The media and entertainment industry has faced many macroeconomic challenges in 2023. Squeezed budgets among media companies and consumer demand for more affordable access to high-quality content means content owners have had to focus on maximizing ROI on their investments while diversifying their offerings to capture wider audiences. Event sports organizations that have sold the live rights to TV are now seeking the ability to create and share their own videos.
Today, all sports organizations, regardless of size, have access to the technology needed to create and share sports content. This is increasing competition, driving competition on price, and a need to complete new features functionality, and revenue streams. We’ve seen a renewed focus on driving greater efficiency and real business outcomes as streaming services look to bring new services to market quickly while managing shrinking resources. Here are several key takeaways that media companies around the world are considering as we approach 2024.
Experimenting with evolving business models
The drive to mission-critical profitability means that media companies need to experiment with new business models and multiple cost points across SVOD, AVOD, and FAST, to best serve and grow their audiences. More and more content providers are pursuing hybrid revenue strategies to align with shifting consumer demands. Audiences are embracing ad-supported viewing to save costs while enjoying
high-quality, lean-back viewing experiences. As major streaming players attract and retain viewers by providing easy and affordable access to lean-back content, the need for advanced advertising solutions to maximize the monetization of every stream has never been more important.
Experimentation is front and center in the sports market as rights holders, sports organizations, and broadcasters look for the most profitable distribution strategies to fit their evolving business needs. The streaming landscape is more fragmented than ever. Sports fans now need multiple subscriptions to watch all their favorite teams’ games, increasing costs and complexity for consumers. Major content owners and sports streamers are navigating multiple viewing models and cost points while growing their direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategies to drive revenue streams and build closer relationships with fans.
Harnessing the direct-to-consumer opportunity
There’s more opportunity than ever before for sports organizations of various sizes to scale their streaming strategies and reach new platforms, experimenting with multiple distribution paths and building their D2C offerings to maximize audience engagement. Brands like the
Canadian Hockey League have partnered with Edgio to stream thousands of live events per year, enabling them to scale their in-house resources with best-in-breed streaming workflows and our dedicated professional services teams.
It doesn’t make business sense for some sports organizations to build and manage the infrastructure required to deliver a modern live sports streaming workflow. Complex technology integrations take time and cost a lot of money — in a competitive environment where agility is everything, sports organizations need to focus on time to market and audience strategy. Leaving the technology headaches to proven experts with trusted technology is quickly becoming a winning formula.
Tackling economic realities with a flexible, scalable approach
Let’s face it – the ability to quickly assemble and manage a streaming ecosystem that delivers high-quality linear, live, or on-demand video while reducing costs and increasing efficiencies is incredibly complex. This year we’ve seen a growing shift towards the managed services model as companies embrace technology partnerships to help them get to market quickly while harnessing economies of scale. Edgio’s newly announced
partner ecosystem is helping media companies build best-in-breed streaming workflows while sidestepping complex and time-consuming technology integrations. Pre-integrated partnerships with leading solution providers mean Edgio’s customers can design complete streaming ecosystems to fit their changing business requirements — and support any content distribution model.
From a technology perspective, organizations are questioning whether it makes sense to invest in developing new tech in-house or whether they can achieve more flexibility and streamline their costs by partnering with a managed service provider. Increasingly, they’re opting for the more agile managed services model to scale their teams and source best-in-class tech across every element of a streaming workflow. Looking into 2024, major media organizations are focusing on driving real commercial outcomes with logical business decisions — re-thinking their technology investment strategies to manage costs, reduce operational pressures, and improve time to market.
Uplynk provides a simplified and scalable workflow to power your streaming business
We offer a trusted, flexible solution that reduces complexity and helps media companies bring services to market quickly and cost-efficiently – empowering brands to focus on their business differentiators, audience growth, and content strategies. The
Uplynk platform provides the key foundation to stream the highest quality linear, live, and on-demand video experiences to any global viewer while harnessing any monetization strategy and scaling with minimal resources. Uplynk has handled hundreds of thousands of live events, and in 2022 alone, the platform helped power 2.4 billion event views, 3.3 billion hours of streamed video, and 220 million hours of advertising.
Contact us today to learn more.
GigaOM Radar Edge Platform Leader & Outperformer 2024 | 
