Easel TV streams Live T20 Cricket

London, 20 June 2023: Easel TV, which provides end-to-end, software-as-a-service streaming solutions to enable businesses and content owners of all sizes to stream high quality video to consumers, today provided details on the pay-per-view live sports streaming service it has delivered and operates for the current English T20 cricket season for Kent Cricket.

Easel TV, whose clients range from broadcasting corporations like Sky, Virgin Media, and NBC Universal to smaller direct-to-market content owners and live-event providers, such as theatres, festival organisers or sports clubs and associations, was called on to help create a pay per view digital service for Kent Cricket as part of a game-wide trial. The innovative pilot project was agreed by Kent Cricket, ECB and Sky on the eve of the Vitality Blast T20 competition and saw Kent Cricket become the first professional cricket club to stream a live T20 Vitality Blast match behind a paywall.

“Working with our client, Kent Cricket, we pretty much created the service within a week having only been approached about 10 days before the first match was due to go live”, said Joe Foster, the CEO of Easel TV. 

Key to EaselTV’s ability to execute a robust TV industry grade streaming service in such a short time, is the suite of self-build design tools that the company provides to its clients, in this case Kent Cricket. 

“We had been introduced to the Easel TV model some time ago but restrictions on broadcast rights had always held us back. As soon as we received approval for the pilot, we reached out but when we called on Easel TV, we weren’t sure if this would even be possible.” notes Simon Storey, CEO of Kent Cricket, “It has taken just one existing in-house editorial resource to create the service within a week ofEasel TV setting us up with an account – phenomenal. Not least because it was never going to be sufficient to just produce the service; we also needed to know that Easel TV could link up with our content producer, AdVision, and implement a professional streaming service akin to BBC iPlayer or BT Sport. We wanted a proper standalone streaming service that provides a platform for future growth of our digital service and we got it; Kent Cricket Play. We’ve been able to provide a differentiated experience for members and supporters as well, an added bonus.”

Much of Easel TV’s new platform is centred on easy self-management of complex media pipeline tasks, bringing it down to simple editorial tools. “Easel TV’s CMS has an easy-to-use online dashboard that includes an intuitive live events facility that allows us to easily set-up a live event with our outside broadcast partner. We can test the stream, monitor it and decide when to go live, with little stress or effort” says Liam Knight, who has created the service and operates the editorial for Kent Cricket Play.

Within the limited set-up period, Kent Cricket was also able to call on Easel TV’s unique ‘Markets’ capability which allows content owners to address multiple audiences’ needs. In this case a separate market was quickly set up for members who would be given free access to the games, whilst all other consumers were offered all matches, except the first match, for a set pay-per-view price. The first match was offered free to all consumers to attract interest and registrations. Other markets were set up for staff, partners and opponents’ staff to give them free access too.

“The ease at which we could set up different matches for free or ticketed, and then the same match for some users free and some users ticketed, was brilliant, and it’s all setup already with payments and registrations.” said Liam.

Joe Foster was keen to point out that there is a lot of capability in the Easel TV system that clearly makes it a very good choice for anyone looking to get what might be seen as a pop-up full-featured professional streaming service for any live event, be it sports, music, shows or anything else. 

 

For more information, visit www.easeltv.com

(ENDS)

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