CASE STUDY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
AT THE STADIUM: STILL THE BEST WAY TO TAKE IN A GAME?
Taking in a game live at the venue is typically considered an unbeatable
sports experience. In recent years, however, the viewing experience for fans
absent from the stadium has improved dramatically, closing the gap between
live and televised sporting events. With access to big-screen, high-definition
televisions, cable packages that show multiple games simultaneously and
trick-play controls for pausing and rewinding a live broadcast, today’s
sports fans are less incentivized to shell out dollars for game day tickets,
transportation, parking and food. As a result, drawing attendance at
stadiums has become more and more of a challenge for many sports teams
and leagues, both within the college and professional ranks. Stanford
University, a college known for its rich athletic traditions and technological
innovation, recently hit upon a new way to attract fans to live sporting
events. How did the school create a unique and exciting experience for fans
inside its venues?
BACKGROUND: A TRENDSETTER IN COLLEGE SPORTS
Stanford University is known as one of the top academic institutions in the
United States; with its reputation for scholastic excellence, the school’s athletic
achievements are often overlooked. A member of the Pacific 12 conference, Stanford
has “quietly” won 116 national championships, second among all universities,
and 439 NCAA individual sport titles, which is first among Division I (D-I) schools.
Stanford sent more athletes to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics than any other
college in the U.S, winning 25 Olympic medals. This would have ranked #11 if it
were a country—tying with Japan.
The athletic facilities at Stanford are top-notch. Maples Pavilion, home to the men’s
and women’s basketball, volleyball and gymnastics teams, was renovated in 2005.
A new Stanford Stadium, the home of Stanford football, was unveiled in 2006 and
has gone on to host multiple top-ten college football matchups. However, while
good teams and first-rate facilities are valuable assets for drawing large crowds, the
university has pushed to add technological advances to its list of attractions as well.
CHALLENGE
• Create an application to attract fans
to stadiums
• Prepare video for Wi-Fi-enabled
device playback
• Deliver video quickly and efficiently
SOLUTION
• Create several adaptive bitrate streams
• Minimize encoding hardware needed
• Harness the flexibility of a
software-based platform
BENEFITS
• Deliver video in a new environment
• Reduce workflow complexity
• Save money and manpower
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STANFORD WI-FI INSTANT REPLAY WORKFLOW
WEB SERVER
SOURCE
MOBILE DEVICES
HD-SDI
(4 Cameras)
CHALLENGE: TURNING THE TURNSTILES
In 1935, Stanford Stadium set a record for single-game attendance, with 94,000
spectators filling the arena for a football game against the University of California.
When the newly renovated stadium opened in 2006, the amenities had been
upgraded while the seating capacity was reduced to 50,000. Selling out games
should have been no problem for the Cardinals then, right? Not quite. Top-ten
Stanford football teams still challenged the university to maximize game attendance,
including then-head coach Jim Harbaugh: “Somebody has got to spearhead [the
effort of getting fans to games],” he said. “It can’t be everybody pointing around a
table saying, ‘It’s your job. It’s your job.”
Replays are viewed through either the
free Stanford Gameday Live website or
dedicated mobile applications and are
available exclusively to fans attending
Stanford-hosted sporting events.
Recognizing the need to fill stadium seats, the Stanford Athletics department took
the lead in leveraging new media and video technology to produce a compelling
draw for fans inside the university’s sports venues. The widespread adoption of
smartphones, tablets and other portable devices offered a straightforward way to
add a novel dimension to Stanford athletic events, unique to event attendees. The
university deployed advanced wireless networks across its sporting facilities and
built out its video infrastructure to allow in-stadium broadband access and to serve
up instant replays on connected devices. This forward-thinking plan would enhance
the fan experience, but required the integration of leading-edge video encoding
equipment to be successful.
MAKING GAME DAY INTERACTIVE
In-stadium Wi-Fi instant replay is part of a larger Stanford Athletics initiative to
augment the game day experience for fans with mobile devices. Instant replay clips
are available through two different mobile products offered by the university: the
Stanford Game Day Live mobile website and the iCardinal application for Apple
and Android devices. In addition to real-time video replays powered by Elemental
Live, the mobile website features live statistics, a venue guide, and social media
integration. The dedicated iCardinal mobile app offers the same features along with
location-based services, photo-sharing, a radio feed, and news, scores, schedules,
rosters and other information about Stanford Athletics. In addition, mobile food
ordering is available, allowing fans to avoid waiting in concession lines. These
mobile offerings give supporters in the venue a highly personalized and interactive
experience on game day and, according to Stanford, align with broad changes in
technology and consumer preferences.
© 2015 Elemental Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
225 SW Broadway Suite 400, Portland, OR, 97205
+1 888.900.8104
Stanford’s mobile product offerings
give fans at the stadium an interactive
and personalized experience.
info@elementaltechnologies.com
@elementaltech
elementaltechnologies.com
SOLUTION: TAKING THE IN-STADIUM EXPERIENCE TO ANOTHER LEVEL
Stanford found a solution flexible and robust enough to satisfy the advanced
encoding requirements for its Wi-Fi Instant Replay system in Elemental® Live.
Elemental Live is a software-defined video processing solution that provides video
and audio encoding for live event streaming to online and mobile platforms.
Elemental Live supplies adaptive bitrate video for Stanford’s Wi-Fi instant replay
system, which delivers game clips and highlights to fans’ mobile devices within a
few seconds of live play.
The solution gives fans in attendance at sporting events on campus immediate
access to video/audio replay on Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. Replays are viewed
through either the free Stanford Gameday Live website or dedicated mobile
applications available exclusively to fans attending Stanford-hosted sporting events.
Stanford is one of the first universities to bring instant replay over Wi-Fi to its
athletic venues; the system debuted at Stanford Stadium for the Cardinal vs. San
Jose State Spartans football game on September 3, 2011.
Using Elemental Live, control room operators at the game are able to continuously
create adaptive bitrate Apple HTTP files from four different cameras sources
located within the venue. Content is encoded in real-time and immediately stored
on a local web server. Real-time encoding of multiple video streams is critical to
this application – operators selecting video for the main boards in the stadium can
simultaneously create and push highlight clips formatted for mobile devices using
a simple function key that references a manifest file and existing metadata. The
availability of adaptive streams from Elemental Live ensures uninterrupted video
delivery to end users through high network traffic or bandwidth constraints.
Elemental Live formats adaptive bitrate video for the iPad,
iPhone and other mobile devices at Stanford athletic venues.
Dynamic stream switching ensures a seamless viewer
experience when network bandwidth is constrained.
© 2015 Elemental Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
225 SW Broadway Suite 400, Portland, OR, 97205
+1 888.900.8104
info@elementaltechnologies.com
@elementaltech
elementaltechnologies.com
BENEFITS: MERGING THE BEST OF BOTH FAN-TASTIC WORLDS
With Elemental Live powering its instant replay system, Stanford is able to provide
Cardinal supporters with angles of coverage never before experienced at a game.
With unprecedented performance, the system executes simultaneous encoding of
multiple adaptive bitrate streams, delivering the high-quality, high-efficiency outputs
required to convert multiple cameras feeds into device-friendly formats inside the
stadium. After a big play, fans can immediately leverage in-stadium Wi-Fi to replay
the action as much as they want from their iPhone, iPad or Android device.
The ease of management offered by Elemental Live allowed for quick and easy
integration of the system into Stanford’s existing in-game workflow. With Elemental
Live in place, highlight clips can be created and delivered without additional
control room staffing or overhead, a key requirement for the Stanford Athletics
department. The deployment of this streaming solution from Elemental helps the
university further the goal of attracting more fans to live events. Higher attendance
at games and bettering the stadium atmosphere, in turn, drives recruiting and leads
to perennially contending teams, ultimately culminating in the biggest prize of all:
alumni contributions. Each piece of this puzzle is significant – and Stanford’s mobile
products create a unique and unmatched in-stadium experience for fans as part of a
larger strategy for executing on these objectives.
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“Even the best seat in the house doesn’t
offer the best view on every play. Maybe
the action is taking place on the opposite
side of the stadium, or your view was
blocked by the guy seated in front of you
waving a giant foam finger. Video replay on
your phone means you’ll never miss a key
moment, and Elemental’s approach means
you’ll have multiple views of those key
moments.”
Philip Michaels
Editor, Macworld
Read the Macworld article: Let’s go to the replay: Stanford beams
in-game action to fans’ phones
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© 2014 Elemental Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.