Level 3 Expands European Presence with Everton, Broadcasters

Level 3 Communications has expanded its work with English football club Everton, Scandinavian media company Schibsted ASA, and Spanish broadcaster Radio Televisión Española (RTVE).

“Our team prides itself on working consultatively with our customers to determine the best solutions to meet their needs, and our continued work with these customers is a great example of that collaborative relationship in action,” says James Heard, president of European Markets at Level 3. “This approach, coupled with our ability to provide solutions from creation to consumption, differentiates Level 3 in the content delivery space and offers significant value to broadcasters and content owners.”

Everton Football Club
Level 3 has been providing live match day audio streaming and video-on-demand (VOD) services for Everton Football Club for several seasons. This summer, the company expanded its services for Everton to support the live streaming of the club’s pre-season friendly tour of Australia. Using Level 3’s Vyvx broadcast network for live signal acquisition, matches were then encoded and streamed across Level 3’s global CDN.

By leveraging Level 3’s Internet Broadcast acquisition and encoding services and live online streaming support, Everton was able to reach fans that may not have otherwise had an opportunity to view the matches. As a result, Everton has been able to double their subscriber base for their exclusive, online-only pre-season content.

Schibsted ASA
Level 3 began working with Norway-based Schibsted ASA in 2009, streaming live and on-demand Norwegian Football League games over the Level 3 CDN to online viewers in Norway. Under the terms of the renewal, Level 3 is providing Schibsted with live event services and tailored tools specifically designed to facilitate seamless event delivery for the company.

“We’ve been particularly impressed with the degree of customization Level 3 offers – giving us more control over certain features like event starts and stops while automating other functions, which takes some of the work out the process for us,” says Anders Berg, technical lead with Absolutt Fotball, a subsidiary of Schibsted ASA. “The end result is a higher-quality, more seamless end-to-end process, both for us and our online viewers.”

RTVE
This summer, Level 3 provided end-to-end event delivery support as part of a pilot for RTVE during the European Athletics Championships Barcelona 2010 from 26 July through 1 Aug. The Championships was delivered in HD using Level 3’s Internet Broadcast services. The company successfully provided signal acquisition, encoding, and CDN delivery of Adobe Live Flash adaptive bit rate streaming technology to online viewers in Spain.