Midco Sports Network® (MidcoSN) - the leading source for high school and collegiate
sports coverage in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. High School and
collegiate sports drive significant audience numbers in the United States, led by flagship
sports such as American Football and Basketball. MidcoSN was keen to extend its
reach by launching an OTT video service with the potential to scale and evolve over time
supporting multiple platforms.
“Midco Sports Plus gives our existing fans more flexibility in how they consume our content, as well as attracting new subscribers from across the United States. For us, one of the most important factors
was to create a simple and engaging user experience that would delight fans and attract subscribers” - Craig DeWit, General Manager, Midco Sports Network
With Midco Sports Plus, MidcoSN was looking to give fans more ways to engage with its live
match coverage and original content across a variety of digital platforms. The OTT video
service would help extend its geographical reach, while enabling fans to consume a
large variety of live and VOD content via a subscription model across mobile, web, tablet, and connected TV devices.
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.
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.
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 and
delivery, 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.
