One of the biggest unheralded trends in the industry last year was the growth in live streaming. 

While streaming of live programming, particularly news and sports, is nothing new, the trend is notable because streaming has long been dominated by on-demand viewing at services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Now, major platforms like Roku, Peacock and others are paying more attention to the development of linear channels, a move that could have major implications for the way companies monetize streaming content.

While the pandemic sidelined live sports for much of the year, news organizations reported record results in 2020. “What we saw in the last year was people looking for lifesaving information from trusted news sources,” noted Christy Tanner, executive VP and GM of CBS News Digital. 

That produced record traffic for all the major news organizations. The CBSN 24-hour streaming news service, for example, racked up a record 28.5 million streams and 19.5 million unique viewers on Election Day (Nov. 3) and then beat that mark with 40.9 million streams and 27.9 million unique viewers on Nov. 4. 

In addition to the pandemic and the election driving viewer interest, Porter Berry, VP and editor and chief of Fox News Digital, noted that “with 5G and phones and tablets becoming more and more a place to go for news and information, video has become more and more important.”

That helped fuel record-breaking digital audiences for election coverage, with video starts on Nov. 4 jumping 167%, page views rising 249% and time spent viewping up a whopping 312% compared to post-election traffic in 2016, according to Adobe Analytics and Apple News. 

CNN also had a record-breaking year, with an average of 215 million monthly unique visitors globally in the first 10 months of 2020, up from 162 million in 2019, and 163 million unique visitors in the U.S., according to Comscore. 

“2020 was a year like no other for us,” noted Wendy Brundige, senior VP of global video at CNN. “We had a lot of growth this year on our TV app with people wanting to watch on their connected TV devices.” 

Whether news channels can continue these record-breaking patterns into 2021 is an open question, given the once in a lifetime stories that drove traffic in 2020. 

But there is little doubt that interest in live streaming and offering linear TV channels in a variety of genres is likely to accelerate this year. 

Chris Berend, executive VP of digital for NBC News Group, also reported record-setting traffic in 2020. It hopes to  build on that by continuing to work closely with the NBCUniversal direct-to-consumer Peacock service to develop channels and content, he said. 

In 2020, NBCU launched the “Today All Day” streaming product on Peacock and added a number of special NBC News productions to the platform. “Peacock is a critical part of our streaming future for news programming,” Berend said. “It is very much the sun in our solar system.”

Others stressed that the trend goes beyond news into entertainment programming and ad-supported linear channels.

Scott Rosenberg, Roku senior VP and general manager of the platform business, cited the growth in live streaming as one of the key trends Roku hopes to capitalize on in 2021. 

“On the Roku Channel, we now have over 130 linear channels that are presented in a grid-like fashion like an EPG,” or electronic program guide, Rosenberg said. “Many folks expected that viewership would switch to pure on-demand viewing, but many viewers are looking for that lean-back experience. So we are seeing that paradigm is being recreated in streaming.” 

Such channels are also a key part of the push to increase advertising revenue. “We think that advertising has been and will be a central funding model for the TV ecosystem,” Rosenberg said. “TV ad dollars are already reflowing towards streaming.”

Rick Cordella, executive VP and chief revenue officer for Peacock, also stressed that live linear TV channels are a central part of the strategy for the direct-to-consumer offering. “We have channels like NBC News Now, NBC Sports, etc., in a bunch of different categories that provide the linear experience of the multichannel universe that doesn’t really have much of a place on other premium video providers,” Cordella said. 

These linear channels have proved particularly popular among cord-cutters, he said, and having linear channels helps freshen up the service. “Because the content is constantly being updated, it feels more vibrant than other SVODs where what I saw last week is what I’ll see this week,” he said. 

After the pandemic powered increase in streaming in 2020, Akamai expects live streaming to surge in late 2020 and continue to be huge in 2021 and is updating its platform to be able to handle the climbing usage.

Akamai said that it could see 50 million people concurrently streaming a single live event in the coming months, about double the current record.

Akamai said it has created new tools to help developers set up live streaming workflows.

New Akamai Developer APIs can increase operational efficiency for organizations that need to manage numerous live or linear streams, often simultaneously,” said Alex Balford, senior product marketing manager, Media and Entertainment at Akamai, in a blog post. “These APIs are designed to simplify the process of provisioning Akamai’s Media Services Live and Adaptive Media Delivery, which are critical components of many customers’ live workflows to ingest streams with high stability and reach global audiences with as little latency as possible.”

Akamai said its Media Services Live now includes a live clipping feature to simplify the creating and archiving of highlight, while a new feature called Instant TV enables streaming providers to define the beginning of a live program and allows viewers to utilize restart TV functionality to start streaming an in-progress show from the beginning.

