Norsk Rikstoto has expanded its long-standing partnership with NEP Mediabank to support the launch of its new direct-to-consumer OTT streaming service, Play. NEP Mediabank now serves as the central media asset management (MAM) platform across Rikstoto’s entire media ecosystem, supporting content management and distribution for broadcast, its branded TV channel, digital platforms and OTT services.
The extension marks an important step in a partnership that began in 2008, when Rikstoto first deployed NEP Mediabank as the operational backbone of Rikstoto Direkte, its branded TV channel. Over nearly two decades, NEP Mediabank has grown alongside Rikstoto’s ambitions, handling live ingest, long-term archiving, and the distribution of thousands of horse races each year. NEP Mediabank is delivered as a fully managed, around-the-clock service supported by NEP’s dedicated team.
With the launch of Play, Rikstoto now brings all distribution, broadcast, TV channel, digital, and OTT, into a single NEP Mediabank environment. This means live horse race content is instantly available across all channels at the same time, without duplicated workflows or separate data silos, and with one clear source for rights, metadata, results, and timing information.
Frode Martnes, executive producer at Norsk Rikstoto, said: “Launching our OTT platform is about more than adding a new channel. It is about building a direct, lasting relationship with our audience on their terms. Having NEP Mediabank as the single foundation across all our distribution means we can move faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver a seamless experience to our fans, whether they are watching on television or on their phone. Sixteen years of partnership gave us the confidence to extend it further, and the results speak for themselves.”
From NEP’s perspective, the move reflects a wider shift in how rightsholders approach their media operations.
Marius Borge, key account manager at NEP, said: “Rikstoto’s decision to extend NEP Mediabank to their OTT platform reflects a broader shift in the industry. Rightsholders are moving towards a single, trusted media infrastructure that supports every distribution channel from one environment. We have been proud to run their broadcast operation around the clock for nearly two decades, and being chosen for this next step shows the trust built over time and what NEP Mediabank delivers.”
Supporting Norsk Rikstoto, NEP Mediabank delivers unified and automated ingest and distribution. A single workflow captures live race content and publishes it simultaneously to broadcast, the TV channel, and the OTT platform, reducing duplication and speeding up time to screen. NEP Mediabank generates content by combining live race footage with real time metadata, betting data, and results from Rikstoto’s systems. Results, odds, timing, and racing data are linked to content at the point of ingest, making the archive fully searchable and enabling more personalised on demand experiences for OTT audiences.
All content assets move through a fully managed subtitling pipeline, with completed subtitles inserted directly into the platform. Rikstoto’s library of tens of thousands of races, built over nearly two decades, becomes an active content asset for the OTT platform, available for replay, editorial use, and audience engagement.
As with the existing broadcast operation, the OTT environment is staffed, monitored, and supported around the clock by NEP’s dedicated Mediabank team, ensuring reliability for every race, every day. The platform is also built to grow with Rikstoto’s ambitions, supporting new content formats, international racing markets, and changing audience behaviour without the need for changing platform.
