The 2010 FIFA World Cup is drawing to a close and broadcasters are breathing a collective sigh of relief. HD content, 3D content, mobile programming and live-streaming placed a huge burden on broadcasters’ networks in the rush to provide top-notch coverage of this monumental event. Aside from live coverage, delivering extra content—highlights, pre-edited segments, analysis, interviews—was a key component of a broadcaster’s total package.

This dynamic presented a major hurdle for broadcast engineers who needed to transfer World Cup content to production centers across the globe within minutes. The demand for HD content significantly increases the average file size, taxing networks further. Traditional methods for sending content over the Internet are ill-equipped for large files and tend to break down over long distances, so how did broadcasters cope?

They turned to Aspera. 

Aspera’s high-performance file transport software is unaffected by transfer distance, file size or network conditions, making it the ideal solution for broadcasters shooting rich media from remote locations. Reporters collected content on-site in Johannesburg, sent the footage to respective production centers using the public Internet to be finalized, and then published it across a variety of channels consumers use to view media content.

“HD content is a center-piece of not just our coverage of the World Cup, but our entire broadcast service,” said Paulo Santos, IT manager at Rede Bandeirantes de Televisao. “While this rich content allows us to be competitive in today’s market, it presents unique technical challenges. With Aspera we were able to quickly and reliably send HD files, as well as SD video, of World Cup highlights, ensuring we met our tight production deadlines and delivered the best coverage of the event to our viewers.”

Selecting Aspera for the World Cup was a natural given that Rede Bandeirantes de Televisao (Band) already uses Aspera software for remote news gathering. Using Aspera software, Band’s reporters sent HD footage over existing Internet connections with no transfer hiccups. Three hundred MB files were transferred from South Africa to Sao Paolo in five minutes, and 2 GB were transferred in as little as 25 minutes.

“The World Cup is a great example of how the media industry relies on Aspera every day to quickly deliver timely content to viewers across the globe,” said Michelle Munson, president and co-founder of Aspera. “To cover the World Cup, tens of companies relied on our high-speed transport software to meet 24/7 production cycles, global distances and massive media files. We’re proud that so many leading broadcasters, content aggregators, and service companies on multiple continents trusted Aspera to manage the delivery of their critical content and optimize transfers, especially during such a significant global event.”