Overview

Engagement overview

Sony LIV prioritized strengthening its OTT platform to support rising live sports viewership, premium on-demand consumption, and high-concurrency events. Aligned with its growth strategy, the initiative focused on improving playback reliability, enabling deeper engagement, and advancing monetization capabilities across Web, mobile, and Smart TV platforms.

In collaboration with TO THE NEW, the program began with a comprehensive audit spanning video player architecture, engineering workflows, application store compliance, and QoS metrics. The initiative evolved into a multi-phase transformation program focused on player modernization, analytics enablement, user engagement innovation, and advertising ecosystem expansion, supporting Sony LIV’s growth across diverse device ecosystems.

Our client

Media & Entertainment
 India

Sony LIV is a premium OTT platform delivering live sports, curated TV programming, and feature films to millions of users across India and international markets. Operating a hybrid monetisation model that spans subscription tiers and advertising revenue, the platform has established a significant digital footprint across mobile, web, and connected TV ecosystems and continues to pursue aggressive growth.

Business objective

Sony LIV defined a set of strategic priorities aligned with performance and scalability goals:

01

Optimize video QoE at scale by reducing start time, minimizing playback failures, and improving rebuffering and EBVS across Live and VOD

02

Engineer for high-concurrency resilience to seamlessly support multi-million user spikes during marquee live events

03

Deliver consistent cross-platform performance across Web, Mobile, and fragmented Smart TV ecosystems (LG, Samsung, Sony Bravia, etc.)

04

Accelerate ad monetization capabilities through advanced ad formats, SSAI, and contextual ad insertion to maximize revenue per session

05

Enhance engagement and retention levers via interactive features, gamification, and intelligent content pre-fetching

06

Increase release velocity with streamlined build pipelines, store compliance, and faster Smart TV deployments

Business solution

The initiative advanced across platform assessment, player modernization, engagement innovation, and monetization capabilities.

  • Conducted a full-stack audit to identify optimization opportunities across player, architecture, and QoS metrics

  • Re-engineered video player to enable content-aware playback and improve streaming efficiency

  • Revamped player across Web and leading Smart TV platforms (LG, Samsung, Hisense, Vidaa, Sony Bravia)

  • Enabled multi-player logic to dynamically optimize playback based on content type

  • Engineered platform to support multi-million concurrent users during high-profile live events

  • Supported development of the Godavari analytics platform, enabling real-time QoS insights and strong data ownership capabilities

  • Eliminated third-party analytics dependency to improve telemetry control and reduce licensing overhead

  • Implemented backend-driven UI framework to enable real-time feature and interface updates

  • Enabled advanced playback features including 4K streaming, Dolby audio, and content prefetching

  • Integrated advanced ad stack including SSAI/DAI and contextual targeting to improve engagement and monetization

  • Introduced interactive features such as co-viewing, play-along experiences, and key-moment navigation

  • Standardized engineering workflows to improve release governance and reduce technical complexity

Business impact

The engagement delivered measurable, quantifiable outcomes across platform performance, monetisation, and operational capability:

20% reduction in playback failures with improved EBVS & rebuffering performance

30% improvement in video start time, enhancing initial playback experience

15+ ad formats enabled, strengthening monetization depth and targeting precision

Multi-million concurrent users supported during major live sports events and content launches

4 months to deploy analytics platform, accelerating insights and enabling full data ownership

Increased user engagement through interactive and real-time participation features