Layercake successfully delivers GPSQLD.TV, a leading streaming solution for GPS Queensland in record time.

GETTING TO KNOW GPSQLD 

The Great Public Schools’ Association of Queensland (GPS) aims to provide outstanding opportunities for students from its nine member schools to take part in an extensive range of sporting and cultural activities. 

The Association encourages students to pursue excellence in sport and cultural activities underpinned by the values of commitment, courage, teamwork, healthy competition, integrity, fair play and good sportsmanship. 

Thirteen GPS interschool sports and activities are included in the annual program:
Basketball, Chess, Cricket, Cross Country, Debating, Football, Music, Rowing, Rugby Union, Swimming, Tennis, Track & Field, and Volleyball. 

OVERVIEW 

GPS required a solution that would allow their students, families and the wider community to watch their sporting events and other competitions, live as well as on-demand, from one centralised location. Using Streamcake Media Orchestration and Automation Platform, a Layercake product, GPSQLD.TV was created. GPSQLD.TV provides a centralised streaming solution that simplifies the delivery and publishing of their sporting events from one location. GPSQLD can now build and grow an audience for the GPSQLD.TV platform.   

BUSINESS CHALLENGE 

GPS Queensland had been using a generic streaming solution that was inconsistent, unable to livestream some competitions and events and others not available on replay (on demand). The legacy platform was difficult to set up and lacked the functionality required by GPS, such as supporting concurrent event streaming and managing the communication of where and when to watch an event. 

This inability to consistently manage the streaming operations, negatively impacted the potential to engage the GPS community and wider viewers. Access to information about GPS viewership was limited, which compromised the user experience and operational functions such as promotion of events in advance. 

GPS recognised that an easy to maintain and operate streaming solution was necessary to provide a centralised destination for their students, families and wider community to watch the various sporting and other competitions and events on offer. 

INSIGHTS 

Layercake was engaged to create the new online destination that met all of GPS Queensland’s streaming and community engagement requirements. Using Streamcake, Layercake’s award-winning Media Orchestration and Automation platform, GPSQLD.TV was born.  

Working to deliver GPSQLD.TV within an extremely short timeframe, Layercake rapidly mobilised a project team and managed the requirements, delivering an iterative solution across all parties and integrated technology partners. Streamcake forms the backbone of the GPSQLD.TV platform, and orchestratd with Enveu, a global provider of specialised OTT solutions to deliver the user experience platform. Doubletake Sports was then enlisted to manage the master control room (MCR) streaming operation. 

Layercake was tasked with the following: 

• End-to-end definition of requirements 

• Design and UX 

• Infrastructure, environments, security configuration and deployment 

• Platform data schema’s, reporting and meta data 

• Key integrations including, Streamcake, AWS Streaming Infrastructure and Content Delivery Network(CDN), Enveu OTT, Stats, Event schedule automation 

• Onboarding the GPS and Doubletake Sports team 

• Testing and release management 

GPSQLD.TV enables the central management of GPS Queensland streamed events and automatic transition from Live to Video on Demand (replay). Schedules are ingested via a Schedule fixture integration enabling automated event details, orchestrating and automating the streaming infrastructure and content delivery network. It also enables publishing on Enveu so the events are available for users to watch on GPSQLD.TV.  

Layercake successfully delivered the GPSQLD.TV platform and its associated workflows in just ten (10) days using Streamcake’s smart technology capabilities. Each week, multiple concurrent live streams are orchestrated and automated with ease. GPS Queensland now owns and operates a capable online OTT watch destination to direct students, their parents and the wider community of viewers to watch and to be part of GPS Queensland events, fostering unparalleled community engagement. Other benefits include:  

• Easy to use interface that automates and orchestrates multiple concurrent livestreamed events 

• Reduced operational load through automation of streaming functions   

• Reduction in resourcing requirements and potential points of failure by leveraging single source to stream multiple events  

• Easy to extend and tailor to GPS Queensland’s future growth and new opportunities like automated highlights, paid subscriptions, commercialisation or sponsor integration 

• 65 Live Sporting events across 2.5 month period  

• 10.5k registered users so far 

• Peak daily users of 17.5k 

• 310+ hours of live streamed events 

• Over 100k streams viewed 

• ~1000 technical streaming operational workflows orchestrated via Streamcake  

• Longest stream 6 hours 45 mins