24/7 Broadcast Channel Launched in Hours Reaches Millions of Viewers

betevé Expands Global Audience of Barcelona’s Largest Festival with Cloud-Native TVU Channel

TVU Networks, the industry leader in live video production and playout solutions, launched a 24/7 live, pop-up channel covering the four-day La Mercè Festival using cloud-native TVU Channel. With TVU, Barcelona public broadcaster betevé, launched the channel, without added infrastructure, in less than a few hours. The channel, Mercè 24h, was available on the broadcaster’s website and in the betevé app.

The “Festival of Festivals,” La Mercè is the biggest annual event in the city of Barcelona. A celebration of traditions, street art, circus, dance, music and film, the festival broadcast and featured more than 500 activities and 1,000 artists throughout the city.

“La Mercè is a huge event in Barcelona,” said Oriol Icart, Technical and Innovation Director, betevé. “We wanted to cover it all, not just highlights, and for the first time ever, we did. Plus, we reached a global audience far beyond Barcelona. Our coverage was flawless, running 24/7 for four days over our app and website without any issues. Because TVU Channel operates entirely through the cloud, we were able to spin up our La Mercè pop-up channel quickly without adding infrastructure or significant cost. We set it up in minutes and began using it the same day. We were thrilled with the results and are planning our next use already.”

Initially designed for one of the world’s largest broadcasters, TVU Channel, enables the scheduling of live programming for any digital platforms, CTV, OTT and OTA from a simple web browser. Because it’s cloud native, TVU Channel can be quickly deployed without complicated configuration. There’s no extensive training necessary to get started. Building and managing channels is as easy to learn as a calendar. Anyone with a stream can effectively monetize their content, risk free, using TVU Channel programmatic advertising. The platform provides extensive and flexible support for adding SCTE markers to a program for ad insertion, including scheduled breaks, manual breaks with a mouse click and pass-through of SCTE decoration.

“betevé created a specialized channel to cover one of Barcelona’s biggest events exactly the way they wanted without incurring the cost or resources typical with this kind of broadcast initiative,” said Rafael Castillo, Vice President EMEA and Latin America at TVU Networks. “We’re thrilled that our technology came through for them and that the city of Barcelona and the world got a true taste of the La Mercè festival – no matter where they live.”