The future of streaming sports and user experience

Balancing innovation and tradition: The influence of streaming on the sports experience

Major League Baseball’s postseason is in full swing and the nine Wild Card games are seeing a 25% increase in viewership since 2023. America’s Pastime fans have more ways than ever to watch the action, from traditional broadcasts on ESPN, FS1 and TBS to streaming platforms like MLB TV, Fubo and YouTube. These and other direct-to-consumer options are displacing linear TV viewers for major U.S. sports, often at the expense of regional sports networks. PWC estimates that 90 million people will stream at least one game per month by 2025. But for fans with big appetites, ordering the all-you-can-eat à la carte buffet can cost over $1,000 a year. Even die-hard gamers have price points, and with streaming platforms we may be nearing the upper limit. To justify higher fees, media companies need to think about improving the user experience, not just because it’s the right thing to do to keep users happy, but also because of the opportunities it creates.

Sign fatigue

For over a decade, live sports remained the last hurdle keeping Americans from cutting the cable television cord. But as streaming services from Amazon to Peacock outsell legacy channels, sports fans, especially older ones, are forced to subscribe to apps and plans that result in problematic viewing experiences while also having to pay sky-high cable bills. Chief among them is login fatigue, the phenomenon that reduces immersion when switching between services that require different usernames and passwords, as well as two-step verifications that overall take longer than the actual commercial breaks. The phenomenon is not only anti-user, but also a reminder of the lure that streaming services have on customers. Remember, the original value proposition of subscription models like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video was that audiences could avoid advertising by paying a fee. While younger, cost-conscious consumers may tolerate advertising, Generation X and older Millennials are used to being able to avoid them by switching channels on traditional sports broadcasts. Streaming platforms like Apple TV+ and YouTube lock viewers into an ecosystem from which they cannot surf as quickly. This is particularly annoying when multiple games are running at the same time, forcing fans to miss out on action when switching between different platforms. Many simply remain seated – the learned helplessness of “platform captivity”. Such captive audiences create value for advertisers and increase revenue for streamers at the expense of viewers who find they have to pay more and more subscriptions for a worse sports experience. Dependence on the platform increases hostility to advertising, but it also offers an opportunity. Research shows that viewer hostility decreases when ads are immersive and additive. Customized promotions related to the sporting event that integrate users’ social media, location and interests can turn a captive audience into an even more captive audience.

Latency delay

The power of sport lies in its liveliness and communal immersion. Latency lag undermines both. Thankfully, spinning pinwheels and frozen screens are becoming increasingly rare, but the varying speeds of streaming platforms are creating a new problem for fans trying to share the viewing experience from afar – the social spoiler. Imagine you were in a group chat like you were last weekend, watching the Phillies-Mets NLDS with friends. With two ons and one out, your team needs a double play to get out of the inning. As the pitcher is being set up, your phone starts to explode: “Bang bang”; “Philthy…” You know the good news before it appears “live” on your screen. The solution, as a friend pointed out, is to mute chats during playback, but that requires even more work that breaks the immersion in a shared viewing experience. While such social spoilers may sound like the cost of doing business for streaming platforms that are in direct competition with one another, there’s a more tangible benefit for media companies figuring out how to get us all on the same page. As Andrew Billings, director of the University of Alabama’s sports communications program, recently wrote: “The Pursuit of Zero Latency.” [is] Much more of a mandate than a desire, especially in the sports and gaming space, where people try to respond to the same content in the same way and with the same success, regardless of demand.” Streaming sports platforms that cannot achieve latency , will be able to integrate fantasy and betting applications into user interfaces, potentially creating a better and more lucrative user experience.

Getting too personal?

These streaming advances offer the opportunity to create an increasingly inclusive, personalized sports ecosystem. But it is not without existential risk. In an age of atomized media and increasingly fragmented interests, sport remains one of the few communal activities that regularly brings large audiences together. While the nichification of streaming, social media, betting and fantasy sports has enormous potential, hyper-individualization can also threaten the shared camaraderie of watching the same event together in the imagined fandom community. Sure, fantasy allows anyone to be a championship general manager, and betting allows anyone to be a keen prognosticator, and artificial intelligence allows anyone to be a skilled analyst, but we should think about whether such advances benefit us a Bowling Alone 3.0 scenario: Will we continue to be fans of teams or just fans of ourselves? The future of sports broadcasting will require streaming platforms that balance user engagement and real-time immersion while preserving the collective experience that has made sports such a valuable cultural asset.