Broadcasters Stretch to Offer Live Sport Streaming

Live online video is taking off, and sporting events are leading the way. At the recent Streaming Forum conference in London, Dan Finch, director of Simplestream, explained how broadcasters are starting to view online as an essential for sport.

"All these OTT solutions are complex. Getting the headroom when you are doing live streaming if you're going from 5,000 simulcast users to 55,000 to 60,000, then there are areas that need to be looked at before, but I think obviously technology is getting better," Finch said. "Broadcasters are making that investment now. They've all been focusing for a long time on DTT [digital terrestrial television] delivery of live sports, which is obviously great to get those huge audiences in. Traditionally it hasn't been a focus area for broadcasters. That's changing now."

By offering live streams and catch-up streams for sporting events, broadcasters are able to tap new audiences and reap useful data about their viewers.

"When you do have organizations that are starting to look at measuring cross platform, well then why wouldn't a broadcaster want to put their own live stream online and across all devices and then benefit from all that data that they can then get back?" Finch asked. "If you can marry up all those different streams, all those different devices, add in someone's IP address, then you've got a really nice audience description of who's actually viewing your content."

For more on streaming live sport, watch the presentation below.

Sport in Live Streaming and Catch-Up TV

Sport viewers demand immediacy, not only in live feeds of events but also in catch-up viewing of entire events or highlights. This session addresses how broadcasters can achieve cross-platform distribution of sport content as soon as possible after the event has finished - or even while it’s still happening - using both manual and automated approaches.

Presenter Dan Finch, Director, Simplestream

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