Sports streaming is no longer just an accessibility issue. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
Less than a year ago, SportTechie covered a study showing how sports fans were clinging onto cable to consume live events. With streaming services flooding the market since then, those fans’ demands appear to have shifted from accessibility to quality.
In December, professional services firm PwC issued results from a survey showing that 82 percent of pay-TV subscribers were willing to trim or cut cable packages if they no longer needed them to access live games. Now, in a survey released Tuesday by streaming technology provider Limelight Networks, fans demanded that streams occur without a delay compared to the traditional broadcast, which can be as long as 30 seconds. Since many fans now simultaneously consume live events alongside second-screen experiences, such as viewing highlights or shows live on Twitter, the speed of the stream matters because it ensures the live stream isn’t beaten by spoilers from broadcast.
In Limelight’s survey of 5,000 people, conducted globally from consumers in France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, the U.K., and the U.S. during the first two weeks of August, 59.5 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to watch live sports online if the stream wasn’t delayed. The numbers were markedly higher in India, South Korea, and the Philippines and lowest in more developed countries, such as Japan, the U.K., Germany, and the U.S.
The demand for quality was much higher among younger generations, with more than 65 percent of people between the ages of 26 and 45 saying they would stream more sports online if they were not delayed from the broadcast. Those results were also slightly higher among male fans, with nearly 66 percent of men saying they’d watch streaming if the delay were minimized, versus 53 percent for women.
SportTechie Takeaway
In its report last year, PwC said live sports had kept people tethered to the cable cord but questioned how long that trend would last. Since then, a number of services have hit the market that have addressed the accessibility problem. The NFL announced a multi-year deal with Verizon to expand its coverage to smartphones and re-signed Amazon as its streaming partner for Thursday Night Football. ESPN+ launched its premium streaming service and recently announced that it had surpassed 1 million paid subscribers just five months into launch. CBS launched a free app, Turner launched B/R Live and Hulu expanded its sports content. Now fans seem to have have moved onto new demands: that streams aren’t interrupted and that there’s no latency or delay.
