Eindhoven original JW Player was selected by Discovery for its delivery of the first digital Olympics on Eurosport.com
JW Player, the world’s largest network-independent video platform that started in Eindhoven but has its headquarters in New York, was key in presenting Eurosport’s streaming coverage of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 on Eurosport.com. It caused Eurosport’s parent company Discovery to also choose JW Player for other global sports events in 2018 including the French Open, Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the US Open. JW Player and Discovery have disclosed the cooperation today.
PyeongChang 2018 was Discovery’s inaugural Games and saw the company deliver the streaming every moment of the Games live for the first time. In search of a new video player, acting as the “glue” that connects all parts of a modern video stack, Discovery chose JW Player.
4,000 hours of coverage, 900 hours of live action
By choosing JW Player, Discovery was able to deliver live video to both free and premium users of Eurosport.com on the Web and on iOS and Android devices. JW Player’s fully customized player delivered video to millions of viewers in 48 markets and 21 languages while fully supporting the Olympic Games’ standards in protecting content. In total, JW Player’s infrastructure supported 4,000 hours of coverage, 900 hours of live action and 100 different Olympics events with zero downtime.
“Given our commitment to deliver the first truly digital Games across Europe, users expected flawless delivery across every screen, device, and property. We spent months designing and building a modern video stack to deliver just that,” said Ralph Rivera, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Eurosport Digital.
“We were honored to be chosen to support Discovery for such a prestigious event as the official video player,” said Dave Otten, co-founder, and CEO of JW Player. The company has been around since 2005 and has its roots in Eindhoven. It was founded by the then Design Academy student Jeroen Wijering. He developed a Flash video player which was soon used by many companies to embed video in web pages. One of the first users was then young Youtube.
Media companies including Fox, VICE, Business Insider, and Univision, in addition to hundreds of thousands of creators of all types and sizes, use JW Player to deliver and monetize their content across all devices. The company is headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Eindhoven, and was named to Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™ in 2017.
Source: press release Discovery