SFR taps MediaKind for UEFA Champions League

Altice France’s SFR, the country’s second-largest telecoms service provider, has extended the deployment of technology outfit MediaKind’s Video Storage and Processing Platform (VSPP) solution to deliver live OTT coverage of UEFA) Champions League football.

In August 2020, MediaKind’s VSPP solution enabled SFR to deliver sporting content to its highest ever live streaming audience, according to the company, when over one million concurrent streamers watched the final of the Champions League through the SFR service.

The SFR deployment includes MediaKind monitoring services, which enable SFR and MediaKind experts to remotely access the VSPP platform to perform proactive observation of performance and identify and mitigate potential areas of risk to the streaming output, said MediaKind. SFR is conitinuing to deploy MediaKind’s solution and services to enable streaming coverage of the competition during the current European season.

Christophe Delaye, CTO, SFR, said: “As the shift towards streaming content intensified last year, we understood the demand for OTT would quickly translate to the live sports space too. Working with MediaKind offered a wonderful opportunity to test our growing competency in the live streaming space by delivering one of Europe’s most important sporting competitions to our subscribers across France. By leveraging the power of MediaKind’s high-performing VSPP solution, we have been able to scale our platform and provide stable, high-quality live coverage of European soccer to our largest-ever OTT audience.”

Damien Montessuit, SVP Global Sales, MediaKind, said: “We are delighted to continue our longstanding relationship with SFR. Ensuring reliable, low latency streaming to large volumes of concurrent traffic is a significant undertaking, even for the most robust networks – every second counts. Through the capabilities of our video-optimized VSPP solution, we were able to protect the quality and integrity of SFR’s live sports content and deliver it to the screens of a record-breaking audience in France. Enabling this high-scale live OTT streaming of one of Europe’s most important soccer competitions is not only a success but also a significant achievement for all the technical teams involved.”