France.tv sport is the France Télévisions sports portal which circulates sports magazines and broadcasts sports competitions. Wildmoka offers cloud-based solutions to edit and broadcast videos both live and on demand. Its platform makes it possible to create a large variety of content such as live footage, highlights, match summaries, and replays for digital providers such as the France.tv application (OTT D2C) and social networks.

France.tv sport and Wildmoka have been partners in broadcasting large sporting events since 2018, including the Tour de France, the French Open, and even the next Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Gautier Curtil, in charge of digital strategy at France.tv sport, states:

“The broadcasting offer for sporting events such as the French Open consisted of taking traditional TV and offering it on digital environments. This linear TV offered everyone the same experience with specific broadcasting times. We wanted to offer a different digital method to complement the TV set. We can reach all audiences by offering a 360° experience, from tennis fans to the general public who just want to find out the day’s results. We have worked to set up a digital ecosystem with a powerful, optimized and user-friendly video, article, and data offer which has been adapted to the functionality that customers have asked for.”

Issues:

• Offering the public a personalized viewing experience on the France.tv platform and across social networks
• Ensuring the stability, scalability and security of the solution
• Intelligently monetizing videos without disturbing viewing experience

Linear television offered all viewers the same experience and meant it was not possible to broadcast large sporting events in their entirety. “Now it’s possible with digital and OTT!”, exclaims Matthieu Loreille, CMO at Wildmoka. “The portal created by France.tv sport offers everyone a personalized experience. It’s a new way to consume sport!”

The French Open illustrates this new dynamic perfectly. A historical broadcaster of the tournament in France, France.tv sport has created a multimedia experience including live footage, edited replays, and content dedicated to social networks. “Sport is still the main type of videos watched live”, remarks Gautier Curtil. For the French Open, the idea is to encourage live viewing and make a tailor-made video offer available which is adapted to all audiences with native digital content.

Thanks to the portal, a fan of a little-known player can watch their matches live or on demand. Video extracts will also be uploaded to the France.tv sport social media channels to lead viewers to the France Télévisions website. “We want to find the right balance between what we broadcast on our social networks and what will be on our platform. The whole social ecosystem must be exemplary. The key is to intelligently encourage our communities by giving them enough content.”

In 2019, France.tv sport broadcast 1200 hours of TV content, from sports magazine programs to on-air event coverage. The digital offer joined this TV offer to make up 6000 hours of content, that is, an increase of 400-500%. “Our posts are adapted to each social network, with video editors monitoring our live offer, choosing content and editing it according to the platform we’ll publish it on. They’re all designed to lead the audience to our own environments (the website and app), so people who are following the French Open on our social networks reach a French Open ecosystem where they’ll find an exclusive video, article and data offer.”

The portal is also part of France Télévisions’ public service mission. “The rights for an event like the French Open are very high. As a public service, we have to offer an intelligently monetized and distributed digital experience, with the idea being to give the whole population access to large competitions. It’s a true French characteristic. We mainly broadcast this content and these digital offers on demand, financed by the taxpayer.”

When faced with the stakes of broadcasting sport, choosing the cloud was a no-brainer. “The acquisition rights for events like the French Open are so high that we can’t risk having a system that might crash right in the middle of a live broadcast ”, Matthieu Loreille explained. We have 19 courts at the same time. The services need to be scaled and stable. The content mustn’t be pirated, of course. As far as security is concerned, the system needs to have proven itself.”
For Gautier Curtil, making a completely digital offer available is a no-brainer. “AWS is one of the main actors on the market. It felt almost natural to start using their services in 2017. We can’t risk anything crashing during streaming. Externalizing guarantees security. We stick to what we know. We’re media editors and we go to technical experts for a high-performance video infrastructure.”

France.tv sport broadcasts sports news all year round with 10 or 20 times more viewers during large competitions, that is, up to a million visits per day during the French Open. “Our technical infrastructure must be fast and adapt to the most important parts of the year. We scale the environment during the event and then we release resources, which allows us to reduce our costs and have a flexible strategy which is adapted to the important moments in the sports market”, said Gautier Curtil.

Digitalization thanks to the cloud makes it possible to offer mobile content, an important point for Gautier Curtil because it “shows that we’re accessible throughout France from several devices and that we offer a seamless experience. Only the cloud lets us offer that complex experience”. Furthermore, in this period of uncertainty regarding COVID-19, it has been important for editors to be mobile. “Digitalization has really freed us from a physical obligation. For the 2020 French Open, our video editors probably won’t be on site, but in our offices or working from home.”

Matthieu Loreille explains: “The camera streams from all the courts go to the on-site OB environment where the AWS Elemental Live encoders are. The 19 parallel streams are sent to Wildmoka. The editors connect to our platform to create clips, match highlights, etc. The live streams that are only broadcast on the France.tv sport app are sent back from Wildmoka to AWS Elemental Media Live which encodes the live videos for streaming, via AWS Elemental Media Package to prepare the videos for broadcast and protect them, then via AWS Elemental Media Tailor to monetize them.”

Monetizing content is also an issue for France.tv sport. “The monetization formats are very well-made to have a real ROI and are designed intelligently to be the least intrusive possible. They are supported by Dynamic Advertising Insertion and pre-roll gaps.”

In the 2019 edition of the French Open, linear TV had a total of 32.5 million viewers. Digital TV had 52.5 million views with an almost equal split between social networks and the France.tv sport OTT platform (25.4% vs 27.1%).
This evolution in the way we consume sport should reach its climax with the next Olympic Games. “It’s a monstrous place. Dozens of people work with our digital ambitions. We’ll have 47 parallel flows with fairly complex feedback issues. We’re expecting up to a million downloads of our France.tv sport app. We have monetization stakes amounting to millions of euros. It's a huge factory, and given the reduction of a certain number of linear channels for France Télévision, the idea is to give pride of place to our digital offer, whether it's readable or referenced", Gautier specified.

Digital is gaining market share over traditional TV, with which we are working hand in hand. We want to have a virtuous ecosystem with links established between the two. The offers are very complimentary”, Gautier Curtil concludes.

• +23% views on digital in 2019 compared to the 2018 French Open tournament
  
• +600 million views per month
• + 6000 hours of live video