At the same time, Akamai is beefing up systems to combat fraudulent or shared streams, while building out capacity, The Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform now includes more than 300,000 servers in 4,00 locations and 1,500 networks around the world. 

In his blog, Balford noted that after lockdown and quarantine, stream traffic on Akamai’s platform exceeded 100 terabits per second every day in the second quarter. Traffic topped 100 terabits for the first time in October 2019.

“Many major sports leagues have recently returned, with limited or in some cases no fans in attendance, and for some the audiences tuning in have been an order of magnitude larger than before the pandemic,” Balford said. “Looking ahead, many major international sporting events such as the Olympics, UEFA Euro tournament, and others have deferred their events until late 2020 or 2021, setting up a perfect storm of sorts where many live events are set to take place in tight time windows.”

Between the U.S. election campaigns and the return of sports to TV, “Akamai has seen a significant increase in live streaming,” he said. “We expect this trend to continue.” 

Start-up virtual pay TV service fuboTV announced today that its service has been integrated into the Apple TV app.

FuboTV has supported apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad mobile devices, as well as the Apple TV OTT box, since it launched. However, it is now recognized by the search, discovery and organizational tool that is native to these Apple devices, the Apple TV app.

It’s only the second virtual MVPD to be tied in this way, with Sony PlayStation Vue announcing Apple TV integration in October.

For fuboTV subscribers using the Apple TV app, VOD and live sports content from their vMVPD subscription will now surface in the “Watch Now” and “Up Next” sections—menus that distill the Golden Age of Television’s vast array of content choices into a small, customized handfuls of selections. Siri voice control will allow users to search for content with words and phrases.

Integration with Apple TV’s single sign-on authentication feature, meanwhile, is forthcoming.

According to Min Kim, VP of business development for fuboTV, the integration will “allow Apple users to discover that their favorite leagues and matchups are on fuboTV and with the ‘Up Next’ feature, they'll never miss what's on. fuboTV subscribers can also find over 10,000 on-demand shows and movies directly in the app."

After boldly announcing itself on the nascent virtual MVPD scene at CES 2016, then wandering into the startup wilderness, Vidgo is finally conducting a soft launch.

Now under different ownership and management, the Atlanta-based start-up this week made two skinny tiers of Spanish-language, soccer-rich channels available under pre-paid conditions to users of iOS and Android devices. (The company said apps for Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, and Apple TV will debut in the coming weeks.)

Related: Is Long-Gestating vMVPD Start-Up Vidgo Finally Ready to Launch?

The $19.99-a-month “Latino” base tier will feature 25 live-streamed channels, including beIN Sports, Canal Sur, Galavision, TV Azteca, TYC Sports, Univision and Univision Deportes. And the $29.99-a-month “Latino Mas” bundle will add Bandamax, De Pelicula, De Pelicula Clasico, Ecuavisa, Foro TV, Ritmoson, Telehit and TI Novelas.

The pre-paid service requires no credit card or credit checks and is targeted to a first-generation immigrant population acclimated to a cash economy—an audience of millions of consumers, Video CEO Shane Cannon noted, that is underserved in the pay TV market, even by suppliers like Dish Network’s Sling TV, which is rich in international programming choices.

Cannon said the company will add an English-language package later in 2018 if the launch is successful.

Vidgo introduced itself with a more mainstream-focused programming package in 2016, under the direction of Robert Kostensky, a former DirecTV sales and and distribution executive. In fact, a webpage still exist, touting a launch in 12 markets in the summer of 2016, and a national rollout by the end of that year.

But as Vidgo’s debut got delayed, the vMVPD market steadily saturated, with DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV and fuboTV joining the ranks. Cannon replaced Kostensky as the lead executive last year, with new backers— described as a top five network—also stepping in.

According to Vidgo’s Crunchbase profile, the company has raised $500,000 in seed funding to date. But Cannon said a new, more sizable funding round is at hand.

Notably, Vidgo is marketing Sunday’s soccer game between Barcelona and Real Madrid, dubbed "El Clasico," which will be broadcast by beIN Sports. 

Hulu has confirmed that it’s virtual MVPD, Hulu with Live TV, has surpassed 1 million customers.

The service launched in May 2017, combing Hulu’s already popular SVOD service with a virtual platform delivering more than 50 live broadcast and cable channels, all packaged for $40 for month.

It’s a key benchmark for Hulu, which in terms of vMVPD size, ranks only behind only the two satellite TV operator-backed platforms, Sling TV (2.344 million subscribers at the end of Q2) and DirecTV Now (1.809 million users as of June 30).

Hulu reported in May that it had reached 800,000 vMVPD users. Across all platforms, Hulu has more than 20 million subscribers.

Hulu confirmed the 1 million figure after it surfaced in a USA Today report Monday, detailing the company’s latest national advertising campaign.

