High Profile Event Management
“The show must go on”. Deliver flawless viewing for landmark viewing moments when audience expectations reach their peak.
Nothing spoils the big event like a technical failure
In the era of binge-watching not all video is time-shifted. Major events still bring viewers together in a collective, primetime viewing experience. Whether we’re viewing online or on TV, live sports and concerts, or the premiere of a must-watch TV series can draw huge simultaneous audiences. But nothing angers consumers more than technical glitches at the crucial moment – from failed pay-per-view authentication to stream buffering, poor picture quality or audio drop-out. Whether you’re watching via satellite or the Internet, the feeling of missing out creates equal fury.
User experience must match the size of your content investment
High profile content comes with a high price tag. Operators invest heavily in sports rights and quality series, and it’s impossible to maximize the return on that investment if the broadcast or streaming technology lets viewers down. The negative publicity created by fans who can’t access time-sensitive content can cause irreparable damage to an operator’s brand. High profile events are also a major target for piracy that further dilutes the value of those content investments.
High Profile Event Management offers a range of services that helps pay-TV and OTT operators to fully prepare their content delivery value chain for their most important broadcasts and to rehearse incident response plans to maximize the chances of a flawless customer experience. When showtime arrives, we can also actively monitor your systems from our Mission Control, providing real-time insights into technical metrics and consumer sentiment for proactive performance tuning as events unfold.
Peace of mind
When you’ve invested heavily in content, you can’t afford to cross your fingers and hope you’re your broadcast or streaming infrastructure will live up to consumer demand. Our stress testing and detailed system audits will give you confidence that every part of your content value chain is up to the job.
Rapid incident response
With Irdeto’s expert team on your side, and a constant stream of real-time insights into system performance and social media sentiment, you can be sure of a swift response at the first sign of anything that might impact the consumer viewing experience. Pre-tested escalation procedures include a concrete plan to communicate effectively with viewers via social media to manage consumer expectations.
Peace of mind
Each Irdeto customer benefits from our experience in meeting SLAs for hundreds of high-profile global events, but every operator’s content supply chain is unique. Post-event performance reports and reviews with our customers foster a cross-organizational learning culture that helps to further improve service quality for every subsequent event.
Infrastructure audits take place before each event. High load (equal to or exceeding previous peak traffic) is simulated for stress-testing and to gather response time metrics. Audits can be limited to your security systems (CAS and DRM) or expanded to encompass the full content value chain infrastructure for OTT or broadcast. Any shortcomings identified in the audit can then be rectified prior to the high-profile event and the tests re-run for benchmarking purposes.
Irdeto’s central control facility acts as the operations nerve center during the event. An Irdeto delivery manager leads a team of technical subject matter experts, each monitoring operator-specific system health indicators (KPIs). Potential issues are identified, isolated and addressed by the team before they can impact viewing. Additional monitoring is provided by Irdeto’s 24/7 Service Operations Centre.
Despite meticulous planning and flawless execution, Irdeto has a trained incident manager on standby throughout each event to deal with any unforeseen issues. Well-rehearsed procedures ensure corrective action is executed in a calm and coordinated manner. Communications channels – including social media – are widened to reduce consumer uncertainly until a resolution is in place.
The Irdeto team publishes performance reports to stakeholders no more than an hour after each event ends. This ensures in-depth analysis occurs while the proceedings are still fresh in everyone’s mind and also allows work on any lessons learned/necessary improvements to begin without delay. Performance trend reports are also produced at pre-agreed intervals.
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Better together
Of course, pirates love high-profile events just as much as consumers do. Irdeto has spent over 50 years helping media companies to protect their content, so we’re acutely aware of the damage piracy can do to an operator’s business. Our ground-breaking Online Piracy Detection service works to identify and disrupt pirate activity in real-time, making it the perfect partner to our High-Profile Event Management service.