Why the Gap Between the Game and Your Screen Is a Business Problem

That gap between reality and your screen is latency, and it has become one of the most commercially consequential technical problems in the live sports industry. With American sports betting exploding in scale and prediction markets rewriting the rules of fan engagement, the stakes around streaming delay have jumped from a quality-of-experience nuisance to a structural business problem that touches broadcasters, technology companies, regulators, and sportsbooks alike.

Why Most Live Streams Won't Exist in 30 Days

The streaming industry generated roughly $78 billion in 2025 and around $100 billion in 2024, depending on whose methodology you trust. Nearly 29% of internet users worldwide tune into live streams every week. Viewers collectively watched 29.6 billion hours of live content in a single quarter last year. By every meaningful measure, live streaming has become one of the most significant content formats on the internet. And most of it will be gone within a month.

Operational Discipline in Streaming is Now Non-Negotiable

Cost control is a major priority for streaming services today. Video providers need smarter architectures that enable resources to be optimized, unnecessary costs prevented, alongside better use of data, and effective financial practices that enable cloud spend to be kept under control. Ultimately, video providers need to implement the strictest operational discipline across every aspect of their service.

Planning Beyond the C-band Auction: How IP Distribution Is Shaping What Comes Next

Under new legislation, the FCC is required to auction at least 100 MHz of additional Upper C-band spectrum beyond the reallocation that took place in 2021. To tackle this challenge, forward-looking broadcasters, networks, and rights holders are turning to managed IP solutions with performance and reliability Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees as the primary path forward. These regulatory shifts aren't introducing a new direction but are accelerating decisions that are already reshaping the industry. Broadcasters are moving away from fixed satellite capacity and adopting scalable, IP-based networks that offer full reach, strong guarantees, greater flexibility, better performance, and long-term value.

Designing the Shift to Software-Based Media Production

The broadcast industry is undergoing one of its most profound transitions in decades as media production moves away from hardware-dependent infrastructure toward software-based environments that are more flexible by design. While this evolution has been building for some time, it is now being addressed at an architectural level, with the industry recognizing that incremental change is no longer sufficient to support modern production requirements.

How Advertisers Can Approach an Epic Sports Year

The Super Bowl has evolved so that viewers can now tune in to NBC's linear channel, as well as stream it via Peacock, Fubo, Hulu+Live TV, YouTube TV, and NFL+. One channel that is conspicuously absent from there is traditional YouTube, but that doesn't mean that it will be without Super Bowl content. Rather the opposite - YouTube will be at the center of the Super Bowl viewership, regardless of broadcast rights. What's more, this will be a precursor to an epic sports year for advertisers - one where YouTube will be more central than they may understand.

Streaming, Hybrid Delivery, and the Reinvention of Broadcast Infrastructure

Today's audiences expect flexibility, immediate access, and personalized experiences. They move fluidly between devices and platforms, and they are less concerned with how content reaches them than with how easily it fits into their daily routines. For broadcasters and content providers, this creates both an opportunity and a significant challenge. The industry must transition from rigid, tower-based workflows to agile, IP-native systems that accommodate evolving behaviors without compromising reliability or quality.

Scoring Big: Winning Over a Distracted and Fragmented Fandom

Today, fandom isn't found exclusively in front of a television. It's a moving target that flows from the broadcast to creator highlights, and from betting apps to the stadium. The days of securing reach through a single broadcast buy are gone. Capturing modern fandom now requires a strategy built for fragmentation, velocity, and constant switching.

Agentic AI: A New Path to Efficiency and ROI

By this time next year, agentic AI will sit inside everyday operations no longer as an experiment, but as part of the connected backbone that powers how content is created, managed, and delivered. The question has shifted from if to how, and specifically, how to make it usable across the whole business.

The Post-Holiday Subscription Reset—Are Streaming Services Built for Retention?

For streaming services, bundling is increasingly a retention tool designed to carry subscribers through the post-holiday rethink, when perceived value matters more than promotional hype. 

How the Super Bowl Ad Playbook Will Change in 2026

As we look toward 2026, the takeaway is not that Super Bowl advertising is getting bigger. It is getting more digital, more flexible, and more strategic. The next phase of growth won't come from adding more ads, but from rethinking how monetization shows up inside the live sports experience. Here are three predictions shaping what comes next.

Win Local, Grow Digital: How Stations Can Shape a New Sports Streaming Model

A new model has emerged in which a local station's linear signal is only one part of a wider distribution strategy. Groups are beginning to treat sports rights as multi-platform assets, preparing versions for direct-to-consumer (D2C) apps, FAST channels, and streaming bundles.

How Global Ingest Is Redefining Cost Control and Agility for Modern Media Operations

Reimagining ingest: Cut costs without cutting corners by treating ingest as a strategic, metadata-driven platform.

Built to Scale? Why Live Sports Need Multicast ABR and a Video-Specialized CDN

Live streaming is rapidly emerging as the primary destination for major sports events, but not without significant challenges. For sports streamers, three imperatives are emerging as critical priorities: scale more efficiently, reduce operational and environmental costs, and secure content against piracy. All while giving fans the high-quality experiences they demand from investing in multiple premium subscriptions.

No Second Chances: Why Streaming Providers Should Embrace a Unified Observability Approach to Avoid Costly Site Failures

When millions tune in for live events, just seconds of downtime can have irreversible costs. Here's how providers can build resilience into their tech stack.

The Six Big Advertising Trends that Will Shape Live Streaming in 2026

Millions of people are abandoning linear for streaming, with live sports causing the biggest shift of all. As audiences embrace streaming, advertisers follow. Here are the six major trends that will define this new phase of streaming.

How Sports Betting Apps Are Gamifying the TV Sports Viewing Experience

Sports apps are having a ripple effect across connected TV. Features like interactive stats and polls are blurring the line between content and participation. Broadcasters and streamers are racing to keep up, building experiences that reward every tap, scroll, and cheer with data-driven connections. You could call it the FanDuel effect; I think of it as the gamification of live sports.

How L-Band Advertising is Unlocking Non-Intrusive Monetization in Streaming

Consumers are willing to tolerate ads in exchange for lower subscription fees, but they expect those ads to be relevant, less frequent, and non-disruptive. By leveraging screen real estate in a subtle yet effective way, L-band ads offer a compelling solution for service providers seeking to balance monetization with viewer satisfaction.

Media Companies Show Signs of Technical Progress

After mostly "kicking AI tires" over the last 18 months, media executives are ready to commit and are looking for solutions that can help them find efficiencies, reduce manual work and automate some of the more labor-intensive processes that are causing a drag on their operation. The pivot towards realistic technological advancements signals that media companies are serious about adapting to the new reality of streaming, AI, and automation.

The Next Generation of Sports Fans Isn’t Where You Think They Are

Live sports remain one of the biggest draws in TV advertising as both TV and the sports fan evolve. We've reached a point where the next generation of sports fans may not even align with the image of the traditional cord cutter or streaming viewer when it comes to engaging with their teams. In fact, they may not even watch the games in full. These passionate fans are engaging with the content and conversation that happens around sports, and this shifting dynamic means advertisers need new strategies for reaching this audience.