Today, sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with most of the revenues coming from broadcast and streaming activities. The number of sports fans that can be accommodated within a particular venue is limited, but when it comes to streaming, sky is the limit.
Over the past few months, sports has also been one of the hardest hit industries by the pandemic. Due to the massively imposed lockdowns all across the globe, staging sports events with live audiences was mostly not permitted.
In these extra-ordinary circumstances, the only mediums for sports fans to connect with the events of their liking were broadcast or live streaming. Over the past few months, we have seen a massive hike in the number of viewers of live streamed sports events.
In this post, we will highlight the key factors that make the Cloud a perfect platform for live streaming of sports events at a global level. We will also highlight the factors that make cloud based live streaming a superior option to traditional broadcasts.
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Move towards Interactive Sports Content
Like many other streaming media out there, live sports streaming is also becoming more interactive than ever. The versatility of the Cloud makes the addition of audience interactive features such as live polls, chats and stats analysis a whole lot easier.
Scaling in Real-time via the Cloud
Anticipating the total number of viewers for any sports event is a very tricky affair. At times, sports events may not initially have a large viewer base but as an event progresses, it may attract a much larger audience than expected.
It is in situations like these that the real-time scalability of the Cloud can come in real handy when streaming sports events. The same is true in cases where the audience does not reach the desired number, as cloud resources would be immediately freed up.
This makes the cloud not only a readily scalable platform, but also the most efficient platform for live streaming sports events. The other great advantage of this instant scalability of the Cloud is that you will pay only for the resources actually utilized.
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Highly Available Cloud Infrastructure
In traditional broadcasting, you have a finite number of audiences that you can accommodate at any given time. However, with the highly available cloud infrastructure at your back, you can accommodate nearly limitless live stream viewers at any given time.
Optimize Costs and Quality
With cloud based live sports streaming, you can optimize both costs and quality. You have a host of Cloud Service Providers (CSP) out there like dinCloud, each with its own unique core competency that you can leverage to your best advantage.
On the content quality side, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being deployed to manipulate live streamed videos in a way that its less resource intensive, without compromising the least bit on the quality of the content.
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Latency is No More a Concern
With massive investments in both cloud infrastructures and supporting technologies, it is widely expected that the latency of cloud based live streaming of sports events will be much lesser as compared to traditional broadcasting channels.
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Multiply Revenues via Targeted Advertising
A certain sports event may be viewed across multiple geographies, each with a different set of needs. By deploying cloud based live streaming, you can easily segment your audience to the most granular level and multiply revenues via highly targeted advertising.
A targeted advertising approach otherwise improves the viewership experience of the audience, as people are seeing the ads that are actually relevant to their needs. This can also boost revenues for localized brands by leveraging highly popular sporting events.
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Conclusion
With the inherent capabilities of Cloud powered live streaming platforms, we can expect that the future of streaming live sports events lies in the Cloud. The stage is set and all that’s needed is the right approach and vision to make this a reality.
If you also have a sports event that you would like to stream via the Cloud, feel free to leverage dinCloud’s state of the art infrastructure.
