By JONATHAN POLAKOFF

Monday, April 22, 2013

Today’s buzzword: “TV everywhere.” It means that television viewing is moving out of the living room as more people stream programs on their computer, tablet or phone.

It started as a trickle a few years ago with the occasional awards show or sports event. But now, that’s turned into a stream of streaming.

And one company that specializes in the technology for live streaming, AEG Digital Media, a unit of L.A.’s Anschutz Entertainment Group, is striving to capture the flow. The company is making big investments and inking deals that it hopes will turn it into the go-to technology provider for real-time online viewing.

“There are a lot of eyes on trends of how consumers are watching media,” said Chris Roach, head of business development at AEG Digital. “Our advice is to get out in front of that.”

To evolve alongside the fast-changing habits of consumers, AEG Digital has also been building out its offerings.

Last year, the company purchased a broadcast center in Marina del Rey, to expand its capacity to receive satellite and fiber-optic signals from all over the world.

For example, it can pick up the broadcast signal of a cricket match in Asia. The company then converts that signal into a streaming format and sends it to Internet video players.

Earlier this month, AEG Digital announced a deal with SnappyTV of San Francisco. The agreement will allow AEG Digital to use SnappyTV’s software to create quick-turnaround highlight clips from live streams. For example, a hole-in-one at the Masters golf tournament could be turned into a highlight and subsequently sent out by a broadcaster via Twitter within a half-minute.

The highlights are meant to bring in new audiences from social networks while also giving advertisers another platform.

The SnappyTV deal took the form of a monthly licensing agreement. The companies will also work to develop new social media features.

SnappyTV Chief Executive Mike Folgner said offering highlights is another way for advertisers to stay relevant in today’s quick-fire world of digital entertainment.

“(There’s) a lot of advertiser interest to be the brand around these events,” Folgner said. “If you’re advertising on the events, you want to be advertising on the key moments.”

Cable deals

AEG bought its way into the streaming business with the purchase of webcasting pioneer Incited Media of Los Angeles in 2009, which was merged with AEG Productions to create AEG Digital Media.

The acquisition gave the company access to AEG resources, including the broadcast center and satellite facilities at L.A. Live, the company’s headquarters.

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

AEG Digital Media and SnappyTV announce a multifaceted strategic partnership that combines the global scale and reach of AEG Digital Media’s streaming, managed encoding, production and technical services with SnappyTV’s leading live, cloud-based video editing platform. The partnership enables global content providers the ability to instantaneously edit, clip and share key moments from their events in real time to leverage the power and virality of the major social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The companies will also provide live content to fans around the world with unprecedented access to real-time social video clips adding an exciting new dimension to live video, both in broadcast and online.

In addition, AEG Digital Media will integrate SnappyTV into its existing Live Experience Platform and event management workflows to create a simplified way for broadcasters to immediately publish highlights of compelling live content, creating a more engaging social experience for their viewing audiences. This partnership takes advantage of SnappyTV’s unique real-time sharing platform and AEGDM’s unparalleled experience and expertise in online broadcast workflows to create a social experience that will reach millions of interconnected consumers around the world.

“AEG Digital Media is committed to giving our clients the ability to integrate best-in-breed technology to simplify workflows and provide their viewers around the world universal access to a clever real-time VOD and social sharing platform through our partnership with SnappyTV,” said Chris Roach, Head of Business Development for AEG Digital Media. “The seamless integration of AEGDM’s managed encoding, streaming services and event management workflows combined with SnappyTV’s technology enables unique social video viewing and sharing experiences on a global scale.”

AEG’s customers can now leverage SnappyTV’s platform to easily stream live video in multiple formats to all devices and augment the live experience with instant in-event highlights on social networks, mobile devices and websites, seconds after these moments happen. Audiences can now watch and share these great moments everyone is talking about on Twitter and Facebook right as they happen.

“We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with AEG Digital Media to offer their fans, clients and advertisers new ways of delivering video content,” said Mike Folgner, CEO of SnappyTV. “When something exciting and newsworthy happens, the ability to deliver this content to the social world immediately allows users to capitalize on the excitement of the moment, which is better for fans, entertainers and advertisers alike. Delivering a video highlight hours later is just too late. What used to be real-time, text-based news delivery is now video.”

