The future of the sporting broadcast for on and off-site fans
E-Mersion Media’s chief commercial officer Chris Styring explores the post-COVID evolution of sports broadcasting.
Like so many industries, sporting events were blind-sided by COVID-19. Event organisers were forced to pivot and find innovative ways to keep fans engaged from a distance. While live sporting events have long been a fixture of traditional TV, radio broadcasting and print media, live streaming platforms and digital media are fast catching up to these well worn paths when it comes to fan engagement.
Sports broadcasting has yet to fully embrace the possibilities available through digital, but it needs to do so in order to maintain engagement with a perpetually logged-in audience as well as offer the smaller, less well funded sports a platform to share their content with fans. This inability to reach the fan has long been a problem for those sports who don’t have the following, participation or audience penetration to negotiate a FTA or even paid broadcast deal.
This void in the ‘experience gap’ can be filled with the adoption of smart technology and innovative digital products now available to rights holders, sponsoring brands and sporting teams.
