It has live streamed every state basketball game for the first time

Australian basketball NBL

The Australian National Basketball League has live streamed every state basketball game in a single season for the first time. 

This helped it to acheive 733,000 game views across the 2021 NBL1 season with over 16.2 million total minutes watched of NBL1 live streams. In addition, the NBL1 Instagram page had over 3.36 million video views during the season. These numbers came from over 900 NBL1 live games, including final matches and highlights.

The NBL used of LiveU Solo wireless video encoders at arenas across the country to stream the games, and LiveU’s cloud platform to stream to online video platforms. The cloud-based remote production was powered by Australian broadcast services company, 5stream, online production platform, Cloudmix, and with LiveU’s local partner, Pacific Live Media, providing the Solo solution and local technical support.

Dean Anglin, general manager of NBL1, said: “We had a dream to deliver NBL1 games from states around Australia and LiveU’s 4G bonded IP technology made it possible, enabling us to stream reliably from every venue, at any time, removing our previous single point of failure issue. The set-up has been unbelievably simple, requiring minimal training for our ground staff – one training session with the kits and they’re ready to go.

“Live streaming the games has strengthened the NBL1 brand and generated a steep rise in interest in basketball. We’ve managed to increase the number of eyeballs online using cost-effective production. Currently, we have 75 Solo units, and this number is set to increase to over 100 for the upcoming season.”

He added: “Both single camera and multi-camera workflows have been set up in different arenas, as part of a cloud-based remote production solution, which has enabled us to manage everything from a central location. The Solo units are seamlessly integrated with our Canon cameras, tripods on the ground and other production equipment centrally, including graphic overlays and commercial integration.

“The live feeds are directly streamed by 5Stream to Sportsradar and our OTT broadcasting platform, the NBL1 website and the NBL App, bringing in original data and vision rights and creating monetization opportunities, such as sponsorships. The highlights are also available on YouTube and the Grand Finals were streamed to a third party OTT platform, Kayo Sports.”