Midco Sports

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Background

Midco Sports Network® (MidcoSN) - the leading source for high school and collegiatesports coverage in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. High School andcollegiate sports drive significant audience numbers in the United States, led by flagshipsports such as American Football and Basketball. MidcoSN was keen to extend itsreach by launching an OTT video service with the potential to scale and evolve over timesupporting multiple platforms.

Objective 

In order to expand its reach across platforms and make it easier for fans to access its content, Midco sought to implement a subscription-based model that would allow viewers to access both live and on-demand content across a range of platforms. Midco wanted to ensure that the video quality remained high, regardless of the user’s location or the potential for increased traffic during live events.

Solution

MidcoSN worked with Accedo to develop the new video service, leveraging the company’s powerful SaaS solution, Accedo One. The unified cloud platform provided MidcoSN with the flexibility to build, launch, and customize their video streaming applications in one convenient place. It also ensured fast time to market thanks to cloud services and ready built native app templates that were ready to be customized in accordance with the company’s needs. Accedo was tasked with managing the project, including technical integrations with several partner vendors via the Accedo One Marketplace.

As a result, the OTT service now leverages Brightcove for end-to-end video workflow and video asset management, as well as InPlayer for user identity management, video entitlement, packaging, and pricing. Supported integration with Google Analytics for Firebase provides a detailed overview on playback events, screen views, and user interaction. These marketplace partners are integrated into the Accedo One technology stack which significantly reduces time to market and development efforts.

As with any sport, some high school and collegiate leagues are more popular than others. This leads to large variations in viewing number for events, so MidcoSN needed the flexibility and scalability provided by video cloud services. The The Accedo One platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), granting MidcoSN the flexibility to quickly scale up and down as needs and market dynamics change. In addition, the company has access to a visual, easy-to-use editor that offers it the flexibility to easily change the user interface and organize content differently depending on seasons, trends, or end-user preferences.
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In addition to extending its geographical and platform reach, MidcoSN wanted to ensure that fans would always have access to high quality video no matter their location or potential spikes in traffic. This is especially important during live events, when a large number of viewers could have a negative effect on latency and service performance. The Accedo One platform is fully cloud-native and makes use of the AWS Cloud to ensure scalability, performance, and availability around the globe. By utilizing a variety of AWS services - including Amazon CloudFront, a fast content delivery network (CDN), Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic search Service, Amazon DocumentDB, and Amazon Elastic Container Services (Amazon ECS) - Accedo has been able to provide a robust service that ensures Midco’s footage is securely delivered with high transfer speeds and quality.

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Results

Midco Sports Plus launched in December 2020, and is available on Android iOS,and web devices, with plans to extend to connected TV devices in the near future.The service gives sports fans access to a great mix of live and on-demand content,presented in an engaging user experience that will keep them happy and engaged.Integrations with Brightcove and InPlayer ensure seamless video ingestion anddelivery, as well as end-user authentication and the enablement of in-app purchases.Integration with Amazon Web Services enables the reliable delivery of high quality,low latency video and means that MidcoSN can scale instantly as demand fluctuates,especially around live matches.