National Hockey League (NHL)
NHL Video Takes Center Ice with Signiant Digital Media Distribution
Challenge:
- Improve branding and enhance fan loyalty
- Engage fans outside their local market
- More effectively utilize alternative venues to distribute highlights
- Leverage existing infrastructure and tools
- Automate process to ingest, encode, and compile footage
Solution:
- Signiant file movement software installed in central data center and 30 arenas league-wide
Results:
- Improved programming with inclusion of more clips
- Enhanced cross league promotion
- Ability to distribute highlight clips in a timely manner
- Scoring data and voice communications on the League’s network remain uninterrupted
The National Hockey League (NHL) boasts 53 million of the most passionate, technically sophisticated fans in North America, and as part of a strategic marketing initiative, the League needed a way to highly engage its avid fans and expose them to more events taking place League-wide.
A significant part of the NHL’s strategy called for better use of online video, and in April 2008, the League launched NHL Network Online, a landmark online video initiative to provide fans with game highlights and behind-the-scenes footage.
The NHL chose Signiant’s software to quickly ingest, manage, and control the distribution of game footage and other promotional video to and from its 30 arenas in the U.S. and Canada. Signiant enables the NHL to edit timely footage into shows that are aired daily on NHL Network Online, but it also permits game highlights to be delivered to NHL arenas and aired on Jumbotrons in near-real time. As a result, the League can keep fans immersed in the game as never before.
Because Signiant allows the NHL to leverage existing IP connectivity at all of the League’s 30 arenas, the solution was deployed quicker and for a lesser cost than some of the NHL’s other options, including signal-based solutions.
Prior to implementing Signiant’s file movement software, the NHL’s proprietary venue-based IP network was only used to transfer scoring data, and provide IP-based voice communications. With the ability to closely control media transfers, Signiant’s solution allows the NHL to accelerate the movement of large video files over its network while managing and optimizing bandwidth usage to ensure that these vital, existing services remain uninterrupted.