The first star-laden national TV spot for that campaign debuted Monday night during the Prime Time Emmy telecast—an event during which Hulu original shows took home only four trophies.

Pay-per-view boxing legend Manny Pacquiao will once again step in the ring Saturday night for a fight that boxing fans will have to dish out a fee to watch.  

Yet instead of paying upwards of $50 on PPV to watch Pacquiao go for his 60th career win against hard-hitting Lucas Matthysse, fight fans will only have to pay digital streaming sports service ESPN+'s $4.99 monthly fee to catch the fisticuffs.

Pacquiao is the second most lucrative fighter in PPV boxing history, and his 2015 fight with all-time PPV boxing champion Floyd Mayweather remains the most-purchased PPV event of all time with 4.6 million buys. Even at 39 years old and well past his prime, Pacquiao's fight with Matthysse could have done decent PPV business, especially since the category hasn’t had a major fight through the first seven months of the year.

Yet the Malaysian-based fight—part of a full day of live boxing content that will air on ESPN and the ESPN app prior to the main event – will instead mark the highest-profile boxing match to stream live on the upstart digital service, which launched in March to much fanfare. 

ESPN’s multi-year, multi-media deal with boxing promotion company Top Rank Inc. reached last year will provide the subscription service with several marquee boxing matches to offer in the near future, including last month's Terence Crawford-Horn welterweight title fight. 

Pacquiao's last fight -- a 12-round loss to Jeff Horn in 2017 -- aired on ESPN and drew more than 3 million viewers, according to published reports.

“Saturday’s boxing lineup gives us the ability to own the night with boxing fans, and the Manny Pacquiao-Lucas Matthysse match is a perfect example of the world-class caliber of events we envisioned for ESPN+,” said Burke Magnus, executive vice president of programming and scheduling. “The match also provides us with an incredible opportunity to generate compelling storytelling across all our platforms.”

With new digital sports services like ESPN+, Turner’s Bleacher Report Live and combat sports-themed service DAZN seeking to secure rights to live boxing content along with traditional premium cable services Showtime and HBO, it’s not that far-fetched to question whether the PPV fight business is on the ropes.

The scheduled Sept. 15 Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin rematch will be the first major PPV event to be offered to fight fans in 2018 (the bout was initially scheduled for May 5 but was cancelled after Alvarez tested positive for performance enhancing drugs).

The last major PPV boxing match was Alvarez-Golovkin I last November, which drew approximately 1.3 million PPV buys, according to industry sources. That fight, combined with the 4.3 million buys generated by the August 2017 Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor PPV fight, made 2017 one of the more successful years in PPV history.

While the PPV boxing category is closely watching the increasing competition from digital sports services, executives say the category remains very viable. PPV boxing historically has been cyclical, and executives say the category is in a downturn right now.

“The PPV industry is only as good as the fighters it can draw, and right now there’s no doubt that there’s a lull with respect to fighters that can carry a PPV event,” said In Demand senior vice president of programming and business development Mark Boccardi. He also said the industry has been spoiled in recent years by the likes of Mayweather, Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Juan Manuel Marquez, who often fought multiple times a year on PPV.

“Even though there are some great fighters in the sport, right now there are fewer PPV draws than we’ve had over the past few years,” Boccardi added. “We’re confident that the  big PPV's will remain tentpoles for the industry in boxing and in MMA.”

Meanwhile, HBO is still bullish on boxing and PPV. The network is confident that fight fans will ante up $74.99 in September for Alvarez-Golovkin despite the lack of marquee PPV boxing events this year.

“I actually think boxing is in great shape when you look at the people who all of the sudden want to be involved in boxing in a big way,” HBO pay-per-view vice president Tony Walker said. 

A new Parks Associates study that found 27% of pay TV homes say "sports programming is the primary reason" they subscribe comes at a time when sports content is preparing for a distribution overhaul.

Parks' figures fall toward the high end of the long-held range of households that watch televised sports on a regular basis -- about 15% to 30%, depending on which research study you believe. Subscribers' appetite for sports may be encouraging to cable executives -- for now.

Operators have often cited the modest viewing levels to fend off high-priced sports packages, although as the Parks study affirmed, devoted sports fans buy whatever it takes to see their preferred programming. And that's where the looming appeal of streaming enters the picture.

Brett Sappington, Parks' senior director of research, cited the shifting trends in sports carriage.

"While broadcast and pay TV remain key sources for live sports, OTT streaming options have become an important part of the live sports landscape," Sappington said. "Increasingly, leagues and networks are offering direct-to-consumer options. These services offer access to content that would otherwise not be broadcast and subscription options to those not subscribing to pay TV."

He pointed out that CBS and ESPN recently launched their own streaming services for sports content, and noted that these services will "both compete with and complement major services such as WWE Network and MLB.TV."

