CASE STUDY

Racing TV, formerly known as Racing UK, is a British television channel with fixtures from 61 racecourses broadcast live. It chose Simplestream to power a media asset management system back in 2012, further expanding the scope to automate the creation of on demand assets, and with the objective to enhance monetisation opportunities.

The brief included the need for a cloud-based platform, for the Racing TV team to benefit from a single system to manage the entire archive, including tools to edit and then publish the content across several channels, including the website, apps, and social media.

Simplestream deployed Media Manager to allow RacingTV to easily control all the existing assets, and seamlessly automate the creation of VOD assets from broadcast, through the Live2VOD module. The easy-to-navigate infrastructure allows the content owners to archive, edit, and publish their on demand content, including opportunities for further monetisation.

• Archive: the combined Racing TV archive, comprising of over 50,000 race clips, is made available across all platforms, including searchable full race metadata sources from the Press Association (which comprises of race, runner, rider, jockey, owner, breeder and trainer information).

• Live2VOD: the dedicated cloud-based module automates the workflow for the generation of replays within minutes from broadcast.

• Editing: Media Manager includes browser-based video editing, including real-time editing, for race commentary and highlights.

• Publishing: race clips are automatically published across the website, apps and social media channels

• Media View: Racing TV can leverage this module within Media Manager to license race replay packages to selected partners, including a range of APIs and integration methods.

Racing TV is broadcast to 14 million homes in Britain and Ireland, and 66% of the audience is engaged by the platform daily, with the mix of live and on demand content distributed across various platforms.

The solution adopted has helped Racing TV to seamlessly manage their content from one place. Simplestream’s Media Manager provides the client with a robust, cloud-based infrastructure, utilised to power on demand content for over 8,000 races per year (2021).

The automated workflows through the Live2VOD module, together with the editing and publishing capabilities within the CMS are key to Racing TV to keep growing their fan-base, and to enhance monetisation of VOD assets through licencing to selected partners.