Scottish Premiership football season hits TV screens with QTV Sports and Cerberus Tech for live delivery
QTV Sports’ live coverage of the Scottish Premiership football season has been enhanced by Cerberus Tech.
The distribution of the season, which kicked off on 1 August, is being powered by the new version of Cerberus Tech’s Livelink software as a service (SaaS) live delivery platform, which allows users to self-manage live feeds from any location.
QTV is producing and delivering live feeds of 142 Scottish Premiership matches to UK broadcasters, as well as to club OTT channels and other Scottish Professional Football League partners. Cerberus Tech was able to ship all required hardware to QTV and the clubs, enabling them to deliver live feeds to social media and their own TV channels, as well as to QTV and Stream Digital.
The ability to self-manage live feeds will enable the broadcasters to deliver multiple matches simultaneously as the season progresses. Even with multiple concurrent matches, Livelink allows QTV to deliver those feeds to multiple locations reliably, securely and with minimal latency.
Livelink is a robust IP delivery solution for transporting live linear and OTT content from point to single-point or multi-point. It allows users to self-manage their live content for delivery to any destination worldwide by utilising cloud environments available in every region. Livelink is cloud agnostic and is also compatible with any IP protocol, including Zixi, RIST, SRT, RTMP and HLS.
Jack McGill, CEO, QTV Sports, commented: “Like the rest of the industry, QTV went from producing hundreds of hours of live and as-live sports coverage every year to a complete sports lockdown. Our team is really excited to get back to doing what we do best. Partnering with Cerberus Tech enables us to deliver live broadcast feeds in the safest and most efficient way possible and we are excited to be the first customer implementing this version of Livelink. Being able to self-manage the broadcast with Livelink means we have complete control over the live feed monitoring; this is the ideal minimal-contact solution for the current situation.”
With social distancing still in place, Livelink minimises contact and the number of staff needed at the event site, ensuring a safe return to sports broadcasting. Due to the ongoing uncertainty, the built-in scalability of the platform will help QTV react quickly to any changing circumstances or government restrictions. There is also no reliance on expensive infrastructure and Livelink fits into existing set-ups with minimal, or often no, hardware requirements.
Chris Clarke, CEO, Cerberus, commented: “The return to sports and the build-up of matches has meant that infrastructure such as OB trucks have become even more prohibitively expensive. Livelink enables broadcasters and production companies to deliver feeds extremely cost-effectively and with very quick set-up times. Our IP solution moves this content from production into the broadcasters’ infrastructure within a two second delay globally.”