Related: CBS Sports HQ Service Hits the OTT Field | One Small Step for ESPN+

Sappington predicted that "over time, pay TV providers will likely partner with these types of services in order to round out their existing channel packages."

Migration Already Underway

One indicator of the shift to different platforms is the paucity of baseball games on over-the-air broadcast channels -- making it impossible for fans, for example, in Washington, D.C., to see games of the nearby Baltimore Orioles or for Los Angeles viewers to see any games without a pay TV subscription.

This year, only 199 Major League Baseball games will air on broadcast channels, compared with 338 games in 2013, according to data compiled by John Mansell, an independent sports business analyst. That means only 4.3% of local games appear on OTA TV; five years ago it was 7.3% of games. Mansell's data show that regional cable sports networks are carrying 4,420 baseball games this year compared with 4,270 games five years ago.

Just as broadcast TV -- once a staple of local sports fans -- has shifted to cable, there are many indicators of sports' looming move to streaming platforms. But that move is not without challenges.

"What's happened now for cable is extremely predictable," said a former sports network executive who requested anonymity. 

"If technology takes us to streaming, then the programs will go there," he added, calling it "the evolution of the economics."

"If streaming becomes the way we consume media, then the rights will go there," he said.

Viewing habits are changing, especially among millennials, who are already a problematic audience for sports producers and distributors. The leagues and some individual teams that control media rights to games are looking deeply at streaming options. In some cases, the streaming rights (for now) are bundled with cable rights, although that connection is likely to be a major negotiating point in future contacts, according to lawyers who are involved with the process.

Major League Baseball's emergence as a leading streaming technology provider (using tech it developed for its own MLB Network) is an indicator of the emphasis that sports producers are placing on the potential of that distribution platform, which eliminates the middleman (conventional networks).

Amazon last month nabbed the U.S. Open Tennis championship streaming telecasts in the United Kingdom for the next five years, a deal which analysts believe is the opening volley in Amazon's next wave of sports deals. Amazon's package will include live coverage plus on-demand highlights and other enhanced features.

Related: Greenfield Says Amazon Poised to be Most Disruptive Tech Giant

Social media platforms are also accelerating their sports programming line-ups. For example, Twitter recently unveiled plans with Disney's ESPN to create live sports programming and other content, including carriage of SportsCenter Live, with viewer participation. Twitter will also live-steam ESPN's fantasy sports podcast.

Related: 'SportsCenter' Expanding on ESPN’s New App

Facebook began live-streaming baseball games on its MLB Live page in March, carrying about one game per week. Although usage data so far is not available, a report this week indicated that latency glitches have annoyed viewers: 34% would cancel a service if they encountered such technical problems, the study found.

Twitter recently published its own research to show advertisers that the social media platform "makes live sporting events more engaging and memorable." The study emphasized fans' experience during live events when they use Twitter "as their second — and primary — screen to learn what’s happening in real time." 

The study, which used comScore data, showed an average 4.1% lift in unique visitors during sportscasts, and the "difference is even more pronounced with tentpole sports events" such as the Super Bowl or other championship games.

Twitter said it has renewed its deal with Major League Baseball and will offer live streaming of out-of-market games weekly starting Thursday (April 5) when the Texas Rangers take on the Oakland Athletics. 

The games will be available free in the U.S. for Twitter users at @MLB and via live.twitter.com/MLB.

Financial terms were not dislcosed.

The live stream will be a simulcast of one the teams’ local broadcast.

Twitter will be making advertising packages available to sponsors.

MLB will also make real-time game highlights available for fans at @MLB on Twitter throughout the season. Spanish-language highlights will be available at @LasMayores.

To help fans embellish their baseball Tweets, Twitter and MLB have created special hashtag-triggered emojis for all 30 teams. Fans can join the conversation by Tweeting to their favorite MLB teams with a unique hashtag-triggered emoji all season long.

[embed]https://twitter.com/MLB/status/978311870288363520[/embed]

Turner will launch the live sports streaming service Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) on April 7.

Turner described the service as “the central hub for both the discovery and consumption of live sports content,” allowing fans to “find and watch their favorite sports content anywhere, anytime and on the screen of their choice.”

Starting this summer, B/R Live will implement flexible pricing options, with direct access to live games for purchase on an a la carte or subscription basis.

The platform helps users find and watch live sports with the ability to scroll through a feed of real-time sports events, and offers personalization features that aggregate live sports content.

Sports on the platform include soccer’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, NBA League Pass games, 65 NCAA Championships and the PGA Championship, as well as the National Lacrosse League, The Spring League, Red Bull Global Rallycross and World Arm Wrestling League.

