For the first time, the National Basketball League (NBL) of Australia has succeeded in live streaming every state basketball game, significantly increasing the popularity of NBL1, Australia’s professional semi-elite basketball league in a year impacted by the pandemic. This is due to the deployment of LiveU Solo wireless video encoders at arenas across Australia, using LiveU’s cloud platform to stream to online video platforms, enabling fans to watch over 900 NBL1 live games, including final matches and highlights, and follow their favorite teams and players. 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.

“LiveU has been a gamechanger for Australian basketball, enabling us to engage sports fans nationwide with exciting, high-quality live coverage for the best video experience. 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”, said Dean Anglin, General Manager, NBL1.

There were over 733,000 game views across the 2021 NBL1 season with over 16.2 million total minutes watched of NBL1 live streams. That success also translated to social media where the NBL1 Instagram page had over 3.36 million video views during the season, all using the vision generated from LiveU Solo.

The LiveU Solo video solution provides wireless live streaming, directly from cameras or other video sources to popular online platforms or any customizable web destinations utilizing LiveU’s Solo cloud platform. By combining bandwidth from multiple network connections, LiveU Solo offers the highest levels of video quality and reliability required for live video production with reduced costs.

Anglin continued, “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.”

Yaal Eshel, General Manager, LiveU Asia, said, “The NBL1 is an excellent use case, representing the potential of a full cloud-based workflows for sports productions using LiveU Solo. NBL1 has done a fantastic job streaming over 900 games and increasing the value of their brand in a very simple and cost-effective way. Congratulations to Dean Anglin, Guy Neville and their team for this great achievement in a challenging year for the sports community. Special thanks to Chris Dredge, LiveU partner in Australia, for his great support.”

NBL1 is a semi-professional basketball league in Australia, consisting of South, North, Central and West Conferences with both men’s and women’s competitions. Each conference is run by their respective state governing body, with the league including 58 clubs from Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales.