SVG Sit-Down: Wazee Digital Mike Arthur on the Company's Evolution and the Oncoming Onslaught of Sports Content Wazee Digital has moved beyond licensing into cloud-based MAM and content management at events By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, June 23, 2017 - 8:30 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Wazee Digital has been known primarily for its content-licensing business for more than a decade - working with a variety of industries, including film, news, and sports. Sports clients range from the NCAA and PGA TOUR to USA Swimming and World Surf League (WSL). While licensing continues to be an integral part of the Denver-based company's business, Wazee Digital is broadening its horizons, most notably with its Wazee Digital Core cloud-based media-asset-management (MAM) platform and Digital Media Hub SaaS portal, powered by Core, for centralized content distribution during events like the U.S. Open.
SVG sat down with Mike Arthur, VP, sports and live events, to discuss Wazee Digital's evolution, where he sees the industry headed, and how the company can help content owners manage and distribute the approaching flood of original sports content.
Mike Arthur, VP, sports and live events, Wazee Digital
How is Wazee Digital's overall strategy changing?
I think the equity in our brand is built on our licensing expertise. About three years ago, we started to focus on the elite technology that enables everything. Yes, licensing is a sweet spot of ours, and we will continue to nurture and support it because we are very good at what we do in that space. However, we also felt like the actual digital-asset-management platform that we utilize here internally and now externally, referred to as Wazee Digital Core, was a very valuable part of our offering. From a business standpoint, we felt it represented larger growth opportunities with more significant improvements for the market in terms of content management and monetizing content in various formats.
Thus, we shifted our priorities so that, in addition to being a licensing-services company, we became a complete asset-management platform on top of which licensing, event services, and digital-asset management and more now sit. Licensing was our birthright, if you will, and we will continue to serve that [market]. However, we will also provide many other services - all sitting on our Core SaaS platform.
How do you see the sports-content market evolving, and how is Wazee Digital adapting to the changes?
In the sports market specifically, there are a couple of different things going on. Our sweet spot is with properties that have heavily viewed content but aren't necessarily large enough to have their own [content-management] division with an on-demand MAM and cloud storage [system]. We do have several partners who do have an on-premises MAM for certain projects, though we usually represent the largest portion of their library because they are in multiple locations and need to have global centralized access. U.S. Tennis Association, for example, has a [facility] in White Plains, NY, and just opened another large facility in Orlando, so the ability to connect to the same content via the cloud from various locations is one of the benefits to the cloud.
There's also the disaster-recovery angle for those customers that have an on-premises MAM.
Over the [past] six or seven years, the ability to produce high-quality content cost-effectively and simply has revolutionized the industry and totally changed the dynamic. You started seeing NFL franchises - who [had been] very limited from a content-creation standpoint because of the limitations of the league's rights agreements - producing vast amounts of content. Through today's [distribution] mediums, social specifically, those teams can connect with their fan bases in an entirely different way that doesn't rub up against those league-wide rights agreements. And, because production [tools] became so much cheaper, they have been able to serve those outlets with a lot of content.
So, from a sports and live-events standpoint, I think we have an amazing opportunity to provide access to cost-effective storage and manipulation through a dynamic archive environment using Core as the platform. That also enables a licensing component, as well as opportunities for our Digital Media Hub.
What is Digital Media Hub, and how is it being used at major sports events?
Digital Media Hub essentially offers a web portal at events that provides [property owners] with centralized access to acquire and distribute content from that event. That can be video highlights, stills, press conferences, audio highlights, and pretty much anything else the media would need. All of that can be distributed out to multiple locations by the user.
We recently spun up a Digital Media Hub at [a major golf tournament], and the beauty of it was that it was for every single type of media. We had all the video highlights from the course, entire press conferences, audio, transcripts, stills, flyover shots. It was also permission-enabled: if one of their major partners was logging in, they would have access to everything; if a local affiliate was logging in, they might have a couple of highlights and some transcripts and press conferences, [depending] on what their access was.
Taking that content, adding metadata, flexible transcode workflows, manipulating it in whatever way the property chooses, and then being able to publish it or post it straight to YouTube or Facebook (with other digital endpoints pending), we're finding, is very valuable. On top of that, we often are the licensing agent of record for that content, so we can immediately start to monetize that content. The Digital Media Hub also provides broadcasters with a cost-effective way to grab content for shoulder programming.
The Core platfor
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
SVG Sit-Down: Wazee Digital Mike Arthur on the Company's Evolution and the Oncoming Onslaught of Sports Content Wazee Digital has moved beyond licensing into cloud-based MAM and content management at events By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
