Broadband-based distribution of live (sports) content [ 🖥 ] has become an essential channel for traditional rights holders (e.g. ESPN, Sky Sports, Movistar, Turner Sports), not to replace the existing cable and satellite distribution [ 📺 ] but to reach a more complete audience with its programming. In fact, „over-the-top“ distribution remains a niche channel for digital-savvy users when it comes to live sports, while the adoption rate for 🎧 audio (e.g. music streaming, podcasts), 📖 text (e.g. ebooks, newspapers, magazines) and even 🎬 non-live video (e.g. scripted content, documentaries) has steadily increased over the last few years, reaching a notable level of mainstream penetration.
Digital live video streaming has struggled, in particular, to find any traction with less digital-savvy consumers aged 45 or older up to this point. 📉
Nonetheless, increasingly more rights holder who think digital-only (e.g. DAZN, ESPN+) or at least digital-first (e.g. Eleven Sports, B/R Live) have entered the sports broadcasting market over the past few months. In addition to familiarizing older demographics beyond its core target group with their services, the mere customer promise of reliably streaming live content at scale seems to remain the main challenge for these new market entrants.
Major technical hiccups during high-profile live events in recent past have certainly not helped the case of digital-only rights holders. The common denominator for most of these highly-publicized struggles boils down to a “Triple-Play” consisting of:
1️⃣ broadcasting a live event in real-time (when disregarding the additional issue of latency at this point in time),
2️⃣ at scale, once the digital channel serves as the exclusive or at least primary distribution system, and
3️⃣ any payment processing right prior to or even during the actual live broadcast.
This blog post explores the evolving sports rights and programming market, which is increasingly characterized by conflicting interests, and proposes short-term solutions for delivering the best broadband-based viewing experience possible while the OTT industry continues to search for a stable solution to deliver big-time sports events in real time and at scale: For example, decoupling the sign-up / payment process from the actual live event would seem to be an equally simple and effective short-term fix. Appropriate incentives for consumers (e.g. „Early-Bird“ - Discount) would have to be implemented. ☝🏼
Along the way, three interesting trends in the OTT space and their consequences for leagues, rights holders, and consumers will be tackled in more detail:
⏺ Microtransactions to have every game at someone’s fingertips without monthly commitments.
⏺ Disrupting the ‘Pay-per-View’ - Revenue Model with Subscription-based ‘All-you-can-Eat’ - Access.
⏺ Moving from All-in-One to Modular Approaches to building more flexible OTT Solutions.
