Kent Cricket has partnered with Easel TV to create the first-ever live pay-per-view streaming service for Twenty20 cricket.
In co-operation with governing body ECB and broadcast rights holder Sky, Kent Cricket has become the first professional cricket club to stream a live T20 Blast match behind a paywall outside of the regular Sky coverage.
The pilot project was agreed just days ahead of the start of this year’s competition.
“Working with our client, Kent Cricket, we pretty much created the service within a week having only been approached about 10 days before the first match was due to go live,” said Joe Foster, CEO, Easel TV.
The company has its own suite of self-build design tools that is provided to clients, in this case Kent Cricket.
“We had been introduced to the Easel TV model some time ago but restrictions on broadcast rights had always held us back. As soon as we received approval for the pilot, we reached out but when we called on Easel TV, we weren’t sure if this would even be possible.” explains Simon Storey, CEO of Kent Cricket. “It has taken just one existing in-house editorial resource to create the service within a week of Easel TV setting us up with an account – phenomenal. Not least because it was never going to be sufficient to just produce the service; we also needed to know that Easel TV could link up with our content producer, AdVision, and implement a professional streaming service akin to BBC iPlayer or BT Sport.”
Much of Easel TV’s new platform is centred on easy self-management of complex media pipeline tasks, bringing it down to simple editorial tools. “Easel TV’s CMS has an easy-to-use online dashboard that includes an intuitive live events facility that allows us to easily set-up a live event with our outside broadcast partner. We can test the stream, monitor it and decide when to go live, with little stress or effort” says Liam Knight, who created the service and operates the editorial for Kent Cricket Play.
Matches are priced at £5.99 each.
Using Easel TV’s Markets feature, the first match was offered free of charge, with the remaining fixtures available at a fixed price. A separate ‘market’ allows for free access for staff, partners and opponents’ staff.
