2021 SHORTLIST

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WSC SPORTS: CREATING AUTOMAGICAL OTT EXPERIENCES

Entrant Company: WSC Sports

FINALIST

Best in OTT or Streaming

WSC Sports- Creating Automagical OTT Experiences

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

With the rise of OTT platforms WSC Sports saw the potential of applying its proprietary technology to help new and existing clients deliver innovative new fan experiences to their subscribers.

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

In 2020 WSC Sports helped deliver brand new fan experiences. The scale and customisation our platform provides enabled PGA Tour to show fans, for the first time ever, highlights of each and every shot from every golfer during tournaments on their TOURcast OTT platform. Fans can follow their favourite golfer(s) and now never miss a shot. This is taking golf coverage to the next level.

We helped our partners Eleven Sports (French and Dutch) and Viaplay (Swedish, Finnish, and Danish) localize their content, making it more accessible and personal in their multilanguage markets in 2020. Our platform ingests multiple language broadcasts and simultaneously prepares the same clip for different markets. Native language speakers shouldn’t have to settle, now they don’t have to.

The above examples as well as the aforementioned ability to let fans navigate their own coverage during games, as well as the much loved ‘Key Plays’ option, proves we’re truly changing the game when it comes to highlights and engagement. We keep innovating and setting the bar higher and higher year after year.

In 2020 WSC Sports analyzed over 27,000 sporting events, created 1.5m videos, which added together makes over 38,000 hours of content!

 

Objective: WSC Sports’ technology utilises AI and machine learning algorithms to automatically create real-time sports highlights, analysing, tagging and ranking each and every event that happens in a game. This allows media rights holders such as teams, leagues and broadcasters to distribute videos at a speed and scale not seen before, and empowers them to engage with fans, grow their brands and explore new monetization opportunities for their content.

WSC Sports’ technology makes it possible to automatically fill clients OTT and streaming platforms with unique and personalized content, before, during, and after live events.

Over the past year our OTT offering has grown significantly, we’ve integrated with new exciting platforms such as PGA TOURcast and Eleven Sport, we ventured into new markets bringing our OTT technology to Russia (Okko Sports) and India (FanCode), and continued to supply content and develop new offerings for existing clients such as EuroLeagueTV, Viaplay (NENT) and many others (see confidential).

Thanks to us, our partners have delivered game-changing viewing experiences to more fans than ever before.

 

Strategy & Execution: WSC Sports’ technology was purposely built to serve the sports world. We understand the needs and desires of our clients and those of modern sports fans. Fans today demand more content, in more places, delivered faster than ever before and with increased levels of personalisation. Gone are the days of producing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ video highlight for all digital publish points.

WSC Sports is driving the sports industry away from VOD, in a shift toward ‘Video on Command’, as we make it possible for sports fans to dictate what content they want to see, where and when.

Across OTT platforms our technology gives fans access to every event that happens in the broadcast right away, they can filter and search for specific events, players and plays, or even catch up to live through ‘Key Plays’ for fans that missed the start of the action. We’re essentially giving fans the opportunity to direct their own coverage of their favourite sport.

Not all fans are the same. WSC Sports helps reach them all, from the die hard fan, to the casual observer, wherever they are and whatever platform they’re using it’s likely they will have consumed one of WSC Sports’ highlights.

 

Results:

WSC Sports knows that engagement creates monetization opportunities. Our ability to create an abundance of content at speed, and then properly utilize it, by delivering it at the right time, and on the right platform, brings unprecedented levels of audience engagement. More content, in more places, means more brand awareness, sponsorships, partnerships and advertising, WSC Sports helps unlock all these opportunities. Interestingly, with some clients, we found that money received through sponsorships alone, from just one tournament, covered the cost of adopting the WSC Sports platform.

By offering revolutionary fan viewing experiences, with video content powered by WSC Sports, our partners saw significant spikes in subscriber rates in 2020.

But perhaps the best way to measure the success of our OTT integration is seeing our partners receiving industry awards. Eleven Sports picked up the award for ‘Best OTT' at the 2020 Broadcast Tech Innovation Awards as well as ‘Best New Platform’ at the 2020 SportsPro OTT Awards. WSC Sports also directly received recognition as our OTT offering won the Gold Award for ‘Best Tech Company’ at the SportsPro OTT Awards.

Despite the tough financial year for the sports world, we signed over 50 new clients and renewed many existing contracts.

PRODUCTION

WSC Sports

 

PRODUCTION

Co-Founder and CEO
WSC Sports
 
Co-Founder and COO
WSC Sports
 
Co-Founder and CBDO
WSC Sports
 
Co-Founder and CTO
WSC Sports

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