Today’s guest columnist is Jed Corenthal, chief marketing officer at Phenix Real Time Solutions.
History has taught us that it takes time for new technologies and new innovations to reach a tipping point. In his 2000 seminal book, Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” We have seen this occur throughout the years: silent movies to talkies; horse and buggy to cars; radio to television; black and white to color TV; cord to mobile phones to touch screen and so on.
None of these changed overnight, but they did eventually change due to factors that include customer dissatisfaction with what was, lack of education and awareness to what the new innovation or technology actually is (and that it exists) and then mass customer adoption. I believe we are approaching the tipping point when it comes to streaming live sports.
Sports fans go to social media when their streams are suddenly cut out, when they’re abruptly dropped due to an influx of people joining all at once, buffering, or suffering from lag time and delays that result in them hearing about game-changing plays long after their friends have already seen them. Truth be told, most people are unaware of what causes all of these issues—they aren’t familiar with industry terms like “latency,” “drift” or “join rates”—but they know these problems exist.
Nor do they realize that the technology exists to solve these issues. Once again, we have history repeating itself: dissatisfaction with what currently exists combined with a lack of education on innovations that address points of frustration with current technology.
According to a recent Kantar report, 20% of all consumers who use a streaming service do so because of sports. According to Magnite, live sports streaming now accounts for 30% of all Connected TV streaming, and live sports streamers are more likely to watch multiple ad-supported services (averaging 3.6 sports apps per viewer). That is millions and millions of people choosing their streaming service based on being able to watch live sports and stay in touch with their favorite teams.
What about the cost of acquiring all this content? According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, U.S. TV and streaming sports media rights payments will likely total $25.57 billion in 2023 across broadcast, cable, RSNs and streaming services. College sports has seen several high-profile media rights deals signed or agreed to in recent weeks, such as ESPN’s eight-year, $920 million deal for 40 different championships including the growing women’s basketball and volleyball championships, and the proposed College Football Playoff deal worth $7.8 billion over six years. Keep in mind the men’s basketball championship is still under an extension that was signed in 2018 for a deal worth $1.1 billion per year through 2032.
So, we have millions of people signing up for various TV services to watch live sports, which is costing rights holders billions of dollars to stream these games. And yet, the technology that most broadcasters and streaming services use remains unchanged. The truth is that most fans simply do not realize that they could be streaming their favorite games in real time, while chatting or tweeting with their friends and even watching the game “together” virtually. We all need to do a better job of educating the public so they can demand change.
Phenix conducts an extensive study on latency each year analyzing streaming delays across the various platforms where football fans can watch the Super Bowl. Latency averaged in the 40- to 90-second range, and drift was in the 30- to 90-second range.
Imagine you are streaming the upcoming men’s NCAA Tournament final on April 8 and the game is coming down to the final seconds. You get a text from your friend at the same time you get a tweet from another so excited that their team won on a buzzer beater. And you haven’t seen the shot because your stream is 30 seconds behind. Yikes!
Considering the high value of sports content and the dedication and enthusiasm of sports fans, it’s truly astonishing that these delays and disjointed viewing experiences are accepted, despite being easily avoidable. As digital transformation continues to accelerate, it will soon become essential for broadcasters to prioritize the viewing experience of top-tier sports content and provide live sports content in real-time.
The modern fan experience is at a tipping point. Why accept the old, why dwell on what has been, when the answer for a better experience is right in front of us? It’s time to look forward.
Corenthal oversees marketing and business development and spearheads the sports betting business for Phenix, which delivers real-time video to broadcast-sized audiences around the globe. Phenix has built technology to deliver high quality, synchronous streams to broadcast-size audiences with less than half-a-second of latency, or delay.
