As the popularity of OTT continues to rise, NeuLion unveiled plans for its newest partnership in the space, locking in a deal with the English Football League for a new platform that will go live in August dedicated to the 72 clubs in the organization. Matches will become available worldwide for the first time through the EFL’s new digital streaming platform, powered by NeuLion, titled iFollow, which will serve up over 1500 matches in HD quality this season, at a cost of $140, featuring live audio commentary, full match replays, highlights, behind-the-scenes content and blacked out games.
With the addition of the league, NeuLion has now seen its roster growing OTT networks span passion plays that range from tennis to surfing to MMA and more through various partnerships. Cynopsis Sports spoke with NeuLion Executive Vice President Chris Wagner about the upcoming launch and how NeuLion has evolved.
Wagner on the English Football League platform: We’ll be offering a new service called the virtual announcer. The way the English Football League works is that they don’t have the rights to the radio broadcasts in each arena so we have an encoder at the venues with a total of 72 clubs. We will take the live match right out of the arena that includes all of the ambient sound noise – so you hear the cheering and all of the background sounds – and virtually the league will have their commentary in a central location so the stream goes through a virtual announcer workstation where the guy is basically watching the game streamed across his computer with a headset and a microphone. There, they call the game and provide commentary and the audio then gets overlaid and mixed with the video stream, which is then pushed out over the network to a fan watching it on a PC, mobile or tablet.
It is available on the NeuLion platform as a new feature and therefor available for other Neulion clients to take advantage of. I see it surfacing either around limited rights where you may not have radio rights and you need to create your own commentary, or you could also strip out the broadcast commentary and overlay a different language on top of it. So if you wanted to deliver live sports in Japan, for example, you could have a commentator sitting in Tokyo calling the game off their laptop.
On the evolution of the company: Our reach has definitely gone global, which is the biggest thing that’s happened for us over the past 24 months as OTT has turned into a global phenomenon with right holders more interested than ever in reaching the fan directly. When we started out, the distribution model was pretty much through the cable operator, but we’ve now countered that and next week will see the opening of our new London headquarters where we’ve gone from five to 60 people there.
On NeuLion’s lineup of enthusiast networks: These channels, especially with skinny bundles growing, have the opportunity to go directly to consumers and their chances of succeeding are better than ever versus counting on cable distribution and that’s why you see so many of them popping up. On our end, we have World Surf League for surfing fans, PokerGo for poker fans, we work with a group to aggregate rugby, Tennis Channel Plus, etc. Live is the secret sauce here, and if you are into surfing for example, the lifestyle, the equipment, etc. are all part of the mix.
