MAKING THE PERSONAL POSSIBLE - SportsPro Media · 2021. 5. 21. · In the traditional media setting, fans were offered a product that was always one-size-fits-all, even when it was

MAKING THE PERSONAL POSSIBLE:

powering interactivity and new experiences in sports OTT

[email protected] | limelight.comProduced by

EXPERIENCE FIRST

[email protected] | limelight.com

INTRODUCTIONAs streaming becomes the industry standard for sports consumption, standard streaming is no longer enough. More than ever, fans view accessible, reliable digital content as a baseline expectation. What will set services apart in the next decade is how they enhance digital experiences.

Content may be king when it comes to driving user acquisition for over-the-top (OTT) live and on-demand subscription services, but the overall experience is what will keep consumers coming back.

Right holders who want fans to stay on their platforms need to guarantee the best possible quality of experience (QoE). That not only encourages sign-ups, it also creates opportunities to improve average revenue per user (ARPU), reduce churn and grow incremental revenue.

Viewership, increasingly, is non-linear, and the same can be said for sport’s economic model. Improving the value proposition ultimately comes down to service differentiation. Creative fan engagement functions and immersive elements delivered around rich, customisable video content are proven to help OTT services stand out from the crowd and make them stickier. Over time, they are also giving them more ways to become profitable.

This white paper delves into some of the front-end features that drive fan engagement. It highlights current use cases and examples of best practice to demonstrate how integrating these functions within an OTT service has a direct impact on the bottom line, and how Limelight Networks makes each of these ‘lean-in’ viewing options possible today through its content delivery network and expertise in sub-second real-time streaming.

MAKING THE PERSONAL POSSIBLE LIMELIGHT NETWORKS | EXPERIENCE FIRST


NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENTEmotionally, watching sport has never been a passive activity, but it has been delivered as such. In the traditional media setting, fans were offered a product that was always one-size-fits-all, even when it was the best in class.

That has changed dramatically with the arrival of digital media. Mediakind’s 2021 D2C Forecast Report identified as many as 16 different fan engagement features that appeared alongside live video feeds in sports content. The average number deployed in any digital broadcast was four, with the most popular being video-on-demand (VOD) hubs of highlights, replays and archive footage.

Yet those categories extended into a breadth of personalised and interactive tools, from key moment alerts to daily fantasy information, that provide opportunities for deeper engagement but also place new demands on platforms.

DAZN, for example, rolled out a MultiView split-screen feature for its users on AppleTV connected devices in 2019, allowing fans to watch several live games at once. Other broadcasters commonly offer choices of camera angles, commentary streams or graphical overlays.

Providing access to multiple audio or video feeds, alongside the main production stream, requires additional applications and services. Limelight’s Edge Compute technology enables those applications without compromising video latency. Meanwhile, services such as Limelight’s MMD Live, with on-the-fly transmuxing of streams to popular formats, and Live Push Ingest, which takes a single ingest stream and distributes it to any number of viewers, allow for high-quality content to be scaled without straining delivery elsewhere.

Alongside those options, rights holders and broadcasters have made their content more responsive for fans with the use of live statistics and data. These can also be combined with analytics tools and graphical overlays for a more intuitive experience.

• Offload customer origin — a stream is only pushed once, regardless of number of viewers• Improve scaling for live events — no threat of origin overload• Control over bandwidth — reduce costs

LIVE PUSH INGEST

HLS/DASH

LL-HLS/LL-DASH

LIVE VIDEO

Single or Multiple Bitrate RTMP Input

ENCODER PACKAGING

VIDEO DELIVERY HLS

LL-HLS

DASH

LL-DASH

Live Push Ingest server

Chunked Transfer Encoded



For the past year, the National Hockey League (NHL) has provided Game Flow visualisations on its mobile app, helping viewers understand the build-up of pressure through a game and access key moments. Similarly, in the National Basketball Association (NBA), Second Spectrum and the LA Clippers’ CourtVision product enables a range of customisable viewing options, from a stats-heavy coach mode to more video game-inspired designs.

