Streaming Gets a High-Definition Boost

Creating a commercial advantage with content

To grow its live-streaming business, Taghos focused on two key objectives. First, it wanted to help its customers protect their content from unauthorized access, especially via illegal streaming websites. Felipe Damásio, Director of Technology at Taghos says, “For popular shows, especially sports, you need to be able to serve a nationwide audience with uninterrupted, high-resolution streaming that is only available to paying subscribers.” 

The second goal was to overcome the online infrastructure challenges which impact Brazil. It is the fifth largest country in the world and most of the population is concentrated in cities near the eastern coast. These areas are well served by ISPs and broadband networks, but the interior of the country has a less developed infrastructure, which affects video quality and increases the likelihood of buffering. 

Taghos spoke to several anti-piracy software and CDN (content delivery network) providers, but discovered that few, if any, offered both services. This is where Akamai has a significant advantage. Its EdgeWorkers development environment enables streaming platforms to deploy software on edge servers close to the access source. 

In addition, Akamai’s CDN has thousands of points of presence in Brazil that can deliver cached content from servers closest to the user, significantly improving streaming resolution and reliability. This includes the interior where Akamai continues to grow its points of presence to serve locations where demand for internet traffic, especially video, is soaring. 

“We need to reassure our customers that we can defend their content from illegal access. When we looked at the market, Akamai was the only partner who matched our ambitious goals for security and streaming quality,” says Damásio. One of the highest profile customers is the Paulista Championship, a top-flight professional soccer league in the state of São Paulo. It has launched Paulistão Play, which uses the Spalla platform to broadcast matches to millions of viewers on mobile devices, laptops, and smart TVs.  

Damásio says, “To protect Paulista, we created a personalized token service to identify paid subscribers. By developing and deploying this software with Akamai EdgeWorkers, we can block illegal streaming domains and ensure that the client maximizes authorized subscriptions and overall revenues.”

Speed to deployment is also critical. Taghos developers can deploy to hundreds of thousands of Akamai edge servers with a single click. Less time deploying means more time innovating and staying ahead of the pirates.

Reducing customer churn, increasing lifetime value

Taghos now has a significant commercial advantage in Brazil’s competitive streaming environment. “With Akamai, we are shutting out the streaming pirates while delivering high-quality content all over Brazil. Fewer interruptions and less downtime also help reduce consumer churn and increase the lifetime value of subscribers,” says Damásio. “It’s good for our customers and their audience, and we can also charge a premium for the service.”

Since the Akamai deployment, Taghos has increased customer acquisition by about 24% year on year while bandwidth and data carried by its platforms has grown by 40%. “We always invite our prospects to talk to existing customers about protection against illegal streaming domains and how quickly we can help them recover from interruptions,” says Damásio. “With Akamai, it’s a matter of seconds, rather than minutes with other solutions. We won three new clients thanks to the testimony of a super-satisfied customer.”