How to: personalise viewing experiences in sport's new hybrid era
A 4-step guide to updating the sport watching experience for the post-pandemic era
1) Recognise that audience expectations have changed
Consider what consumers were offered in their homes during the pandemic:
- More audio and video options
- Deeper athlete access
- Broader content access
- Watch together options
The pandemic struck, the lockdowns started, and sport stopped. At least for a little while. Media and marketing departments scrambled to fill the content gap, getting creative in the use of archive content, bespoke commentaries, and athlete access; resource was funnelled into digital innovation projects, accelerating the trends and developments that were already underway; new video messaging platforms and ‘watch together’ technology was fast-tracked. Then sport returned, hermetically sealed in empty venues – and with new camera angles and new audio options to compensate for the eerie atmosphere. Rights deals were modified so that fans – stuck at home – had access to everything. The Premier League, for example, changed kick-off times and made every game available in its domestic market for the first time, divvying them out among its broadcast partners. LaLiga made use of the extra space in stadiums to experiment with new camera positions to deliver an immersive experience, Fox Sports went big on its drone usage for Nascar, and the Masters introduced arguably the best app for total coverage in any live sport environment.
Source: MediaPro
Earlier this year, LaLiga and MEDIAPRO worked together to develop new audiovisual technologies to bring viewers closer to the match action inside the stadium.
Following the hiatus to the 2019/2020 Premier League season, Sky Sports introduced 'Fan Zone' to allow spectators to watch selected matches with friends in a video room, along with 'Sky Sports Crowds' - a feature which replicated live match action with real fan noise; the latter receiving a Leaders Sports Award.
2) Recognise that people will have less time, less money, and less tolerance to spend on subscriptions
Consider:
- The experience economy is poised to rebound
- Disposable income priorities will shift accordingly
As lockdowns end and the bricks and mortar consumer economy sputters back into life, and into people's lives, spending priorities are shifting. In major sports markets in the opening stages of welcoming fans back to venues, research is conclusive: fans are keen to return. In the UK, 97% of sports fans intend to return to live events. In the US, the momentum is equally strong, but this survey indicates some interesting caveats: the return to live sport will have to be contingent not only on new safety and security measures, but on the widescale introduction of digital fan experiences that would aid social distancing.
Consumer spending – a return to ‘normal’ purchasing patterns in retail and on live experiences – is expected this year. This may well mean pressure to cut entertainment spending elsewhere. Streaming services – likely to be used less than last year – could be in the firing line. But streaming ‘experiences’ may well be expected in situations they might not have been before, with digital fan engagement methods that encourage interactivity - such as gamification - likely to proliferate.
97% of sports fans intend to return to live events in the UK according to UK Sport's Return to Major Sports Events survey
“The incentives that drove the interactive use cases we became familiar with throughout the pandemic will remain for different reasons than not being allowed in a stadium,” explains Verizon Media’s Head of Video Product Management Darren Lepke. “At home, watch parties, in-app trivia, and choose your viewpoint became new ways to engage with the content and experience the event. That will remain. At the same time, it's critical that the sports leagues get people back in seats. All leagues and teams would like to bring back the ticket and concessions revenue they lost throughout Covid. Interactive in-stadium experiences will incentivise this action.”
3) Embrace 5G to bring second screen experiences to the venue
Consider:
- Bespoke broadcast options for fans in stadiums
- In-seat merchandising and F&B opportunities
- Gamification, social and any other real-time usage of a personal device in a stadium
Reliable connectivity is the fundamental enabler of digital experiences within venues. If it’s not there, it’s not happening. Recent research in the Bundesliga indicates that an average crowd of 43,000 people consumes 500GB of data. A concerted effort is well underway. As of October 2020, 43 major stadiums and arenas across the US had access to Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband Network. By the end of this year, the company has committed to providing its fastest 5G service to 28 NFL stadiums. And there’s a reason to get excited about that. Some of the most exciting developments for both in-venue games and live-at-home viewing are made possible with the advancement of 5G,” explains Verizon Media’s Lepke.
“For instance, in-stadium fans can project AR overlays of player stats on their smartphones or choose from a handful of camera angles or even watch virtually live with a group of friends,” he explains. “It's exciting to see how the throughput and reduced latency from 5G, even in a crowded stadium, can help personalise each fan's viewing experience. Gamification of content is also on the rise, with polling, predictions, and trivia enabled by social media integrations and digital content overlays to drive engagement. This, along with in-play betting integrations, increases monetization windows, all of which are enabled by advanced real-time streaming capabilities.”
