Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

How broadcasters can leverage the appetite for sports content

22/07/2021

When TV providers show live, real time sports, they are encouraging connections and sparking passion; emotions of which every sports fan thrives on, writes Veset CEO Igor Krol

By Contributor

Published: July 22, 2021

When TV providers show live, real time sports, they are encouraging connections and sparking passion; emotions of which every sports fan thrives on, writes Veset CEO Igor Krol

target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>

Like many sectors, sports broadcasting has had the odds stacked against it over the last year. Dealing with postponed or cancelled events, empty stadiums and now an increasingly crowded schedule as the backlog of live events returns. On the plus side there is a huge appetite for sports content following the hiatus, which content owners can leverage, as long as they adopt a strategic approach.

Increase in demandSport naturally sparks loyalty in fans. After a highly disrupted year, the return of live sport broadcasts meant that fans could enjoy the familiarity of live, scheduled sports broadcasts on TV. The lack of new sports content during the pandemic, however, left fans hungry for alternatives and although fans are eager to return to live sports events, there is an ongoing demand for digital content.

There is a demand for a broader range of content, such as archive footage, sports documentaries and episodic content as consumers have shifted to wanting more thought provoking and engaging content. There has also been rising demand from wider demographics including older audiences and those wanting to see more from niche sports.

AudienceAlong with the audience's profile, viewing habits have also changed. With the option of attending live sporting events taken away and people spending more time at home, consumers have become aware of new ways to interact with sports content. A recent study found that social video provides a direct complement to linear TV, offering 75 per cent of the reach that linear provides.

With a growing trend in second screen viewing comes challenges and opportunities for TV content owners. Although the use of smart phones and tablets may take the viewers' attention away from the television, it gives content owners another method of reaching the audience. Often, viewers will use the second screen for social interaction during a live match, which provides additional touchpoints for engagement and targeted advertisements.

Additionally, with many consumers left with lower incomes as a result of the pandemic, consumers continue to want long term free-to-view content. This is great news for content providers who are able to generate revenue through advertising, and great for consumers who are able to consume sports content for free through traditional TV.

FormatsDiversifying sports offerings through alternative formats will enable broadcasters to reach wider audiences and increase revenue streams. While most of the value in watching sports comes from a live, scheduled experience, flexible cloud-based formats can be implemented to maximise engagement around key events.

The appetite for sport is still there, however, viewers are using alternative technologies and formats to access content. During a period of ongoing transition, content owners are having to experiment with different technology and platforms to gauge value. Taking the time to understand new behaviours means providers can tailor new experiences to the evolving needs of the viewers. Although OTT providers are gaining popularity, many sports fans are either unwilling to subscribe to an OTT service or unable to do so because of their set-top box or broadband connection.

Content ownersUser experience will continue to be a main factor for maximising engagement with existing customers and attracting new audiences. However, with changes in consumer habits, content owners must be willing and able to adapt to the requirements of the consumer.

The adoption of simplified linear TV management systems provides new methods to manage and operate their content delivery. Providers can leverage these new management methods to schedule and deploy live sports content easily and cost efficiently to platforms such as Twitch, for example.

As the sports industry continues to recover from the significant impact of the Covid pandemic, content providers must develop new ways to encourage fan engagement. To re-coup lost revenue, content owners will still need to diversify touchpoints to attract new audiences and keep existing ones. Exploring new viewing trends such as social watching and second screen viewing will offer new opportunities to reach targeted audiences, whilst driving fans back to the traditional ways of watching TV.

There is no doubt that linear TV is neither dead nor dying. When TV providers show live, real time sports games, they are encouraging connections and sparking passion; emotions of which every sports fan thrives on.

data-src=https://www.tvbeurope.com/wp-content/themes/tvbeurope/library/images/tvbe-subs.jpg width=729 height=90>
LINK: https://www.tvbeurope.com/live-production/how-broadcasters-can-leverag...
See more stories from tvb

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

23/06/2026

PBS Selects LTN to Power Nationwide IP Video Network

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

PBS selects LTN for nationwide IP video network

LTN, a global leader in IP-based video transport and network services, today announced that PBS has selected LTN as its IP video partner to modernize and future...

23/06/2026

The LiveU Q Era Arrives in ANZ with the LU900Q at ABE2026

LiveU will introduce its Q Era to Australia and New Zealand for the first time at ABE2026 on Stand No. 25, (July 30 31). Leading the showcase is the LU900Q, a n...

23/06/2026

Miri Technologies Ships V410 Live 4K Video Encoder-Decode...