“As viewing habits continue to evolve, Turner is well positioned to provide fans with direct access to premium live sports content that is highly coveted by audiences of scale, including a high concentration of millennials,” said David Levy, president of Turner. “When we first acquired Bleacher Report in 2012, we knew the definition of a network was changing and we anticipated a time when B/R would become a virtual network. Today is a significant step in that direction and we will fully leverage the reach of B/R and its deep connection with passionate sports fans to provide compelling experiences for them across this new, exciting platform.”

NBA League Pass will allow fans to purchase and watch live NBA games in progress at a reduced price.

“For us, it’s really a question of bringing fans what they want,” said Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, offering the example of a fan tuning in as a star player goes for a historic point total.

Lenny Daniels, president of Turner Sports, called B/R Live "a game-changing product that will serve as the ultimate destination for the sports fan."

YouTube has introduced a set of new features for YouTube Live, its live-streaming platform – automatic captions, chat replay and location tags.

Among them, automation captions addition makes the live streams more accessible, and helps viewers follow the action without sound. YouTube launched auto-captions for its broader platform in 2009, and estimates that it has implemented the feature on about 1 billion videos so far.

Chat replay enables viewers to catch up on both the live stream and the accompanying chats on their own time after the live stream is over.

YouTube Live users now have the option to add a location tag to their mobile live streams and video uploads.

Viewing a live stream is a lot like watching an Olympic figure skater: It’s easy to spot a poor performance, but hard to know what separates the good from the great. Having the right coaches and staff in place while using ample time to practice your routine will make for the best shot at the podium, and your viewers’ loyalty.

To ensure a strong live-streaming experience — particularly for major events — organizations must conduct their due diligence to make sure all necessary processes and people are in place. With the Olympics, along with a host of major games and tournaments set to kick off over the coming days, weeks and months, here are four best practices to make sure your live stream is ready for prime time.

1. Establish a vision and share it will all of your “teammates": Before diving into specific plans and processes, it’s critical that you take a step back from your event and establish a clear vision for the experience you want to deliver. What do you want the event to look like? How do you want your audience to feel when viewing the content? The focus might be on live delivery, but what about post-event highlights and replay capabilities?

Live-streaming is an unedited experience that requires a holistic approach, so taking the time to establish the vision and clearly communicate it to all parties involved will help ensure everyone is on the same page from the get-go.

2. Identify the three “Ts” as early as possible: It’s never too early to start planning for a live event, and we recommend nailing down three critical Ts — technologies, tools and third parties — as early as a year out from the event date. Questions to ask yourself during this planning period:

• How many users do you expect to view the event during its peak? What is the peak bandwidth required? Can your infrastructure scale to handle traffic spikes?
• What’s your traffic mix? What’s the expected split between desktop and mobile devices? What kind of mobile devices do you plan to support?
• What are the bit-rate profiles for your event?
• How do you expect to interact with social media during the event?
• Is there a possibility that your stream landing page — or broader company infrastructure — will be attacked in an attempt to bring it down? (Hint: The answer is likely yes.)

3. Practice makes perfect: Testing your live workflow early in the planning process affords you the time to retool and make infrastructure changes as necessary. This should be done through actual simulations, as some issues don’t come to light until the switch is flipped. It’s important to account for the diversity of devices used for streaming, including TVs, consoles, desktops, laptops and mobile, as each device operates differently. The last thing you want is to scramble to identify and fix a technical mishap in real time.

With that said, the content provider and the content delivery network (or networks) should have a clear picture of what contingencies will be used in the event of quality degradation. What are the primary and backup paths for first mile? Do you have backup streams or workflows configured to switch to in the event of unforeseen failures? Make sure you figure these things out well before showtime.

4. Err on the side of overcommunication: From account and sales teams to technical managers, each segment of the business must understand its role and how that falls into the vision established on day one. Daily reports and project updates should be ongoing. Any and all lines of communication should be readily available, including control rooms, chatrooms, conference calls, email and dashboards.

This level of transparency also applies to partners. While confidentiality concerns should be respected, they shouldn’t supersede concerns about delivery, quality and viewer experience. The more you share with your partners, the more they can help address any potential constraints.

Even after all parties are in sync, communication continues to be key during the event. For example, it’s crucial to establish a live audio bridge between customer and the CDN to facilitate any changes in production that may impact the streaming content.

When you’re gearing up for a major event live stream, it’s important to create a vision; identify the technology, tools and third parties required; test early; and communicate as much as humanly possible. Following these practices, you can put your live event in a position to succeed.

Matt McKenna is a service line manager at content delivery network and cloud services provider Akamai. Photo of U.S. figure skaters Alexa Scimeca-Knierim and Christopher Knierim by Kyle Terada/USATODAYSports/Newscom.

