Case Study: TVNZ achieves scalable, reliable authentication for 2.5M OnDemand users with Auth0

How TVNZ Scaled Their OnDemand Service to Reach 2.5M Kiwis

TVNZ, New Zealand’s state-owned, commercially funded broadcaster that reaches more than 2 million Kiwis daily and operates TVNZ OnDemand with 2.5 million registered accounts, faced growing competition and a persistent identity problem. As Michael Robinson put it, “Authentication has been a thorn in our side,” so TVNZ needed a modern, cloud-based, developer-friendly IAM that could scale, migrate users, and protect their trusted reputation.

TVNZ selected Auth0 and performed a “lazy migration” of 2.5 million accounts (migrating users only when they logged in) to avoid forced password resets. The move delivered reliable authentication through peak demand (a ~50% spike in weekly streams during COVID-19 and 60,000 concurrent logins for a press conference), improved data integrity, and freed up roughly two engineers on a small team to build new features like Profiles that increased weekly reach.

TVNZ

Michael Robinson

Head of Digital Capability