Key Points
- Nagravision and Harmonic have launched a managed watermarking service integrating forensic watermarking with Harmonic’s VOS 360 platform to combat live sports piracy and illegal restreaming.
- The cloud-native solution uses A/B forensic watermarking on a per-event basis, allowing streamers to activate protection only when needed rather than maintaining persistent infrastructure.
- The service reduces infrastructure costs and engineering resources for operators while providing real-time security measures required by content owners for premium live events.
Nagravision has expanded its partnership with Harmonic to launch a fully-managed, event-based watermarking service aimed at combating piracy in live sports, the companies announced this week.
The new offering integrates Nagravision’s NexGuard forensic watermarking technology with Harmonic’s VOS 360 Media software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, and will be available as an upgrade for existing VOS 360 customers or as part of the Nagra Streaming Security suite.
The companies said the solution is designed to help rights holders identify and mitigate illegal restreaming during live events, a growing concern as sports distribution becomes increasingly fragmented across platforms.
The joint solution enables streamers to activate A/B forensic watermarking — a capability increasingly required by content owners — while reducing the infrastructure and engineering resources typically needed to support high-volume, low-latency workflows. By delivering the service through a cloud-native architecture, the companies said operators can deploy watermarking only when needed, paying on a per-event basis rather than maintaining persistent infrastructure.
The announcement comes as media companies face mounting pressure to protect premium live content, particularly sports, where piracy continues to drive significant revenue losses. Industry stakeholders have increasingly pushed for real-time, outcome-based security measures that can be deployed efficiently without adding operational complexity.
“As consumers increasingly turn to streaming to watch live events, our customers need powerful security solutions that are effortless to deploy and deliver strong business outcomes,” Gil Rudge, the Senior Vice President of Solutions and Americas Sales at Harmonic, said in a statement on Friday.
Rudge added that the collaboration builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies, with the goal of simplifying deployment and lowering costs while maintaining robust protection. “Through our long-standing collaboration with Nagravision, we are delivering watermarking-as-a-service that eliminates complexity, lowers costs and activates only when needed,” he said.
Nagravision executives emphasized the importance of scalable, flexible security tools as streaming becomes the dominant distribution method for live events. Stéphane Le Dreau, the Senior Vice President of Global Product Management and Sales Development at Nagravision, said the solution makes the company’s forensic watermarking technology more accessible to a wider range of operators.
“Our expanded solution with Harmonic makes our well-established edge-based forensic watermarking accessible as an on-demand service that fits the operational realities of today’s major event streamers,” Le Dreau said. “It is the pragmatic innovation that the market needs as more live events are delivered via streaming.”
Harmonic said it will manage orchestration, scalability and uptime for the service, allowing operators to focus on content delivery while reducing internal engineering overhead. The companies said the model is intended to lower per-event costs while maintaining the performance required for large-scale live broadcasts.
