Sneak Preview: Creating Lean-In Engagement With Personalised, Next-Gen Sports Streaming Experiences

On Wednesday 13 May, Chris Pfaff, CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech Media, will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "Fans Forward: Creating Lean-In Engagement With Personalised, Next-Gen Sports Streaming Experiences." This panel explores how next-gen platforms deliver individualised sports experiences: customisable commentary tracks, fan-selected camera angles, in-game ecommerce, personalised graphic overlays and statistics, and even AI-generated highlight reels tailored to individual interests.

NAB 2026: AMC Global Media's AWS-Driven AI Journey

My visit to NAB 2026 skewed heavily toward talking about workflow changes with AI. I tried to keep my travels on the convention floor to very specific examples of AI's impact on streaming workflows, and this article will explore the most interesting ones I found. First up is how AMC Global Media (newly rebranded from AMC Networks) is working with AWS to leverage AI to create better content access.

NAB 2026: NVIDIA’s Not-So-Secret AI Agents

One demo I saw at NAB 2026 covered using agents to create content. Obviously, agents need to be managed so they don't think too far outside the box. In this demo, NVIDIA talked about their control plane for a multitask agent project that helps create both a script and animated characters.

Multiviews on Live Sport Streaming at NAB 2026

Perhaps the booths that cropped up on my NAB 2026 itinerary and the sessions I squeezed in between simply skewed this way, but it seems like everyone's favorite sport in streaming this year is, well, sport. Certainly, when it comes to live, the pinnacle of achievement appears to be seamless delivery of premium sports events at global scale, with an eye to "meeting fans exactly where they are"—crossing national, lingual, and cultural borders via localisation, and transcending generations through autogenerated highlights and verticalised mobile delivery. And when it comes to traditional landscape sport video streamed to conventional CTV glass, multiview more than ever seems to be the name of the game in 2026.

NAB Is Full of Big Ideas—Live Sport Needs Ideas That Work

As we head into another NAB, I'm less interested in what looks impressive on a stand and more interested in what is actually ready to survive in production.

Q&A: Paramount Global CTO Phil Wiser Talks AI in Media

After delivering a presentation on "AI's Impact on Media" at HumanX in San Francisco on 7 April, Paramount Global CTO and Head of Multiplatform Innovations Phil Wiser did an open Q & A with attendees expanding on the key themes of his presentations.

New Research from Hub: Roku and Amazon TV Operating Systems Gain Influence as Consumers Explore New AI Integrations Across the Home

AI-powered home devices and smart TVs present new opportunities to improve home security, health, and entertainment experiences

Independent report compares codec royalty costs across two major licensing pools

Streaming services evaluating codec licensing face a difficult question: how do the royalty costs of Access Advance Video Distribution Patent Pool and the Avanci Video program actually compare? A new report from Streaming Learning Center's Jan Ozer answers that question with hard numbers.

Peeling Back Sport's Hidden Layer of Streaming Ops and Tech

We spend a lot of time talking about what fans see in sport. The camera angles, the replays, the graphics, the studio analysis. All of it is designed to bring the viewer closer to the action. But the most important part of modern sports broadcasting is not what fans see. It is what they never see. Behind every moment on screen, there is an entire hidden layer of technology and operations working to make that experience feel effortless. And that layer is becoming more complex than ever.

In AI for Live Video, Context Is King, and Less Is More

Last week I attended a webinar titled "Context Is King: Best Practices for AI in Live Video," featuring Norsk's Adrian Roe and Dom Robinson and CaptionHub's Tom Bridges. Although we're always hearing about AI-driven solutions that can streamline, simplify, or turbocharge elements of the livestreaming workflow, or relieve streaming pros of the need to juggle or manage so many of those tasks themselves, this webinar focused not so much on what AI-enabled tools can do for us as what operator-supplied context and context-aware design can do to optimize those tools and more reliably provide the value we want, and increasingly rely on them to provide.

Broadcast Industry Urges Mobile Network Operators to Help Commercialise Live Production Over 5G By Exposing Standardised Quality on Demand APIs

Neutral Wireless, with support of Amarisoft, AW2S, BBC, France Télévisions, Haivision, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, and Sony calls on mobile network operators to enable interoperable, on-demand network quality for live 5G broadcasts

Live sport streaming's era of experimentation is ending

The era of experimentation in sports broadcasting is quietly coming to an end. Not because innovation is slowing down. The difference is that technologies that were once considered experimental are now expected to simply work.

Why the Future of Remote Production May Run at the Speed of Light

If immersive, real-time and AI-driven production is the future, the underlying network must change, argue photonics advocates and members of IOWN.

H.264 Streaming Fees: What Changed, Who's Affected, and What It Means

Via's new AVC Streaming Licence Fee structure, which applies to new licences beginning in 2026, replaces the old single-cap model with a tiered system that scales sharply with platform size.

Netflix Ramps Up Ad Suite

Netflix hopes the special sauce of their newly expanded expanded Ads Suite with assists from Amazon and Yahoo DSP will make CTV look different. This balance of data and technology, making things faster, more efficient, and more personalised within the ad environment should bring a unique experience to the marketplace.

Rakuten TV doubles down on ad-supported streaming in Europe

In a market defined by subscription fatigue and advertising reinvention, Rakuten TV is betting that FAST is not simply an add-on to streaming but one of its defining next chapters.

ICYMI: Streaming Media Connect February 2026

Streaming Media Connect February 2026 was all about the business and tech of ad-supported streaming and featured exclusive keynote fireside chats with Michelle Auguste of the NBA, Michelle Munson of Eluvio, and Kimmy Li of GAMELOOP and a slate of expert panels panels packed with speakers from YouTube, Disney, DAZN, Fubo, Fremantle, FloSports, Fuse, LG, Philo, Bitmovin, CacheFly, Tavant, and more. Check out a playlist with Streaming Media Connect sessions on Streaming Media's YouTube channel to catch the sessions you missed and revel in the ones you want to relive through the magic of VOD.

Vertical Leap: Growing the Free Vertical Drama Business at Streaming Media Connect

On Thursday, February 26, at Streaming Media Connect, the panel "Vertical Leap: Growing the Free Vertical Drama Business at Streaming Media Connect" assembled expert practitioners from Celestine Pictures, Hudson Vertical, Stratagem Vertical, and GoodShort to explore the ways that vertical drama is exploding on free streaming platforms, driven by mobile-first viewing, bingeable formats, and a new generation of viewers and global creators.

The Games Behind the Games: Winter Olympics From Mountain Slope to Mobile Screen

That illusion of effortlessness is what makes the Winter Olympics such a powerful lens for understanding where streaming and live production are heading next. Because what happened at Milano Cortina 2026 is not just about new cameras or sharper graphics. It is about the entire journey from capture to cloud to consumer.

MWC26 Barcelona: Operators shift from selling connectivity to selling experience

The global mobile industry may be the "nervous system" of the digital world but its perennial moan to regulators, governments, and policy makers is that network operators are never sufficiently valued. At Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, industry leaders are now exploring greater connectivity by linking cell phones with satellite systems and by hoping to finally earn revenue from 5G.