Important Players - M2A Media

Traditionally, broadcasters have wanted to buy technology, build a system, install it and pay for it. Today, broadcasters are increasingly turning to a new model in which they pay only for the technology and services they use for any given period, which can help to spread costs.

And that means opportunities arise continually.

Many of those opportunities are snapped up by those individuals and businesses who are both sharp enough to spot them before their competitors and have the nous to execute and achieve commercial success.

Here, Frame 25 looks at five such companies: what they’re doing, who they’re doing it with, and why they matter.

Who: M2A Media

Based: London

What they do: In the three years the company have been established, M2A Media have grown as specialists in media workflows in public cloud, specialising in live streaming. They’ve grown to a team of about 30 people who are from 10 countries and speak 13 languages, which helps the company generate ideas and tackle problems from multiple perspectives.

Why they’re important: They’re making waves in the streaming side of things, having successfully delivered high-profile content from the royal wedding (for the BBC), the World Cup (ITV) and top European football in Spain and Italy (DAZN).

M2A Media are leaders – not surprising, given the views of Marina Kalkanis, the company’s CEO and co-founder, who spoke at this year’s BVE in London on how tech is changing video in terms of the way viewers interact with it.

She says that emerging technology such as AI, blockchain and edge computing will lead video to a similar place that music consumption has ended up.

“They’ve come up with algorithms that say ‘If you like this, you’re probably going to like this’. And it’s got really good, and people trust that now.

“I don’t know that we’ve got to the same place with video yet, but my guess is we will.”

Kalkanis also suggests that viewers’ access to content might become easier, as barriers between carriers such as Netflix and Amazon dissolve.

BVE - Behind the Brand

Who they work with (selected): BBC (royal wedding), ITV (Love Island and the World Cup), DAZN (El Clasico and Serie A football)

In the news: M2A Media were also a finalist at the first Broadcast Tech Innovation Awards, nominated in the Technical Innovation in a Sports Broadcast category for their work with DAZN. The company have also recently announced the launch of M2A 4K Live Streaming.