In 2021, the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU) launched a new premier competition, Japan Rugby League One. And the union built a video management system leveraging AWS to deliver match footage to teams, broadcasters, and other stakeholders. During the season, watchers downloaded over 32,000 videos.

Japan caught rugby fever when hosting the 2019 Rugby World Cup, making the sport more valuable than ever. Following the tournament’s success, the JRFU formulated Japan Rugby 2050, a long-term vision to further popularize rugby, host another world cup, and reach the top of the rugby world.

In June 2021, the Union revealed Japan Rugby League One (“League One”), a new competition to replace the 18-year-old Top League and stir the passion of fans. The new league kicked off in January 2022, with the season ending in a playoff tournament in May. However, managing the video of games presented a challenge.

“We didn’t take a systematic approach to managing video during the Top League era,” explains Yutaka Muroguchi, General Manager of the JRFU Media Center. “But video assets are much more important in modern sports. Video not only needs to reach viewers, it’s also essential for team promotion and tactical analysis. For the launch of League One, we decided to make an environment for everyone—the league, teams, stakeholders, and media—to access video immediately.”

The JRFU built a system to centrally manage video from League One games played across Japan, selecting several AWS services for its platform.

According to the Media Center’s Kensei Sawa, “We chose AWS because of its cloud agility, cost, and substantial ecosystem. An end-to-end system implemented with AWS services reduced development work like compatibility testing and trimmed administrative loads with managed services.”

The video management system took just three months to develop, starting in November 2021and ending the following January. This fast turnaround was achieved with support from AWS account administrators, who aided the project from planning to launch, and a combination of multiple partner solutions. The new system—which uses AWS Elemental Live in an on-premises environment to encode video broadcast from the game venue and upload it to the cloud—has three main purposes.

First, to send video data to a match data provider to digitalize the timing of match information such as tries and set plays for further use. Second, to use AWS Elemental MediaLive to encode data as streaming video and provide a live streaming environment. Third, to edit matches as 30-second to 1-minute clips or instantly send completed footage of matches to league stakeholders, the teams involved, and broadcasters.

English company M2AMedia and game-day operating services supply partner solutions that automate video processing based on schedules and monitor the system. The system also uses Edius, video editing software by U.S company GrassValley, to create highlights and make clips for social media and the CMS of Japan-based Necfru to preview video content stored on Amazon S3 and index data for searches.

The new system managed the video of all 184 League One games from January to May 2022. Between the months of January 2022 and August 2022, 32,600 videos had been downloaded　with an average of 160 downloads per game during the season. Broadcasters, teams, and competition stakeholders all use the videos for their own specific purposes.

“Users love the system because they can download video at any time if they have authorization,” explains Sawa. “They can obtain footage more easily and apply it with more flexibility than ever before.”

Workloads for game-day livestreams aren’t a problem, as only two members of the JRFU are needed to control the streams, even managing up to six games simultaneously. The new setup also keeps costs much lower than an on-premises solution. The League One season runs from January to May with mainly weekend games. The pay-as-you-go AWS fee structure minimizes costs and frees the JRFU from expenses when games are suddenly canceled due to Covid-19.

The greatest benefit of the AWS-based video management system is that it provides the JRFU with a highly flexible platform that can keep pace with change.

“Using a combination of AWS services enabled us to build a platform that is far more flexible and cost effective than a packaged video management system,” says Muroguchi.

“Its mechanisms are easier to understand than a black-boxed packaged product, so we can isolate problems more efficiently. We can also quickly modify and evolve the system based on user needs.”

The JRFU plans to expand the system’s functionality and range of use, including overseas delivery. Video production and delivery is extremely costly, which is a bottleneck for delivery to overseas broadcasters and distributors. The JRFU aims to overcome this challenge by using the cloud to lower costs and showcase Japanese rugby to more countries and fans.

The Union is also considering cloud-based live production to enable remote operation, replace dedicated equipment in stadium broadcasting vans, and minimize production costs.

“We've built a platform to provide many video services,” says Muroguchi. “We’ll use it as a mechanism to engage new fans and streamline video production for matches. We also want to expand the scope of the system to include the national team and student rugby, so we’re looking forward to ongoing support from AWS.”