As part of the partnership, AEG Digital Media will leverage the SnappyTV platform to enhance their current live-to-VOD workflow, making VOD assets available instantaneously for broadcasters and other content providers to share with the masses. The partnership has already seen great success earlier in the year on several of the world’s largest awards shows, helping to increase time to publish assets online by 300%, with an average of 55 seconds for live stream to real-time highlight.

About SnappyTV: SnappyTV is the leading real-time, cloud-based video publishing platform started by the team behind Jumpcut.com and former executives of Yahoo! Video. Audience patterns for video viewing have shifted to social networks and mobile devices, driving a clear need for media companies to quickly edit and publish video clips and highlight reels to these new audiences. Existing video acquisition, editing and distribution tools and platforms don’t meet this new demand. SnappyTV has created a cloud-based video streaming, editing and distribution platform that allows media companies to reach their audiences on Twitter, Facebook, mobile devices and OVP-powered websites instantly. Major television networks, cable channels, sports leagues and conferences, including Pac-12 Networks, Fox Sports, MTV, Tennis Channel, NCAA, PBS News Hour and TechCrunch are using SnappyTV’s real-time publishing platform to change the way audiences engage with and talk about their favorite shows and live TV events by integrating video clips with social conversations. For more information, go to http://www.snappytv.com or emailcontact@snappytv.com.

About AEG Digital Media: AEG Digital Media is the leading provider of complete webcast management, technical media services and video optimization solutions in the digital media industry. AEG Digital Media is regarded as the definitive turnkey service provider in the market today with a 12-year track record of empowering and enabling the defining moments in Internet broadcasting and live streaming media. Based in Los Angeles, AEG Digital Media maintains the industry’s leading technologies and broadcast operation centers to enable seamless, broadcast-quality live events and TV Everywhere services. www.AEGDigitalMedia.com

LOS ANGELES, Calfi., March 20, 2013/BusinessWire/–AEG Digital Media (AEGDM), the leading provider of live online broadcasting solutions, streaming and video optimization services in the live events and digital media industry, was honored with the prestigious DMW Music Leadership Award for 2013 “Music Technology Company to Watch” by Digital Media Wire. Digital Media Wire held their prestigious music leadership awards and dinner in conjunction with the Digital Music Forum in New York City. The Awards recognized music-tech leaders across three categories: Music Tech Startup to Watch; Music Tech Trendsetter to Watch; and Music Technology to Watch.

“AEG Digital Media is thrilled to be recognized for our streaming capabilities and technology platform in front of our peers and influencers in the music industry,” said Chris Roach, Head of Business Development for AEG Digital Media. ”To receive such an esteemed honor like this is a testament to AEG Digital Media’s world-class facilities, broadcast capabilities and innovative Live Experience Platform, comprised of our state-of-the-art Tremolo Player, branded social collaboration tools the Hawk and MC.”

Winners were chosen upon building content, technologies and business models that shape the future of the music industry. The awards recipients were determined through an open nomination process that resulted in over 100 nominations and a voting process involving 20 industry leaders who served as jurors.

“Digital Media Wire created the Music Leadership Awards to recognize innovative and forward-thinking executives and companies who all contribute to the growth and leadership in the music industry,” said Ned Sherman, CEO and Publisher of Digital Media Wire. “We are proud to honor a company of such esteemed leadership and technology, such as AEG Digital Media. They are definitely the music technology company to watch in the industry this year.”

About AEG Digital Media

AEG Digital Media is the leading provider of complete webcast management, technical media services and video optimization solutions in the digital media industry. AEG Digital Media is regarded as the definitive turnkey service provider in the market today with a 12-year track record of empowering and enabling the defining moments in Internet broadcasting and live streaming media.