Second Spectrum, which is to be acquired by London-based data company Genius Sports in a $200 million deal, also provides data tracking services to the NBA itself, as well as the Premier League, Major League Soccer (MLS) and broadcasters like BT Sport and ESPN. The integration of tracking, data visualisation and on-screen storytelling has spread further through providers such as AWS, whose partnerships with Formula One and Six Nations Rugby have allowed fans of those sports to consume real-time analytics in a digestible way.

Increasingly, these services encourage more of a two-way relationship with the viewer by adding a data-sharing capability to the stream. LiveLike supplies a range of suite of live polls, quizzes, predictions and alerts to partners including Canal+, Turner Sports, Sky Sports and FloSports. Sport Buff works across sport and esports to deliver gamified, in-broadcast elements that can also be paired with graphical tweaks for the likes of Turner Sports and Fox Sports, and on coverage of Formula E, the Women’s Super League (WSL) and MLS.

Edge Compute can be leveraged to offer a menu of player and game statistics that viewers can choose between or display on screen via augmented reality (AR). Artificial intelligence (AI) can now support capabilities like player recognition, for faster, smarter interaction.

Source: Mediakind 2021 D2C Forecast Report

Digital broadcasters used 16 different types of fan engagement features in live sports feeds in 2020



BETTING AND DIRECT MONETISATIONOne of the most powerful uses for the technology that sustains interactive streams is in direct monetisation and increased ARPU. Personalised streams could provide the basis for premium subscription offers, or for in-event purchases that enhance the viewing experience in a model similar to that seen in video games.

Several rights holders have been exploring the possibility of giving fans the option of buying a section of a game for a reduced, one-off price. The NBA and Turner Sports began trialling their fourth-quarter ‘microtransactions’ scheme back in 2018, letting fans join live streams late on for $0.99. More recently, leagues have looked to combine that approach with mobile notifications, enticing fans to tune in when something exciting is about to unfold.

Buzzer is a startup founded by former Twitter director of live content Bo Han. In early 2021, though still in its beta testing phase, it announced partnerships with the NBA, PGA Tour and NHL to offer free ‘live look-ins’ at events, and alert potential viewers to key passages of play in live action they could access through existing subscriptions or micropayments. Han has said he hopes the mobile app will “complement all industry players, from networks, vMVPDs, MVPDs, RSNs and OTT platforms”.

The biggest short-term opportunity for monetisation in sports streaming, however, comes from betting. In particular, the liberalisation of sports gambling laws in states across the US has set off a mushrooming marketplace. According to the American Gaming Association, wagers on sports events reached a single-month record of $4.36 billion in January 2021.

With media companies managing the transition between traditional rights and subscription models and direct-to-consumer offers, betting revenues offer a useful bridge. The result is that broadcasters have begun integrating live odds and other information for bettors into their coverage.

• Sub-second latency• Uses WebRTC

LIMELIGHT REALTIME STREAMING

LIVE VIDEO

WebRTC Edge

WebRTC Edge

STREAM DISTRIBUTION

ADAPTIVE BITRATERTMP/WebRTC

Ingest

Primary

RTMP/WebRTC Ingest

Secondary

WebRTC

WebRTC

• Standard browser suport - no plug-ins• Globally scalable

• Integrated redundancy & security• Integrated data sharing



NBC Sports has partnered with the PGA Tour and sportsbook partner PointsBet to launch the NBC Sports Edge BetCast, providing specialised streams to subscribers to the premium tier of the Peacock D2C service. The NBA has also created dedicated betting streams for its NBA League Pass viewers. Deeper connections between betting and sports media appear inevitable in the US, with casino operator Bally’s becoming the naming rights partner of regional sports networks (RSNs) owned by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, and DraftKings launching a sports betting channel for the SlingTV streaming platform.

Bookmakers have operated a tranche of the sports OTT market internationally for some time but the scale of the audience is now rising all the time. Any gamification functionality is reliant on high performance and low latency, but these are especially important in the financial and integrity contexts of in-play betting.

Limelight’s global CDN Edge Compute locations can host the applications and data workflows needed to create these experiences, while Realtime Streaming is a platform designed for scale and sub-second delivery, and includes integrated bidirectional data-sharing that enables betting opportunities to be offered to viewers, and for viewers to respond. These can provide the foundation needed to make these products as engaging and reliable as possible.

