Premier League moves massive match trove to the cloud

The Premier League, the world’s most watched domestic football league, has moved its immense historical content archive, with footage of every game played over the last 30 years, to the cloud. 

It will be hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which will support the Premier League’s ever-increasing broadcast quality levels and content storage requirements for years to come. Storage volumes are expected to reach three petabytes by 2025.

On a rolling two-week basis, the Premier League records and stores video on every aspect of every single match, including pre-and post-match interviews. That footage, stored on OCI, is then syndicated worldwide for broadcast to 79- million households in 188 of 193 UN member states. It is also sold for use in ads, documentaries, match highlights, and other applications.

“The Premier League’s worldwide broadcasts are the linchpin of the league’s relationship with its global fan base,” said Nick Morgan, managing director of Premier League Productions. “Showcasing the best football players in the world requires the best technology, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure delivers the performance we need to get fans around the world as close to the action on the pitch as possible.”

In addition to top-tier performance, availability and security, says Oracle, OCI delivers significant cost advantages over competitors, especially for data transit, which is a critical component of managing an extremely high volume of video content for global syndication. The Premier League is also taking advantage of OCI Object Storage, which utilises automatic, policy-based tiering. This intelligently moves data and optimises costs based on demand.

The Premier League also benefits from Oracle’s comprehensive cloud footprint. Oracle will serve the Premier League video footage out of cloud regions in four countries—initially out of the United Kingdom, then also out of Singapore, the United States, and Brazil—giving broadcast partners in every part of the world a consistent experience in terms of both price and performance.

“As the Premier League’s popularity continues to explode worldwide, OCI helps to ensure that Premier League content is cost-effectively delivered to its partners around the globe at the highest quality,” said Karan Batta, vice president of product management at OCI. “Equally important, with OCI the Premier League can continue to take advantage of advances in video quality and innovations in broadcast technology to meet rising fan expectations with zero concern about storage capacity.”

In addition to storing Premier League’s extensive video archive, says Oracle, it is committed to increasing the excitement surrounding every Premier League game. Oracle is producing real-time player and team statistics for each match broadcast using its advanced data analytics and machine learning technologies. Those stats include Average Formation, Live Win Probability, and Momentum Tracker.

In May 2022, the Premier League presented two new end-of-season awards based on rigorous Oracle Cloud data analyses: Most Improbable Comeback, awarded to Tottenham Hotspur for their last-minute 3-2 come-from-behind win at Leicester City; and Most Powerful Goal, awarded to Manchester City midfielder Fernandinho for his 117.61-kph (73.08-mph) strike against Leeds United.