Based in Los Angeles, AEG Digital Media maintains the industry’s leading technologies and broadcast operation centers to enable seamless, broadcast-quality live events and TV Everywhere services.

www.AEGDigitalMedia.com

Axis Entertainment

Sarah Miller, 310-276-2220

smiller@axis-entertainment.com

LOS ANGELES, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – AEG Digital Media, (AEG DM), the leading provider of live online broadcasting solutions, facilities and video optimization services in the digital media industry joined forces with Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AKAM), the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, to deliver The Recording Academy^®‘s upcoming GRAMMY^® Live online broadcast experience. Now in its fourth year, GRAMMY^® Live provides viewers around the world with access across multiple devices to exclusive, behind-the-scenes events surrounding the 55^th Annual GRAMMY Awards^®.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100225/AKAMAILOGO )

Running February 8^th through February 10^th, GRAMMY Live will feature three days of live and on-demand video coverage of Music’s Biggest Night^® that includes exclusive interviews, performances, red carpet arrivals and backstage interviews and reactions.  GRAMMY Week events include “Social Media Rock Star Summit” at the LA Live Conga Room and “MusiCares Person of the Year Event” at the Los Angeles Convention Center both on February 8^th, “Special Merit Awards and Nominees Reception” at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on February 9^th, “Pre-GRAMMY Gala” at the Beverly Hills Hilton on February 9^th, the “Pre-Telecast Ceremony” at the Nokia Theatre on February 10^th and the “Red Carpet Arrivals Area” on Chick Hearn Blvd., adjacent to the Staples Center on February 10^thwith coverage from behind the scenes activities during the 2013 GRAMMY Celebration^®.

AEG Digital Media’s Online Broadcast Center in Marina Del Rey, Calif. is playing a key role in Grammy Live, acting as the master control room. Utilizing their direct fiber to L.A. LIVE, broadcast feeds will be routed to the new facility allowing for live encoding and seamless integration of red carpet coverage, backstage interviews and Grammy week events.

“AEG Digital Media is excited to be working with the GRAMMY Awards and GRAMMY Live again to deliver the show across multiple devices so music fans around the world can join and share in one of the biggest music events of the year,” said Chris Roach, Head of Business Development for AEG Digital Media. “Our multi-angle Tremolo Player, coupled with our world-class Online Broadcast Center will allow fans to interact with several GRAMMY events, including red carpet events, behind the scenes interviews and onstage performances in high definition streamed to any handset or screen.”

Throughout the GRAMMYs and all GRAMMY-related events, The Recording Academy will be using AEG Digital Media’s multi-angle Tremolo Player, to create a multifaceted and engaging experience for fans watching the GRAMMYs from any screen, giving them the best in online streaming while delivering a skip and buffer-free end user experience. In addition, AEG DM will provide a quick-turnaround VOD, as well as advanced audience analytics.

“Akamai is pleased to once again help music fans worldwide so they can enjoy GRAMMY Live video content at the best possible quality wherever they are, on whatever screen they’re using,” said Bill Wheaton, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Media, for Akamai. “Akamai is proud of our alliance with The Recording Academy and AEG Digital Media, which has led to new and exciting ways to engage audiences and extend the GRAMMY brand with initiatives like GRAMMY Live that marry broadcast and online content to form even more compelling events.”

Designed to ensure viewers enjoy watching the highest possible quality video on any device, The Recording Academy will stream GRAMMY Live content over Akamai’s Sola Sphere global media storage and delivery platform. Part of Akamai’s Sola Media Solutions, Sola Sphere can overcome the challenges of delivering video across the world’s wide variety of fixed and mobile network types and varying connection speeds.

About The Recording Academy
Established in 1957, The Recording Academy is an organization of musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers and recording professionals that is dedicated to improving the cultural condition and quality of life for music and its makers. Internationally known for the GRAMMY Awards — the preeminent peer-recognized award for musical excellence and the most credible brand in music — The Recording Academy is responsible for groundbreaking professional development, cultural enrichment, advocacy, education and human services programs. The Academy continues to focus on its mission of recognizing musical excellence, advocating for the well-being of music makers and ensuring music remains an indelible part of our culture. For more information about The Academy, please visit www.grammy.com. For breaking news and exclusive content, follow @TheGRAMMYs on Twitter, like “The GRAMMYs” on Facebook, and join The GRAMMYs’ social communities on Foursquare, GetGlue, Google +, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and YouTube.

