019 were esports titles, with more than 500 million players in total and a similar-sized fanbase. The North American market is not far behind.

However, like most industries, esports has had to adapt to the pandemic. This meant that the showcase live events had to be suspended, but the sector has been hugely successful at pivoting to an online proposition – a testament to the broadcasting and content distribution innovation that has been the hallmark of esports tournaments in recent years.

Steve Jalicy of ESL, the world’s largest esports production company, explained on the webinar how ESL had actually managed to increase its number of tournaments this year as a consequence of going online. Jalicy estimated that more than 300 major esports tournaments were hosted in 2020, not including a huge longtail of smaller tournaments.

The pandemic had other impacts too. In the period where no traditional live sports were happening, we saw many broadcasters look to esports to fill a gap in the schedules. And the consumption habits of online gamers also witnessed change. Speaking on the webinar, Anna Lockwood (Head of Global Sales at Telstra Broadcast Services) explained how there were volume increases in gaming activity recorded on both Telstra’s domestic and international networks, although now consumers were gaming at all hours of the day.

Lockwood noted that Telstra has invested significantly to support these new trends, providing new gaming bundles for its Australian consumers, and working with gaming developers on an international basis to ensure its networks were able to support an optimised gaming experience.

We had an interesting discussion on what happens next. There will be an appetite for big in-person tournaments (such as ESL Cologne) to return, but the online experiences will be here to stay.

The industry is also reliant today on brand sponsorship and media rights, in the same way as traditional sports, but that could change as new revenue opportunities are realised. This could include betting, e-commerce and digital offerings. For example, one of Team SoloMid’s fastest-growing businesses right now is Blitz.gg, a player and coaching tool that allows TSM fans to improve their gaming skills.

And, finally, my esports prediction for 2021 will be that the teams and leagues start to organise along similar lines to traditional sports, allowing the market to break out from being seen as only a marketing platform for games publishers to becoming a fully-fledged sports and entertainment industry in its own right.

Watch the SVG Europe tech webinar in full here:

https://youtu.be/2gjbNWrvVEY

Game on! Facilitating the (further) rise of esports in Europe

While in popular perception the esports market is centered around the twin loci of North America and Asia, Europe is fast becoming an esports hotspot. It accounts for almost one-third of all global esports revenues and is host to more than 70 million esports viewers. However, it remains far less homogenous and represents a far more diverse mix of countries and cultures than America and China

Europe’s rich and diverse games heritage traces back to the earliest days of games development, including some of the biggest titles in the business, ranging from Minecraft (Mojang, Sweden), through Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar North, Scotland), and on to the ubiquitous Candy Crush Saga (King, Sweden). It is unsurprising to see European developers amongst the first organisations that made esports popular, especially in the West. Amongst them are major players such as Germany’s ESL, which is now arguably the world’s largest esports organization.

Some of the world’s top gaming teams are based in Europe, including Team Liquid (The Netherlands), SK Gaming (Germany), Fnatic (UK), Natus Vincere (Ukraine), Astralis (Denmark). Likewise, three out of the Top 5 biggest eSports events in history were held in Europe, including the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2017 which had a live audience of 173,000 and an online one of 46 million.

Remote production

Live audiences have, of course, been a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. But, when they return, large-scale events will be able to take advantage of the innovation that companies such as Telstra have brought to rebooting sports coverage after lockdown. Remote production of major sports events was already a growing trend within the broadcast industry; Telstra is already adept at remote production of large-scale events such as the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Our pioneering expertise in this area has already been applied to esports events globally.

For example, we worked on Riot Games’ 2019 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational. The Invitational took place in Chinese Taipei and Vietnam, with multiple HD and audio feeds fed back to Riot’s studios in Los Angeles 13,000km away via Riot Direct – the company’s global Internet backbone supported by Telstra subsea cables. There, the feeds were edited and finalized for broadcast before being sent back out to the many streaming and broadcast partners across Asia via the same route.

Crucially, remote production on this and the events we have collaborated on since, takes place with little discernible latency. Riot now handles the production of all major events on a worldwide basis from its LA-based hub.

Network requirements

Developing a game, launching it in key markets, expanding game availability and keeping customers engaged, streaming and broadcasting of the esports events — these are all stages in a game’s cycle where access to a powerful network can become a key competitive advantage.

