Voice of Asia

When Voice of Asia (VOA), a Sri Lankan media and entertainment group needed to broadcast the ICC T20 World Cup Cricket 2021, it was stumped. It didn’t have a way to access and receive the live content for the events. It needed to deliver the content in a reliable, cost-effective way – and quickly. That’s where we came in.

The challenge

VOA is a sub-licensee of a company who held the broadcasting rights to the cricket content. And VOA wanted to take advantage of this and broadcast the live events to millions of expectant cricket fans in Sri Lanka. The cricket matches were taking place in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Quite the stretch from Sri Lanka. And unfortunately, they didn’t have a way to receive the live content via any existing provider or infrastructure. 

After gaining the broadcasting rights for the ICC T20 World Cup Cricket 2021, VOA’s senior manager of engineering operations, Rushan Senanayake, faced a problem. How to deliver the broadcast to Sri Lanka? India’s Star TV presented two operational options for receiving the video feed: via satellite or through the BT Tower. As time was running short, the satellite option proved impractical both from a technical and regulatory perspective. It would take too long and cost too much for the business to buy the receiving devices before the cricket began.

The solution

VOA needed access to a rapid, secure, economical, and reliable connectivity solution to deliver the cricket content back to Sri Lanka. As BT Tower in London is a global exchange for high-definition (HD) video and audio content, we already had access to the ICC T20 live sports feeds that VOA needed. Using our internet and cloud-based delivery services, VOA could connect to the BT Tower switch, as well as any destination already available on our media networks and cloud services, from anywhere in the world. 

Using their existing internet connection and the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol, we sent the live feeds reliably and cost effectively over the internet to VOA for their onward distribution. Our International Media Centre (IMC) provided managed support for these live feeds during the matches to ensure a successful broadcast.

The result

We delivered all 45 matches in high quality without a hitch and VOA was able to keep its customers happy, while maintaining its domestic market leadership.

Thanks to the success of the delivery of the ICC T20 World Cup Cricket 2021 content, VOA asked us to source new live video around the world.