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A new era in streaming possibilities for Qplus.tv and Queensland Rugby League
As QRL’s home of livestreaming, Qplus.tv now offers an unmatched viewer experience for fans ready to be entertained by Queensland’s next generation of talent.
Getting to know Qplus.tv & QRL:
Qplus.tv is Queensland Rugby League’s OTT streaming platform and QRL’s home for broadcasting and livestreaming. Qplus.tv is a subscription service where users can purchase a weekly, monthly, or annual subscription, granting them unlimited access to the platform. Some feature game content is also free-to- view for users who sign up to use the platform. Every game of every state-wide competition – including the flagship Hostplus Cup – is streamed live and on demand on Qplus.tv, as well as select regional and community content.
Overview
Layercake has delivered Qplus.tv for Queensland Rugby League, a best of breed streaming platform and home for broadcasting and livestreaming. Layercake’s Media Orchestration and Automation platform, Streamcake forms the backbone of Qplus.tv. The solution makes QRL’s elite match content available live for their fans and provides sponsors and partners with unique commercialisation opportunities.
Layercake, together with partner DoubleTake Sports delivered an end-to-end streaming operation for QRL. DoubleTake Sports managed the master control room and production while Layercake provided the technical solution and wider OTT platform offering.
Qplus.tv now represents a high-quality, cost–effective streaming platform that brings together leading technologies, vendors and production solutions to deliver unparalleled performance and reliability to the QRL.
Layercake’s collaboration with Enveu
To complete the solution, Layercake enlisted Enveu, the global provider of specialised OTT solutions to deliver the user experience platform, player and subscription offering that manages the fan/viewer user experience. Streamcake manages the automation of production and infrastructure going upstream into specific workflows, while pushing the data to Enveu, to manage the playout platform, user experience and device platform of Qplus.tv.
Streamcake seamlessly integrates with Enveu automating the live stream publishing from creation to VOD (Video on Demand). It includes transition conversion and associated content delivery as well as stream protection on the Qplus.tv web application.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Qplus.tv was born out of a need to satisfy the strong demand from fans for more games available to watch live and on replay. In response, QRL engaged Layercake to overhaul the legacy version of Qplus.tv. Layercake was selected based on its extensive experience working with sporting codes and track-record of delivering cost-effective solutions, on-time and within budget. The solution needed to be reliable, cost-effective and delivered within a very tight timeframe (1 month), ahead of the start of the 2024 competition. The new solution for Qplus.tv also needed to have additional functionality including:
- Subscription tracking and user metrics
- Commercialisation of assets
- Integrate with existing partners and technology
- Asset migration
SOLUTION: Rapid mobilisation to deliver Qplus.tv on time
Layercake took the lead, by rapidly mobilising a project team and managing the deliverables across all parties and integrated technology partners. Layercake was tasked with the following:
- End-to-end definition of requirements
- Design and UX
- Infrastructure, environments, security configuration and deployment
- Platform data schema’s, reporting and meta data
- Key integrations (Media Services & CDN, Stripe, Firebase, Google Analyics, Enveu, Streamcake, Stats)
- Onboarding
- Testing and release management
RESULTS: Unmatched performance and reliability, delivered on time
More than 200 games from the six QRL statewide competitions have been streamed to Qplus.tv so far with an estimated 450 games to be streamed in the 2024 season. Despite the tight delivery timeframe, the project was successfully completed ahead of the season launch and now provides QRL with a plethora of commercialisation opportunities. Other benefits include:
- Intuitive and easy to use interface that automates and orchestrates multiple concurrent livestreamed games
- Reduction in resourcing requirements and potential points of failure by leveraging single source to stream multiple events
- Successful solution delivery and release in less than 4 weeks
- Provision of activity and other logging information that improves MCR and similar functions reducing time to resolution and identifying improvements
- Enhanced user experience for fans and QRL staff