BUILDING THE DATA PICTUREWith so much of life lived digitally and more and more connected devices in use, the volume of data produced is rising exponentially. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 175 zettabytes of data – a zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes – will have been produced by 2025. That is ten times the amount produced by 2017.

That quantity of information can help every business make better decisions, supporting service providers in sport in judging rights acquisitions, original programming investments, content production and UX personalisation. Yet the availability of that data is not transformative in itself.

‘Closing the Data Value Gap’, a 2019 paper by Accenture, cited research from Forrester that showed between 60 per cent and 73 per cent of all data within a business is not processed for analytics. Accenture’s own survey of 190 American executives went further, finding that only 32 per cent of companies reported being able to extract tangible and measurable value from data. Just 27 per cent found that data and analytics projects produced ‘highly actionable’ insights and recommendations.

There are two points to take from this. One is that improving capacity for data management is vital. Systems empowered by AI and machine learning are improving companies’ ability to sort data and find new, unexpected connections and insights.

The other lesson is that the quality of the data coming in is also invaluable, and it is here that well-structured broadcast experiences can play a key role. Forrester has identified the advent of ‘zero party data’, whereby consumers provide their data in return for additional value like special offers and discounts, as an important force in marketing. That data can then also be used to improve the customer relationship.

Source: Sportradar

72 per cent of fans believe a personalised experience is ‘important’



This fits an observable trend in sports broadcasting. According to Sportradar, 72 per cent of fans believe a personalised experience is ‘important’. Properly sourced, well-segmented data, which can be delivered by offering sports viewers a range of interactive options when they engage with content, can help inform the design of those experiences. That can drive a virtuous cycle, refining touchpoints to deliver better data and better services.

It is important for rights holders and broadcasters to be able to master data from every source. Off-platform content and social video, like highlights and original programming, are an important part of many sales funnels and the popularity of sport on third-party channels is growing. In the Q4 2020 edition of its State of Streaming report, Conviva found that sports accounts enjoyed the biggest year-on-year growth on YouTube, up 5.4 per cent on the fourth quarter of 2019.

Taken together, this data creates attendant benefits not just for the broadcast product, but for partners. That can be in the delivery of more relevant advertising, which will improve user sentiment as well as return on investment for brands, as well as the direct integration of retail and other services.

US streaming platform FuboTV – a ‘sports-first cable TV replacement service’ whose revenues rose 83 per cent year-on-year to US$268.8 million in 2020, with subscriber numbers increasing by 73 per cent to 547,880 and total content time streamed up 82 per cent to 544.9 million hours – is examining these kinds of opportunities. Speaking at the SportsPro OTT Summit USA in March, founder and chief executive David Gandler said the company believed ecommerce to be a “really compelling” option.

“You can sell jerseys and uniforms,” he said. “You’re watching a football game, why not just press a button and get DoorDash to deliver wings to your house for your party?”

The curation of richer, better understood datasets will make it easier to identify and serve the fans who want those elements most.

• Transcoding of live streams to multiple bitrates for adaptive bitrate delivery

• Automatic transmuxing on the fly to popular streaming formats

• Deliver the highest picture quality to each viewer that their connection bandwidth and devices support

• Video Analytics provide insight into audience behaviour

LIVE VIDEO PACKAGING AND DISTRIBUTION

LIVE VIDEO

Single or Multiple Bitrate RTMP Input

ENCODER

TRANSCODING TRANSMUXING HLS HDS MSSMPEG-DASH

CC

LIVE TO VoD



RISING TO THE COVID-19 CHALLENGEThe Covid-19 pandemic has radically transformed the way sport has been seen in the past year. With fans forced to watch at home instead of in venues or shared spaces like bars, broadcasters had to rethink their on-screen product without crowds. That prompted a change in expectations, as well as greater demand for the type of engagement available in other forms of digital media.

Some of those adaptations will recede as public health measures are eased but there are a wealth of key trends that have been accelerated by the pandemic.

