Facebook's Peter Hutton on bringing community and interaction to live sports broadcasting By Heather McLean, Editor
Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 16:36
Print This Story
SAid Peter Hutton: I think it's important when you talk about video on Facebook that we don't see it purely in terms of consumption of minutes of content
Facebook is now well known for its live sports broadcasting capability, yet as far as live sport is concerned the platform is enabling a far richer environment than just being another place to consume moving images.
SVG Europe spoke to Facebook's director of sports partnerships, Peter Hutton, about the platform's strategy regarding live sports, and where it is adding to the experience for fans and federations alike.
Hutton said: I think it's important when you talk about video on Facebook that we don't see it purely in terms of consumption of minutes of content; it's also where does that [content] take you, what additional information can a federation use and retarget, and build their business on the basis of those audiences?
More than just broadcasting
Live sport on Facebook is about more than just the broadcast, notes Hutton. On ironman and surfing broadcasts, he said, that's something that seems to be working very well because you get that sense of a community coming together on Facebook to enjoy that content, and that's something we'll increasingly lead into; that idea of communities sharing a passion, sharing it every day, multiple times a day, with live content being part of that experience.
The platform is proving to be advantageous for certain types of sports that are not necessarily suited to live broadcasts on linear TV, Hutton said. Facebook is working with ironman and surfing federations to publish live content. He commented: Surfing, for example, you never know when it's going to start; till the wave conditions are right, it might be Tuesday, it might be Wednesday? So [using a platform] where you can send out notifications [to the community] saying the event starts now and alert fans worldwide to watch it, is a step forward for that community. Ironman is a sport where you've got all day events that don't really work on linear TV; it's too much of a commitment in live hours. But there's a passionate community all over the world that want to watch that content.
The priority is improving the experience and that's really at the heart of the experiments that we're doing. We want to make this better for a fan
So there's lots of existing sports that benefit from what we can offer and the ways you can consume that material, but it's also about allowing the federations and teams and leagues to then build their businesses into what we offer, he went on.
Continuing, Hutton said: A lot of people will use their audiences to serve other business needs. Ironman looks at the people who watch [the live feeds on the platform] and say they're the logical participants for other [ironman] events, so they retarget them with advertising and information to have them sign up for events. You look at some of the North American sports leagues and they particularly use those audiences of video as their ticket buyers; it's a natural way of targeting people that want to buy individual or season tickets.
The same is true of merchandising and Instagram shopping which is rising and rising in popularity, he added. Again, this is a way of hitting those audiences the content that they want.
Keeping up with moving targets
On Facebook's strategy for live sports broadcasting, whether that be live or on demand, Hutton said: It's a question that continues to be updated because we're in the middle of a lot of trials of different types of content on the platform, across a lot of different markets.
The majority of content on the platform is put on by publishers to solve their business needs and that's great to see. Those publishers are looking to develop their audiences around the world, to be in a place where their audiences are, and that's one of the great advantages of being part of the Facebook system. The number of hours people are publishing on the platform is increasing all the time, really without our direct involvement.
Hutton continued: The priority is improving the experience and that's really at the heart of the experiments that we're doing. We want to make this better for a fan. We don't want that sense that somehow Facebook is taking something away from a fan; we're all about being a free-to-air funnel that people can come and enjoy and experience in a way that's hopefully better than the way they've experienced that sport before. And that might simply be about ability, it might be about different layers of information and data they can take at the same time as they're watching events, and it might be that they're chatting with their friends and discussing the event while it's going on. So our focus is how can we make the experience of watching live better on Facebook, in terms of in the moment and how do you build on that live watching experience.
Bring the baggage!
For the company and also personally, Hutton is facing challenges in the industry. He says part of it is, the baggage that I bring to this, right! . He explains that in his previous roles, sports rights sales were the key to all problems, whereas at Facebook, it is more complex. I've had 30 years of working in pay TV, trading rights and basically building pay TV audiences, and therefore the conversations I'm having with a lot of old friends across the table [now I'm at Facebook] are starting to become very different.
We are going to help solve problems your business faces, but it's not saved straightforwardly with one cheque
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Facebook's Peter Hutton on bringing community and interaction to live sports broadcasting By Heather McLean, Editor 
