The sheer volume of sports content today – pre-game interviews, multiple simultaneous feeds, post-game analysis – requires a complex combination of infrastructure and operational expertise to deliver at scale. Through its work with leagues, federations and rights holders, SES delivers more than 1,300 hours of premium live sport and events every day across its hybrid networks.
Innovation
The industry never stands still, and continued relevance depends on continued innovation. In sport, that has produced SES SCORE, a content orchestration platform that securely connects content owners and rights holders with takers worldwide. By simplifying the distribution of rights across broadcast partners, platforms of this kind help rights holders monetise their content while enabling broadcasters to activate both existing and new audiences.
Investment in space infrastructure continues in parallel. A new generation of software-defined digital satellites introduces capabilities such as adaptive power, which improves signal delivery, alongside more granular geo-fencing. These satellites are easier to build and faster to launch, flexible enough to support digital services for both video and data networks, and have the potential to change the economics and dynamics of deploying space technology.
Standards development is a third strand of that evolution. SES continues to contribute substantially to emerging standards capable of turning live satellite broadcast into a real-time, satellite-fed, file-based CDN – combining satellite delivery and OTT services within a single viewer experience.
A powerhouse for the future
SES’ s merger with Intelsat in mid-2025 brought together complementary expertise, resources and infrastructure to create a global media distribution business of significant scale. The combined multi-billion-dollar space and ground infrastructure provides extensive reach and resilience. But scale alone is not what will define the next phase of media distribution.
As viewing habits continue to evolve, the more important question is how different delivery technologies can work together to meet changing audience and business requirements. The move from C-band to hybrid approaches such as Ku +, the integration of satellite with IP and cloud workflows, and continued investment in software-defined satellites all point towards the same conclusion: the future of media delivery is unlikely to be defined by any single technology.
Instead, it will be shaped by the ability to combine the right technologies, infrastructure and expertise to deliver the right content to the right audience, wherever they are. As SES approaches its fifth decade in the industry, that evolution continues- with satellite remaining not a technology of the past, but an essential part of the infrastructure-neutral media ecosystem of the future.
EUROMEDIA 13