fan.at expands audience reach and boosts subscription revenue by 133%

fan.at is a sports broadcaster and streaming platform for football and handball sporting events. The company’s website and mobile app offer sports fans hundreds of live streams of men’s, women’s, and youth games, plus on-demand videos, personalized feeds, highlights, news, voting, live ticker, player statistics, and match results. Viewers can enjoy live streams and replays of games from major leagues and championships like the Bundesliga, Premier League, and Gold Cup. With video content from 50,000 games played by 15,000 teams per season, fan.at delivers high-volume broadcasts to an engaged and growing viewer base.

Lacking scalability to support multi-stream delivery

fan.at wanted to meet the growing demand for more game coverage, expanding beyond major national leagues to include smaller regional clubs and junior leagues. The company faced a significant challenge in adding these live streams. “Our previous streaming partner could not support our plans to scale, so we initially brought the technology in-house. This meant that we needed to establish a new streaming setup and supporting infrastructure under tight deadlines,” said Raphael Hollenstein, Senior Software Engineer at fan.at.

While the company had automated cameras installed at football and handball venues to record games, it lacked the necessary infrastructure to efficiently ingest, transcode, and deliver multiple streams to its growing audience. This prompted the team to explore external solutions. “When we spoke to providers, many couldn’t offer the functionality we needed, like graphical overlays and sponsor inserts, while others were simply too expensive for managing multiple simultaneous streams. It wasn’t a scalable option,” explained Hollenstein.

fan.at turned to Gcore for a solution that could support its current and future growth plans, attracted by features like free encoding, which significantly reduces costs. Gcore offered all the essential functionality, including simultaneous live streaming of multiple matches, video-on-demand (VOD), the ability to add sponsor inserts and overlays, and the option to create and edit video clips using the API. fan.at selected Gcore Video Streaming and CDN due to its high-quality, low-latency performance, scalability, and global reach—all of which were essential for supporting the broadcaster’s expansion plans and meeting the demands of additional streams and a larger audience.

Delivering game-changing sports coverage to a global audience

fan.at integrated Gcore Video Streaming and CDN into its existing workflow, enabling a smooth transition that strengthened its streaming capabilities without disruption. “The Gcore implementation was seamless, and the platform provides everything we need in one place, from live ingest to low-latency global delivery,” said Hollenstein. “It’s been a game-changer, allowing us to focus on scaling our content without the technical hurdles.”

Using Gcore’s fast and flexible CDN, fan.at can deliver large, continuous data streams with minimal buffering and latency for an uninterrupted viewing experience. “With Gcore, we no longer have to worry about transcoding our media,” said Hollenstein. “Gcore’s solution automatically converts video files between formats so that our content is always delivered at the highest quality and accessible to all viewers, regardless of internet stability, bandwidth, resolution, or screen size.”

With the right technology foundations in place, fan.at could install over 130 additional cameras at sports venues, successfully expanding coverage of smaller regional club games. The efficient management of these additional streams by Gcore made the expansion process simple and hassle-free for the team.

Meeting customer demand for these games unlocked new financial opportunities for the broadcaster, “By expanding our game coverage, we’ve seen a surge in new subscriptions, leading to a 133% increase in revenue within just one quarter, which is a great result,” Hollenstein notes.

Elevating live sports viewing experience and fan engagement

Fast clip creation is crucial for enriching the game experience and broadening audience reach on social media. “We use the API to create instant highlight videos from live streams, which is exactly what we needed,” said Hollenstein. “We can produce clips almost instantaneously, which is crucial when managing up to 300 cameras during peak weekends.” The ability to create short videos for social media has also helped to grow brand awareness and interaction. “Within four months of implementing Gcore, social media engagement with video content rose by 43%, and video views on Instagram increased by 64%,” added Hollenstein.

Gcore enables fan.at to create customizable graphical overlays, superimposing information like scores, player stats, and logos directly onto the footage. This feature offers fans additional context that complements the on-field action and improves the viewing experience. The broadcaster can also insert HTML overlays like sponsor banners, alerts, and a time clock into live streams, enhancing visual appeal and engagement.

Streamlining broadcast operations and reducing streaming costs

fan.at streamlined operations and reduced costs by consolidating its streaming infrastructure with Gcore’s integrated transcoding and VOD storage solutions, eliminating the need for multiple providers. “We’ve seen a 13% reduction in VOD storage costs and an 85% decrease in transcoding expenses compared to our previous providers,” noted Hollenstein. Additionally, Gcore’s automated video streaming and production workflows saved the engineering team 500 working hours over four months, further enhancing operational efficiency.

Continued innovation to grow and engage a diverse audience

By partnering with Gcore, fan.at has successfully expanded its broadcast capabilities beyond major leagues to include coverage of football games from smaller clubs, reaching a wider audience. The collaboration enabled the broadcaster to meet growing demand, optimize streaming performance, and enhance viewer engagement. Looking ahead, fan.at plans to rely on Gcore to add live commentary, innovate further with video editing, and explore new interactive features to continue delivering high-quality entertainment to an ever-growing audience.