Is Streaming The Future of Live Sport?

Most sports viewers have become customary to tuning into a live broadcast of their favorite teams on various TV channels which have been able to offload a monumental sum of money to afford the rights to provide coverage for each of the world’s biggest and most popular leagues.

However, there has since been an upsurge in the number of live streaming channels and sites in recent years that has allowed more fans to partake in watching their preferable sports coverage rather than the allocated scheduled time slots that are available on TV.

Some sporting leagues, particularly in the US, have begun offering their own streaming services to fans as well as allowing the regularly scheduled broadcasts to appear on live TV for a select few games and certain teams (preferably franchises who are major contenders or operate out of the bigger US sports markets to help appease their target demographic).

With streaming sites now being morphing into a monumental role in all future sporting broadcasts, are these sites truly capable of paving the way for all future mainstream sports events for years to come?

The benefits that streaming platforms can provide:

As stated above, mainstream TV channels such as TNT, ESPN or FOX may still own the rights to various leagues and a specified number of games which are usually those that are vastly popular among fans for their market viability and overall quality of a teams roster, which thus makes for great viewing for neutral spectators.

Fans will often want to tune into a game that features two major teams fighting for a place in the postseason playoffs or two big market teams rather than teams that are falling out of contention and more than likely moving into a full scale rebuild.

These teams that are in a rebuild phase or even ‘tanking’ to earn higher Draft odds will not draw in major audiences due to their often lackluster on-court product that certainly does not appease mainstream neutral fans across the country.

Streaming sites give these teams a platform to exploit their teams’ hidden talents within their rosters and allows coverage to their selected group of fans which may wish to watch their favorite team in action rather than the usual TV broadcast of two sides that they may not be fully invested in.

These streaming services can be broadcasted from a wide range of sites that allows more international audiences to engage in the latest broadcasts rather than being unaware of whether a sport will be broadcasted on their TV schedule.

Some sportsbooks now offer the opportunity to stream live events, meaning that occasionally users can check out the latest online NBA betting odds while watching the game itself through the app or via the site. Sportsbooks will often require a stake to be placed on the event in order for the user to gain access to the stream.

The implications raised with online sports streaming:

Many sports fans may not be able to get the best use of sports streaming mainly in part to their bandwidth and broadband connection while at home, meaning those that have a weaker internet connection may not be able to access the full range of convenient streaming services without numerous buffering issues that could cause the site to refresh numerous times.

This can obviously be very frustrating to any users and could see them miss a large part of the contest they are interested in viewing as TV broadcasts do not always require a stable internet connection for most viewings of mainstream sporting events.

Another issue that could be raised is the overall quality of the stream and whether the picture makes for good viewing and is of an acceptable quality, most viewers may also suffer from a noticeable delay in the broadcast and as such could be notified from other sources surrounding a recent on going without having witnessed it themselves.

An example could a person being notified by an application that a team has scored a goal in soccer, but they have yet to catchup to this on their stream viewing, which can take away all the thrill of watching the game when they witness the goal.

Should sports leagues and providers aim to switch to wider streaming services, it could see an influx in numerous salary caps from different leagues due to their ties with TV deal broadcasts, which could completely change the overall system of the major leagues that feature such a cap system, as many teams could struggle to uphold their rosters.

Streaming sites are becoming much more frequent in the modern age of mediational communication and are sure to be a hot commodity for the future of sports broadcasting.

 

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