Over-the-top (OTT) for sports is becoming increasingly attractive. There are growing investments in content acquisition that show how more and more companies are getting into the OTT game. Typically, broadcasters have played a key role in sports rights acquisitions driving revenues for Leagues & Clubs, however, the entrance of OTT providers in the last few years has increased the competitive landscape.

OTT providers, like Amazon Prime have entered the sports arena, some of which are also pure-play sports operators like DAZN and Eleven Sports or digital channels such as the Tennis Channel, aim to deliver a more engaging sports-focused experience.

Increasingly the user experience is now a two-way channel. Sports OTT services are underpinned by three important criteria: interaction, gamification and personalization across the video services offered.

Data has become an even more prevalent part of interactive storytelling for publishers, media outlets and rights holders pre-game or during a live broadcast. New data points help broadcasters and content owners tell more engaging stories to tech-savvy audiences.

Gamification can be used to support programming on streaming sports platforms in the form of polls, quizzes and social gaming settings using sports data, offering a free and engaging content module. By bringing together data and video to engage the audience, gamification can unlock monetisation opportunities and provides possible secondary benefits for commercial partners.

With deep descriptive metadata, it enables intuitive content navigation and nuanced recommendations that connect viewers to the content they like, driving personalization features for each user.

As an example, Data Sports Group (DSG) created a sports data module for an OTT provider for a live match broadcast. Using DSG data as reference, the user could navigate away from the match into the game timeline, view player & match stats and other data metrics. Linked to the personalization is also the ability to buy merchandise related to the teams or players from the specific match in progress.

A snippet of this service is available to view here.

A data-led approach within OTT offering is an increasingly efficient way to keep users engaged, gather fan insights and thereby unlock the full commercial potential of an OTT platform’s offering.