Case Study: ESPN achieves near‑live HD World Cup file delivery with Signiant file-acceleration

Signiant Helps ESPN Deliver Files for World Cup Production

Signiant partnered with ESPN to solve a high-stakes content-delivery challenge during the World Cup: reliably moving large HD and 3-D video files from production venues across South Africa to ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, CT. The project had to overcome long-distance latency, limited bandwidth, multi-venue workflows and format conversions (1080i to ESPN’s 720p house format) while delivering content as close to live as possible for broadcast, streaming and mobile platforms.

Signiant’s file-acceleration and bandwidth-management software sped transfers, prioritized and managed network usage, and generated confirmations of receipt, working over dedicated undersea fiber and satellite links where needed. The solution enabled near-real-time delivery and reliable multi-venue coordination, supporting all 64 World Cup matches and associated studio programming in HD across ESPN networks and digital platforms.

ESPN

Michael Kidd

Associate director of Technology Development, ESPN