CLIENT CASE STUDY

Live streaming service helps Cricket Australia delight fans

Cricket Australia offers fans a high-quality, feature-rich live streaming service—powered by the Accenture Video Solution.

Overview

Cricket is one of Australia's favorite sports and has been the trigger of national joy and sometimes heartache for more than 200 years.

Now, fans can watch live streaming of domestic and international games played in Australia on the go, via their mobile, tablet and digital enabled devices thanks to a digital service launched by Cricket Australia during the 2013-2014 season.

OPPORTUNITY

Recognizing the influence of its always-connected fans, Cricket Australia knew they needed to harness the power of digital to improve the customer experience and further monetize their digital offerings.

Cricket Australia made the bold decision to build a multi-platform subscription service. But they knew they couldn't do it alone. Cricket Australia awarded Accenture a five-year contract to create their live streaming and subscriber management services.

Solution

With only eight weeks to design, build and launch the live subscription service in time for the 2013-14 Commonwealth Bank Ashes Series, the Accenture team got started quickly.

The subscriber management service enabled a seamless workflow for registration and payment, and other user authentication—including social integration.

Accenture Video Operations leveraged their specialized managed services to provide a multi-platform digital broadcast service at scale, including:

  • Acquiring the footage from the TV broadcaster

  • Encoding

  • Publishing the live match footage

Results

After only two months, Cricket Australia successfully launched “Cricket Australia Live: The Official App,” which included the subscription-based live streaming service in time for the 2013-14 Commonwealth Bank Ashes Series.

The Accenture team facilitated zero downtime across more than 800 hours of streaming over the summer cricket season. The quality and reliability of service helped Cricket Australia:

  • Exceed initial targets for the number of subscribers

  • Increase their website audience by more than 190 percent over the previous year

Cricket Australia is committed to meeting the needs of fans well into the future.