AR overlays for ‘second screeners’ within the stadium itself will begin to become more common. The Bundesliga, for example, intends to roll out AR overlays to bring to life data-driven insights such as how fast a particular player is running at any given time. The NFL has been working with AWS and Verizon’s 5G Edge on a pioneering statistical overlay project of its own.
Case Study: The NFL's SuperStadium App Experience
This year’s Super Bowl in Tampa was notable for the debut of a new digital experience made available through the NFL app. The SuperStadium experience allowed fans to engage with seven different camera angles in the stadium, and five angles at home, also projecting AR overlays of stats for players. The multi-cam experience – available via the same platform to viewers as a second screen experience either in the stadium or at home – brought a substantial uplift in engagement with the app. “We saw a meaningful increase in viewing duration and viewer engagement for the multi-cam experience vs watching the broadcast feed alone,” explains Verizon Media’s Darren Lepke. “To me, that means the fans were excited to experience the game in a new way. For our broadcast partners, that means more loyal viewers and more advertising revenue.
“We leveraged a new real-time streaming offering from the Media Platform team. We were able to capture seven camera feeds coming out of the venue, encode them and deliver them back to mobile devices, all in under one second. We leveraged advanced video protocols and a proprietary synchronization method to stream the action from all angles. This ensured fans in-stadium or at home were able to catch all of the action on the field, at their own direction.”
In addition to the mobile viewing experience within the NFL app, Verizon's 5G technology also made it possible to take fans and gamers inside the Raymond James stadium using Fortnite creative, allowing fans and gamers the opportunity to interact and compete with NFL players in a variety of games.
Image Credit: Verizon Media
"We saw a meaningful increase in viewing duration and viewer engagement for the multi-cam experience vs watching the broadcast feed alone.
To me, that means the fans were excited to experience the game in a new way. For our broadcast partners, that means more loyal viewers and more."
Verizon Media's Darren Lepke on The SuperStadium experience.
4) Provide real-time context to suit individual tastes
- Consider the 'megacast' model
- Look to provide digital companion packages to different audience segments ie:
- Statistics for a gaming overlay
- Cartoon graphics to appeal to children
- Celebrity or fan commentators to appeal to niche interest groups
Ultimately, personalisation means providing different things to different people to suit their different tastes and expectations. Arguably, ESPN’s ‘MegaCast’ is the finest exponent of that across the modern sports production landscape. Evolved across several iterations of the College Football Playoff National Championship, the MegaCast presents itself as stacked menu of options to the viewer, with 14 distinct presentations of the same live action made available. From a production perspective, the effort and resource is monumental: 100 cameras, 100 microphones, on-field views, skycams, VR graphics, data overlays, multiple commentary options. Elsewhere, bespoke betting-focused presentations of live sport have become commonplace, while Nickelodeon and CBS continue to attract plaudits for their kid-friendly presentations of NFL games, complete with slime cannons superimposed onto the endzones.
Source: NFL
The virtual slime cannons erupting in celebration of a touchdown between the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints - an example of CBS and Nickelodeon striving to make the broadcast more appealing for younger audiences.
For his part, Lepke has been impressed with the work the NBA has done in the gaming space. “I think the NBA’s work to offer alternative betting broadcasts has been incredibly successful,” he says. “In August [2020], the league announced a new betting-focused option featured on its NBA League Pass streaming service and NBA TV network. The broadcasts included analysts from Action Network, Bleacher Report and Yahoo Sports, while BetMGM provided real-time betting lines and statistics. This provides a custom service to those sports enthusiastic about sports betting and pulls together a number of the different trends we’ve already talked about.”
Pointing to the complex task for venue operators and broadcasters of trying to integrate elements of the at-home experience into the match-going routine, Lepke says: “To achieve multiple objectives that satisfy the requirements of different audience members, content owners need a unified media platform to stream interactive linear, live, and on-demand video content to every device, everywhere, servicing every personal preference. The Verizon Media Platform has unique features that enable users to simplify workflow from encoding and delivery to data and insights. Not only do we make it easy to extend existing workflows, but we open the door to new monetization strategies. We combine our global edge network’s performance with advanced technologies, software, cloud security tools and service to quickly and reliably deliver highly personal, TV-like quality streams that viewers demand.”
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