Discovery is the worlds largest broadcaster of factual and documentary programming, and in recent years making huge strides into Sports through the acquisition of Eurosport, Olympic broadcast rights, Cycling and Golf.

Challenge

Sports data is viewed as some of the most complex and varied in the world. Following the acquisition of global rights for a major sporting vertical, the challenge of how to aggregate, normalise and enrich vast amounts of data was set. This data would power schedules, leaderboards, players, events and venue information to DTC applications in real time across 250 countries and a multitude of languages.

Solution

We developed a bespoke sports data warehouse solution that operates in real time to aggregate data directly from source with no delays, normalising this to a unique sports data schema and making it available via a set of structured and secure RESTful API's that are simple to use. Developed and operated within the cloud and supporting global scale at latencies of less than 50ms average - our solution provides a reliable way to access real time data with consistent formatting. Reliability is key - so we design for high availability, not disaster recovery. Our solution has alleviated the common challenges related to data differences, authentication, ephemerality and reliability when dealing with a large array of supplying partners.

Impact

Our solution provides harmonisation across multiple sources and allows Discovery to query and syndicate effectively to consumers and third parties globally. The rich consumer experience obtained through real time data allows Discovery to monetise and obtain a return on their investment in the rights they have acquired.