Creating a fully managed live sports streaming service

As the way that viewers watch sport continues to evolve, broadcasters and streaming services must keep a finger on the pulse of the market and adapt their offering and feature set to best service the increasingly complex demands of the audience, writes Josh Harrington, head of sales at Simplestream

By Contributor

Published: March 21, 2024

As the way that viewers watch sport continues to evolve, broadcasters and streaming services must keep a finger on the pulse of the market and adapt their offering and feature set to best service the increasingly complex demands of the audience, writes Josh Harrington, head of sales at Simplestream

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For as long as live broadcasting has existed, the acquisition and distribution of live sports has sat at, or close to, the peak of the content market. Taking a look at the success of Sky in the UK, it has been driven n no small part its acquisition of sports rights, helping lead to the establishment of the Premier League. But over the past decade, the market has evolved alongside the development of live sports streaming. There are, however, challenges in creating these services, challenges that need to be met, both from technical and relationship perspectives, in order to maximise the fan experience and therefore monetisation.

Simplestream has been active in the sports market since 2014, when it started working with pay-TV channel, Racing TV. It initially supported backend workflows to enable simulcasts of the channel for distribution across digital platforms, but has since evolved into a system that clips and tags over 5,000 horse races a year.

In the past, sports OTT was limited to broadcasters complementing their existing broadcast licensing strategy. However, about five years ago we noticed a shift in the market whereby federations/rights holders were looking to take more control, restoring their direct relationship with and relevance to fans. Ultimately, there was a demand in the market that we could see wasn't being properly satisfied. Sports want and need to be seen and securing broadcast deals in each market takes time. And, of course, in some countries, such as the UK, certain sports dominate the national narrative and viewership - football being the case in point here - leaving federations/rights holders needing to find their audience. OTT solutions give federations and rights holders the opportunity to take matters into their own hands, although, once again, there are challenges that must be faced.

What we are discussing is live sports streaming, which requires a level of timing and service quality that can only be provided through a dedicated solution tailored specifically to fit. Federations need to provide a true television experience for fans, without overengineering match centres or introducing overly elaborate fantasy experiences that can detract from the core viewing experience. While interactive features can enhance engagement, there's a risk of overshadowing the essence of the sport itself. The need is to maximise live video content - its overall technical and onscreen quality - to drive monetisation. Any solution must also be able to support multiple payment models: PPV, subscriptions and ad-funded, or a blend of all of the above. We have seen a wider move towards ad-funded models and it will be interesting to see how this evolves in sport. We are also witnessing the rise of non-exclusive rights models, meaning federations are starting to shift away from exclusive licensing and looking for more exposure through windowing or non-exclusive deals.

The first challenge is simple: makes sure it works. A broadcaster or streaming service might have the fanciest platform in the world, but if it doesn't work that's all people will remember. Getting the basics right is fundamental to success, particularly in the highly competitive sports market.

That all sounds fairly obvious and reasonably simple. But it isn't. Fans are passionate about their sports. It is vital for any solution to ensure both the technical infrastructure and the teams of people are in place to not only handle day-to-day requirements, but to react and intervene when necessary, making sure feeds are received and servers optimised for the amount of traffic being handled. Fans expect the service to work, as they should, without necessarily realising that behind the scenes, huge investments into process, pre-event checklist and testing make sure that nothing goes wrong.

So, obviously live streaming and the ability to take a payment must be supported, but there are also requirements such as being able to cast to a big screen, or watching a video offline by downloading. And then there is the issue of being able to supply this content across as many platforms and devices as possible, which requires a lot of integration and testing work. It is also essential to make any platform integrate well with infrastructure that may already be in place, which requires a modular technological approach. Lastly, being able to provide a comprehensive range of analytical tools is a key, real-world benefit when it comes to driving monetisation.

In order to fully address this market, we sat down at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 and considered the major challenges. One thing immediately stood out: there was a huge gap in the market in which some federations pay a broadcast specialist to manage their broadcast workflows and also a digital agency to manage their digital workflows - literally doubling their costs and efforts. It doesn't have to be this way. Federations are paying too much. If a solution could help them reduce costs while improving the quality of the service for fans, it would be a win-win all round.

This is why, as part of our Sports Video Platform, we established a relationship with Gl

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