In many markets, 2020 was the year in which a growing preference for choosing content streams over linear channels became more pronounced. For live sport in the US, a decline in traditional viewership numbers was offset in many cases by a rise in digital consumption.

The figures around the NFL’s Super Bowl in February are a case in point. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs drew 96.4 million total viewers across all platforms for US broadcaster CBS, the game’s lowest domestic audience since 2007. However, the streaming audience reached a record high for the league of 5.7 million viewers per minute, with over a billion minutes streamed in total.

Just as forced separation encouraged the adoption of video-calling services such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, it also accelerated the rollout of shared viewing products. In the UK, BT Sport launched a Watch Together integration for its mobile app, allowing up to four people to view a live stream and chat simultaneously. That followed the launch of a similar service across Europe by Eleven Sports in 2018.



Sky Sports introduced Fan Zone, which combined video calling with a range of in-game updates and statistics. In the US, the NBA, Turner and LiveLike collaborated on a ‘watch party’ shared viewing feature for post-season games.

These offerings may be in their infancy but the huge popularity among gaming audiences of shared streaming sites like Twitch suggests that social viewing will be part of the future of live sport. Again, its progress will depend on getting the right infrastructure in place.

Building innovations like this into a broadcast demands services that make use of WebRTC. Limelight’s Realtime Streaming service incorporates the use of shared data objects that can be used to create interactivity between viewers, enabled at scale to maintain a reliable, responsive experience.

Source: Conviva State of Streaming Q4 2020

Super Bowl LV secured a record domestic digital audience of 5.7 million viewers per minute with over one billion minutes streamed in total

CONCLUSIONComing out of the Covid-19 crisis, live sport will continue its digital journey and the signs elsewhere are that streaming will get closer to becoming the default option for many viewers.

The Conviva State of Streaming report for Q4 of 2020 found a 44 per cent annual growth in global viewing time on streams across all media. That included a 24 per cent year-on-year rise in Asia, a 27 per cent increase in North America, 69 per cent in Oceania, 122 per cent in Europe, 224 per cent in Africa and 257 per cent in South America.

Where access to streams is driving adoption in some territories, more mature markets are seeing marked changes in device usage. Connected TV devices like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Chromecast accounted for more than 50 per cent of viewing time on TV screens in the quarter, but viewership on smart TVs leapt 157 per cent.

The upshot is that more and more viewers are watching digital streams on the best available screen, blurring the lines between where they would expect to find data-rich interactive content and high-impact presentation. That will have particular implications for sports broadcasters.

Meanwhile, the last year has also seen a considerable rise in the uptake of subscription streaming services. According to a report by MPP Global, 31 per cent of consumer households in the US were subscribing to four or more OTT services in March 2021. Yet while the churn rate for OTT services had reached a two-year low, with an average of 38 per cent, over 80 per cent of providers were concerned about increased churn when more entertainment options return and economic conditions bite after the pandemic. These organisations are planning to invest in subscriber acquisition and retention strategies to protect and extend their share of wallet.



To some degree, that response will come through financial incentives, with many consumers highlighting the possibility of pausing subscriptions as attractive. Exclusive content will also be crucial.

Nonetheless, as live and on-demand sport faces increased competition for attention from every part of the entertainment sphere, engaging, personalised experiences that sustain more diverse revenue streams are vital.

The possibilities that lie ahead are extraordinary. Technologies that already exist today, from AR to interactive features and multi-feed selection, have only just begun to show what they can add and how they can drive personalised engagement and excitement. There is so much more to come.

It will be essential to have the right tools in place to win over and keep fans engaged with your digital experiences.

Source: Conviva State of Streaming Q4 2020

Global viewing time on streams grew 44 per cent annually to the end of 2020

[email protected] | limelight.com | EXPERIENCE FIRST

©2021 Limelight Networks, Inc. (“Limelight”). All rights reserved. Limelight Networks and the Limelight Networks logo are registered trademarks of Limelight Networks, Inc. All services are subject to change or discontinuance without notice. All other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.

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MAKING THE PERSONAL POSSIBLE - SportsPro Media · 2021. 5. 21. · In the traditional media setting, fans were offered a product that was always one-size-fits-all, even when it was