Equidia moves to cloud delivery with Globecast MCN to accelerate international growth
International horse racing channel Equidia, a subsidiary of PMU, has chosen Globecast’s Managed Cloud Network (MCN) service, plus encoding, to increase the choice and flexibility of what content can be aired by which affiliates, cost-effectively.
Equidia, through its B2B Equidia Pro service, delivers 39 international channels to PMU’s affiliates. It has been a Globecast customer for the past 20 years, using SNG contribution services across France alongside international distribution capabilities. These include satellite distribution to Europe, fibre to the UK and Globecast XN for internet delivery to Asia and South America.
Equidia has deployed Globecast MCN in order to expand the amount of content available and to easily select which affiliates receive what content. It’s tailored for sports broadcasters and rights holders and provides Equidia with cost-effective, secure, cloud-based distribution. Using a clear UI, the channel can easily add new affiliates and can modify feeds to them and existing customers on a rights-held basis, even per race, without the additional cost of more fibre or satellite capacity. It’s also low latency, which is vital for horse racing as most bets are placed in the last 10 seconds prior to the start of the race.
Globecast MCN is a prime example of the company’s global partnership with AWS, with the cloud technology integral to the success of the solution. Earlier this year, MCN successfully completed AWS’ Foundational Technical Review (FTR).
Laurent Alvarez, director of the technology, operation and innovation department with PMU, said: “We’ve been exploring ways of increasing our international reach while also being able to be far more flexible in the feeds that we can provide. Doing this via fibre or satellite would have been prohibitively expensive and cumbersome, too. We needed low latency and an easy-to-use interface and that’s exactly what Globecast MCN provides. We’re very happy to once again extend our international relationship with them as they have been both a reliable and innovative partner for us.”
Gregoire Courtois, sales director media solutions and distribution with Globecast, said: “This is precisely the type of application for which MCN was designed. Using the cloud provides a previously impossible level of flexibility and content distribution management, allowing PMU to operate in a far more precise way while driving further international growth.”