As In-Market Streaming Barriers Are Lifted, RSNs Look To Serve More Live Content to Fans Custom fan experience, sports betting drive many efforts By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Monday, August 19, 2019 - 7:00 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
In recent years, the MLB, NBA, and NHL have inked authenticated in-market streaming deals with nearly all the regional sports networks in the U.S., allowing the RSNs to connect with local fans on a whole new level. As a result, the walls between linear- and digital-production teams are coming down, with RSNs looking to become more efficient and distribute content across an ever-growing number of platforms.
From left: NBC Sports Regional Networks' Deven Persaud, NESN's Theresa Spencer, and KSE Digital's Matt Williams discuss growing RSN activity in live streaming.
At SVG's RSN Summit earlier this summer, digital leaders from NBC Sports Regional Networks, NESN, and Altitude Sports discussed best practices in designing a live-streaming app, enhancing fan interactivity, differentiating the digital experience, and riding the on-coming wave of legal sports betting.
Customized Stream: MyTeams by NBC Sports App
Last October, NBC Sports Regional Networks launched MyTeams by NBC Sports, a team-focused mobile app that provides fans customized, all-in-one access to live game streaming and other content featuring their local teams from the 25 NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB teams covered by NBC RSNs. Fans select their favorite team or teams - with no limit and in order of preference - to create a customized content offering that matches their passions, priorities, and interests.
In our research, we found that most of our users and our fans were team-specific, not regional-specific, said Deven Persaud, director of product, NBC Sports Regional Networks. Somebody in the Bay Area might be a huge Warriors fan, but they don't care about the Sharks, and vice versa; we found that across the board in all of our regions. We took that information and, using the backbone of the streaming products that the [NBC Sports] national side creates, made sure that we were presenting streams to help mitigate a lot of the confusion around authentication and geographic blackouts to get fans into the streams that they want and are credentialed for as quickly and as easily as possible.
The Peacock digital team's efforts paid off. Three months after launch, the MyTeams app had exceeded its annual download goal for the first year. Persaud believes that a major factor in its success was his organization's commitment to invest in digital and give the MyTeams app time to be built correctly.
Invest in digital now because these things take longer than people realize to build, he advised. One of the big barriers that I've had to break down in my career is the thought that, because it's on the internet, you can build it quickly. That is not the case. Make sure you invest in it and give it time to build. You might be able to get something up quickly, but it's not going to be scalable, and it's not going to function properly.
NESN Teams With Playmaker Media, Sees Success With NESNgo
NESN launched its NESNgo in-market streaming app in 2017 to live-stream Red Sox and Bruins regular-season games within its regional footprint. Last year, it relaunched the streaming service and moved it onto NBC Sports Group's Playmaker Media platform.
Since we were on the forefront, there weren't really industry best practices to go off of [in launching the app], recalled Theresa Spencer, digital technology manager, NESN. You're working internally with a limited knowledge base and resources from a technical perspective. I always come from the mindset in digital of you don't know what you don't know so everything is possible. We just brought the expertise from our team. Then, ultimately, we found a third-party partner, NBC Sports, to bring a strong technical stack and backbone to fill in the gaps and make us competitive and help with audience adoption.
In the two years that NESNgo has been available, the RSN has seen 80% distribution among its MVPD partners - making for ultra-quick audience adoption - and its in-market streaming analytics have trended similarly to their linear-TV metrics.
Phase 2 for NESNgo is definitely going to be looking at how we integrate data onto the screen, said Spencer. Do we have maybe different announcers during the games, giving our mobile viewers on the go a different experience on their phone vs. when they're watching in the home. Ultimately, I think addressable TV ads are something else that we'll be paying attention to in the near future.
Altitude Goes In-House for AltitudeNOW App
Last October, Altitude Sports & Entertainment launched AltitudeNOW, its in-market, live-streaming service featuring Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Colorado Rapids games and additional Altitude programming. Altitude/KSE Media Ventures worked with numerous vendors and its in-house engineering team to produce the app from scratch.
We spent a lot of time putting it together, and we took on a huge part of the project ourselves, said Matt Williams, VP, KSE Digital. We have a great group of engineers at Altitude who we worked really closely with the past two years. Solving the puzzle without having a blueprint was really challenging. Looking back at it, there was so much that we didn't know and discovered along the way, which was an exciting project. But, as far as the time it took, it was a lot greater than we expected.
Although the launch of the app proved a heavy lift for Williams and his team, the efforts paid off when both the Nuggets and the Avalanche advanced to the Playoffs and the app logged an all-time-high 200,000+ streaming views during the month of April.
We really just built the founda
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
08/09/2026
Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has announced a multi-year agreement with A E...
08/09/2026
Spectra Logic today announced the availability of Media Insight, a new capabilit...
08/09/2026
Rogers Communications and Quebecor have announced a 12-year sublicensing agreement for French-language national NHL games beginning with the 2026-27 season. TVA...
08/09/2026
Skyline Communications and Bridge Technologies will demonstrate two integrations...
08/09/2026
Boland Communications will make the European debut of its 4K55HDR7SNB 55-inch super-narrow-bezel monitor at IBC2026 (Stand 12.C57, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-1...
08/09/2026
Ateme and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) have announced a collaboration comb...
08/09/2026
Haivision has joined the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme as part of t...
08/09/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced price reductions on its PYXIS 6K and Cinema Camera 6K models, effective immediately through Blackmagic Design resellers worldwid...
08/09/2026
AI-Media will demonstrate its LEXI Suite at IBC2026 (Booth 5.C34, September 11-1...
