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The Race for Personalization in Sport Streaming

The Race for Personalization in Sport Streaming

The Race for Personalization in Sport Streaming

As more and more companies begin rolling out over-the-top services for consumers, many users are cord-cutting and make the switch to streaming services. These services offer various perks and the most beneficial of them is personalization which has come to stay. Streaming services are currently giving cable TV providers a run for their money and this isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Netflix, the movie streaming service, introduced its streaming operations in 2007 and premiered its first in-house show, “House of Cards” in 2013. Since then, Netflix has gained more popularity with several blockbuster productions.

The Race for Personalization

The prevalence of the internet actually laid the groundwork for most of these streaming services to thrive and many companies are consistently rolling out services peculiar to specific niches. While that of music and videos has seemed more successful and diverse, sport streaming services are still shortly behind in the race for personalization.

This is a time where models for content distribution are often being changed to meet consumer demands. These demands for flexibility and personalization have to be met with new monetization models and technological changes.

Where Technology meets Sports

In Nielsen’s research, 80% of the most broadcasted programs on TV were related to sports and this should come as no surprise given the passion and drive people to have for sports. While many sport lovers are already harnessing streaming services to enjoy their favorites games, cable TV providers rely mostly on fans to catch the action via their paid subscription.

Significant opportunities abound for service providers as streaming services in sports would require the confluence of technology, streaming and sports itself to adapt to the changing landscape that abounds in TV viewership. It might seem like the reason why streaming services for sports aren’t as pronounced as those for movies is because of the insufficient coverage.

To back up this claim, a research carried out by Verizon Media stated that 63% of fans affirmed that they would consider subscribing to a paid sports streaming service provided it availed them the opportunity of watching just about any game, interview or event pertaining to their favorite sports team or league.

If there is one thing to be learnt from the successful streaming services, it is that personalization and multiscreen feature is key. Easy as it might seem, new companies trying to deliver sport streaming services face several challenges – especially financially. This is as a result of the huge amounts spent on purchasing rights to show games. Everyone in the sport streaming space is currently striving to be the “Netflix of sports”.

Meeting Consumer Demands

Every business faces challenges and the ones rather peculiar to sport streaming services are picture quality, latency and buffering. Seamless user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are two key features that must not be left out in application design. UI/UX designs in applications help give users a positive experience and eventually keeps them loyal to the service.

This shift in paradigm to digital platforms has led programmers to begin to study user feedback so that they can tailor applications to meet the demands of consumers and keep their engagement time on a high.

As much as sports games can be enjoyed worldwide, some sport streaming services have decided to restrict content to some locations – mostly because of permission and rights issues to air sports games in some countries.

For users in such countries where some services are restricted, downloading a VPN and getting an IP address of a country where such service is permitted simply solves this challenge. However, the user will most likely still be required to pay a certain subscription fee so they can have access to the services rendered by the streaming company.

Many live streaming services provide applications that are available across several platforms and this is good for more viewership. However, meeting the demand for personalization such as a subscription to a single league or sports team will ultimately take the users of any streaming application to a staggering high.

Related: 49ers’ John Lynch Makes Surprising Tom Brady Admission

Anthony Amador

A graduate from the University of Texas, Anthony Amador has been credentialed to cover the Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and high school games all over the Lone Star State. Currently, his primary beats are the NBA, MLB, NFL and UFC.

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