The launch of the Turkish streaming platform Exxen by parent company Acun Medya marked the beginning of a major ambition. Acun Medya, a significant force in Turkish media founded by the household name Acun Ilıcalı, produces over 5,000 hours of primetime TV annually and operates two national channels. Leveraging its vast content library of Turkish originals, global acquisitions, and, crucially, live sports, Exxen rapidly exceeded a million subscribers.
This growth was significantly accelerated when Acun Medya secured exclusive rights to stream the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League for three seasons. However, the surge in demand from live sports quickly highlighted limitations in Exxen's existing infrastructure and performance.
While Exxen was a domestic triumph, Acun Medya's vision for the service was global. The company already produces content across Europe, South and North America, and operates its EXATLON sports-reality format internationally. To achieve true global reach and compete effectively, Exxen required a substantial upgrade to its technical foundation, demanding greater reliability and performance.
The platform was experiencing issues like buffering and latency, particularly during high-peak viewing times such as live sporting events. This inconsistent experience posed a clear risk to subscriber retention (churn) and hindered the company’s ambitious expansion goals.
Acun Medya turned to Accedo, entrusting them with full responsibility for operating, managing, and enhancing the Exxen service. This involved improving performance, boosting reliability, and optimizing the user experience for a global audience.
Burak Ayan, Business Development Director at Acun Medya, placed the project into context: "Our vision for Exxen has always been global. To achieve this ambition, we had to fundamentally rethink how we build, operate and scale the platform. Through close collaboration with world-class technology partners, we led a full-scale rebuild of Exxen’s applications across Android, iOS, tvOS, Android TV, Samsung, LG and web, establishing a modern, resilient infrastructure capable of supporting international expansion."
Accedo was charged with executing a full-scale rebuild across all major platforms, establishing a resilient infrastructure to handle international expansion and high traffic. This transformation required deep integration with critical core systems, including:
- Payment and billing (using partners like PayTR, ZotloPay, and Oracle ERP)
- Online video playback (Brightcove)
- AI-powered analytics (Jump AI)
- Customer lifecycle management and compliance (Evergent, MySoft IYS)
Iris Nedio, Head of Account Strategy at Accedo, emphasized the commitment to service quality: “The provision of the service is being managed entirely by Accedo to ensure smooth and consistent quality of service and user experience, even during peaks around live sporting events.”
With the new system in place, Exxen can now deliver a premium experience to its viewers in Turkey and scale globally without sacrificing quality. Following the launch, the Accedo team conducted a full audit across infrastructure, engineering, architecture, and security. These post-launch optimizations further enhanced the platform's scalability and reliability.
A critical area of impact is the management of live sports event lifecycles—allowing the stream to automatically transition between upcoming (countdown), ongoing (live), and finished (replaced by clips) states, ensuring a seamless experience for high-value content.
Acun Medya's Burak Ayan concluded by highlighting the success of the collective effort: "I’m proud of the collective effort across teams and partners that made this possible," claiming the deployment has positioned Exxen as a competitive OTT platform that is "ready to grow globally with a robust, user-centric and future-proof foundation."
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