As the battle "OLD vs. NEW Media" in the global sports rights market looms, the underlying technology to deliver the live streaming experience at scale and in real-time still faces many limitations: latency, buffering, and lackluster video quality among others. 🧐
Especially in large-scale markets where the most popular leagues regularly draw +/- 20 million concurrent viewers (think: USA 🇺🇸), those technological limitations make exclusive media rights for a digital-only contender in the medium-term future more than unlikely. Instead, they will rather serve as a complementary channel to linear TV for premium live content: 🏀🏈. The implications include less exclusivity, more fragmentation and the continuation of legacy media companies remaining the most important media partners of the NBA, NFL & Co. beyond their current rights period. 😉
Over in Europe 🇪🇺, however, new market entrants (think: DAZN, Amazon, Eleven Sports) got a much earlier shot at the most sought-after live sports content due to several factors including stronger regulation by public bodies resulting in shorter rights cycles and smaller viewerships lowering the stress on OTT platforms given territory-based media markets.
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Despite OTT delivery being the future of sports broadcasts, the market for B2B service providers and their white-label solutions (think: Sportradar AG, Deltatre) is probably limited: With rights-buying entities being aware of the new technology's importance, acquiring/developing in-house expertise in this area will be made a priority. This leaves only less monetizable niche sports as potential clients for independent service providers. Such partnerships (think: Sportradar - powered ehfTV🤾♂️, Perform-powered WTA TV 🎾& FIBA TV 🏀) & Deltatre - powered FINAtv 🏊🏼♂️) rarely entail service fees for the OTT infrastructure paid by rights holders but less attractive revenue sharing only.
Solution: Getting into the business of acquiring, trading, or distributing rights and directly competing with their clients? 🤔 At least DAZN agreed. ☝🏼
Finally, I look at two recent news that could provide a first glimpse into the medium-term future (3-5 years) of sports broadcasting: Integration of social, gaming & betting with focus on niche sports and the inevitable aggregation-model for the increasingly fragmented landscape of sports video content. 👀
