1. Meeting the demands of millions – from the cloud
Digital media provider turns to Azure to deliver the FIFA 2014 World Cup in live streaming and on-demand services
Objectives
Deltatre provides digital media services for sports organizations. It needed to provide video broadcast services to media rights licensees and their audiences for the FIFA 2014 World Cup
Tactics
Expand its use of Azure by including the latest live-streaming features in Azure Media Services
Transmitted six simultaneous live video streams from each match and made them available on-demand
Results
Scales to support 25 million users, serves 20,600 TB of content
Platform was up and running quickly and cost-effectively
Delivered 100% uptime
Key points:
Customer profile: Deltatre is a global leader for the sport business including digital, mobile, social, broadcast, results, content and professional services. It enables sport federations, event organisers broadcasters, brands, teams and athletes to elevate their sports, accelerate performance and connect to fans.
Business goal: The company was asked by the FIFA World Cup broadcast production service provider, to provide its Diva digital video player to media rights licensees and their audiences. Peak streaming loads couldn’t be predicted, but whatever their size, deltatre had to be ready for them. Scaling to support variable demand and an unknown number of users wasn’t the only challenge that deltatre had to meet. FIFA wanted the deltatre player to give its licensees the most advanced full digital live and video-on-demand offering ever, so they could provide their audiences with the richest “second screen” experience. That meant deltatre had to support an unprecedented level of interactivity, empowering users to choose among multiple live streams, multi-angle video-on-demand, enhanced statistics, and social media integration. The company expanded its use of Azure by including the latest live-streaming features in Azure Media Services. It was then able to transmit six simultaneous live video streams from each match and make them available on-demand.
Results: The company was able to scale its platform to support 25 million users by serving 20,600 TB of content. By using Microsoft Azure, deltatre scales the solution quickly—including all of the streams for all of the platforms and devices—to meet the unpredictable peaks in use. The platform was used by 10 major broadcasters and other licensees around the world with a combined World Cup viewership of 25 million. Concurrent users peaked at 1 million. The platform was up and running quickly and cost-effectively and it delivered 100% uptime.
“The 2014 FIFA World Cup had the most sophisticated online-streaming solution of any sporting event in history. And Microsoft Azure was at the heart of the solution.”
—Carlo de Marchis, Chief Product Officer, Deltatre

2. Deltatre transforms online viewing for the FIFA World Cup for 25 million fans
Key points:
Customer profile: Deltatre is a global leader for the sport business including digital, mobile, social, broadcast, results, content and professional services. It enables sport federations, event organisers broadcasters, brands, teams and athletes to elevate their sports, accelerate performance and connect to fans.
Business goal: The company was asked by the FIFA World Cup broadcast production service provider, to provide its Diva digital video player to media rights licensees and their audiences. Peak streaming loads couldn’t be predicted, but whatever their size, deltatre had to be ready for them. Scaling to support variable demand and an unknown number of users wasn’t the only challenge that deltatre had to meet. FIFA wanted the deltatre player to give its licensees the most advanced full digital live and video-on-demand offering ever, so they could provide their audiences with the richest “second screen” experience. That meant deltatre had to support an unprecedented level of interactivity, empowering users to choose among multiple live streams, multi-angle video-on-demand, enhanced statistics, and social media integration. The company expanded its use of Azure by including the latest live-streaming features in Azure Media Services. It was then able to transmit six simultaneous live video streams from each match and make them available on-demand.
Results: The company was able to scale its platform to support 25 million users by serving 20,600 TB of content. By using Microsoft Azure, deltatre scales the solution quickly—including all of the streams for all of the platforms and devices—to meet the unpredictable peaks in use. The platform was used by 10 major broadcasters and other licensees around the world with a combined World Cup viewership of 25 million. Concurrent users peaked at 1 million. The platform was up and running quickly and cost-effectively and it delivered 100% uptime.
“The 2014 FIFA World Cup had the most sophisticated online-streaming solution of any sporting event in history. And Microsoft Azure was at the heart of the solution.”
—Carlo de Marchis, Chief Product Officer, Deltatre