At the game development stage, companies need to assess their evolving network demands, costs and diversity, and start planning for it well in advance. For larger projects with significant revenues, dedicated private networks can be required to connect servers in different locations, enabling design and development teams to easily collaborate in a safe, secure manner as they develop the game.

At launch, and especially given the prevalence of digital media, a network insulated from spikes or local network outages is crucial to ensure a positive user experience.

During the engaged stage, a secure and stable network is required to deliver the live services and game updates that help to keep gamers engaged. As companies enter new markets to expand their gamer base, a network partner to help navigate regional network-related complexity is important.

Finally, at the streaming stage and for esports companies, the capabilities to follow international tournaments are required. This includes set-up, connectivity, and test and deliver stages, all while maintaining stringent levels of low latency, security, and quality.

Press start

Telstra’s network can effectively support gaming companies throughout the game cycle. Our networks are designed to provide low latency alongside the high reliability and high security that are crucial for the deployment of the games. In addition to this, our global media network with its 2,500 end points and widespread connectivity into Asia (including India and China) and America makes it a desirable network partner for any gaming and esports company, especially when coupled with our proven experience with managing spikes, disruptions, and continual investment to meet demand.

The European gaming and esports industry is already a successful one. Using advanced network technologies will allow it to increase traction to not only maximise its opportunities in Europe, but also connect to the enormous markets and global audiences eager to consume high-quality esports content. For network operators such as Telstra, it’s game on!

To hear more on how Telstra is helping gaming and esports companies, tune into the recent webinar on ‘’unlocking the opportunities in gaming and esports’’ available on demand by clicking here

Cutting Edge Post Creates a Secure Self-Serve Video Archive for its Clients

Australia’s largest post house has found a cure for one of the biggest headaches in production: keeping up with client requests.

Cutting Edge Post has 77 people working across three offices: Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sydney. The facility supports feature and TV productions with services ranging from dailies, online editing, color grading, and sound editing, to mixing, final mastering, and delivery. It also supports the unique requirements of leading commercial entities, including Queensland’s lead marketing body, destination and experience development agency, Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ).

A media powerhouse, TEQ is known for innovative media campaigns such as “Best Job in the World”, a competition that garnered more than 40,000 applications for the role of “caretaker” for the Islands of The Great Barrier Reef. And more recently, the “ScUber” campaign which partnered with rideshare giant Uber to showcase the biodiversity of The Great Barrier Reef, via the world’s first rideshare submarine. Both campaigns were produced using EditShare creative solutions and garnered global press attention with jaw-dropping footage that allowed viewers to experience the magic of the reef and its surrounding islands.

Improving Customer Service

For the past decade, Cutting Edge has worked closely with TEQ on projects and manages the agency’s vast archives. With content spread across several storage pools, searching and retrieving TEQ assets from media archives was a manual and time intensive process. To streamline requests and support TEQ, Cutting Edge set up a web-based production and archive service to manage a vast array of assets stored at its facility while giving TEQ teams secure, remote access to annotate, download, and upload content.

“We’ve been managing TEQ assets in some form for several years,” said Matt Maguire, Workflow Architect at Cutting Edge. “They needed a revised media asset management tool so they could quickly go through their decades of footage and easily pick out exactly what they need for a project.” Using this workflow with EditShare EFS shared storage and FLOW media management, the Cutting Edge shared archive of assets is completely accessible to authorized TEQ users anywhere globally, increasing production efficiency for both organizations. Cutting Edge is also utilizing FLOW to generate additional revenues through transcoding files, repurposing videos and creating new content from existing assets.

FLOW Self-Serve Video Archive

Cutting Edge began developing the self-serve video archive with the TEQ IT team in 2019. Initially, this process required a massive consolidation of all the media Cutting Edge had stored in-house, as well as outside assets scattered across hard drives and other local devices. The next steps were to create a separate space to host the desired services with FLOW, as well as developing policies and procedures for content access and sharing.

Once that underlying foundation was in place, the team began leveraging AirFLOW for web-based and remote access search and retrieval and FLOW Story. They are able track and search when footage was shot as well as drag and drop the content directly into a timeline with associated metadata.

“It’s all done off lightweight streaming proxies,” Maguire said. “If we need to do an edit in house, TEQ can send us the clip from their browser as a web-based link. Our editors clearly know what shot they want, and they can launch that through FLOW.”

