“NBC Olympics’ coverage of the Rio Games shattered streaming records in the sports category, with over 3 billion NBC Olympics breaks streaming minutes streamed. … Our partnership with Microsoft Azure was critical in extending our reach to more people and records with support from more devices via cloud streaming than ever before.” Microsoft Azure Eric Black Chief Technology Officer, Digital Media, NBC Sports Group

When athletes took the playing field in Rio, Eric Black knew exactly how they felt. The eyes of the world were on him and his team as NBC Sports orchestrated the broadcast of hundreds of events to billions of views for 17 days straight on dozens of devices—without a single glitch. Black is the Chief Technology Officer, Digital Media, for NBC Sports Group. Unparalleled scale experience to view the Olympics in NBC Sports has covered 15 Olympics the United States. and has been awarded broadcast rights to the Olympic Games through “A whopping 40 percent of Rio “We’ve had a great relationship 2032. In addition, NBC Sports Group event consumption happened on with Microsoft going back to televises and live-streams about connected TVs, which really blew us the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and 15,000 sporting events a year, but no away,” says Rick Cordella, Executive have had great success with our event matches the Olympic Games Vice President, Digital Media, NBC endeavors together.” for media streaming workload and Sports Group. “Streaming allows high-profile visibility. you to watch your favorite events Eric Black, anytime. From a preparation Chief Technology Officer, perspective, this means we had to be “The biggest challenge in covering Digital Media, NBC Sports Group the Games is the scale—the number ready to host any number of viewers of events, the number of viewers, the at any time of the day or night.” number and types of devices being used to watch, and the amount of Typically, sporting events such as NFL data streamed,” Black says. “The games happen in prime time—on scale of the Rio Games was massive. weekend days or weeknights. The It was the largest digital event in Games brings huge viewer numbers history, with more than 4,500 hours at odd times such as midafternoon of content. We saw more than 3.3 on a weekday, so NBC Sports had to billion minutes of live consumption. be ready around the clock. An event of this magnitude has never before hit the internet.” Proven partnership NBC Sports Group turned to The digital growth has been Microsoft, its longtime technology enormous in the last decade. In partner, for help in ensuring that the Vancouver, in 2010, NBC Sports coverage went off without a hitch— had a limited mobile presence. NBC and delivered maximum viewer Olympics’ coverage of the London engagement. 2012 Games and Sochi 2014 Winter Games were the first Summer and NBC Sports Group and Microsoft Winter Olympics available to viewers have a near-decade-long partnership in the United States on mobile delivering mega broadcast events and tablet devices. NBC Olympics’ through Microsoft Azure. But NBC coverage of the Rio 2016 Games Sports also relies on Azure as the provided the first connected-TV cloud media encoding, hosting, and

