SVTA Announces First Industry Group, The Streaming Sports Council, To Capture Key Technical Challenges in Live Sports Streaming

The Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA), a global technical association developing solutions to address critical technical challenges in delivering a high-quality video experience at scale, announces the launch of its first Industry Group, the Streaming Sports Council, which met formally for the first time at the SVG Summit in New York on December 17, 2024.

“We are excited to announce this first industry group,” says Jason Thibeault, SVTA CEO. “Live sports streaming has some very unique technical challenges to ensure a high-quality viewer experience. We want to capture those so that our working groups, and other organizations, can address solutions which will improve the viewing experience for streaming sports regardless of platform.”

Consumers are increasingly watching live sports streaming through a variety of platforms including DAZN, Fubo, NBC Sports, ESPN, Paramount, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix. And along with that demand comes expectations for high quality and reliability. Only, many of these operators struggle with technical issues inherent in streaming live events at scale, especially when the concurrency reaches into the 10s of millions.

The SVTA Streaming Sports Council was established to bring the industry together and capture those technical challenges. The group, meeting two or three times each year, will catalog and describe the technical challenges to streaming high-quality live sports at scale. The group will then make their findings publicly available through the SVTA website. The challenges can then be tackled by SVTA working groups or other organizations, and even used as technical topics at key industry events like SVG and SportsPro.

“Working with organizations like the Streaming Video Technology Alliance is core to our mission, especially as streaming quality becomes more and more important for fans who may be relying on anything from 4G wireless to 1Gbps wired connections to stream their video,” says Ken Kerschbaumer, SVG Editorial Director. “We’re happy to welcome SVTA to our Summit activities this year and we look forward to working with them again in the future.”

This industry group will also be public, allowing non-SVTA members to join. Interested people can sign up to participate on the Streaming Sports Council webpage at: https://www.svta.org/working-group/streaming-sports-council/.

Expanding the SVTA’s mission of addressing the technical challenges throughout the streaming video workflow, two new working groups are now available for members to participate in: Encoding & Packaging and Edge.

The Encoding & Packaging Working Group, co-chaired by Alex Giladi of Comcast and Yuriy Reznik of Brightcove, will work to capture best practices for encoding and packaging. This group will explore and publish best practices for the encoding and packaging of streaming video content. This can include, but isn’t limited to, profile specifications, live linear workflows, and encoder/packager configuration settings. For more information, visit the group webpage at: https://www.svta.org/working-group/encoding-and-packaging/.

The Edge Working Group, co-chaired by Giladi of Comcast, Yoav Gressel of Qwilt, Sanjay Mishra of Verizon, and advised by Glenn Deen of Comcast, will create specifications and best practices for the use of edge resources within a streaming video workflow. The first project, Hosted Edge, will address developing best practices and specifications for hosting containerized, specialized caches and media workflows at the edge to meet the distinct needs of different event and media types. For more information, visit the group webpage at: https://www.svta.org/working-group/edge/.

The Streaming Video Technology Alliance is the global technical association addressing challenges of delivering high-quality video at scale. By providing a forum for collaboration across the streaming video ecosystem, the SVTA member companies can develop technical specifications, educational whitepapers, best practices, and software code which address those challenges. Over 100 companies including network operators, content rights holders, OTT platforms, service providers, and technology vendors participate in bi-weekly working group activities and quarterly face-to-face meetings. For more information on the SVTA, the Technical Groups, or to inquire about becoming a member, visit https://www.svta.org.