Within FLOW, editors can mark clips with in and out points for viewing by TEQ remotely. “They simply mark the section of a segment they like and then send it to the editor to snip it and go. The media then links cleanly to the original high resolution media for online”

Cutting Edge is also using FLOW automation to populate standard metadata detail, freeing its staff from manually entering and logging information, while making clip identification more consistent and ultimately more searchable.

“FLOW makes it super easy for TEQ to quickly browse for what they want,” Maguire explains. “They don’t have to give us vague instructions about which clip to pull. Instead, they can drill down using standard metadata tags such as location, region or time of day. We can allocate our resources more effectively instead of having people spend time on logging repetitive details and searching for content.”

Once the metadata is attached to content, it lives in the databases to avoid duplication of efforts. “If a clip is ingested twice, we won’t actually double up the entry within the database,” adds Maguire. “The metadata lets us know immediately there’s a conflict.”

Maguire adds, “FLOW has some really interesting features for automating work and taking stress off your teams. Its metadata and search functions are changing how we work.”

Real Benefits

With FLOW, there is no need for an expensive, custom web portal, all TEQ assets are accessible and searchable from anywhere in the world via the AirFLOW web-browser. Media is logged with detailed metadata, making it easy for staff to search and locate the right assets for creative collaboration, saving both time and money. The fine-grain control over assets lets TEQ better manage the life-cycle of their archive. They can make their own archival decisions based on the relative value of each asset, controlling storage usage and ultimately, the cost.

Maguire explains, “With detailed oversight into the assets we manage, we have the ability to monitor the storage usage, make recommendations, and forecast with precision the expected storage expenses for our client. FLOW transparency allows us to better serve our clients in terms of their experience and budgets.”

Future Proof

Built into FLOW’s open architecture is a robust set of APIs that enable the teams to add new functionality as an organization’s needs change or evolve. One new feature Cutting Edge Post anticipates will further enhance workflow is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“We envision AI algorithms helping with image-based capturing and tagging, as well as generating subtitles and transcripts,” Maguire said. “If a client handed us several days’ worth of a broadcast event or presentation, rather than having someone transcribe everything manually, it can happen on ingest. It’s already handled. It’s a game changing level of efficiency.”

Do You Need to Streamline Archive Access for Your Clients or Team Members?

Whether you are a post facility that needs to provide remote access to client archives or a media organization with varying layers of internal stakeholders that require archive access, EditShare can help. Contact us to learn how FLOW can securely orchestrate access, optimizing content use and efficiencies: sales@editshare.com.

BaishanCloud Receives the Most Trusted Cloud Services Credit Rating for its CDN Services

BaishanCloud (Baishan) recently received the Trusted Cloud Services (TRUCS) AAA credit rating for its CDN services. Baishan has been recognized as a trusted CDN provider by The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) for the 3rd consecutive year.

The TRUCS Certification is the most authoritative and sole recognized certification system for cloud services in China. Since introduced in 2013, TRUCS has expanded to cover the entire cloud industry and serves as a strong endorsement of standard compliance and quality. Based on examination of discreditable behavior records, self-regulation, and the credibility of service capabilities, TRUCS certifies CDN providers on a credit rating scale of five levels: AAA, AA, A, B, and C. The credit rating provides a trustworthy reference for companies looking to evaluate CDN service providers.

Leveraging its highly agile and loosely coupled architecture, Baishan offers transparent and bespoke CDN services for various scenarios such as webpage optimization, download acceleration, video-on-demand, live streaming, and application acceleration. Until now, Baishan has deployed over 400 points-of-presence (PoPs) in 250+ cities globally, responding to over 810 billion user requests daily with 15 million quests per second at peak. On key performance indicators such as response time and availability, Baishan’s CDN services exceed the industry average, providing a fast, reliable, and secure network experience for Internet users worldwide.

As the enterprise IT structure is transitioning to cloud-based infrastructure, Baishan’s CDN evolves into an intelligent edge-cloud network that integrates content distribution, edge-computing, and security defense capabilities. Under this megatrend, Baishan strategically invested in three major areas, including cloud distribution, cloud security, and data application integration. The services cover content delivery, dynamic acceleration, WAF, DDoS defense, zero-trust security, API management, and more.

