beIN, a global leader in the broadcast of premium sports, is tackling the threat from digital piracy to its Pay TV business head-on, by deploying the world’s leading live watermarking service from Friend MTS.
Widely recognised as a ground-breaking provider of platform, channel and content protection services, Friend MTS is providing its live watermarking anti-piracy service ASiD (Advanced Subscriber Identification) to protect all beIN channels on the broadcaster’s OTT platform throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
beIN is joining a number of tier 1 broadcasters using the Friend MTS’ ASiD service to make it the most widely deployed and actively used digital watermarking system in the world.
ASiD uses a sophisticated but lightweight watermarking technology to identify originating subscriber accounts that are being used to retransmit live channels and events. The technology can be implemented without any changes to the video delivery infrastructure, and enables accounts to be identified and video access blocked within just minutes.
For beIN, the technology means that it can identify individual subscribers that are stealing and retransmitting their content, and shut them down.
‘A real and costly threat to Pay TV business’
Friend MTS’ CEO Jonathan Friend explains: “beIN recognises that piracy is a real and costly threat to its Pay TV business and has contracted us to deploy our ASiD services to protect their channels across the beIN OTT platform in MENA.
“With the proliferation of OTT platforms, broadcasters need an anti-piracy solution that can fit both broadcast and OTT. ASiD is a true step change in the fight against video piracy, with a simple and easy to install robust content protection technology that will wipe out OTT and broadcast piracy 100% of the time.
“Our watermarking system is now the most widely used in the world, as we continue to roll out the service with some of the world’s biggest broadcasting platforms.”
Mohammad Al Subaie, Executive Director of Commercial Affairs at beIN adds:
“Piracy in MENA impacts pay TV industry immensely. Piracy causes millions of dollars of losses to organisations, governments and deprives legitimate industries like regional content creators from return on their investments. By deploying latest technological means, beIN wants to ensure that our eco-system in the region grows.”
Friend MTS is the world’s leading provider of technology-led platform and content protection services used by many of the world’s leading Pay-TV platforms. Its suite of managed services includes the world’s most deployed broadcast and OTT subscriber-level watermarking solution, operational daily in tens of millions of devices, coupled with global content monitoring for seamless discovery of theft, recovery of subscriber identity, and real-time session tear-down.
For more information about Friend MTS: www.greycable.com.
