Australian Football League (AFL) protects, monetises and broadcasts its content with Dalet Flex

O Vale Flex is at the heart of a new project to digitise and modernise the Australian Football League’s (AFL) video asset workflow.

The implementation, based on Dalet’s cloud-native media logistics subscription and delivered in collaboration with partner Telstra Broadcast Services, has enabled the AFL to address a large-scale technical upgrade of its rich game content stored on 22,000 physical tapes and reimagine the way they share and resell content.

Spencer Wilson, director of operations and broadcasting at the AFL, elaborates: “Dalet Flex provides a single source of truth for this mammoth archive. You can use Dalet Flex to search the archives, pull content and package it for monetization for any type of sales channel. The core design of the system tracks not only media assets but manages commercial agreements, compliance requirements and transactions tied to those assets. This allows us to set up an on-demand service that radically changes how we can share with our broadcast customers and fans.”

O AFL archive project comes on the heels of other world-class projects, such as those undertaken by Lega Serie A, Australia’s National Rugby League, Arsenal Football Club and the Ligue de Football Professionnel. All of these organisations have implemented Dalet’s solutions to drive new video strategies to expand multi-generational fan engagement on digital channels.

Upholding the legacy of the Australian Football League

As the governing body of Australian professional football, the AFL is responsible for preserving its historical content. Concerned about the degradation and loss of valuable assets, and the growing storage needs of each of the matches recorded since 1909, the organisation sought to digitally preserve its entire archive. The AFL used Telstra Purple to configure the Amazon Web Services data servers and data centres storing the digitised match content, and Dalet Flex to facilitate key media logistics functions, including archive searches, retrievals and packaging of content for on-demand and multi-platform distribution.

The new on-demand media request workflow allows the AFL to significantly expand the use of historical match content and enable fans to experience historic moments in the competition.