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Rise and Challenges of Live Sports Streaming

The High-Stakes Game of Live Sports Streaming in the OTT Arena.

Author : Murali Manohar 

Date : 23 Jun 2023

OTT platforms spend millions and billions on Live Sports Streaming. This Market is expected to reach over USD 247 Billion by 2027.

Source: https://www.globenewswire.com/

Every prominent streaming platform, such as SonyLiv, Amazon Prime, Disney+Hotstar, and JioCinema, has already marked its presence in the field of live streaming and continues to do so. Disney+Hotstar has acquired the broadcasting rights for ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup this year. In contrast, JioCinema is gearing up for the upcoming IPL after witnessing a record-breaking success in the 2023 IPL.

In all this hype, investments, and profits, broadcasters must recognize the challenges behind every live stream. Technological glitches, lag in streaming, and low-quality video streaming can immediately turn the scene otherwise and can be reasons for a massive loss in viewership.

Let’s first discuss the rise in Live Sports Streaming

The madness about live sports streaming has never been before. Especially during and post-COVID, the rise has happened, and technological advancement and massive global access made it happen.

A report by Deloitte suggests that $50 billion has been spent on live sports content in 2021. In contrast, due to the increasing popularity, the producers and OTT platforms will invest over $6 billion individually in live sports content.

We are already anticipating the significant rise of Live Sports streaming and the craze over it. Let’s look at some of the crucial factors behind the immense possibilities in the stream:

Advancement of Technology

Technological advancement is the most significant reason behind the immense interest in Live Sports Streaming. The way the technology has connected the global audience through multiple platforms is commendable. It serves the massive pull of the worldwide audience through connection and interaction. In addition, the connectivity, longevity, interactivity, and quality content make viewers hooked to the screen. Technology has also made live sports content more analytical through statistics and data to grow the audience’s interest. With advanced 5G and broadband bandwidth, streaming high-quality 4K with Dolby Audio content added significant value to end users.

Evolving Business Opportunity

Live sports streaming evokes business opportunities with its growing popularity and immense viewership. OTT streaming platforms across the globe are grabbing the opportunity with multiple business models.
The business models include pay-per-view, multi-graded subscription-based models, advertising, and merchandising.These business models benefit them and generate revenue through the services offered.

Nowadays, viewers are used to such OTT platforms and choose any business model according to their needs. By identifying the target audience and researching their consumer behaviour, providers can design the models to succeed in the business.

Use of Social Media

Social Media has a significant role in the rise of Live Sports Streaming. The experts are integrating live sports into social media platforms to make it more engaging. This way, viewers of the same interests can interact with each other, share thoughts, and discuss, which makes the sports more exciting and fun to watch. Fan clubs and Fantasy feeds, alongside Live streaming, are catching up to make users more fun and express online views.
With technological advancement, viewers can interact with the players of their choice, encouraging them to lean over the sports even if they must pay for the service.

Alongside advanced analytics, advertisements through social media and influencing play an immense role in the success of these OTT Live Sports Streaming.


Challenges Associated with the Live Sports Streaming.

When Live Sports Streaming is at its peak, challenges are also increasing daily with the considerable demand for quality content. Quality content in live streaming is the most challenging aspect, as the time is limited, and there is no scope for making mistakes.

Let’s discuss the challenges streaming platforms face during live streaming:

Adequate Technical Implementation for a Live Streaming

Live Sports streaming requires proper technical implementation, from video capture to video consumption. All pieces of the entire ecosystem have to work faultlessly to deliver the best in QoE to users. Internet bandwidth, connectivity and platform integration play a significant role. Any technical lag may lead to viewer dissatisfaction and loss of viewership.

Operators often find it challenging to configure, maintain, and integrate data throughout platforms, keeping the quality intact. That might lead to inconsistency across the platforms and raise content quality issues.

Maintaining a Low-latency

Have you ever witnessed a one to two-second delay on the same video content on your phone and laptop? Latency is the reason behind the apparent lag. 

Live Sports streaming is only fun with the real-time experience. A real-time experience can only be obtained by obtaining the least latency. Most viewers expect five to ten seconds of latency, and anything more than that would degrade the viewing experience.

Another technical challenge is to provide the user with a live-streaming experience without buffering and jerkiness in the video. Various device-specific measures ensure the handling of these.

Competition and Monetization

OTT industries have been growing extensively in the last few years, and so has the competition. These platforms use multiple business models to keep their viewers hooked. The offers and benefits provided by one platform often lead to a loss of viewership from the other platforms.

Thus, monetizing those Live Sports Streaming is challenging for many because of the growing competition. Also, the viewers tend to consume free content, where they have abundant streaming platforms that are not free.
Free content with many advertisements may also lead to dissatisfaction with user experience. A great balance in the number of ads is required to ensure the user is not too annoyed.


Do We Have a Solution to the Challenges?

When there are challenges, there are solutions. Technology is evolving daily with new features and solutions for existing challenges.

Technology’s rapid transformation and advancement have made work more accessible. The techno geeks are working tirelessly with the new technologies to develop an adequate live streaming environment where they make integration easy with stable connections.

Technology providers like Logituit rapidly improve the latency problem and develop solutions like ultra-low latency. They have successfully integrated the least latency to provide a real-time experience for Live Sports Streaming, interactivity and other video content streaming.

Different business models for various platforms are coming up with business solutions. With the help of advanced analytics, they identify the target audience and design the models of their preference. Chances of uncertainty are the least in such models as they are targeting a particular group of viewers for Live Sports Streaming.

Even businesses are integrating multi-business models to serve viewers based on their preferences.


What’s More

With the advanced technological revolution, Live Sports Streaming will be one of the most successful streaming content modes with adequate features, analytics, and higher engagement methods.

Stay tuned for more such updates, and please get in touch with us for any technological support at [email protected]

 

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