Following the launch earlier this year, Eurovision Media Services (EMS) is bringing their content distribution platform to the next level, right in time for the 2018 European Championships – a new multisport event taking place 02-12 August.

Eurovision Highway is an online service allowing broadcast partners and rightsholders to preview, download and share broadcast quality video files related to an event or a sport discipline. The 2018 European Championships channel is a part of the Eurovision Sport Highway – a content library built specifically for rightsholders of different disciplines in the EBU Sports portfolio.

The purpose of this this service is to aggregate all available content, data and documents in one interface and make it easy for media organisations covering the event to search, download or export content to editing and publishing tools.

"The first version of the platform was well received by rightsholders and is currently used to exchange promotional clips and other pre-event footage" said Louis Matignon, Multiplatform Solutions Manager at EMS. "We are excited to release new functionalities and integrate this platform within the Eurovision digital ecosystem", he continued.

A key benefit of the new Eurovision Highway is enhanced search capability allowing users to look for footage by athlete, sport, venue and other criteria. This feature is enabled by tags and logs placed directly into the video files. During the event EMS will expand its digital desk to ensure all content uploaded to the platform includes necessary metadata.

Other new features include: a timeline preview and the ability to extract parts of video files and organise assets in dynamic folders. Media organisations using the library are now presented with several options for downloading files: using web browser, Aspera or Eurovision NEX. Depending on the volume of the file, connectivity and media workflow used by each organisation, different methods may be recommended.

The Eurovision Highway upgrade was announced and showcased during the second content workshop dedicated to the 2018 European Championships. The event took place in Glasgow, on 08 June 2018 and gathered all major stakeholders of the event: rightsholders, sports federations, host cities as well as representatives from the EBU and EMS who will act as both the broadcast partner (representing European public service media) and the Host Broadcaster (overseeing the overall production of the event).

The platform will be available as of 1 July 2018, free of charge, to all EBU Members holding rights for 2018 European Championships.