Transforming Video Management and Delivery for a Global Sports Platform

About the Client

A leading global sports organisation, renowned for its premier sports events and extensive global audience, embarked on a journey to revolutionise its video content supply chain. With an expansive portfolio of live events, highlights, and on-demand content, the organisation needed a more agile and efficient solution to develop video workflows and streamline content delivery. Partnering with Spicy Mango, we set out to build a flexible and scalable Video Management System (VMS) leveraging advanced cloud-based technologies and integrating seamlessly with an array of existing technical solutions and partners.

Introduction

A leading global sports organisation, renowned for its premier sports events and vast international audience, embarked on a digital transformation journey to modernise its video content supply chain. With an expansive portfolio of live events, highlights, and on-demand content, the organisation needed a more agile, cloud-native, and cost-effective solution to manage video workflows and streamline content delivery.

By partnering with Spicy Mango, the goal was to develop a flexible, scalable Video Management System (VMS). This new system had to integrate seamlessly with existing technical solutions and partners, ushering in an era of fast, reliable, and future-proof content delivery for global sports fans.

The Challenges

A Need for a Flexible, Scalable Video Ecosystem

As the demand for digital sports content continues to soar, the organisation recognised the need for a more dynamic content supply infrastructure that could support faster evolution of media services and reduce the cost of change. The existing tightly coupled architecture presented several critical challenges:

Monolithic Services

The legacy Content Management System (CMS) handled everything from storage and delivery of video catalogues to metadata and entitlements. This monolithic architecture:

• Limited scalability

• Increased costs and complexity

• Hindered innovation and quick integrations

Tight Coupling

Highly interdependent system components made it difficult to:

• Integrate new technology providers

• Scale efficiently

• Deploy new features quickly

Processing and Delivery Bottlenecks

A slow and inefficient workflow restricted the ability to:

• Accelerate content ingest and transcoding

• Support business rule–based processing (e.g., cost, capabilities, green initiatives)

• Meet fast turnaround requirements for live sports content

Scalability Concerns

Without a cloud-native foundation, the legacy environment lacked:

• Auto-scaling capabilities

• Seamless expansion and contraction based on demand

• Efficient content processing guided by dynamic business rules

Limited Operational Visibility

Editorial and operations teams had restricted tooling and dashboards, making it difficult to:

• Monitor performance metrics

• Identify error states promptly

• Gain real-time insights into the health of workflows

The Transformation Journey

Strategic Shift From Tight Coupling To Cloud-Based, Modular Architectures

Following an assessment of the existing media workflow and logistics processes, the decision was made to introduce a refreshed Video Management System (VMS) solution using a micro-services and loosely coupled approach. The project necessitated strategic rethinking of the platform’s architecture to avoid replicating the inefficiencies of the old system in a new environment.

Key Strategic Changes:

1. Adopting a Modular, Decoupled Architecture: The new VMS was designed using a modular approach, decoupling core components such as content ingest, media preparation, transcoding, metadata management, and catalogue. This structure enabled independent scaling, updates, and replacement of components, significantly improving flexibility and reducing system dependencies.

2. Leveraging Cloud Infrastructure for Scalability: The platform was built to leverage cloud infrastructure capabilities, allowing for dynamic scaling to handle fluctuations in demand. This flexibility ensured that the infrastructure could automatically expand to accommodate peaks in viewership during major sports events and contract during off-peak times, optimising both performance and costs.

3. Optimising Content Ingest and Delivery: The reimagined system introduced an automated pipeline for content ingest, workflow orchestration, catalogue and metadata delivery, providing faster turnaround times for content. This was crucial for meeting the critical requirement of near real-time content availability.

4. Implementing Automation and Self-Healing Capabilities: The architecture incorporated advanced automation and self-healing capabilities to detect and resolve issues without manual intervention. This significantly reduced the operational burden on the organisation’s technical teams, allowing them to focus on innovation rather than routine maintenance.

Crafting an Optimised Operational Strategy

Spicy Mango’s approach to transforming the organisation’s platform wasn’t merely about re-developing in the cloud, it was about crafting an operational model that maximised the inherent benefits of cloud infrastructure and platform services, along with reducing the cost of developing and maintaining existing monolith based services to reduce overall TCO for video workflows and content supply chain.

• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: The new solution provided significantly reduced complexity of engineering - lowering the overall TCO and maintenance efforts associated with monolith solutions that were difficult to develop.

• Seamless Scaling: The platform was designed with auto-scaling in response to demand, balancing high performance with cost efficiency.

• Improved Operations and Visibility: Editorial and operational teams now have oversight and visibility of media workflow and content logistics - solving a key gap that existed in the legacy implementation.

Enabling Real-Time Delivery at Scale

The newly developed Video Management System was rigorously tested during some of the most-watched sports events globally. The platform’s ability to handle millions of concurrent viewers and manage tens of thousands of video streams in real-time demonstrated its robustness and agility.

• Seamless Scaling for Peak Demand: The system was designed to handle significant traffic spikes of millions of concurrent viewers effortlessly, scaling up to accommodate demand and scaling down just as efficiently to control costs. This ensured the platform remained both robust and cost-effective during even the most intense periods.

• Reduced Content Turnaround Times: With an optimised content processing and delivery pipeline, the organisation could deliver live broadcasts, highlights, and on-demand content with unprecedented speed, meeting the high expectations of sports fans for immediate access to content.

• Optimised Architecture: Extracting complicated logic and metadata from the legacy CMS reduced engineering complexity, and increased development velocity.

Reaping the Rewards: Confidence in Continued Innovation

Through this partnership with Spicy Mango, the organisation has gained more than just a next-gen Video Management System - it has achieved the confidence to pursue its strategic ambitions with a platform designed for growth. This modernised infrastructure offers:

• A future-proof foundation for delivering premium sports experiences

• The agility to innovate rapidly

• Operational efficiency for sustainable cost management

Navigating the Future of High-Performance Content Supply

For a global sports platform, the ability to scale rapidly is vital. Spicy Mango engineered a cloud-native solution that accommodates spikes in demand without performance compromises.

Optimising Cost and Performance

Balancing cost-efficiency with premium performance is critical for low latency global content delivery. Through intelligent scaling and advanced cost management, the solution delivers high performance without uplifting costs.

By leveraging microservices, strategic cloud adoption, and expert execution, this digital transformation initiative has future-proofed the organisation’s OTT and streaming capabilities. Spicy Mango continues to support the client’s journey, ensuring they remain a leader in live sports streaming, global media distribution, and video content management.