A new survey has found that 42% of adult consumers said they’d be willing to spend a maximum of $20 per month on streaming subscription, according to Phenix, a real-time video solutions provider.

The study, conducted online, would mean that a big share of people would be limited to one or two streaming subscriptions per person.

Related: Cord Cutters Say They’re Saving Money

Phenix’s Future of Streaming Report found as many as 40% of Americans don’t plan to live-stream this year. A big reason for resistance to streaming is delays or buffering, with 12% of those saying they’d be more likely to stream live content if latency wasn’t a consistent issue.

“This year, we saw everyone from platforms to networks to franchises heavily invest in streaming technologies,” said Stefan Birrer, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Phenix. “Even though the industry significantly advanced in 2017, claims of offering real-time capabilities are false and it’s because of major latency issues, especially at scale. ‘True-live’ has the potential to be such a key differentiator this year that original content is going to take a back seat to it, despite original content investments from tech giants like Apple and Facebook. In fact, consumers are already feeling a case of ‘content fatigue’ so platforms need to worry less about churning out a new show every week and more about providing consumers with what they want – live-streamed content that’s truly live.

Related: Will Big Sports Streaming Bets Pay Off?

The top subscription choices for consumers who want to live-stream content this year, according to the study, were: Netflix (60%), YouTube (48%), Facebook (38%) and Amazon (37%). Less popular were Hulu (25%) and Twitter (12%).

“Right now, most platforms that provide ‘live streaming’ capabilities offer either scale or speed, not both,” Birrer said. “Yet, offering both is the only way to create a real-time experience, as well as the only way for it to be a market differentiator this year and beyond. Once achieved, providers will be in a better position to win more subscribers and reach untapped audiences.”

The study was conducted online by YouGov, with 1,128 adult participating Oct. 25 and 26.

Sports, one of the last vestiges thought immune to cord-cutting, is feeling the impact of the changing viewing landscape. Organizations outside of traditional broadcast television giants such as CBS and NBC are grabbing up the rights to live-stream fan-favorite leagues and games. Amazon paid the National Football League $50 million for the rights to streamThursday Night Footballgames this season. Facebook has worked out deals for the rights to stream live Major League Baseball games, Major League Soccer games and an assortment of other college and international sports games. Verizon Communications announced a $2.5 billion deal with the NFL to expand the telco’s current streaming rights, which now include playoff games, the Super Bowl and in-market games on Verizon websites such as Yahoo and AOL. Clearly, the tech giants see the live-streaming opportunity as a way to land more user attention and, hopefully, more advertising dollars.

Still there’s reason to doubt if their investments will pay off. Sports fans are passionate beasts; they won’t stand to miss a moment of the game they’re watching. No fan wants to have the game lag or the stream fail, and thus miss an important play. While the promise of live-streaming sports games would open up more options for people to watch their favorite teams, as the industry currently stands, live streaming is not truly live.

Unsatisfied With Live Streams
According to Phenix’sThe Streaming Wars: Sports Report 2017, nearly 75% of sports fans expect problems when they stream a game. The culprit is latency — delays, poor picture quality and buffering — turning sports fans off from live streaming. Even these tech giants entering the game are plagued by latency, so much so that 63% of sports watchers said they are reluctant to sign up or resubscribe to live-streaming platforms in 2018. A third said they would think about canceling the service that was giving them an issue.

This past year, there have been some devastating examples of live-stream failures, most notably the widely hyped Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight. The main event was delayed due to scattered outages on pay-per-view. And a large number of fans weren’t able to see the Showtime stream of the fight due to technical issues, actually prompting some to sue Showtime, citing poor quality including grainy video, error screens, buffer events and stalls. UFC Fight Pass also crashed multiple times due to overwhelming traffic.

What’s clear is that these platforms weren’t able to handle all the concurrent viewers, and they disappointed their customers. Right now, the AmazonThursday Night Footballstream review rating is only 2.5 out of 5 stars, with many reporting latency problems and stalling. Eventually, people are going to look to watch the games elsewhere or turn back to more traditional platforms.

For organizations spending huge sums of money to stream the games, with the expectation that either viewers will pay for streaming subscriptions or advertisers will pay more to reach those viewers, these issues will result in lost revenue. With so many fans disappointed by the current state of live streaming and willing to give up on live-streaming platforms, we have reason to believe those dollars might be limited and the investments might not pay off.

Real-Time Potential
Fortunately, there’s still time for the industry to course-correct. This means companies need to invest in technology that allows for real-time streaming, which is different than “live” with sub-second latency, at broadcast scale. By doing so, fan engagement can be taken to the next level. Phenix’s research found that more than one-third of fans want to gain insight into player stats and stream more than one game on different devices, offering a multiscreen experience. Moreover, fans are looking to see updates from the locker room or sidelines, and would even want to talk or interact with the players and coaches in real time.

