The Match Is No Longer the Beginning of the Journey

The sports industry spends a lot of time discussing how to attract younger audiences. Every conference seems to feature a panel on Gen Z viewing habits. Every strategy document contains a section on fan acquisition. Every rights holder, broadcaster and streaming platform is searching for the next generation of supporters. Yet despite all this attention, I often feel we are asking the wrong question.

Agentic AI workflows and the future of streaming ad tech

AI makes it possible to model delivery across live, VOD, and FAST together and to update forecasts as signals come in, instead of planning channel by channel.

Serenading the Creator Economy With Branded Music Videos: A Q&A With VP of US Sales Melissa Sofo

In this Q&A, Vevo's Vice President of US Sales, Melissa Sofo, delves into how brands and artists are working together to increase audience participation through seamless authenticity and intelligent alignment with Gen Z and Millennials.

TiVo Channels Expands FAST Offering Across the U.S. and Europe with New Line-Up of Premium Content Partners and Channels

New curated selection brings expanded genres, global content, and leading media brands to audiences across North America and Europe

Comcast’s Universal Ads Officially Launches in the UK with Channel 4, ITV & Sky

For the first time, small and medium sized businesses can run a single campaign across ITV Media, Sky Media, and Channel 4 Sales. Universal Ads makes buying premium TV advertising "as simple as social," allowing campaigns to go live in minutes from a single self-service platform. The launch represents the next phase of Universal Ads' global expansion built on a year of deep collaboration between Comcast, Sky, Channel 4, and ITV

IBC2026 creates new pathways from innovation to real-world industry impact

Future Tech Ignite launches to connect start-ups, entrepreneurs and emerging technologies with the wider media and entertainment ecosystem

What Fox Corp’s Acquisition of Roku Means for the Future of Independent Streaming: A Q&A with Future Today Co-Founder Vikrant Mathur

News broke this morning of Fox Corp's $22bn cash-and-stock acquisition of Roku. To gain more insight into how the Fox-Roku deal is likely to impact the future of independent streaming operators and ad-supported streaming in general, I conducted this Q&A with Future Today Co-Founder Vikrant Mathur.

BBC embraces home-based production for World Cup coverage

The sheer scale of this World Cup, even were it to be hosted in the US alone, makes travel between venues and accommodation a logistical and budget stretch for any broadcaster. For the upcoming tournament, the BBC is adopting a fully LED-powered virtual production environment at Dock10 in MediaCity, Salford.

FIFA World Cup 2026: The '104 Super Bowls' broadcast machine

On the eve of kickoff, the scale of FIFA World Cup 2026 still staggers. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has compared the undertaking to "104 Super Bowls," with a global audience of six billion predicted to watch some of the 104 matches packed into 39 days from 16 venues across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. For 2026, FIFA is deploying 16 dedicated venue crews — one per stadium — rather than rotating a smaller pool. They will be supported by seven centralised replay teams based in Dallas.

Survey says: streaming battling for viewer attention in a fragmented media market

A new Accenture survey, "Reinvent for growth, the signals shaping media's next chapter" finds streaming slipping compared to social and gaming in battle for viewer eyeballs, and AI rising for production and post at diversified tech platforms.

The Streaming Industry Is Building for Personalisation Before It Solves Discovery

While the industry races towards increasingly sophisticated personalised sport streaming experiences, the fundamental viewing journey for many fans remains fragmented, confusing, and unnecessarily complicated.

Nominate Now for the 2026 Innovation Awards

Nominations are now open for Streaming Media's 2026 European Innovation Awards.

Creator Content Crossing the Media Chasm at Web Summit Vancouver 2026

We are now seeing a groundswell of content coming from social platforms and podcasts that challenges everything about how legacy media has operated. The Web Summit conference that happened in Vancouver this week, which The Guardian dubbed "Glastonbury for geeks," served up a next-gen creator vibe in its Creative Summit typified by a panel titled "How Fandom is Transforming Entertainment" that explored how responsive fan communities are driving and defining content creation.

Generative AI Got the Hype, Agentic AI Will Do the Heavy Lifting

The most important AI systems in sport may end up being the ones fans never see. Agentic AI is not flashy. Fans are unlikely to notice it directly. There will not be endless social posts about orchestration layers dynamically rerouting workflows or prioritising distribution paths.

Women-Centered, Artist-Owned: A Q&A With Chera TV

Streaming Media has been tracking the trend of vertical microdramas (aka vertical dramas), as multiple companies gain traction in the space. The subject of this Q&A, Chera TV, is hoping its unique approach of being what it calls "the first artist-owned vertical streaming platform" can entice viewers to give it a try as it introduces its dramas this spring.

Sneak Preview: Ultra-Low-Latency Sports Streaming From Stadium to Screen at Streaming Media Connect

On Thursday, May 14, Elecard's Victoria Tuzova will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "Need for Speed: Ultra-Low-Latency Sports Streaming From Stadium to Screen." This panel of experts from Servers.com, Synamedia, Vindral, and Stats Perform dives into the engineering fundamentals—capture, encoding, delivery, and playback—that underpin smooth execution through the first, middle, and last miles without sacrificing quality. Learn what breaks at scale, how to prepare for and ward off disaster, and why low latency isn't just a number, but the difference between a winning broadcast and a blown opportunity.

NAB 2026: Things You Might Have Missed

An in-depth look some developments that may have flown under the radar at NAB 2026, from the rise of differentiated agentic media solutions and workflows and the demise of SaaS to advances in audio stem separations and the industry's better-late-than-never cult of content authenticity via C2PA.

The Post-NAB View: Live Sport Still Needs Technology That Works

I recently got back from Las Vegas after a few days at NAB. And, as always, it delivered. Big ideas, big promises and a huge amount of innovation across the show floor. But walking away from it this year, one thing is clearer than ever. Live sport is no longer short of ideas. It is short of things that actually work at scale.

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.

DFB taps Deltatre to launch DTC streamer DFB.TV+

The German Football Association (DFB) has partnered with Deltatre to launch DFB.TV+, a new direct-to-consumer streaming service that consolidates a wide range of German football content previously scattered across multiple platforms. The service, built on Deltatre's end-to-end OTT product Vesper, is scheduled to go live on 22 May, forming a central pillar of the DFB's first 24/7 pay-TV channel, DFB.TV.