About Akamai
Akamai® is the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere. At the core of the Company’s solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

About AEG Digital Media
AEG Digital Media is the leading provider of complete webcast management, technical media services and video optimization solutions in the digital media industry. AEG Digital Media is regarded as the definitive turnkey service provider in the market today with a 12-year track record of empowering and enabling the defining moments in Internet broadcasting and live streaming media. Based in Los Angeles, AEG Digital Media maintains the industry’s leading technologies and broadcast operation centers to enable seamless, broadcast-quality live events and TV Everywhere services. www.AEGDigitalMedia.com

AEG streams live events for some of the biggest entertainment properties around, so it has to deliver perfect experiences every time. Pulling that off is no small accomplishment. At the recent Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles, Joe Einstein, AEG’s senior vice president of technical services and operations, sat down for a red carpet interview.

“We have eight days of fuel on site, so we can lose LADWP power for eight days. We have fueling contracts,” Einstein explained. “We load test our generators every quarter. On top of that, it’s diversity across our internet providers. We always go into the CDNs at redundant entry points. So it’s sort of that never can fail, whether it’s a $5,000 event or a $2 million event. We treat it with the same equipment and experience and staff, because the guy with the $5,000 event, to him it’s just as important as the Academy Awards are or the Grammys or the Super Bowl.”

While AEG makes streaming live events look easy, a lot goes into creating that upload and distribution system.

“The biggest challenge right now that we see is education on how complicated the process actually is, If you want to deliver something that never, never fails,” Einstein said. “There’s, you know, from a production to signal acquisition to encoding to delivery to supporting every device. It’s very complicated. We try to simplify that process as much as possible, but if you want to support every device and every connected television with a six-hour event that’s coming from even just one location, it’s a pretty massive task.”

For more one how AEG puts live events online, watch the full video.

Eric: I’m Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, the editor of Streaming Media Magazine and StreamingMedia.com. I’m here with Joe Einstein, who’s the Senior Vice President of Technical Services and Operations for AEG Digital Media. Hey, Joe.

Joe: How’s it going?

Eric: Great, great.

Joe: Excellent.

Eric: Thanks to you and AEG for sponsoring our Red Carpet interviews and for doing a couple interviews with us. For our viewers and readers who don’t know, tell us about AEG Digital Media from a high level first, and then we’ll sort of start drilling down.

Joe: Okay. AEG Digital Media is a technical services company when it comes to live events, live linear and sort of just online broadcasting in general. We run a broadcast operations center in Los Angeles here for supporting some of the biggest events like the Academy Awards and the Grammys, as well as a lot of 24/7 linear services, all the way down to your small nonprofit-based events that pass through our facility.

Eric: Now, your online broadcast center here in Los Angeles or just outside of L.A. is a really crucial part of what you offer, what AEG brings to the table. Tell us about what happens there. What’s all going on at the OBC?

Joe: So we built the facility from a broadcast background so we’d say never can fail, everything’s redundant, any single outage doesn’t take down an event. We aggregate all video from all of our events around the world. We have partnerships that give us acquisition facilities in Europe and Sydney and Asia-Pac. We bring everything into L.A. We then process any on-demand content, live content, and then usually push that into one of our CDN partners like Akamai for delivery through a platform that has the player as well as any social media and any other metadata around the live experience.

Eric: Now, from a technical standpoint, what does AEG offer that perhaps some other companies don’t?

Joe: I think the biggest thing is the reliability. So we’ve got, you know, and I think with what just happened in New York, we have, it’s sort of a good example, we have eight days of fuel on site, so we can lose LADWP power for eight days, we have fueling contracts. We load test our generators every quarter. On top of that, it’s diversity across our internet providers. We always go into the CDNs at redundant entry points. So it’s sort of that never can fail, whether it’s a $5,000 event or a $2 million event. We treat it with the same equipment and experience and staff, because the guy with the $5,000 event, to him it’s just as important as the Academy Awards are or the Grammys or the Super Bowl.

Eric: Right. Now, again, from that technical standpoint, what do you see as the biggest challenges and perhaps opportunities facing the streaming of large or small live events coming up in the next 6 to 12 months, and how do you think AEG and the industry in general will respond to them?

Joe: Think the biggest challenge right now that we see is education on how complicated the process actually is. If you want to deliver something that never, never fails. There’s, you know, from a production to signal acquisition to encoding to delivery to supporting every device. It’s very complicated. We try to simplify that process as much as possible, but if you want to support every device and every connected television with a six-hour event that’s coming from even just one location, it’s a pretty massive task.

