Fall Sports Highlight Consolidation Needs For Streaming Consumers
Labor Day weekend has long ushered in the fall sports season, with the return of college football, followed by the NFL the ensuing Thursday. While that’s always meant channel-surfing for audiences, streaming has complicated matters quite a bit.
We’ve covered this before here, too. Sports leagues’ endless quest to maximize media revenues is cutting TV products to pieces, and driving audiences nuts as they search 10-12 traditional networks plus another 4-6 services (at least) to find the games they’re looking for.
Those problems never get more obvious than the fall, when a single college football gameday can have fans bouncing between the Big 4 broadcast networks, the CW, ESPN and Fox cable networks, conference networks, WBD properties, Peacock, Paramount+, ESPN+ and more. Add in NFL and MLB action, and you’re juggling Amazon and RSNs (MLB) as well. NBA and NHL season means more RSNs, NBA League Pass and/or Hulu for more contests.
The potentially endless list of viewing options has been a point of contention for audiences for at least a couple years now, and it seems those concerns have also reached networks and technology providers.
Both VIZIO and ESPN have just unveiled new aggregation tools that aim to simplify the sports viewing and discovery experience, to remove the mystery from “what channel is the game on?”
VIZIO’s new Sports Zone hub on the Home Screen is a simplified view of the sports landscape, quickly pointing users directly to the streaming app(s) where they can watch a given game. Sports Zone already works with many major U.S. leagues and allows users quick options to personalize views depending on favorite teams and leagues/conferences.
ESPN also unveiled “Where to Watch” on WatchESPN and its website last week, to help clear up that same confusion. ESPN’s version, which requires a login to personalize, does have countless team and individual sports included and a list of streaming and traditional TV options to watch on. The feature only links out directly to a handful of partner (plus Disney-owned) streaming apps right now, though.
Regardless of which of those options consumers choose to engage with, however, the fall sports season does appear to be spurring more action around programming consolidation, bundling and aggregation.
While the way sports rights are handled makes it impossible to ever put live feeds to ALL sports under one roof (hi, Venu!), we’re clearly moving toward an approach that understands the value of uncomplicating sports audience viewing preferences. And TV manufacturers are at a unique advantage there as the platforms are set up and incentivized to manage discovery, aggregation, distribution. No matter which app that takes place within.
In an era of Netflix’s famed algorithm seemingly putting the perfect watch recommendation in front of eyeballs all over the world, why did it take so long to figure out that sports audiences may value a similar (albeit simpler) approach?
The delay doesn’t ultimately matter at this point, though. The good news is that the TV industry is actively trying to put the pieces of the sports rights pie back together. And that ultimately benefits fans, while likely creating increased watch-time. Sounds like a win-win.
