TwelveLabs and Qencode — From Days to Minutes: How MLSE Changed the Game with TwelveLabs

Customer Profile

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), one of the world's premier sports and entertainment companies, owns the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL), Toronto Raptors (NBA), Toronto FC (MLS), Toronto Argonauts (CFL), Toronto Marlies (AHL), Raptors 905 (NBA G League), TFC II (MLS Next Pro) and Raptors Uprising Gaming Club, the Toronto Raptors esports franchise in the NBA 2K League. MLSE's desire to create winning teams – and deliver championships to its city and its fans – has always been at the core of the company's values. It has driven MLSE to strive to continually grow, develop world-class venues, and be at the forefront of innovative ways to bring fans together. This same approach will guide MLSE into the next century of incomparable entertainment.

"We can't imagine our content production process without TwelveLabs. Our media operations team used to spend countless hours sourcing the moments that matter, now they can find exactly what they're looking for with precision, in seconds."

— Senior Director, Media Operations and Sports Production

Executive Summary

In the fast-paced world of sports, there is a constant growing demand for quick content production in new content types and form factors. This case study examines how the team at MLSE partnered with TwelveLabs to implement cutting-edge video understanding models that would ultimately transform their creative workflow and free up team bandwidth to focus on other creative assets and solutions. By leveraging TwelveLabs, MLSE was able to turn 16 hours of video search and retrieval efforts into 9 minutes, effectively cutting days out of their highlight creation process and allowing their creatives to focus on more personalized, fan-driven content and promotional assets.

Challenges

MLSE faced several challenges in their content operations.

1. Content Volume & Turnaround Time — Across the sports industry there is a growing need for more content, more quickly, that can be repurposed for multiple platforms. Manual logging alone was taking MLSE upwards of 30 hours.

2. Video Asset Management — Even with tagging, much of MLSE's content was going unlogged, and therefore, hard to retrieve. This created a time-consuming process when creating highlights, promos, and other video-centric creative elements.

3. Missed Opportunities for Timely Storytelling — Fans are increasingly demanding content that is both unique and personalized to their interests. With MLSE creative teams spending more time searching for the relevant content, then creating that content, opportunities to connect with their viewers were missed.

Solution

MLSE partnered with TwelveLabs to enable semantic search, allowing MLSE to source the best sports moments and content in a matter of seconds.

1. Natural Language Video Search

• TwelveLabs creates multimodal embeddings that understand the content of videos beyond tags

• TwelveLabs enables powerful natural language search across the entire content library

• TwelveLabs identifies specific moments, actions, emotions, and interactions within the video content

2. Workflow Optimization

• TwelveLabs allowed MLSE to create an innovative UX design which allowed for a conversation-first approach to content discovery

• TwelveLabs and MLSE collaboration also enabled an intuitive feedback loop between the editor and AI

• TwelveLabs enabled script-to-edit workflow automation

3. Proof of Efficacy

• Content search transformed from manual logging to natural language queries

• Automatic indexing of video content

• Real-time availability of game footage post-match (automated clip assembly & editing)

• Streamlined editing process through XML export to professional software

Unleashing Creative Potential

• From quantity to quality, editors as storytellers

• New content types enabled

• Fast post-game emotionally resonant highlights, player journey narratives and fan-specific content streams

Conclusion

MLSE's utilization of TwelveLabs reduced content creation time from hours to minutes. Content discovery time saw a 97% reduction, going from upwards of 5 days to as quick as a few minutes. MLSE has now increased the bandwidth of their editorial teams, allowing them to tell more meaningful stories, across different content types and platforms. TwelveLabs also enables MLSE to explore more personalized content for enhanced fan engagement, leading to impactful promotional opportunities with greater ROI.