Powerplay Golf
Overview
Streaming Tank where asked by Powerplay Golf, IMG, and European Tour Productions to live stream the Inaugural Powerplay competition at Celtic Manor Resort and Golf Club (home of the most recent Ryder Cup).
The event was broadcast live in 30 countries and streamed live on the Powerplay website and the Powerplay Facebook page.
On-Demand video of the whole event was streamed live through the main player after the event and edited highlights were streamed live into a separate Streaming Tank MicroTV and onto the Powerplay YouTube site.
Due to television rights, the live stream could only be made available to specific countries with Geo-location blocking being lifted at different times depending on different countries rights agreements.
The start of the Powerplay events saw major stars coming out to compete including reigning US Open champions McDowell and Creamer.
Solution
Prior to the event, Streaming Tank set up and managed all the streaming aspects, including the players to enable selected Geo-Blocking, connected to our Geo-Blocking servers. A MicroTV was set up for edited clips along with transcoding to handle multiple incoming edits prior, during and after the event.
The production included 26 cameras around this course, including multiple RF Cameras, Crane Cameras and fixed cameras.
The internet connection was sent to the on-site Streaming Tank team via fibre, laid from the main hotel complex to the press centre where Streaming Tank was based.
On-Site hardware encoding into multiple qualities in Flash to work alongside the adaptive bandwidth detecting players.
The on-site crew managed all encoding and transcoding while the off-site crew managed the Geo-blocking.
The on-site crew also managed the MicroTV player and PowerPlay YouTube site.
Result
A successful live and on-demand stream onto all sites. Successful Geo-Blocking and management.
Powerplay Golf are currently organising at least 3 more events in 2011 and multiple events in 2012.
