LiveU has announced that it is providing Skweek, a basketball and lifestyle streaming platform for fans, players and brands, with a cost-effective localized solution for European basketball coverage.
As part of the deployment, Skweek has turned to the next-generation version of LiveU’s cloud-native video production solution, LiveU Studio, to stream EuroLeague Basketball games in France and Monaco. The games offer cloud-based remote local commentary added to games featuring French teams, including LDLC ASVEL, AS Monaco, JL Bourg en Bresse and Paris Basketball.
Skweek, a pay-per-view service, holds the exclusive rights to the men’s EuroLeague Basketball tournament in France and Monaco, streaming up to 12 simultaneous live games per evening, and EuroCup.
Skweek receives the international feed from IMG and ingests it in LiveU Studio, adding branding and French commentary sent directly from the commentators themselves who connect to LiveU Studio as a “remote guest.”
This gives commentators greater flexibility and reduces preparation time, the companies said.
Using LiveU Studio, Skweek also streams occasional games with live local commentary directly to YouTube and other social media platforms. Leveraging the ability to publish to multiple destinations, it can ingest live feeds on its subscription-based video-on-demand (VOD) service and stream them elsewhere.
Skweek is taking advantage of LiveU’s flexible payment package option throughout the season. This helps clients like Skweek to stay in control of their costs, allowing them to scale up or down as required, providing a risk-free way to expand production capacity.
“We wanted to significantly reduce our video production costs and introduce more flexibility to the workflow,” Cyril Méjane, managing director, Skweek Studios, said. “The LiveU team were incredibly fast to respond to our initial request and we were up and running in a very short space of time. The Studio toolbox enables us to do complex production easily while only paying for what we use. Delivering live commentary to the cloud is a different way of working for our commentators but they quickly adapted to the change and have found it to be a more streamlined process.”
“Cyril and Faïssal Berkani, Skweek’s editor in chief, made the whole process incredibly straightforward,” LiveU Regional Sales Manager Philippe Gaudion added. “Very soon after a LiveU Studio demonstration by our technical team and in-house testing at a smaller event, Skweek were using the solution in earnest for Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Basketball. LiveU Studio provides a rich toolbox that enables complex cloud production in a simple way, as well as access to additional intelligent features. Just one of these features has saved Skweek significant costs and given them autonomy as they can now fully control their live remote cloud-based commentary and distribution workflows.”
