February 24, 2021 5 min read

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With cancelled sports games and award shows, the world has moved entertainment away from public venues and into the home, with end users consuming more content than ever before for extended periods of time. With the media now navigating an unchartered territory, the industry is seeing a subtle shift in the priorities for players in the streaming world. Reliability has always been a cornerstone of ensuring that the consumer fairy-tale of high-quality video offerings and an abundance of choice leads to a happy ever after ending, but in these challenging times it has emerged as the leading performance measurement, with some services reducing default bitrates to help broadband and mobile network providers manage increased loads.

This is not to say that quality does not matter: it certainly does. The challenge is that a shift to focus on reliability as a leading indicator means that more effort has to be put on ensuring the user experience does not suffer as a result.

For OTT providers to keep up with these changing demands, they need to be able to understand the consumer, the current climate and take a proactive approach with their CDN partners to deliver the consistent experiences that audiences are demanding with the right formats and bitrates, at the right time.

Change in streaming priorities

It is no secret that over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have taken the local entertainment market by storm; almost everyone uses such a service, or even several. Yet, it's not just their content that has kept customers coming back for more.

Consumers today are no longer hindered by the limitation of television broadcast showtimes or content availability. Instead, they have become accustomed to accessing deep content libraries and seamless viewing experiences, at the simple touch of a button or tap of a screen. When this is not achieved, they are fast to move to providers that are able to provide this. It has made streaming a much tougher game, with viewers now having a myriad of options to pay to view on-demand content on-the-go through OTT apps. The platforms may not all have the same content or access models, but a platform with poor reliability will not keep their audience engaged if users cannot access their offering consistently.

But with a surge in demand for on-demand streaming content due to more people staying at home, how can OTT providers relieve the pressure on their content networks and the wider internet infrastructure whilst capturing consumer attention? According to Limelight Networks’ research, over half of UK viewers cite video re-buffering as the most frustrating aspect of watching video online, with 60 per cent abandoning a video if it re-buffers as many as two times. The importance of reliability of streams has led to platforms such as Netflix and YouTube lowering their bitrate, thereby reducing the default quality setting to ensure customers can still access content.

It’s clear that streaming services will need to offer an all-round quality experience from story to delivery. From preserving outstanding video quality to service reliability and low latency, it all comes down to robust delivery strategies. Within the OTT space, preventing any latency or friction that would disrupt the user experience is the key to success. One area in which these challenges are particularly defined is in the world of live sports streaming.

Can sports come back to live?

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