Customer Name: NBC Sports Group Customer Profile Industry: Media & Entertainment—Broadcast NBC Sports Group is a division of NBCUniversal that is responsible for NBC Country or Region: United States Sports’ media properties, encompassing the NBC television network’s sports Customer Website: www.nbcsports.com division as well as day-to-day operation of the company’s sports-oriented Employee Size: Need # Campaign: Azure Platform/Cloud Infrastructure cable networks and other properties such as NBC Sports Radio. streaming platform for the 15,000 NBC Sports gained the agility to “regular” sporting events it streams adapt quickly to that demand throughout the year. regardless of where it came from. Microsoft doubled compute “A record number of viewers were “We’ve had a great relationship with capacity—from NBC Olympics’ engaged with NBC Olympics’ Microsoft going back to the 2008 previous coverage in Sochi—to coverage of the Rio Games, and Beijing Olympics, and have had great 20,000 cores. It also developed the overall response was incred- success with our Olympic endeavors and tested new backup and active ibly positive. By working with together,” says Black. failover procedures, added new Microsoft and our other partners, automation technologies, created we hit it out of the park when For example, Microsoft brings to real-time monitoring dashboards, it came to delivering at a high the table innovation in instant and improved video and audio signal quality level.” replay, dynamic packaging, cloud quality. DVR functionality, and more. (See Rick Cordella, “Meanwhile, deep in the datacenter NBC Sports is a key Azure Executive Vice President, …” at the end for more detail). development partner with Microsoft, Digital Media, NBC Sports Group providing input on features needed Dynamic Packaging is just one to deliver mega events. “The fact unique and powerful capability that Azure is built for the toughest provided by Azure Media Services. possible scenarios makes it well It reformats the video stream on equipped to handle the everyday the fly and enables NBC content to scenarios of most customers,” says be viewed on any consumer device Steven Goulet, Cloud Media Architect available on the market, regardless with the Azure Media Services team of brand or operating system, from at Microsoft. mobile phones to tablets to desktop browsers to gaming consoles to Shattering records smart connected TVs. This not only Rio 2016 established a new standard allows NBC to maximize its viewing for event coverage in terms of audience but also greatly simplifies streaming media. “Rio 2016 shattered the end-to-end video workflow. streaming records in the sports category, with over 3 billion minutes “With Microsoft, we get some of streamed,” Black says. “More than the smartest minds in the room and one-third of those who streamed the most cutting-edge streaming NBC’s coverage of the Games in the technologies,” adds Cordella. United States did so from connected TV devices. Our partnership with Training day Microsoft Azure was critical in The Rio Games were expected to be extending our reach to more the largest sporting event in history, people and more devices via cloud with record viewership. However, streaming than ever before.” there was some uncertainty as to NBC Sports and Azure racked up how and where people would be a host of record-breaking firsts viewing the events. By using Azure, covering the Rio Games: • More than 4,500 hours of content “Azure made this tremendous scale Black says. “There was never a time was made available. possible,” Cordella says. “Our goal during those 17 days when we were • Across NBCOlympics.com and the was to deliver more channels and troubleshooting a major issue. It was NBC Sports app, there was a record content in real time across all devices by far the smoothest coverage of the 3.3 billion total streaming minutes, in a high-definition, glitch-free Games we’ve ever delivered.” shattering streaming records in livestream experience. We’re pleased the sports category. (During the to report we did just that—and with Behind the scenes, Microsoft was entire 2012 London Olympics, 818 zero downtime in all 17 days of the moving traffic between redundant million minutes of streaming was event.” Azure datacenters and encoders in consumed.) a complex workflow, but from the With Azure, NBC Sports has viewer perspective, there was 100 • Viewers live-streamed 2.71 streaming capacity on demand percent uptime. billion minutes of NBC Olympics and pays only for the servers it’s coverage—a new record for live using. If, during a routine week, it’s “A record number of viewers were event coverage. The 2.71 billion streaming a small number of events engaged with NBC Olympics’ figure nearly doubles the combined on a particular day, it turns off Azure coverage of the Rio Games, and live-streamed minutes of ALL prior resources. When the number of the overall response was incredibly games. events increased, the NBC Sports positive,” say Cordella. “By working • NBC Olympics digital coverage staff simply clicks a button on a with Microsoft and our other amassed 100 million unique dashboard to increase its Azure partners, we hit it out of the park users—29 percent more than the server and channel count. when it came to delivering at a high 2012 London Olympics. quality level.” • Azure helped deliver all this with “By using Azure, we don’t have to zero downtime in all 17 days of the rack, power, cool, and monitor a Meanwhile, deep in bunch of hardware, and we don’t event—from the Opening Ceremony the datacenter … to the Closing Ceremony. have to reserve capacity in advance; NBC’S presentation of the Rio Games it’s all on-demand usage,” Black • A 1080p profile for all streamed was a proving ground and showcase says. “We can leverage the cloud channels (up from 720p during for Azure media services. The NBC and Microsoft’s expertise in cloud to Sochi) as viewers expect a TV-like Sports Group and Microsoft Azure dynamically scale for our audience.” experience on any device. teams worked together around • More than 50 simultaneous the clock to deliver eye-popping, events—a 40 percent increase Rock solid. Picture-perfect. uninterrupted programming at The NBC Sports team never compared to coverage in Sochi. unprecedented scale. experienced a major technical • More than 100 live high-definition challenge during Rio. “During our The media services workflow began channels continuously available, coverage of the Olympics, the in Rio, with cameras sending video nearly double the number available technology has to work, and it did,” feeds through fiber connections for the Sochi Games. and satellites to the NBC Broadcast TVs. This feature represented a from the Azure infrastructure and Operations Center in Stamford, savings for NBC Sports, because displayed real-time data in “red- Connecticut. There, initial encoding it did not have to ingest signals yellow-green” dashboards. The Azure was performed with branding multiple times to support a diverse monitoring team could see how and overlays. To ensure maximum range of devices. signal ingest, archive, and egress uptime, redundancy was built into processes were performing and could the entire signal path. Signals were NBC Sports was able to quickly and even click for deeper views. pushed through two different fiber easily spin up and down channels optic providers via iStreamPlanet to by simply pressing a button. This The close, real-time cooperation duplicate Azure datacenters on the issued a simple API call that signaled of technical teams at NBC Sports east and west coasts of the United Azure Media Services to provision and Microsoft were the unheralded States. more Azure Virtual Machines, performers at Rio. Azure Storage, and other needed Once received in Azure, live cloud infrastructure elements. To learn more, visit our Digital Media encoders and streaming endpoint solutions page. services simultaneously added Azure Media Services features a additional bit-rate qualities, inserted live-to-VoD (video on demand) markers for commercial breaks, feature that NBC Sports used to stored the video content for later on- deliver instant replay. The Dynamic demand playback, and forwarded the Packaging feature eliminated the live streams through content delivery work of reformatting video signals networks to be accessed by myriad in different formats specific to each end-user players. device request, so switching from live feeds to VoD—and enabling DVR The Dynamic Packaging feature of capability—was fast and simple. Azure Media Services reformats the video stream on the fly and enables Throughout the event, Microsoft the NBC content to be viewed on supported the NBC Sports technical any consumer device available in team in real time using an integrated the market, from mobile phones monitoring dashboard built just for to tablets to desktop browsers to NBC’s coverage of the Games. The gaming consoles to smart connected dashboard pulled custom telemetry

Products • Microsoft Azure • Azure Network • Azure Content Delivery Network • Azure Storage • Azure Media Services • Azure Virtual Machines

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published March 2017.