There’s massive potential to improve the overall experience for fans, but the first step is to eliminate latency. By providing streams in real time, major organizations broadcasting games can differentiate themselves and provide more interactivity for fans, achieving true return on investment — more subscribers and viewers equals more engagement, and thus more advertising dollars.

It’s not all grim: Amazon, Facebook, Verizon and others are providing fans the opportunity to engage in games on different platforms, testing new waters outside of traditional big TV players. But the only way these investments will pay off is if they give fans the streaming quality they demand and deserve. Right now, the industry isn’t living up to its promise and consumer sentiment toward live streaming is reflective of the obvious latency problem. The good news is, fans do see the potential in live streaming and want the engagement and flexibility real-time streaming can provide. Sports fans are dedicated to their team, and so platforms need to be dedicated to their subscribers.

Stefan Birrer is co-founder and CEO of streaming systems developer Phenix. Photo of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady courtesy of ESPN.

Amazon said that NFL Thursday Night Football game viewership via streaming rose 17% this season as Amazon Prime replaced Twitter.

Related: Amazon Hits Paydirt With NFL Streaming Deal

Amazon Prime Video had live coverage of 11 games, 10 simulcast on Thursday night and one on Christmas Day. The games reached 18.4 million total viewers in 224 countries and territories.

The Average Minute Audience — the measure most comparable to TV ratings — was 310,000, up 17% from last year. Those viewers watched an average of 63 minutes of the game.

In total more than 750 million minutes of live NFL coverage was watched on Prime Video this season.

The biggest audience for prime video came on Dec. 7 when 2 million viewers worldwide watched live coverage of the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Cheddar, the financial news network focused on younger audiences, has cut another distribution deal, this time with Twitch, the gamer-focused streaming service/platform that Amazon acquired in 2014.

RELATED: Amazon Puts Up $970 Million for Twitch

Starting Tuesday (January 9), Cheddar will launch a 24/7 linear feed on Twitch (at twitch.tv/cheddar), and include daily live content each day from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Cheddar’s Twitch channel will also enable viewers to interact with the service via a real-time chat capability.

Cheddar said it will kick off its new channel on Twitch with live interviews from this week’s CES in Las Vegas.

The deal adds another distribution conduit from Cheddar, which is also available on Amazon Channels (for $2.99 per month), Layer3 TV, virtual MVPDs such as Sling TV, Pluto TV and Philo, Comcast’s X1 platform, and apps for Android and iOS mobile devices, Apple TV and Roku players and Roku TVs.

RELATED: Cheddar Streams Onto Comcast's X1 Set-Tops

"Amazon has been a phenomenal investor in Cheddar, and we are already the only live news on Amazon Channels. Twitch is the home of true tech and gaming enthusiasts--a perfect fit for Cheddar content,” Jon Steinberg, CEO of Cheddar, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to be one of a select group launching a 24/7 channel on Twitch and a premier player in news on Twitch.”

“Cheddar has carved itself a stellar reputation when it comes to covering tech news live online," added Jane Weedon, Twitch’s director of business development. "By bringing their specialty to Twitch and embracing the interactive element of our service, it represents an experience that will be engaging for both new and existing fans of their programming."

Facebook will offer the exclusive live stream of pre-show events for the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and dick clark productions said that the official Red Carpet pre-show will livestream exclusively on Facebook from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (ET) on Sunday (Jan. 7). Other exclusive Red Carpet and backstage content will stream on Facebook and Instagram.

Related: HBO, Netflix Dominate 2018 Golden Globe Nominations

The Golden Globe Awards will air live coast-to-coast on NBC from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. (ET).

“We’re thrilled to partner with Facebook and give viewers a front row seat to the red carpet that can’t be found anywhere else,” said HFPA president Meher Tatna. “We hope to enhance the overall viewing experience so fans at home can feel they’re enjoying the show alongside their favorite stars at Hollywood’s biggest party of the year.”

The HFPA Presents: Globes Red Carpet Live, the two-hour pre-show produced by dick clark productions in association with the HFPA, will livestream exclusively on Facebook from the red carpet at the Beverly Hilton. The show will feature interviews with celebrities and Facebook and Instagram content to bring fans into Golden Globes action throughout the night.

Hosts for the pre-show include AJ Gibson, Jeannie Mai, Scott Mantz and Laura Marano.

The @Instagram Story, with 229 million followers will be hosted by Marano on Golden Globes Sunday. Further expanding upon red carpet content, Facebook 360 videos will be captured from the red carpet and throughout the pre-show, offering the Facebook community a chance to explore immersive videos on the Golden Globes Facebook page.