Miri Technologies Inc. has begun shipping its highly anticipated V410 live 4K video encoder/decoder for streaming, IP-based production workflows and AV-over-IP ...

23/06/2026

DHD SX2 and TX2 Consoles Go On-Air at Radio Tzafon

DHD audio reports the completion of an upgrade to the audio production facilities at the Galilee headquarters of Radio Tzafon. The station broadcasts two progra...

23/06/2026

Nagravision Launches Nagra Venturi Security Offering

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

ITN Expands Programmatic Local TV Platform

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery Taps AWS for New AI-Powered Ad Tech

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Study: Younger Viewers More Distracted But More Receptive to Ads

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Chilevisin, ClaroVTR Tap Pixop for 4K FIFA World Cup Feed

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

23/06/2026

Imagine Communications Names Greg Garmon as Senior Vice P...

Multifaceted Growth Executive Brings 20+ Years of Experience Leading Organizations Across Tech and M&E Imagine Communications today announced the appointment ...

23/06/2026

Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNTAPPED returns for 2026

Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNT...

23/06/2026

Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026

Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026 Brie Clayton June 22, 2026 0 Comments New Relay Solution Combines DMX, ...

23/06/2026

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Global Media Technology Community

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Gl...

23/06/2026

RT AND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION IRELAND ANNOUNCE RT TOY SHOW APPEAL GRANT AWARDS 2026

The RT Toy Show Appeal has raised over 31 million since its inception in 2020 ...

23/06/2026

NVIDIA Powers Over 400 of the World's 500 Fastest Supercomputers

News Highlights: NVIDIA technology runs 81% of the TOP500 and 90% of the systems new to the list. 26 systems on the TOP500 adopted the NVIDIA Grace CPU, up ei...

23/06/2026

How Businesses Are Building Specialized AI They Can Trust

Companies are asking how to build specialized AI that fits with the way their workflows actually run. The first wave of enterprise AI was about access. Compan...

23/06/2026

June 22, 2026

Newly identified molecule strengthens the eye's response to damage in retinal disease Scripps Research discovery finds that restoring the naturally occurrin...

22/06/2026

Behind the Mic: SportsCenters Lisa Cohn to Retire This June From ESPN as Longest-Tenured Anchor

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...

22/06/2026

Cosm Appoints David Ho as Chief Legal Officer

Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...

22/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery and AWS Announce AI-Powered Advertising Technology Platform

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...

22/06/2026

Daktronics Completes Audio Control System Upgrade at Petco Park for San Diego Padres

Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...

22/06/2026

Accelerate Media Names John Willi President, Launches Accelerate Sports Network

Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...

22/06/2026

AWSN to Air 3XBA Womens Basketball Tournament Live June 26-27

All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...

22/06/2026

OWL AI Appoints Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer

OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...

22/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF Support for Inside the NBA at 2026 NBA Finals

CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...

22/06/2026

Polymarket and GRID Partner to Integrate Esports Data and Streaming into Trading Platform

Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...

22/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Metinteractive's Rachel Mele, Ken Cyr on Building Technology Backbones for Sports Venues

As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...

22/06/2026

SVG All-Stars: Corbin Perkins, Chief Engineer, Victory+

As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...

22/06/2026

Meet the 2026 Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Intensive Fellows

By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...

22/06/2026

Blade joins CEDAR Audio Icons line-up

New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...

22/06/2026

Sampleson release Aeronaut

Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...

22/06/2026

ADDAC System's new Four Strings Series

Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that&#...

22/06/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in to SBS coverage

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...

22/06/2026

NAGRA Venturi - Turning Piracy Intelligence into Measurable Business Impact

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...

22/06/2026

Xumo Expands Contextual Targeting Capabilities Through Gracenote and IRIS.TV Integrations

Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...

22/06/2026

Greg Garmon Joins Imagine as Senior VP, Americas Video Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Kaleidescape Breaks the 8K and 4:4:4 Barriers

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Xilica introduces Dynamic Voice Lift in new Designer

Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Brings Trusted, 24/7 AI Agents to Telecom Operations

Telecom operators have seen remarkable returns from using generative AI to automate network management, customer care and back-office operations. Most of that i...

22/06/2026

Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Monday 22 June 2026 Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...

22/06/2026

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Vera CPU Opens the Way for Agentic Scientific AI at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...

22/06/2026

From Materials Simulation to Experimental Astronomy, New NVIDIA AI Software Unlocks Scientific Discoveries

At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...

22/06/2026

NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...

22/06/2026

At ISC, JUPITER Shows What Exascale Science Looks Like

JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...