Sports' Move Into Streaming Strains Supply of Tech Personnel Layoffs at tech companies closely aligned with sports leagues are poorly timed By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Monday, October 16, 2023 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The glitchy launch of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign on Twitter in May may have been an inauspicious start to a turbulent political year, but, for some observers of the streaming sector, the event serves as a canary in the coal mine as streaming catches on in sports.
Twitter's layoffs of tech personnel foreshadowed the DeSantis debacle, which took place after more than 80% of the social-media company's workforce had been dismissed since Elon Musk acquired it last year.
In March, Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon - which is planning a standalone app for its newly acquired live sports content, including the rights to the NFL's Thursday Night Football games in the U.S., the Premier League in the UK, and the NBA in Brazil - said the company would slash 9,000 jobs, bringing total cuts since November 2021 to 27,000. Adding to the general uncertainty are potential staffing cuts at Apple, whose Apple TV+ service started this year to exclusively live-stream MLS games in a 10-year, $2.5 billion global deal, and Meta Platforms Inc., owner of Facebook, which has said pro sports leagues could benefit from its paid online events feature in the future.
In the Engine Room In short, the boiler rooms of streaming-media distributors are running with fewer and fewer engineers. Folks on the management side of streaming's deep infrastructure have taken notice.
Stack Sports' Tyler Feret: Companies will come to regret it if they don't keep enough staff to constantly maintain and scale [streaming] infrastructure.
Sports-media companies should certainly be careful about laying off too many people, especially because sports streaming skews so heavily towards live content, as opposed to a Netflix or HBO, observes Tyler Feret, GM, digital media, Stack Sports, which develops SaaS solutions that power several thousand sports organizations from scholastic to professional. Audiences are a lot more forgiving if a VOD service is down for 15 minutes than if they lose 15 minutes of a [ballgame].
Feret, who was founder and CEO of Meridix Creative, which developed HD streaming solutions for sports before being acquired this year by Sports Stack, suggests that Twitter may be an especially egregious case because Musk seems to have gutted that organization at obvious risk to the product, whereas some of the layoffs at Disney and elsewhere were explained by the companies as right-sizing' after a period of overhiring.
However, he cautions, sports-media companies shouldn't underestimate the nuances and complexity of streaming, nor the talent levels required to successfully operate a high-caliber streaming service.
Layoffs are a near-term solution to cut costs, Feret explains, but companies will come to regret it if they don't keep enough staff to constantly maintain and scale infrastructure, monitor quality of service, and test playback on the immense ecosystem of audience devices. If executives knew what really goes on to successfully stream video from point A to point B, they would see it is nothing short of magic.
Balance of People and Jobs Not everyone is as concerned. Mike Kelley, president, Grabyo, a cloud-based video-production-tools provider, considers the Twitter case unique and not necessarily a portent.
Grabyo's Mike Kelley sees opportunities for streaming-tech staffers as sports teams and leagues pursue their own streaming agendas.
I think no one is feeling great about the state of Twitter's APIs and their tech platform and their support, he observes, but I think other platforms are still pretty solid. Amazon, for sure, has sports as a major priority, and, obviously, Amazon Prime is a major priority, so I don't think that they're necessarily laying off a lot of key people on the streaming-tech side.
And any streaming-tech staffers at risk could find plenty of opportunities as sports teams and leagues pursue their own streaming agendas, Kelley contends.
Content owners are realizing that they need to invest more in personnel that can help manage some of these things internally, he explains. Even on the club level - an NBA club or an NFL club or an MLS club - I've seen them starting to staff up technology-savvy people internally, just to be able to help manage all these different platforms that they have to stream to and push content to, whether that's highlights or live feeds, the coach shows, and athlete launches, like the Messi [event] they did in Miami. Leagues in the U.S. need more talent on that side of things. I think I see a lot more opportunities on the team and league side for these platform-technology folks.
Some pro-audio manufacturers are ramping up engineering departments, in part because of streaming. According to Wheatstone spokesperson Dee McVicker, the console and IT-platform developer now has more R&D engineers on staff than even two years ago, but with different skillsets: [Streaming] and, by extension, streaming sports is moving into the mainstream, where there's so much more opportunity for reach and revenue. For most broadcasters, it doesn't really matter if you're streaming from a cloud or from a server in your [Technical Operations Center]; it's all the same tech that runs on both.
Economic Impact The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes over the summer revealed some of the financial pressures behind streaming. The ad market is in free fall, consumers are cutting the cable cord at a dizzying rate, and launching streaming services has been enormously costly, forcing these companies to pack on billions of dollars in debt, Vari
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
Sports' Move Into Streaming Strains Supply of Tech Personnel Layoffs at tech companies closely aligned with sports leagues are poorly timed By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