Receiving the highest level of Trusted Cloud AAA credit rating is a recognition of Baishan’s service capabilities and quality and also encouragement for Baishan to further develop edge-cloud services based on its edge networks. Now serving over 1,000 corporate clients worldwide, Baishan is dedicated to developing large-scale distribution technologies, edge computing technologies, and high-speed network transmission technologies to meet the customers’ growing needs from a variety of industry verticals.

On top of the TRUCS award, in 2020 Baishan was selected for CB Insight’s China Cloud Edge Collaboration and was honored as a China Top 100 Internet Company 2020. “Baishan will continue to focus on innovating and upgrading edge-cloud capabilities. By creating a safe, reliable, and high-performance distribution platform, it will empower developers to innovate efficiently and help our customers develop strong capacity in the competitive digital era.” Said Tao Huo, Founder and CEO of Baishan.

About BaishanCloud:

Founded in April 2015, BaishanCloud (Baishan) is a leading global cloud data service provider specializing in data life cycle management. With a strong emphasis on data interactions and exchanges, Baishan’s cloud product suite is comprised of cloud delivery, cloud edge security, and cloud API management.

Baishan now has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seattle, and Shenzhen, as well as R&D centers in Xiamen and Guian.

To get more articles on trendy topics related to cloud delivery, streaming best practices, edge security, cloud technology in China and Asia, please visit www.baishancloud.com and subscribe to the BaishanCloud newsletter.

BaishanCloud Partners with Chinafy to Expand Cross-border Content Delivery Ecosystem

BaishanCloud (Baishan), a leading global cloud data service provider, announced today that it has added Chinafy into its cross-border delivery partner ecosystem. Chinafy is a SaaS-based platform that optimizes offshore websites to achieve faster onshore web performance in China. This partnership will further enable joint-customers to both accelerate their web services and optimize their web performance, localization, and SEO performance in China. Chinafy customers can now enjoy the premium content delivery service empowered by Baishan’s extensive content delivery network throughout China and Southeast Asia. BaishanCloud (Baishan) customers can now have a premium option to leverage Chinafy’s intelligent resource optimization platform to further elevate their web performance in China offshore.

The partnership is a step forward in Baishan’s continued effort in building a leading edge-cloud Ecosystem that brings seamless digital experience to users in China, Asia, and beyond. “Performance, reliability, and compliance have long been the pain point of international companies’ web services into China,” says Matt Haentzschel, Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “With this partnership, Chinafy’s and BaishanCloud customers can have uncompromised CDN performance in China and Asia and vice versa”

For more information about BaishanCloud Partner Program and how to become a partner, please visit www.baishancloud.com/partner-program.

For more information about Chinafy Partners and how to become a partner, please visit https://www.chinafy.com/partners

About BaishanCloud

Baishan now has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seattle, and Shenzhen as well as R&D centers in Xiamen and Guian.

About Chinafy

Headquartered in Hong Kong , Chinafy (www.chinafy.com) is on a mission to put the world’s second largest economy within reach for global companies everywhere with their Web Performance Solutions for China. Chinafy’s platform accelerates, optimizes and protects any internet property for delivery in China without adding hardware or manually modifying a line of code. By combining intelligent China-specific resource optimizations, with a multi-layer infrastructure, internet properties are able to achieve significant improvements in performance, a decrease in bounce rates, and increase in conversions in China in a more cost-effective, results-driven way.

Market forces shaping an essential role for smart TVs

As broadcasters face increasing competition from OTT providers for both viewers and advertising dollars, they are adopting aggressive hybrid broadcast-OTT service strategies especially well-suited for smart TVs. However, such an approach requires rigorous content protection across the various delivery networks and requires both DRM and legacy CA systems—a two-silo approach.

The good news is that smart TV converged security is readily available today. This allows the operator to replace the set-top box with a smart TV Operator App (OpApp). The result: major CAPEX and OPEX savings for hybrid broadcast-OTT service providers.

Download this paper to read about forces driving hybrid broadcast-OTT service strategies, and the role of smart TV as the linchpin based on standards initiatives such as HbbTV, DVB-I, and ATSC 3.0.

Download this game changing paper now!