Eric: Right. And in addition to that, so AEG offers from soup to nuts the entire work flow, but you also offer managed services that customers can come to you for, such as transcoding and encoding and signal acquisition.

Joe: Yeah.

Eric: Which services are you seeing the most interest in and demand for right now?

Joe: Think one of the big services we’re seeing is as everyone’s focused right now on, “How do I get more content?”

Eric: Right.

Joe: And so obviously to get more content, basic business economics is the price point needs to come down. So we are rolling out with a lot of our clients a managed service product. So it’s sort of a hybrid between your traditional co-location – you’d have at a data center and your traditional video services that you’d buy from a video provider. We’re putting all that into one quarter rack for our client. They pay a monthly fee for that sort of service. They have full-time access to that hardware. It’s usually a hybrid between what we manage and they manage but they have remote access. They can make profile changes, but when their live events come along, they give us the coordinates. They say, “Hey, I need to get a feed out of Denver into my encoders,” and we just manage that piece for them. So it’s much lower event-based cost, because we’re not charging them a setup fee. It’s sort of all bundled into this longer-term contract they have which allows them to generate 5, 10, 50 events a week, if they want.

Eric: Right. One of the things I find fascinating that you do is the way that you have, you know, even though AEG comes from broadcast background, you’ve really gotten ahead of things like social media and second screen experiences with your HAWK and MC platforms, tell us about the kinds of unique interactive social media type of experiences that you can bring to a live event that takes it beyond simply a picture of a concert on a screen.

Joe: Sure. So I think sort of the experience that lives, whether it’s a companion experience to a broadcast or it’s just an online experience, we’re seeing we’re using social media to not only drive traffic to the event but allow people that are watching the event to talk about the event and share photos around the event. Not necessarily photos from the event, but  a photo of Bob and his cat watching the show gets posted and then we share that back out. Then everyone starts posting their photos of their cats watching the show. So it just sort of drives the engagement and then we see the viewer times go up, which obviously makes the content provider happier. It makes the advertising partners happier and it makes the content delivery companies happier. So it sort of all-around just sort of generates more business and makes all of the partners get more out of the experience.

Eric: Right. What are some of the most, as you look back on the last, say, 12 months or so, what are some of the most memorable or exciting events or unique events that AEG has delivered.?

Joe: Think in particular it’s the events we’re doing with the broadcasters.

Eric: Mm-hm.

Joe: So it’s things like Academy Awards or “Glass House” that was on ABC where there really, you know, used to be there was this web show, then it was this broadcast show. They were pretty separated. They didn’t share any resources, they didn’t share budget. We’re seeing that come together really in the last year. Started about two years ago, but it’s really now the broadcast guys are saying, “Hey. This is an actual medium that we can make money on and really extend the experience.” And as we see those two really consolidate into sort of one message to the consumer, that’s been pretty cool to watch.

Eric: Very cool. Exciting times all around. I’ve been speaking with Joe Einstein from AEG Digital Media. I’m Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen signing off from Streaming Media West.

By Troy Dreier
Posted on January 24, 2013

Fans around the globe will be able to access a constant stream of live content powered by AEG Digital Media’s Online Broadcasting Center to ensure a flawless viewing experience.

Online viewers can also experience a concert-like atmosphere with HD content and audio clarity streamed through AEGDM’s industry leading Live Experience Platform. Leveraging the platform allows multiple levels of interactivity where the online audience can collaborate with one another as well as socialize with festival goers actually on site in Central Park to share their concert experience in real-time. The Live Experience Platform features include trivia, text messaging, audience polling, postings and an aggregate news feed of all social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, etc. In addition, fan goers everywhere can upload and share their own photo experiences and images via an Instagram aggregation – all in real time.

The Live Experience Platform developed by AEG Digital Media enables the audience to directly contribute to the Global Poverty Project, as well enhance the experience for all joining in this historic event around the world.

“We are excited to provide a truly engaging online experience platform for the 2012 Global Festival that enables users to not only see the show, but truly be immersed in an interactive experience that will have a global impact on extreme poverty,” said Chris Roach, Head of Business Development at AEG Digital Media.

For the first time in live broadcast events, AEGDM’s event producers will have a two-way communication with viewers across six major internet portals. Social media will play a huge part in producing global engagement, through Facebook and Twitter, users will see what people are saying about the event and be able to share their thoughts on the festival.

