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...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
22/07/2026
RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...
22/07/2026
In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...
22/07/2026
Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...
21/07/2026
New research involving a cross-section of Mongolias independent media landscape finds enthusiasm for AI as a tool to improve efficiency, sustainability and resi...
21/07/2026
With winners Spain having already paraded the World Cup trophy through Madrid in front of millions of fans and the dust now settling on an epic tournament of th...
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 