Download White Paper

Partner Snapshot: EditShare, Adobe, and MoovIT

Switzerland’s Oldest Private Broadcaster Gets a Modern Media Makeover

Today’s content creation landscape is complicated. Media producers have to embrace new production workflows and increasingly diverse options for viewing video. In addition to traditional cable and satellite, streaming services (OTT) are claiming an ever-increasing share of viewers’ attention, often in new formats like HDR and 4K. There is no “one size fits all” solution. The best approach is an open solution that splits workflows into different layers, weaving best of breed technology to create an agile platform that simplifies and facilitates media creation, management and distribution while providing flexibility for growth.

This approach is exemplified by the solution chosen for a complete overhaul at Telebasel, the oldest private broadcaster in Switzerland. The broadcaster’s goal was to create a future-proof infrastructure that would lead to dramatic improvements in cross-department collaboration and overall productivity. Importantly, Telebasel wanted to offer its Adobe Premiere Pro users a familiar experience while boosting efficiency across the media enterprise.

Interchangeable Media Content for Traditional, Social, & Digital Channels

A key component of Telebasel’s programming is the “Newsblock,” a live news format show where news stories are developed and moderated in-house. News packages need to be visually engaging and contain the latest information. In addition to live news, Telebasel produces lifestyle shows and entertainment programs that run on a 24/7 loop as well as digital and social channels that need to keep sync with programs while promoting deeper engagement with audiences.

“Our material needs to remain flexible and adaptable, right up to the point of broadcast,” said Pascal Jacot, head of technology at Telebasel. “It’s important for us to be able to exchange content between our channels and react quickly to developing stories. We also need to include reaction from the audience in the form of video clips.”

Telebasel required a solution that would integrate its digital, social and linear channels under one seamless media production and distribution workflow. Off the shelf products were not suitable. What was needed were deeper level integrations that simplified complex tasks, enabling Telebasel to interact with audiences, customers, and external media outlets.

Open Solutions Integrate Channels and Remove Complexities for Storytellers

To connect its channels and simplify its enterprise workflows, Telebasel opted for open solutions from EditShare and MoovIT. Based on Adobe Premiere Pro, the new workflow is centralized around EditShare’s high performance, media optimized storage environment. With centralized storage in place, EditShare’s asset management platform, FLOW, and MoovIT’s workgroup administration tools, Helmut, combined to optimize the media creation process. They automated, simplified, or made unnecessary manual steps or complex procedures that were common during the sharing, creation, and distribution of content at Telebasel.

Open APIs, from EditShare and MoovIT, enabled Telebasel to not only integrate its channel workflows but customize them as well. The unique assignments and administrative structures are clearly defined while their finely tuned collaborative and technical processes are seamlessly automated, yielding powerful results.

The Adobe editing process is more open, collaborative, and interchangeable. With content centralized, Telebasel editors can view and edit video directly from their desks or remote external locations. Material is processed in real time, with editors accessing proxies in FLOW and Helmut, synchronizing the data for the high-res cuts in the background. Once editing is complete, Helmut automatically renders and adds clips to the channel’s schedule. All the media is stored centrally with rich metadata on EFS enabling control and administration of media assets at scale.

“The centralized management capabilities were crucial to the entire system,” Telebasel’s Jacot added. “The new workflows have helped us to quickly integrate live reports and news reports into the newly adapted transmission formats.”

The Telebasel rollout is a perfect template for other organizations, of any size, looking to deploy integrated centralized storage, “under the hood” administration and orchestration, and highly collaborative media and project management for Adobe enterprise workflows.

Achieving Digital Superiority

Omdia, in partnership with Oracle, interviewed heads of service, marketing, operations, revenue, information, and technology across media & entertainment firms (M&E). The interviews were conducted in May 2020 across the B2C publishing, broadcasting, digital media, filming and entertainment studios, gaming, and sports franchises sub-categories to determine their level of involvement and progress toward digital transformation. The survey also aimed to seek insights to help highlight the critical technologies that enable proactive and relevant digital customer engagements, as well as reveal the barriers to digital transformation.

This resulting Omdia research highlights the business and technological challenges Media & Entertainment firms face in orchestrating engagement with prospects and customers across channels, devices, and their enterprises while monetizing content. It also highlights insights that reveal maturity levels of the core CX capabilities and technologies that are helping to achieve success; as well as future investment plans in emerging technology and digital to enable enterprise omni-channel engagement.

View White Paper

SVG Europe Tech Webinar – ‘Winner takes all: Unlocking the opportunity in video games and esports’.