This event marks another global milestone for AEG Network LIVE, who is producing the entire event. Leading broadcast sponsor Australian technology company, Vividas, along with online distribution partners including VEVO, YouTube, AOL/ Huffington Post, Yahoo!, VH1.com, andNYTimes.com are all on board to stream the event live. In addition, television partners AXS TV Palladia, Globo Brazil, and Fuse will carry the live program.

“Working with AEG Digital Media’s Live Experience Platform will allow us to stream and broadcast this historical live event around the world allowing fans everywhere to watch and support Global Poverty from any device,” said John Rubey, President, AEG Network LIVE.

The Global Citizen Festival 2012, presented by The Global Poverty Project, is a free-ticketed concert to help generate awareness to end extreme poverty. The Global Citizen Festival will include performances by Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, Band of Horses and K’naan, talent arranged by AEG LIVE Goldenvoice. The event’s Host Committee includes Katie Couric, Jeffrey Sachs, Jack Dorsey, Selena Gomez for U.S. Fund for UNICEF, Sophia Bush for Pencils of Promise, Olivia Wilde for Half the Sky Movement, Katharine McPhee for Malaria No More, and Erin Heatherton.

The broadcast will air live on Saturday, September 29, 2012 starting at 4:00PM EDT and again at 12:00AM and 8:00AM EDT globally for the worldwide audience to view in their respective time zone. The event broadcast is generously supported by Vividas and Max Sound (MAXD).

AEG DIGITAL MEDIA:

AEG Digital Media is the leading provider of complete webcast management, technical media services and video optimization solutions in the digital media industry. AEG Digital Media is regarded as the definitive turnkey service provider in the market today with a 12-year track record of empowering and enabling the defining moments in Internet broadcasting and live streaming media. Based in Los Angeles, AEG Digital Media maintains the industry’s leading technologies and broadcast operation centers to enable seamless, broadcast-quality live events and TV Everywhere services. www.AEGDigitalMedia.com

ABOUT AEG NETWORK LIVE:

AEG Network Live is the industry‘s premier provider of live, digital and 3D entertainment, offering fans unparalleled access to the artists they want—when and how they want it—via broadband, TV, radio, wireless, theatrical and retail. AEG Network LIVE has completed successful tour and album launch campaigns for AEG Live clients including Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Prince, Linkin Park, Usher, Garth Brooks, and many others. More information on AEG Network Live can be found at www.networklive.com.

ABOUT THE GLOBAL CITIZEN FESTIVAL:

The Festival is produced by Goldenvoice and supported by a range of Foundations, private donors and businesses. The Pratt Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, David Leppan and Billionaire.com, and Capital for Good have provided generous support for Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival. The event is only possible because of critical funding from the Sumner Redstone Foundation. Art and other creative elements of the festival will be produced by Milk Studios and the HOPE Campaign.

Tickets can be earned online at www.GLOBALCITIZEN.org where performing actions and sharing information allows the user to log on, get involved and earn tickets. The site contains messages about international health and development issues and showcases the nonprofit partners, social entrepreneurs, academics, writers, host committee members and artists involved in these particular issues. A small number of VIP tickets can be purchased; all net proceeds go to the charity.

AEGDM head of business development Chris Roach believes the free concert, to be held Sept. 29 at Central Park in New York, will be the “largest syndicated charity broadcast in history.”

Perhaps the biggest undertaking is that Global Citizen Festival will be streamed live simultaneously on Vevo, YouTube, AOL/Huffington Post, Yahoo, VH1.com and NYTimes.com. AXS TV Palladia, Globo Brazil and Fuse will carry the concert live on television.

“From that standpoint alone, coordinating the feeds to those different portals is really where the magic of this starts,” Roach tells Billboard.biz. “AEG Digital Media is pulling the feeds directly up satellites to our facility in Marina del Rey (Calif.), and then digitizing them to go to the web, iOS, Xbox and linear television.”

The broadcast airs live on Sept. 29 at 4 p.m. EDT.

To Roach’s knowledge, nothing of this magnitude has ever attempted.

“As far as the undertaking of this much syndication and replicating the same experience across all these different major portals, we don’t believe it’s ever been done in history,” he says.

Roach notes, however, that AEG Digital Media has live-streamed such music festivals as Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.

