Kent Cricket taps Easel TV for pay-per-view T20 streaming service

English county cricket body Kent Cricket has tapped streaming software-as-a-service vendor Easel TV to deliver a pay-per-view live sports streaming service for the current English T20 cricket season.

T20 is the shortened version of cricket introduced in 2003 for inter-county cricket in England and Wales.

Kent Cricket used Easel TV to create the pay per view digital service, Kent Cricket Play, as part of a game-wide trial. The pilot project was agreed by Kent Cricket, ECB and Sky on the eve of the Vitality Blast T20 competition and saw Kent Cricket become the first professional cricket club to stream a live T20 Vitality Blast match behind a paywall.

Excluding fixtures televised by Sky Sports, the overall rightsholder, Kent Spitfires’ home T20 matches are being streamed priced at £5.99.

Easel TV said its markets feature enabled Kent Cricket to set up a a separate ‘market’ for members who would be given free access to the games, while all other consumers were offered all matches, except the first match, for a set pay-per-view price.

The first match was offered free to all consumers to attract interest and registrations. Other markets were set up for staff, partners and opponents’ staff to give them free access.

“Working with our client, Kent Cricket, we pretty much created the service within a week having only been approached about 10 days before the first match was due to go live”, said Joe Foster, CEO of Easel TV.

“We had been introduced to the Easel TV model some time ago but restrictions on broadcast rights had always held us back. As soon as we received approval for the pilot, we reached out but when we called on Easel TV, we weren’t sure if this would even be possible. It has taken just one existing in-house editorial resource to create the service within a week of Easel TV setting us up with an account – phenomenal. Not least because it was never going to be sufficient to just produce the service; we also needed to know that Easel TV could link up with our content producer, AdVision, and implement a professional streaming service akin to BBC iPlayer or BT Sport. We wanted a proper standalone streaming service that provides a platform for future growth of our digital service and we got it; Kent Cricket Play. We’ve been able to provide a differentiated experience for members and supporters as well, an added bonus.” said Simon Storey, CEO of Kent Cricket.