The European Tour has announced the launch of European Tour TV, a free online TV channel providing video on demand highlights shows through www.europeantour.com/tv
Developed in partnership with the Tour’s digital media services provider deltatre and Microsoft, European Tour TV offers a new way to watch golf with fans around the world able to enjoy an extensive library of content across The European Tour group.
European Tour TV has launched with over 100 hours of highlights going back as far as 1987, which will grow into a library of over 500 hours of content. Later in the year live streaming of tournament coverage in territories that currently do not benefit from any local television distribution will also be made available.
The European Tour TV service sits on www.europeantour.com/tv within the free fan registration section, My European Tour, and provides daily, curated playlists.
Archive highlights are streamed by deltatre using their video platform, DIVA, with storage managed by Microsoft in their Windows Azure Media Services.
The launch of European Tour TV is a landmark development for The European Tour’s global coverage, enabling golf fans all around the world to watch The European Tour along with highlights of the Challenge Tour and Senior Tour.
“Meeting the expectations of our global fan base is extremely important and we wanted to find a mechanism to deliver our tournament highlights and extensive archive directly to our consumers,” says Mark Lichtenhein, the European Tour’s Head of Television, Digital Media and Technology. “We also wanted to ensure that everyone in the world is able to access European Tour video content and using the Windows Azure platform to enable us to reach fans beyond our regular broadcast footprint.”
Paul Bristow, Chief Commercial Officer, deltatre, said: “The European Tour shares deltatre’s commitment to providing golf fans the most complete, interactive experience possible whether following live play or re-living some of the greatest moments in golf history. That mutual goal, along with deltatre’s longstanding relationship with Microsoft, drove the three organisations to bring European Tour golf to the global audience in a whole new way.”
European Tour TV is also another stage in the partnership between The European Tour and deltatre, which began with the re-design, build and management of the europeantour.com website in 2009. Since then that has evolved to include the provision of graphic design services to European Tour Productions, work with the European Tour’s live scoring team to ensure a streamlined scoring data feed is provided to all platforms, including third party federations and broadcasters, the building and managing of the Tour’s iPhone app and this week’s launch of Live Blogging.
European Tour www.europeantour.com