Another aim of Global Citizen Festival’s digital experience, Roach says, is to help people watching the live feed at home feel like they’re in attendance at the show. He hopes this will be accomplished by utilizing AEG Digital Media’s Live Experience Platform. The software application allows people watching the festival at home to post photos of themselves on Instagram, which are later aggregated by AEGDM staff and posted to videos screens inside Central Park.

“We’re enabling multiple levels of interactivity, where the online audience can collaborate with each other and socialize directly with the festival-goers on site,” Roach says. “The goal is to get them to engage with the video and become a part of the experience and movement.”

The Live Experience Platform features also include trivia, text messaging, audience polling, postings and aggregated news feeds of Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Global Citizen Festival broadcast sponsors include Australian technology company Vividas and Max Sound. Other funding for the event was provided by the Pratt Foundation; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; David Leppan and Billionaire.com; Capital for Good; the Sumner Redstone Foundation; and others.

The festival’s host committee includes Katie Couric; Jeffrey Sachs; Jack Dorsey; Selena Gomez for U.S. Fund for UNICEF; Sophia Bush for Pencils of Promise; Olivia Wilde for Half the Sky Movement; Katharine McPhee for Malaria No More; and Erin Heatherton.

A FESTIVAL WITH A MISSION

The first and only Global Citizen Festival will be held on September 29 in New York’s Central Park, a date that was chosen to coincide with this week’s UN General Assembly, where world leaders discuss the Millennium Development Goals. The event was conceptualized by the Global Poverty Project, an education and advocacy organization that aims to end extreme poverty, and AEG Network LIVE and AEG Digital Media (who will be producing and delivering the event).

Its aim? According to the website: “[To] celebrate the progress already made in fighting extreme poverty, secure financial commitments for tackling extreme poverty and disease, and mobilise thousands of ambassadors for change” while supporting a slew of anti-povert NGOs. In short: It’s not your usual outdoor affair.

The event features a pretty impressive roster of musicians and celebrities, including performers Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, Band of Horses and K’naan, and hosts supporting a variety of charities: Katie Couric, Jeffrey Sachs, Jack Dorsey, Selena Gomez (for U.S. Fund for UNICEF), Minka Kelly (for The World Food Program USA), Sophia Bush (for Pencils of Promise), Olivia Wilde (for Half the Sky Movement), Katharine McPhee for (Malaria No More), and Erin Heatherton.

SOCIAL TICKETING

With this much star power in Central Park, one might suppose that tickets to the show are pretty pricey — and one would be right. You can currently score VIP tickets to the show, the cheapest of which are $250, online. (Net proceeds go to The Global Poverty Project.) However, many of the attendees were able to get access to the event without paying a dime.

The Global Poverty Project gave away more than 25,000 tickets to the show to interested parties by way of its Global Citizen app, an online tool that rewards users points for completing altruistic, real-life actions related to eradicating poverty. Users who scored three points were entered into a ticket lottery, and a lucky several thousand were chosen to attend the show. Apparently, 60,000 people entered the lottery in total.

AN ONLINE EXPERIENCE

Those who weren’t able to secure a physical ticket won’t be left out in the proverbial cold, however, as the Global Poverty Team plans to broadcast the show both online and on-air in what they’re calling “the largest syndicated music webcast and broadcast” in history.

According to John Rubey, executive producer of the broadcast and president of AEG Network LIVE, the show will stream three times from the festival’s website (once during the actual show and twice the day after), as well as via online properties like MTV, VH1, CMT, VEVO, YouTube, NYTimes.com and AOL, and TV outlets like Fuse, Globo Brazil and our very own Palladia.

Chris Roach, Head of business development for AEG Digital Media, adds that online livestreams will be a social affair. “We want to create an experience that lets the viewers watching it on their desktops, mobile phones, connected devices feel like they’re in the venue themselves,” he says.

Consequently, the experience will include interactive features like trivia related to global poverty and a social donation widget, as well as on-site aggregation of Tweets, Facebook posts, Google+ posts and Instagram pictures with tags related to the show and the Global Poverty Project. Viewers at home will even have their own host who will act as a liaison between the physical event and the social sphere.

Check out a behind-the-scenes video from the event up yonder and let us know in the comments: How do you give back?