Akamai Technologies announced today it will serve as the exclusive live video streaming provider to Turner Sports for the official PGA Championship App available on the App Store. The 91st PGA Championship will be held August 13-16 with 18 hours of television coverage on TNT complemented by four video streams of live coverage exclusively on PGA.com.
The PGA Championship iPhone App for the iPhone and iPod touch supports Turner Sports’ integrated broadcast strategy of combining traditional television coverage with online and mobile components to provide fans with a multiplatform experience.
“Turner Sports is known for its innovation in presenting content across multiple platforms, and this is another example of that strategy,” said Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media at Akamai. “Organizations like Turner Sports are leading the charge with live streaming and taking the fan experience to a whole new level to mobile devices. Streaming the PGA Championship live to the iPhone and iPod touch brings a personalized and high-quality experience to even more golf fans, no matter where they are. With increasingly better connectivity over WiFi, we’ve reached the point where high definition experiences are no longer limited to the PC.”
Variable bit rate streaming benefits the consumer by enabling a high fidelity viewing experience at any bitrate – critical for mobile video as viewing conditions vary dramatically between carrier edge networks to 3G to WIFI. Using Akamai HTTP Streaming for iPhone and Inlet Technologies Spinnaker solution to deliver live and on-demand content, content owners can enable higher-quality video experiences at near HD bitrates over WiFi and 3G.
“Inlet works closely with Akamai to ensure our live encoding service for mobile applications works seamlessly across the Akamai network to provide for the optimal live video experience,” said John Bishop, senior vice president of strategy and business development, Inlet Technologies. “Working with Akamai we are able to provide a smooth end to end process for content providers to make it easier to deliver next generation video experiences -“ such as variable bit rate streaming.”
