SportTech 2019: Keeping subscribers happy when It's Just Got to Work' By David Fox
Friday, May 24, 2019 - 09:57
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The nature of live sports makes launching OTT and VoD sports services particularly exciting. Whether it's a single round heavyweight fight or Tottenham scoring in the 96th minute of a Champion's League semi-final, those minutes are not to be missed.
Unfortunately, they sometimes are, said Tom Williams, chief executive, Ostmodern, who chaired the SportTech 2019 session called: It's Just Got to Work' - Keeping Viewers and Subscribers Happy when Streaming Live Sport.
Streaming is a trade-off between reliability, latency and quality, and all three matter for live sports. No one wants to watch a feed that breaks up or looks bad, but they also don't want Twitter telling them all about a goal before they've seen it.
Panel discussion: (L/R) Tom Williams, Ostmodern, chief executive; Marcus Parnwell, DAZN, senior vice president of market expansion; Oliver Thompson, BBC, executive product manager; and Andrew Hall, Tennis TV, director
However, for many fans, it is the only way to see all the sport they want. Broadcasters like the BBC also want to show as much live sport as there is audience appetite for, but which linear TV hasn't time for, said Oliver Thompson, executive product manager, BBC. Linear is still hugely important for sport, particularly in terms of numbers, but it always has to be balanced against non-sport content, and popular programmes of other genres can't be usurped by minority sports. What OTT does is give us a direct route to that audience.
I think our audience appreciates the fact that our coverage is pretty much comprehensive of the ATP tour, subscribers get access to every singles match which is a very difficult thing to achieve via traditional television, said Andrew Hall, director, Tennis TV (ATP Media).
Netflix sets the standard and sets the expectation for all of our products, so it's just got to work, unfortunately people expect live sport to work in the same way and with the same efficiency as Netflix, which presents tremendous challenges for smaller operators like ourselves or larger ones like DAZN, but he believes that expectation is a good thing for driving the progress of streaming.
Sport needs to be given back to the fan and made accessible, on devices they use all day long, to fit in with their lifestyle, added Marcus Parnwell, senior VP of market expansion, DAZN. It's really about delivering the same high-quality experience to everyone, despite the fact that subscribers have widely different internet connections and devices, but should be afforded a similar level of interactivity despite this.
In planning for DAZN's recent launch in Brazil, an analysis of the spread of games and the internet topography, showed times when viewing might have been difficult. So, as it does whenever it enters a new market, it worked with local internet service providers to help optimise their servers and networks to cope with the demands.
There is a level of expectation, not so much around quality of delivery but quality of presentation. OTT gives us the opportunity to stream more hours of sport, but the expectation that goes with the [BBC] brand is that that is to a very high production standard, with half-time analysis and a lot of other content, and that doesn't necessarily scale.
So, how we meet that in an OTT market and what different presentations of live-stream sport could look like under the BBC brand, is something it is continually working on, said Thompson, who is working on live streaming not only for sport but all genres for all devices.
On the technical side, the BBC is trialling UHD to connected TV sets, which it did for the World Cup and will do for Wimbledon. While it has a lot of bandwidth there is finite capacity there, so it has to carefully monitor how many people are connected, and as more higher-definition streams are made available this will continue to be a challenge.
Tennis TV has an even more global reach, but with a limited infrastructure. Our users expect the quality production and the quality delivery. What they don't like is stuff that just doesn't get produced, they expect every match to be available to them, said Hall. I think they are a little more relaxed about whether they can watch it on a one-camera or three-camera production so long as the game is covered as someone, somewhere, is interested in the player on that court and our promise is that we'll show it where others don't.
This all has to be done within budget, and it is working closely with Deltatre to optimise its technology to bring the best possible quality to as many users as possible. But, yes, the expectation is Netflix.
DAZN has tried to give users a similar experience to traditional TV, but with added personalisation and curation to make it as relevant as possible. A lot of users just want to sit back and watch the content. Yes they want to engage in social media and second screen, and there is a definite space for that, but it's about moving the wheels slowly and taking people on a journey as opposed to changing that game completely, said Parnwell.
In terms of distribution, he acknowledged that the big tech companies, like Amazon or Netflix, have set a high bar, but I think that is just rising the tide for all of us, he said. As we all get bigger, the space gets bigger, everyone benefits.
The way audience behaviour is changing, particularly under-25, we're in the hardest market of all, in terms of our product propositions, because that cohort's behaviour is moving away from appointment to view, or watching anything when it's live or scheduled, and even moving away from long-form programming (30 minutes plus),
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SportTech 2019: Keeping subscribers happy when It's Just Got to Work' By David Fox 
