Are the high-quality streams of a live sports broadcast recorded and stored somewhere?

482 views

I was watching a soccer match and this struck me: is the live high-quality broadcast stored anywhere or is it just streamed? I suppose it needs to be stored somewhere to make highlight reels, but wouldn’t this storage take up TBs of space and therefore not be economical?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most OTT (over the top) video broadcasters hold on to the raw recordings. There’s a lot of value in these recordings beyond just the original sports broadcast. Say a famous sports player passed on. There’s a lot of value in replays of their past games.

The revenue stream goes beyond just the broadcast itself. It extends to include syndication, royalties, etc.

The videos are stored offline, yes cost is a big issue, but there’s usually a method to the madness. Hot storage for most recent videos, warm storage for older ones and Cold Storage for archives. There are those that store everything on cloud and some that store everything on site and there are those in between. It depends on their production workflow and their demands for the footage in those workflows and businesses.

Modern broadcasters will balance the type of storage they have with the cost to own and operate them. Overall they make more money than they spend. Their profitability allows them to spend what they need on the right type and amount of storage they need. It grows constantly, but usually the tech develops fast enough that the cost of storage per TB reduces over time with higher storage densities, better workflows, better tech etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most broadcast networks save everything. Yes, it’s TBs of space but compared to the budget required to make the broadcast in the first place a stack of TB storage drives, especially at scale, is peanuts. It would be certainly be less than 1% of the overall budget.

YouTube is storing far more than all the sporting events that have ever happened and they can pay for that just off ad revenue.