How Globo Handles Latency Costs for Live Sports Streaming at Scale
When it comes to implementing streaming tech for large-scale, high-stakes live sports, decisions around managing latency are often driven as much by cost concerns as by network conditions, audience expectations, and the like. Jonas Ribeiro, Digital Products, Platform and Adtech Manager, Globo, reveals the latency Globo delivers on typical sports streams at scale and what factors into those numbers in this discussion with Magnus Svensson, Media Solution Specialist, Eyevinn Technology, Sweden, in this discussion from Streaming Media Connect 2024.
Svensson says to Ribeiro, “You mentioned that you're gradually moving things to the cloud. What is [your] trigger point for confidence [to move] to the cloud? Is it a cost, confidence, or a technology barrier?”
Ribeiro says these are all significant factors, and he adds a fourth one: a learning curve for people to acquire new skills for cloud technology. Additionally, he says that moving events like soccer games to the cloud could increase efficiency and reduce latency issues.
Svensson asks, “What latencies do you see today, and where would you like to be?”
“Right now, we have maybe ten seconds of latency,” Ribiero says. "It depends on the device, and we believe that maybe three to two seconds [will be] a good latency that we can afford. It's easier to have a time delay on the broadcast side, but all the teams are putting a lot of effort into reducing the latency because when you do this, you need to change everything on your pipeline.”
He also mentions the geographical challenges in Brazil, where cloud providers are centralized in Sao Paulo or Rio, making expanding services across the country difficult. “That's why we have our own CDN that is split in every state here in Brazil [and] supported by our affiliates and ISPs," he says. "And this helps us to be more on the edge and have more control of the latency that we would like to offer to our customers.”
See videos of the full program from Streaming Media Connect February 2024 here.
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