By Jason Leonidas, Regional VP, Australia & ASEAN, New Relic
Live sports are popular across Asia, and for good reason. What other pursuit can unite fans across a region as richly diverse as ours, to witness live moments of awe-inspiring skill and heart-stopping suspense together?
The increasingly connected population in Asia, combined with widespread mobile device usage, creates a great environment for the growth of live sports streaming. A report from Media Partners Asia, projects Asia Pacific sports revenues in TV and online video will grow to a staggering US$8.9 billion by 2026.
As the 2024 Paris Olympics promises some of the most immersive viewing experiences in Olympic history, broadcasters must ensure they are prepared to meet this demand.
Observability a game-changer
We’ve all experienced the agony of missing a game-winning shot because your streaming service falters, or the action on the field being eclipsed by buffering screens and frozen replays. It is paramount for media and entertainment platforms to deliver an engaging and uninterrupted user experience for every single viewer across every device – laptop, smart TV, mobile phone, or tablet.
Even a second of delay or unavailability can lead to poor reviews, high dropout rates, and loss of a significant portion of subscribers, which ultimately impacts revenue and profitability. The answer to optimising the viewing experience and propelling live sports to unprecedented heights is observability.
Observability offers a detailed perspective across the entire technology stack, enabling insights into its performance and condition. This includes real-time monitoring, tracking, and analysis of complex distributed architectures that will likely include on prem servers, multiple cloud providers and services, virtualised containers and third party APIs. A robust observability platform allows broadcasters to anticipate these surges in demand by analysing historical data and sporting event schedules, and proactively scaling resources accordingly. This approach is a necessity to ensure smooth streaming even during peak viewership times.
Game, set, match
The 2024 NFL Super Bowl, arguably the biggest sporting event in the U.S., drew in viewership of nearly 124 million viewers earlier this year, making it the most-watched live broadcast event since the 1969 moon landing. To support this spike in viewership, streaming companies like YouTube TV, Hulu and Paramount+ began preparing their IT infrastructure months in advance to ensure an exceptional viewer experience without outages or major interruptions.
The importance of a seamless viewing experience can not be understated. A New Relic survey found that viewers do not hesitate to switch providers due to interruptions during a live stream. In fact, 58% of survey respondents said they would switch to a different provider to continue watching live events – such as the Super Bowl – in case of interruptions, with Gen Z (64%) and millennials (63%) being the most likely to switch streaming services.
When an outage occurs, quick resolutions are critical for streaming platforms to retain viewers. Successfully broadcasting live events means capturing every second of the action, so an outage on a streaming service means fans could be missing game-changing moments. The switch of providers following an outage can be almost immediate, with nearly half (48%) of respondents saying they would wait less than 10 minutes before switching providers.
With plenty of Asian athletes expected to deliver breakout performances on a global stage in Paris next month, the Summer Olympic Games is expected to produce over 11,000+ hours of broadcast coverage over the 17 days of the games. Amid more competition and strong consumer demand for uninterrupted viewing experiences, streaming companies will increasingly have to ensure their applications are well-equipped to seamlessly broadcast major live events.
Observability enables broadcasters through their digital platforms to put a high volume of content online and meet the viewing demand of a wide range of sports. This presents a huge opportunity for broadcasters to capitalize on this content as much as possible and reach a wide spectrum of sporting fans.
Investing in observability is not just a strategic move; it’s a commitment to delivering a world-class live sports experience. Broadcasters should consider a proactive observability tool that offers real-time insights, predictive analytics, and proactive issue resolution capabilities, so they can identify potential bottlenecks well before they become a problem.
*A version of this story appeared on the Television Asia Plus July-August 2024 Issue.