08/09/2026
Bitmovin and Ad Insertion Platform (AIP) have announced the first live deploymen...
08/09/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate story-centric media workflows at IBC2026 (Booth 9.A01, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), connecting newsroom production, content ma...
08/09/2026
M2A Media and Ateme have announced a partnership integrating Ateme's video processing solutions into M2A Media's MediaToAnywhere platform for live sport...
08/09/2026
Ikegami will exhibit at IBC2026 (Stand 12.A31, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), including a Day 1 introduction of new cameras in the UNICAM XE series. Additiona...
08/09/2026
Broadcast industry analysts will be gathering plenty of insights at the 2026 IBC Show this weekend in Amsterdam, but Caretta Research has offered up some though...
08/09/2026
SENSHI and DAZN have announced a global broadcast partnership that will bring SENSHI's live events free to viewers in more than 200 markets. The partnership...
08/09/2026
New architecture built with Evertz will bring 4K HDR to Monday Night Football, N...
08/09/2026
Built for rap producers, by rap producers
Sauceware Audio, the independent plug-in company founded by Grammy-nominated producer Jacob (Travis Scott, 21 Sava...
08/09/2026
Classic Sound Techniques design revived
Warm Audio's latest release delivers a meticulous recreation of the preamp circuitry employed by the Sound Techn...
08/09/2026
Latest soft synth inspired by the Memorymoog
XILS Lab have just launched a software instrument that draws its inspiration from Moog's iconic Memorymoog,...
08/09/2026
The Airport Chaplain takes off as SBS's biggest launch of 2026
8 September, 2026
Media releases
1.67 million viewers on National Total TV to date
Best...
08/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/09/2026
Mo-Sys, the world-leading developer of virtual production, camera robotics and image tracking technology, has completed a business restructuring, which has incl...
08/09/2026
New York, September 8, 2026 The TSAmediaHUB audiovisual contribution and distribution infrastructure developed by Telef nica's Audiovisual Services area re...
08/09/2026
Expanded Riyadh operation brings Asharq and Thmanyah services together on a resilient on-premises Pebble platform.
Pebble, the leading automation, content mana...
08/09/2026
Techex, a pioneering leader in live video workflows, will showcase its broadest software feature set to date at IBC 2026 (Stand 2.B45), extending its lead in so...
08/09/2026
Visitors to Grass Valley's booth at IBC2026 will be introduced to new Framelight X capabilities that connect content acquisition, management, editing and pu...
08/09/2026
BCNEXXT will showcase the latest evolution of Vipe at IBC2026 (Stand 2.B09), introducing a series of innovations designed to deliver higher-quality audience exp...
08/09/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Ad Insertion Platform (AIP), a leading innovator in advanced ad insertion technologies, to...
08/09/2026
Brainstorm, a leading manufacturer of real-time graphics and augmented and virtual production, is announcing a major package of enhancements to its Suite 7 soft...
08/09/2026
Big Blue Marble is supporting TDF, French infrastructure and network operator, broadcasting Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and radio services, as a techno...
08/09/2026
Agents work inside a single production environment, from incoming wire copy to a live studio show...
08/09/2026
Building on their strategic partnership, Ceeblue and Layercake make the unthinkable possible: scalable sub-second streaming over standard DRM, SSAI, and CDN wor...
08/09/2026
Brainstorm, a leading manufacturer of real-time graphics, augmented and virtual production, is completing the environment for fast-paced broadcast production wi...
08/09/2026
A SaaS portfolio built to work together, helping operators grow audiences, monetise smarter and run leaner, on their own terms
At IBC 2026 (stand 1.B49) Synam...
08/09/2026
Accedo, global provider of video streaming software and services, has been selected by PlayOn Sports, a national leader in high school sports technology, to exp...
08/09/2026
LiveU, the leader in live IP-video solutions, is enabling The Associated Press to take global newsgathering to the next stage with intelligent connectivity and ...
08/09/2026
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, today announced the latest evolution of it...
08/09/2026
Compact, power-efficient X Platform performance brings broadcast-grade reliability and ultra-low latency to space-constrained remote production (REMI) workflows...
08/09/2026
Zixi, the leader in live video delivery and workflow orchestration, and Kiloview, a leading provider of professional IP video encoding and decoding solutions, t...
08/09/2026
Collaboration gives content owners scalable CDN capacity and broadcasters enhanced flexibility, including for C-band transition planning
Quortex today announce...
08/09/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/09/2026
Telos Alliance and Pluxbox Announce Dynamic Media Facility Integration Partnersh...
08/09/2026
J nger Audio Showcases Industry-First S-ADM Cloud Workflow at IBC 2026
Search
Dolby, MainConcept, Techex and J nger Audio will showcase the industry's ...
08/09/2026
Tuesday 8 September 2026
Sky Go gets a major upgrade for Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers
Today, Sky launches a new version of the Sky Go app for Sky Glass ...
08/09/2026
Documentary thriller simulating a Russian attack on UK soil will culminate in a live final episode reuniting the playersTuesday 8 September 2026
Trailer releas...
08/09/2026
Tuesday 8 September 2026
Jamie Demetriou and Amelia Dimoldenberg to host next t...
08/09/2026
Wuppertal September 8, 2026
Riedel Introduces New OnAir Headset PlatformRiedel Communications today announced the launch of its new OnAir headset platform, a...
As In-Market Streaming Barriers Are Lifted, RSNs Look To Serve More Live Content to Fans Custom fan experience, sports betting drive many efforts By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
