SVG Sit-Down: Amagis Dan Marshall on Cloudport and the Power of Channel Building

The company helps content owners take advantage of the burgeoning FAST business to give viewers more choices

Amagi EVP, Global Sales, SaaS, Dan Marshall has served in that role since 2022 and has watched the evolution of FAST channels and their role in the sports-broadcast and -streaming business very closely. At the IBC in Amsterdam last month, he sat down with SVG to discuss the latest developments in FAST and their importance for nearly every type of sports league and rightsholder.

Amagi exhibited at IBC, which draws broadcasters from all around the world. What was some of your core messaging this year?

Our presence at IBC has always been about how we embed ourselves into the traditional linear-broadcast workflows and how customers make that shift from ground to cloud. On the FAST side of the business, oftentimes not related to our success in broadcast modernizations, we have approximately 65% of the FAST channels around the globe running on Amagi, so it has been a great journey.

At IBC 2026, we started to see the convergence of streaming unification between the broadcast side and IP delivery. We refer to this as a unified content-supply chain.

Another change in the industry related to FAST is that the number of platforms becoming available is increasing as traditional MVPDs are adding FAST channels to their EPG. This change gives customers a lot more choice in terms of content viewing, and we are doing this at no additional cost. We like to call it front porching : the consumer goes to the cable-channel guide, and, all of a sudden, there are 50 more channels available, and they didn't have to pay any more money. That has been a successful strategy to build incremental revenue for the MVPD and create stickiness because they create a better user experience by offering more content.

The other things we are showing are Smart Scheduler, an automated solution for scheduling streaming-TV-channel programming, and Metadata Enrichment, which means taking text, audio, and the video from the file and making it easier to find content in your archive. These benefit content owners in a lot of ways.

How have you seen the market maturing?

A few years ago, FAST was a land grab, and content owners were trying to get on as many platforms as possible. But, as the market has matured, we've seen tier-one content coming to FAST, which is important for sports.

Leagues like the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR all have FAST channels, and that has been both good and bad. Good because those are important leagues that produce really good content, but bad because other FAST channels may lose eyeballs, which could reduce their ROI. We are seeing a bit of a recalibration in the market but still growth at double-digit rates.

What has been your market advantage in the area of FAST channels?

We introduced the notion of bringing live into FAST channels. Customers started in FAST by building channels out of archives; our technology lets our users integrate live programming with traditional FAST and therefore provide a TV-over-IP experience. We've seen this strategy result in higher HOV, fill rates, and impressions, which should all result in an increase in revenues for those FAST channels. NHL is a good example of a sports FAST channel that integrates live news programming into FAST.

There is a ton of flexibility in the way FAST channels can be used today, and broadcasters are looking for new ways to grow revenue via FAST for either live or VOD content. FAST allows them to monetize it relatively inexpensively via ad placements or even SVOD.

For example, DAZN is a big customer of ours. When they were running the World Cup, they were taking a live feed and distributing globally to the rightsholders that had exclusive access for that content. They were also creating IP streams that they distributed where they had rights for the IP distribution of that content. At the same time, they were creating live-to-VOD assets that could be retransmitted at a later time or used for highlights or social distribution.

Amagi's Dan Marshall says MVPDs can create stickiness with customers by seamlessly deploying FAST channels within their existing ecosystem and channel guides.Do you help the MVPD with changing the channel guide?

Yes. We have to help them because we have the EPG data and want to make sure they can present it in the right format. The goal is to make it seamless, so the guide just gets extended from, say, 130 channels to 160 channels.

And is that sort of offering a deal that you do with the channel providers or the MVPD?

It can start from either. Sometimes, the MVPD will come to us and say they want to use Amagi's Connect marketplace, where we have hundreds of content providers and platforms available. Content owners have the opportunity to access and build distribution relationships with hundreds of platforms globally. On the flip side of this, the MVPD can come looking to Connect marketplace and choose the types of content or channels they would like to distribute. All legal and commercial terms are agreed upon through the marketplace portal.

The MVPDs are under a lot of pressure with respect to subscription erosion. Do you think FAST can help them respond to changing market and customer needs?

Right now, there is an evolution going on, and we do see that the front porch model can help cut churn. In the near term, we see that it is a viable strategy for an MVPD to stay relevant.

How exactly does one get started with launching a FAST Channel with Amagi?

It's fairly simple. We have a product called Amagi Cloudport, and we give you the ability to look at all your VOD assets and determine how you want to build that channel. Then, Cloudport will build that channel, which is really just a user interface that allows someone to put the channel together. You begin the process of getting it

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/10/26/svg-sit-down-amagis-dan-marshal...
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