From on-demand replays to event promotions to broadcast highlights, moving digital assets from the game to the fans requires enterprise file transfer infrastructure.
In the era of engagement marketing, building loyalty is no easy feat. Luckily, sports fans are the most loyal of them all. With great content, you can win them over!
All the footage that gets captured on game day is valuable content, especially when it’s repurposed effectively. Whether the footage comes from the production team or created by in-house marketing, once the content is created, it needs a way to get to its final destination. There are a hodge podge of services that each have their advantages and disadvantages. From file sharing services to file transfer sites to setting up FTP, what you should look for is resiliency and reliability in any file transfer method.
Sports content consumption is perishable, necessitating a reliable file transfer platform
The window of opportunity to disseminate sports content is limited. Commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, hits the nail on the head when he said that “it’s not about lamenting the limited lifespan of live sports; it’s about being prepared, with ways to amplify, disseminate, and re-purpose content, before it’s forgotten.”
This orchestrated operation that sports marketing requires wouldn’t be possible without the right systems and tools in place. Once the team is prepped and empowered to produce content on the fly, the question now is how do you distribute that content to various organizations around the world?
Some of the challenges that production and marketing teams have to manage include:
- slow and unreliable bandwidth at broadcast stations
- geographically dispersed network of affiliates
- tight turn-around times
- finding a distribution solution that adapts to the seasonality of the sport
- growing file sizes of UHD and virtual reality content
To meet these challenges, a resilient and reliable distribution platform is needed.
Why FTP doesn’t make the cut as a reliable file transfer platform
FTP is a technology that was first developed in the ‘70s. In technology years, that’s old. It was never designed to expediently and securely transfer massive amounts of data as we see it today. There is no mechanism to check the integrity of the file that is transferred or whether it’s been successfully sent or received. It also requires dedicated resources in terms of hardware and man-hours.
One of the most important reasons to avoid FTP is that there is no security. Any file delivered via FTP can be easily snatched. SFTP (FTP over SSH) was implemented as a way to address that weakness. It requires a little more work to implement and it slows down file transfers, but it can work. However, just because it’s an encrypted channel, that doesn’t mean it’s the safest method for file transfer.
Beyond lack of security, FTP is missing many other critical features—like file integrity checks, auto-resume, and audit trails.
File integrity checks are useful when a file hasn’t finished transferring and the computer transferring the file loses connection to the internet. Ideally, the FTP client would know that the file hasn’t finished transferring and would not make it available to the recipient. Unfortunately, the opposite often happens where both the sender and recipient are left frustrated wondering why the file is corrupt and reattempting to resend the file. The amount of time spent on incomplete transfers adds up and opportunities for disseminating sports content is reduced.
In an a more ideal scenario, the transfer would automatically resume from wherever it left off and then notify the recipient that the file is ready for access. Then as a manager, you’d be able to see who accessed what file at what time. These features can be built on top of FTP but more often than not, it leads to file transfer inefficiencies and increases IT overhead.
In short, FTP isn’t an efficient option, especially when you consider the bandwidth available at broadcasting stations around the world. Sports content is increasingly becoming a global commodity. To engage fans, media files have to travel to where the fans are quickly and reliably. With FTP’s unreliability and inefficiencies, it doesn’t make the cut.
What does a reliable file transfer platform do?
A reliable file transfer platform should efficiently transfer files in a variety of situations. It should run like clockwork. If for some reason it stops working, you should have someone you can rely on to get it back up and running ASAP.
A reliable file transfer platform performs regardless of the available bandwidth at a broadcasting station. Whether it’s slow or fast, it ought to complete a transfer without ever needing to restart a transfer. If the bandwidth connection drops, the transfer can resume itself without human intervention. When the transfer is completed, the recipient is alerted and is ready to disseminate the content appropriately.
It expediently reaches all corners of the globe. As sports content becomes increasingly globalized, sports marketing teams have to think about engaging fans wherever they might be.
It’s not only reliable, it’s also fast. Because sports content has such a short shelf life, the value of the content diminishes as it’s being transported from one location to another. The file transfer platform should be built for speed.
It adapts to your business needs. Sports are seasonal. A file transfer platform should scale up quickly during the peak seasons and scale down as needed.
Lastly, it keeps up with the changing pace of technology. Technology changes quickly. An IT team can keep a company ahead of the game when they’re not bogged down managing current implementations and putting out fires with failed transfers.
Prioritizing reliable online file transfer helps you reach more fans
File transfer, especially for sports content, is an essential business utility. Like electricity, water, or internet, it should work reliably and efficiently. When it does run like clockwork, a marketing and production team is spending less time managing file transfers and more time creating and repurposing content. They reach their fans faster.
eSecureSend is built for reliable online transfer
Clients that we work with in this space are able to capture footage that day and send it to a home base for broadcasting same-day. They’re able to distribute content to affiliate stations all around the world for a fraction of the cost and time. From slow transfer speeds to incomplete transfers, the online-file transfer landscape makes shipping a physical external drive more reliable and trustworthy than shipping it online. We’re here to change that. Interested in learning more about how we can help you transfer files online? Let us know and we’ll be in touch.