DAYTONA, Fla.—The 2019 Daytona 500 NASCAR stock car race ran for the 61st time in Daytona Beach, Fla., in February and for the first time, Fox Sports Digital produced a “Daytona 500 Infield Party” live to multiple streaming destinations. The live, second-screen experience gave viewers the “inside track” on events taking place behind the scenes during the race.
The Fox Sports Digital production team used Telestream’s Wirecast software for the 4.5-hour multicamera live stream, hosted by Fox Sports commentators Kaitlyn Vincie, Alan Cavanna, and Bob Pockrass, and two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip.
MULTILANE STREAMING
To publicize this high-profile Fox Sports broadcast, the event was live-streamed to five sites simultaneously, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Gaming platform Caffeine.TV and the FOXsports.com website.
Normally, whenever the crew operates on a Fox network infrastructure, which provides about 120 Mbps, we have sufficient bandwidth to stream to multiple social/online sites simultaneously. And, as an integrated switching, production and encoding system, Wirecast can output multiple live streams to different online destinations simultaneously as a direct output of the system.
The NASCAR-supplied 15 Mbps bandwidth provided some challenges for five-destination streaming. From within the Wirecast software, we were able to access the Wirecast Restream service from Telestream Cloud to distribute our live signal in real-time to all of the online platforms and audiences we wanted to reach. This capability allowed us to send a single upload stream to the cloud and then have it “re-streamed” to all our destinations from there. All we had to do was enter the target sites into a Wirecast Restream settings window, and the entire CDN process was handled for us from Telestream Cloud.
Wirecast enabled us to deliver our “Infield Party” live stream with the high production standards our viewers expect from Fox Sports. Operationally, it allowed our small, four-person crew to handle all aspects of the live production and streamlined our production costs.
AFTER THE FINISH LINE
The “Infield Party” is just one of the many live streams that Fox Sports produces throughout the year. The network touts 21 consecutive months of growth for video viewing on its social and online platforms, with the “Daytona 500 Infield Party” generating more than 350,000 views.
We plan to use both Wirecast and Wirecast Restream on future live stream remotes for Fox Sports Digital. Upcoming events include other 2019 NASCAR races, as well as the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup from Paris in July. Together, Wirecast and Wirecast Restream have allowed us to deploy an extremely portable, yet highly capable production system allowing our relatively small production crews to do very big things.
Daniela Mayock oversees the technical direction of all original Fox Sports Digital live streams. She can be contacted atDaniela.Mayock@fox.com.
For additional information, visittelestream.netor call 530-470-1300.
