What does sports livestreaming mean for network operators?
Livestreaming of professional sports games could become either a network nightmare or an opportunity for operators. For fans, it could add a whole new dimension to the stadium experience. But it’s clearly making stadium owners and TV broadcasters nervous.
Major League Baseball opened its season amidst debate around the issue, quickly denying a story that claimed the organization would try to prohibit livestreaming via Periscope or Meerkat. Even if MLB wanted to stop the practice, it would not be possible in all cases. Stadium IT managers can only monitor their own Wi-Fi networks and distributed antenna systems.
“They would only be able to see what is running over their DAS – if users were on another operator from a remote tower, this portion of the audience would be nearly impossible to control,” said Scott Sumner of Accedian Networks.
Analyst Simon Saunders of Real Wireless believes monitoring the networks might not be the most efficient approach.
“It might be easier for them to simply monitor within the apps themselves,” he said. “These users will be broadcasting and easy to determine the user from the camera angle. Stadium security staff do that kind of thing routinely when dealing with troublemakers.”
Troublemakers?
Livestreamers could become “troublemakers” from both a network perspective and a legal perspective. MLB Advanced Media, the league’s interactive media unit, is definitely taking a hard look at uplink livestreaming, and not just for sports events. The group handled the streaming of Sunday’s Season 5 premiere of “Game of Thrones” for HBO, another event that was circulated by livestreamers.
If fans indulge in lengthy livestreams of sports games they risk threatening the TV broadcasters’ exclusive rights to air the game, as well as overtaxing the network and slowing it down for others.
“Uplink streaming by fans could become a traffic problem if there is no optimization,” said analyst Sue Rudd of Strategy Analytics. Fans already upload short videos and endless selfies from sports events, but continuous livestreaming would be something else entirely.
“Reliable detection of streaming (both uplink and downlink) in real time is technically possible with all types of video optimization,” said Rudd, noting that there are a number of solution providers if operators are willing to invest. She added that treating Periscope or Meerkat traffic differently from other traffic could be a net neutrality violation.
“Even if technology could optimize fan-originated streaming it could be a violation of the FCC ‘Open Internet’ ruling if operators did something special just for the League and Periscope,” she said. “However, operators could probably ‘optimize all streaming uplink traffic of the same type (as Periscope)’ for ‘traffic management reasons’ without violating the ruling.”
The livestreaming question may be even more relevant in sports that move more quickly than baseball. Imagine thousands of fans trying to livestream the final minutes of an NBA game in overtime.
Stadium owners may be losing sleep over scenarios like these, or they may be talking to operators about ways to make the most of them. A stadium could optimize its own DAS in a private cloud by setting up a third-party MVNO to manage the service, according to Rudd. That could create new opportunities for ad delivery and the sale of premium tickets that would include faster broadband.
Analyst Simon Saunders sees an opportunity to incorporate user-generated livestreams into LTE broadcast offerings.
“LTE broadcast represents a major new opportunity for a different sort of rights deal: the opportunity for the venue to provide specific content (player stats, replays, different viewing angles, close-ups) to those attending the event, without conflict with the wide-area broadcast rights deals,” said Saunders. “And there is scope for user-generated streams to be incorporated within that content, making for an even more inclusive experience (look Dad, I’m the cameraman!).”
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