Arsenal Football Club is using Amazon Web Services to live stream its friendly matches to fans around the world.
To complement its primary path for video backhaul for matches, Arsenal has deployed AWS Elemental MediaConnect to live stream games.
The Switch provided live stadium video contribution for last summer’s Arsenal vs Colorado Rapids feed from Colorado to Emirates Stadium in London via a 15Mbit/s IP link. A new AWS Elemental Live encoder in Colorado was fed an identical video source for contribution to the Cloud using the AWS Elemental MediaConnect video transfer service, enabling transatlantic backhaul via the AWS network at 40Mbit/s. Arsenal then decoded the IP-based feed in its London facility to HD-SDI baseband for onward production and local distribution to broadcast rights holders.
The club is now exploring how it might expand its AWS-backed workflow to support weekly deliverables to exclusive rights holders. The club is also looking to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) as an archival and backup option to complement its on-premises workflows.
“We were impressed by how simple it was to set up and deploy a live video backhaul stream from the USA to London using AWS Elemental MediaConnect,” said John Dollin, senior product and engineering manager, Arsenal F.C. “The stream was as reliable as our primary fibre path, cost significantly less than fibre or satellite, and was better quality. We see significant potential in this workflow to ensure fans and commercial partners around the world can access our games and supporting content with greater flexibility and lower costs for us.”
