Sports media houses are turning towards a new revenue stream to make their TV business even more lucrative in today’s world. Media houses are pouring in more resources into direct-to-consumer streaming services nowadays. The experience for the customers is optimized and even personalized to keep them hooked. Even the viewers are enjoying the extra attention and continuously enjoying the DTC experience. Companies like Disney and ESPN have made direct-to-consumer their new growth strategy as well. Other media houses are joining the bandwagon as well adding live streaming on their platform to engage more viewers. Some companies even have the resources to lead the innovation chapter when it comes to OTT.
From the regional aspect, the US is still running behind Asia when we discuss about innovative streaming engagement strategies and the region can learn a lot from others’ successful strides in the industry.
With this blog, we plan to educate you on the ways in which digital sports media firms can increase viewers and improve viewing minutes as well on their platform.
First and foremost, let's discuss the isolation of digital channels.
When we consider the current customer behavior, research has indicated that mobile users’ time spent on the apps is ever-increasing and when we dive a little deeper into that we see that 84% of the users spend their time on select five apps, of those limited screen time, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Snap chat already enjoying a lot of attention. Mobile users are drowning in apps with over 3.48 million apps on Google Play and 2.22 million on Apple’s App Store. It isn't surprising that users are giving their screen time to select five apps.
The fight to be amongst the five apps- While dealing with such severe competition for screen time it is absolutely prudent that your apps need to be aggregated into one app that offers multiple functionalities to the users, why have different apps such as NFL Mobile and NFL Watch Network and then even have an app just for fantasy football- NFL Fantasy? What are you going to achieve by having 9 different apps?
Technological advancements, with UX now more popular than ever, the idea is to give first priority to the customer’s experience. There should not be any friction in the message within or even between applications, websites, and other UIs. Many organizations are using data to optimize user experience with whole departments now set up for the purpose. Thus, what companies need to aim for is unifying the apps and creating a seamless digital presence across the channel. Users would be able to engage with their social media platforms easily, and not lose viewers to Twitter, or Instagram.
Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube are even hoping to get the rights to broadcast live sports events and keep the viewers on their platforms. While at first, it seemed like a foreign concept as it seemed like they wanted to enter the sports world but then now their action looks completely planned and methodological. While there were many failed attempts by these companies but they were simply creating the first data sets to observe the viewing patterns of sports fans. Their failure on a smaller scale would pave the way to streamlining the platform to offer more intuitive and compelling experiences to the viewers. Sports media firms need to recognize this as a threat it is and plan their move accordingly.
Further one thing to be noted down is that user attention is limited and would always be so in this highly competitive market, media houses would need to get the most of the short attention and offer quality content to keep users engaged. There is one solution sports media houses do have at their hands, interacting with the users live, direct-to-consumer live sports gives organizations a chance to interact live as well and create more engagement opportunities. One can explore Real-time chats, which would increase communication and add value to the user's experience. There are multiple ways to keep your viewers engaged on the platform, polls, questions, answers even money-less wagers.
All this is made possible with rich-quality sports data that can transform the way live streaming is consumed by the audience with one-way communication. But innovative personalized ways can be created with sports data and here is where Data Sports Group has excelled at, the sports data provider has an extensive portfolio of over 70 sports with complete and detailed stats from pre-match, live sports data feed to post-match analysis which is exactly what the Sports media houses need to build their rapport and have a loyal following.
