MASV Case Study: User-Generated Video and the Evolving Nature of Sports Broadcasting

Pro sports leagues, clubs, and broadcasters handle an unprecedented amount of high-resolution sports video, from large events featuring dozens of live cameras and hours of file-based content, to fan-generated video that’s often repurposed on social media or elsewhere.

These organizations often handle all this video in environments with poor connectivity, using distributed production teams, with content stored in multiple locations – but where fast and reliable file transfer is crucial.

So how should sports entities ingest, move, share, and store user-generated video, along with ever-increasing sports video volumes in general? We break it all down for you below.

The advantages of user-generated video for sports

User-generated content (UGC) is content created and shared by users rather than professional production teams. User-generated video is typically captured using smartphones or other mobile devices and then shared on social media, and has significantly impacted sports broadcasting in several ways:

Increased accessibility

User-generated videos provide fans with a wider range of sports content, including fan perspectives from the bleachers or clips from behind-the-scenes events that may not make it to the main broadcast.

Improved engagement

A recent survey showed that nearly 70 percent of Gen Z viewers prefer using mobile phones to watch sports. That’s a big reason why leagues like MLB have launched exclusivity partnerships to stream live games on platforms such as YouTube.

User-generated videos encourage greater engagement among both fan creators and their audiences – specifically, younger audiences. Recent studies show that younger cohorts watch sports differently than previous generations: Millennials, for example, almost exclusively stream sports on mobile while using social media, often browsing user-generated videos.

Greater exposure

The authenticity of user-generated video is a big part of its success: According to one survey, 93% of marketers say consumers trust user-generated content more than brand-generated content. And, of course, there’s always a chance a user’s video could go viral.

The flip side of all that exposure, however, is more video – a lot more. One company that measures user-generated video for sports leagues estimates UGC is responsible for approximately 10x more video than what can be found on a typical pro sports league’s official channels.

How to acquire user-generated content

Sports leagues and broadcasters can always ask the creator or platform to remove any copyrighted material that gets posted. But some leagues choose to work with content creators by promoting or running advertising on their user-generated video and giving them a cut. This helps promote the league and provides additional revenue streams while keeping creators happy.

When using original user-generated videos, however, leagues should always err on the side of caution by getting explicit permission from the content creator before downloading or using their video.

That’s because not getting the proper permissions can lead to a copyright infringement claim by the creator. Content owners can informally ask that the video be taken down, send the organization a formal takedown notice, or publicly accuse the organization of stealing their content (never a good look). They could even send the organization an invoice for use of their content.

If the infringement is serious enough, organizations could even be asked to pay damages to the content owner under applicable copyright laws.

The exponential growth of sports video

User-generated video isn’t the only type of non-traditional video being embraced by sports entities, who regularly create their own videos for social media (not surprising, given that YouTube views of sports-related videos grew 33 percent year-over-year in 2022) before, during, and after games.

Other asset packages that get moved on game days include primary and ancillary content like highlight clips, interviews, pre-recorded segments, graphics packages, post-game footage, and video clips for the venue itself, all often created by off-site teams.

The amount and type of game-day footage has also changed with the advent of HD and 4K broadcasts powered by more cameras than ever – making for extremely large video volumes. The average English Premier League match, for example, uses around 30 cameras and generates several hundred terabytes of video data.

These large video files must be transferred from cameras to S3 buckets and other destinations as fast as possible – a goal that can be difficult to achieve using easily-throttled standard IP networks.

Considerations when moving fan-generated and other sports video

The complex technology stacks used by sports broadcasters means these organizations need powerful, plug-and-play tools that can be implemented within existing workflows quickly via web- or API-based services easily added or removed with minimal disruption.

The increased demand in user-generated and other video content means faster turnarounds and tighter deadlines, which requires a dependable network and cloud infrastructure that’s easy to deploy, reliable, and simple for teams to onboard.

But most self-hosted file-sharing services are difficult and time-consuming to onboard and scale, are prone to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and don’t have an easy way to ingest user-generated and other video content while receiving creator consent and enforcing terms of service.

Sports entities need a cloud file transfer service with a universal web uploader that can be embedded on any website, provides complete control over file size and type of file, and can seamlessly connect with cloud systems and storage. The file transfer service should offer the following features and benefits:

Upload parameters and terms of service Some brands repost their audience’s content without permission; others download it, augment it, or republish it without permission. Both practices carry inherent risk. Video or image file uploads from your audience should be handled by a universal web uploader that can be embedded on any website, can handle any size of video file, and that includes comprehensive file upload forms.

These forms should include terms of service or consent forms asking for the creator’s explicit permission to use the content. This streamlines UGC ingestion by avoiding having to ask every creator for permission separately. File upload forms also save time and effort by allowing the organization to limit file uploads to specific file types and naming conventions for added security and organization, or enforce a maximum file upload size.

Broadcasters, leagues, clubs, and other sports entities should also be able to set file upload portals to expire after a defined date, such as after the final day of a contest.

Cost savings

Broadcasters can realize significant cost savings and reduced capital expenditures in the cloud – an important point considering the ongoing erosion of live sports broadcast margins, with broadcasters paying more than ever for the rights to carry content from major sports leagues. Broadcasters can streamline traditional distribution workflows by transcoding, encoding, and performing other tasks in the cloud instead of using programmers or distributors.

Flexibility

The flexibility of the cloud allows organizations to quickly scale up and down, future-proof their operations by seamlessly adding new technologies (such as machine learning modules), or implement cloud-enabled business models such as subscription-based streaming. Broadcasters can also use the cloud to better capitalize on remote workflows, and take advantage of cloud storage to more efficiently deliver content to multiple endpoints at the same time.

Speed Many file-sharing services don’t invest in the infrastructure necessary to provide an accelerated network. File-sharing solutions for sports broadcast should ride a specialized content delivery network (CDN) that bypasses the public internet to accelerate file transfers. They should also offer channel bonding capabilities – which allow crews to combine multiple internet and wireless connections for added power – along with transfer acceleration up to 10Gbps.

File transfer services should also support growing files, or the transfer of in-progress files, which helps shorten upload times and allows production staff to offload media from an outside broadcasting (OB) truck faster and more efficiently.

Simplicity Organizations shouldn’t have to worry about long sales cycles, buying extra seats for new users, or constant hand-holding because their solution is too complicated to set up and use. Sharing a large video file should be as simple as sending an email. File transfer solutions should also offer integrations with popular cloud storage and media asset management solutions, and automated file transfer options for virtually hands-free content ingestion and storage workflows.

Reliability Sports broadcasters need to be able to transfer footage smoothly and reliably, without fail, every time – even in areas with poor network connectivity. They also shouldn’t have to put their file packages back together on the other end: File transfer solutions should keep your file and folder structure intact, and offer checksum verification and relentless retries in case of network interruptions.

Security File transfer solutions should employ a secure-by-design approach that emphasizes strong encryption, identity and access management tools such as multi-factor authentication, and adhere to important regulatory standards such as ISO 27001 and SOC 2. In general, cloud-based file transfer offers better security than self-hosted solutions: Instead of managing your own infrastructure, cloud products come with enterprise-grade security features out of the box and patch and mitigate vulnerabilities within minutes for all users.

Sports broadcasters can take advantage of the power of cloud-based tools and a universal file uploader to get up and running quickly, drive fan engagement, and better leverage their audience’s content by transferring and organizing files quickly and reliably from any location.