AWS empowers Kayo to be ‘the Netflix of Sports’
Dubbed ‘the Netflix of Sports’, Kayo Sports, a multi-sports streaming service, was launched in Australia last November with a promise to deliver more than 30,000 hours of content each year covering live sports, documentaries, entertainment shows and more. Powered by Fox Sports Australia, ESPN and beIN Sports, Kayo offers over 50 sports events streamed from Australia and other countries for viewing across multiple devices — from iOS and Android mobile devices to laptops and PCs, as well as on TV with Telstra TV, Apple TV and Chromecast Ultra apps
Offering enhanced viewing experiences, Kayo’s features include ‘SplitView’ that allows viewers to watch up to four feeds simultaneously across all screens, as well as ‘Key Moments’, which allows users to catch highlights of selected games, bringing them back-to-back action from the field at their fingertips.
‘No Spoilers’ is another function for viewers who have missed a match to remove all the scores and reveals, allowing them to enjoy every game as though it was happening live!
Enabling these innovative features to power new viewing experiences are solutions from Amazon Web Services (AWS) — including AWS Elemental Live encoding on premises, Amazon CloudFront, and other AWS services — that permit Kayo to personalise live streaming and video catch-up functionality.
The Kayo online sports service features pause, rewind and replay functionalities delivered by AWS Elemental MediaPackage in Apple HLS and MPEG-DASH streams, letting viewers watch how and when they want.
To support the delivery of best possible viewing experience, the end-to-end AWS Elemental live streaming workflow delivers video content with lower delay than traditional live streaming sports simulcasts, said AWS.
Thomas Kaurin, director of technology at Kayo Sports, explained: “With over 30,000 hours of content and game-changing features, it’s critical we deliver the best possible experience to sports-loving Aussies.
“AWS helps Kayo to do this through its fast pace of innovation, with constantly evolving tools that help us deliver a world-class experience.”
Kayo’s video infrastructure is architected for availability, scalability and low latency. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides elastic compute capacity based on demand, while AWS Elemental MediaPackage is supported across multiple AWS Availability Zones to repackage and originate content for delivery to Amazon CloudFront.
Storage built on EC2 and Amazon Simple Storage Service Glacier (Amazon S3 Glacier) is used to analyse live performance data to support continuous optimisation. AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions provide a “serverless” execution of sign-ups and user validation.
Paul Migliorini, managing director, Australia and New Zealand, AWS, said: “The time-critical nature of sports puts a premium on performance that goes beyond any other type of content streaming.
“AWS means broadcasters can have full confidence of an outstanding live user experience while providing the compelling library of sports that consumers expect.”
