Keeping Pace with Sports Innovation
Posted on Oct 24, 2024 by FEED Staff
Sports broadcast as we know it is changing. FEED sits down with Harmonic’s Jean Macher to learn how to keep up with this innovation growth spurt
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The sports broadcast industry is currently facing a momentous shift, aiming to provide a colossal number of fans with unparalleled access to a wide range of sports content through various platforms and services.
Whether it’s the excitement of national leagues or the passion of college sports, streaming services have expanded exponentially to meet these growing demands.
With 2024 featuring the ultimate summer of sport, these demands are greater than ever before.
“It used to be that live sports would be attached to a linear channel,” begins Jean Macher, senior director of global SaaS solutions, Harmonic, “and the trend now is to decouple live sports from channels and to offer singular live sporting events on streaming services – freeing them from being linear.”
The transformation of live sports is driven by a convergence of technological innovations, changing consumer habits, in addition to a strategic shift in the industry’s focus from growth at all costs to profitability and sustainability.
“Before, with linear channels, it was always the same,” continues Macher. “Whether it was watching a live soccer game or a TV show, it was always the same quality parameter and redundancy security. Now, if I have premium content that is going to appeal to huge audiences, I can boost the quality.
“For instance, I can use forensic watermarking because I want to protect against piracy; and I want more redundancy for a similar reason. Then, if I have something more niche and less premium, I can dial down on those more sophisticated features.
“Much of this change comes down to education,” he adds. “Many of our customers come from the background of linear channels, meaning they have to un-learn the linear method and move to this.”
Times are changing
With a growing number of OTT service providers counting live sports as an attractive part of their offering, many consumers are now willing to watch live events through their video streaming service. As a result, service providers have been boosting their offerings behind the scenes, in ways that many might not realise.
“For the duration of a singular event, one innovation that has surfaced is the ability to offer a smooth time shift,” says Macher. “This starts at the beginning of the event and lasts all the way to the end, which we do in HLS and DASH.
“We manage extended DVR windows for the duration of the live game, with the result for the user being a highly smooth and seamless way to scrub the timeline.”
Seamless is the crucial word here, and that comes hand-in-hand with innovations in the latency arena.
“For sport, latency matters,” argues Macher. “It’s not necessarily about being ultra-low, but having a latency that isn’t drastically more than what you’re used to. For example, you’re not often going to look at social media for a goal before it appears on your streaming service. The aim is to avoid people seeing a goal before it appears on the stream itself. As long as you can keep the streaming service latency at that range, that’s as good as preserving the user experience,” he explains.
Thinking outside the ad break
Macher emphasises how the value of sports content is constantly on the rise, triggering an upturn in monetisation strategies.
“Sports is one of the rare content forms that’s still extremely valuable in terms of how much people are willing to spend to acquire it,” he notes.
“Media companies are still spending extremely high amounts on buying sports rights. Plus, they are competing against technology companies. Once they acquire these sports rights and start streaming, it is crucial that they monetise them as effectively as possible.”
Advertising is, of course, where Macher is heading with this, but he emphasises the importance of putting the viewer experience first and foremost.
“It’s important you monetise in a way that’s not going to frustrate your viewers. You have the traditional ad break, but you don’t want to increase ad load because that’s counterproductive.
“At Harmonic, we have introduced a new streaming advertising format: in-stream advertising. This is where customers will watch their live events, and as the action unfolds, you can display advertising messages in the form of either an L-shape or a double-box. The main action can then be squeezed into one box, with a targeted ad in the second box – and the background can also feature a sponsor.”
Harmonic’s VOS360 Ad offers in-stream advertising through server-side insertion of new addressable ad formats. These split-screen ads can be strategically placed at high- and low-action moments of the game, either through manual operation or by automated triggering from external data feeds.
“The massive benefit for media companies is that they now have a way with these new formats to create new inventory – whereas previously, inventory was limited to ad breaks,” concludes Macher, highlighting the significant shift in potential.
To learn more, head to harmonicinc.com
This feature was first published in the Autumn 2024 issue of FEED.
