How observability powers Australia's biggest streaming event

As Australians increasingly demand high-quality digital content, streaming providers face the mounting task of keeping audiences engaged while delivering optimal viewing experiences amid often complex architecture.

Providers and their IT teams now manage today's growing tech stacks, including risk and compliance layers to address disparate issues such as authentication, DRM (digital rights management), targeted advertising and verification. Many are turning to observability practices for a comprehensive view of the entire system in one platform to ensure uninterrupted, optimal user experiences. 

According to New Relic's recent industry report, 39% of media and entertainment organisations surveyed use observability to support an increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance. 

The need for end-to-end observability becomes even more critical when providers have to meet the demands of users during key events or moments. The added pressures of a live major sporting event are well recognised by Seven Network, one of Australia's largest media companies, having secured the biggest broadcast rights deal with the AFL.

Getting ready to play

For the first time, Seven's deal with the AFL would enable footy fans to tune in for free on 7plus Sport, Seven's capital city and regional broadcast channels. 

Ahead of the new season, Seven needed to ensure its streaming platform could scale to meet growing demand, deliver a seamless viewing experience, and adhere to strict compliance requirements. The agreement required precise geotargeting to ensure accuracy of viewership, which meant full visibility of application performance was non-negotiable.

Seven partnered with New Relic to build a tailored solution that would enable them to gain insights into their users, using their data to ensure they were reaching the right audience segments. New Relic's real-time analysis function helped to analyse data and correlate IDs, weeding out any unauthorised access.

The solution involved firstly checking if the content has geo restrictions, collecting location data via GeoComply, session, device and user IDs, all of which were analysed New Relic dashboards provided visibility through real-time data and tracked performance to identify performance bottlenecks and errors before they impacted viewers.

In 2024, Seven's AFL and AFLW coverage reached 17.4 million Australians. The AFL Grand Final reached a total of 6.24 million Australians, the most-watched program of the year. 

With a strong observability platform, the Seven team were able to anticipate demand spikes and enable proactive resource scaling to ensure uninterrupted streaming during peak periods. Their IT team quickly detected and resolved issues proactively before viewers experienced any downtime or interruptions to their viewing. 

Preventing outages and costly downtime in the AI era

Beyond brand reputation, downtime can cost providers millions of dollars. However, New Relic found that only 43% in media and entertainment rely on observability tools to unearth software and system interruptions, relying instead on incident tickets and manual methods for detecting and resolving problems.

The emergence of new technologies such as AI and the increased need for reliable, responsive systems mean new challenges for providers. 35% of respondents look to observability to deliver on the adoption of AI. The most widely used observability capability is AI monitoring at 60%, the highest among all industries.

To stay competitive in the crowded market, providers must ensure that networks and infrastructure perform, while simultaneously providing seamless digital experiences. As they grapple with high cost of downtime and the need to resolve unique compliance, providers stand to benefit from streamlining their observability programs and integrating various business data types into a single, consolidated platform. 

As more streaming services and content providers like Seven adopt new capabilities and become more sophisticated, observability will help to manage growing pressures to ensure their platforms can handle the demands of major broadcast events without disruption.