Key Impacts
- Streamlines digital-media asset management and publishing
- Enables NBA to Webcast over 1,500 games annually with small staff
- Supports over 35 million unique users each month
- Supported all-time monthly record of 14.6 million unique domestic visits to NBA.com
- Supported monthly record of serving 30.4 million video streams worldwide
- Enabled 500% increase in online advertising revenues
- Enables NBA to enforce licensing restrictions
The National Basketball Association (NBA), founded in 1946, is a global sports and entertainment brand that features 30 teams in the United States and Canada. For the 2007/2008 season, more than 900 games and over 45,000 hours of programming will be televised in 215 countries in 41 different languages. NBA.com is one of the largest and most heavily trafficked collections of Web sites in the world-consisting of more than 60 unique Web sites, including NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBDL.com, team sites and the international versions of NBA.com. These sites provide fans from around the world with comprehensive coverage of the league, including news, results, statistics, broadband video highlights, exclusive behind-the-scenes access, and fantasy and NBA-branded games.
"The NBA chose Akamai Stream OS because it's the only option that combines an enterprise-class rich-media management application with the unmatched reach and reliability of Akamai's global delivery platform. Prior to the Akamai solution, our production team lacked an efficient way to manage our media. They could upload links to the content, but were unable to associate thumbnails and descriptions with the files. All of that information was stored separately, which created a logistics and management nightmare, " explains Stephen Grimes, Vice President of Interactive Services for the NBA. Akamai's Stream OS tools allow the NBA to effectively manage more than 45,000 streaming assets, and provide access to online game highlight footage within minutes of production to NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBADLEAGUE.com, and all team sites. "We can tag each asset with descriptions, thumbnails, titles and keywords that feed into video players. And we are able to extend this ability to each NBA team so they can publish their own content, while we maintain overall control of the Web site look and feel," continues Grimes.
"The NBA chose Akamai Stream OS because it's the only option that combines an enterprise-class rich-media management application with the
unmatched reach and reliability of Akamai's global delivery platform."
—Stephen Grimes, Vice President of Interactive Services, NBA