“Facebook has had a long collaborative relationship with the entertainment community, and we’re thrilled to be able to extend that through our work with the Golden Globes,” said Sibyl Goldman, head of entertainment partnerships at Facebook. “We always aim to create unique experiences which bring communities together, and partaking in the kickoff of award season in conjunction with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, is a demonstration of our commitment to bring fans together through entertainment they enjoy.”

Backstage, winners and presenters will step into the official Instagram immersive studio experience shot by photographer Ramona Rosales (@ramona_rosales). The exclusive video and photo content will be posted to @GoldenGlobes on Instagram in real time with behind-the-scenes moments shared on stories. Additionally, the HFPA will incorporate a community driven Q&A into the backstage press room, where select questions will be sourced via Facebook and streamed live on the Golden Globes Facebook page.

(Photo via WikiMedia Commons. Photo was uploaded Jan. 16, 2007, by Peter Dutton. Used under Creative Commons License 2.0. Photo was resized to fit MCN's specs.)

Live video streaming has yet to find a significant audience, according to a just-released Cogent Reports study by Market Strategies International, which found that only 11% of streaming customers pay for live streaming video. Moreover, the analysis identified a preference for watching over-the-top streams on smart TV sets in homes with those devices, although smartphones are also popular.

In the context of recent deals (like the $1.5 billion plan for Verizon Wireless to stream National Football League games), the Cogent findings underscore the hopes and expectations of media companies.

Related: PwC Sees Sports Media Rights Overtaking Gate Receipts Next Year

"Live-stream TV features, such as real-time viewing and access to sports or local programs, don’t produce the same lift in reach that comes from improved navigation and expanded content," according to the report, titled "StreamOn." A sample of the report's findings is available here.

“TV providers are failing to recognize that the habits and needs of the viewer have dramatically changed, and the old rules of television no longer apply,” said Greg Mishkin, vice president of research and consulting at Market Strategies. “TV providers must evaluate and revise the business model to fit the needs of the consumer, because if they don’t, they are setting themselves up to fail.”

"Different needs" lead to various behaviors, according to Cogent's report. It identified three types of users: "Complementers," who pay for a streaming service in addition to traditional pay TV (about 53% of respondents,); "Supplementers," who cancel or downgrade traditional Pay TV (29%); and "Testers," who do not pay for streaming services but have tested various offers (19%).

Cogent's analysis also identified that computers, smartphones and smart TVs were the most-used devices on for streaming shows (see chart). In homes with a smart TV, 91% of streaming customers use that screen, but overall, computers are the favorite device (65% of consumers view videos on it), while 45% use smartphones -- substantially more than use tablets (34%), gaming consoles (31%), or streaming media players (25%) or sticks (17%).

The study includes customer satisfaction responses for quality, reliability and overall satisfaction (mostly in the 86% to 91% range) for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu.

The broad popularity of streaming was underscored by the finding that 73% of respondents have used a paid streaming service; of the remaining 27% of respondents, 44% haven't used any streaming service and are unaware of any video streaming services (the report classified them as "out of category").

According to the report, the qualitative expectations around live streaming may be partly content-related: Some of today’s attraction to live streaming stems from the gaps in content on VOD streaming services, including the delay between the live air dates of network programs and their release dates on other services.

"This may explain the relatively low boost in reach associated with 'real-time/live viewing.'" said the study. "As usage patterns change, many are becoming accustomed to watching time-shifted TV, but the shift needs to be brief. If streaming providers figure out how to solve for that, live-streaming needs may change."

Using a "base-streaming service" priced at $10 per month appealing to 40% of its survey sample, Cogent found that local programming attracted only 4% more viewers, "real-time live viewing" added 3% and live sports added 2%.

Video Transcends "Commodity" Status
"Video is more than just a commodity," Cogent's analysis concluded.

It "facilitates" social and emotional needs, including family activity, relaxation, stress reduction, education and adventure, according to the report.

In its study, Cogent found that 48% of streaming customers often watch videos with others, and 22% frequently converse (multitasking) via social media while watching video streams. About two-thirds of streaming viewers often watch alone.

In a granular analysis of the potential streaming market, the report found that:

· 82% of respondents paid for a streaming service;

· 44% had "trialed" (tested) a streaming service;

· 32% had shared a streaming service; and

· 3% had both trialed and shared a service.

The streaming of live and on-demand events and shows has improved steadily in recent years, but those streams still tend to struggle during highly-watched tentpole events.

Of recent note, Yahoo’s Sept. 24 live stream of the Baltimore Ravens-Jacksonville Jaguars National Football League game in London didn’t go off without a hitch, as some users, particularly watching via TV-connected devices, lodged complaints about buffering and blurry images.

Initiatives such as the Streaming Video Alliance’s open caching initiative are taking aim at those scale challenges, but a content delivery network provider is also trying to solve that riddle.

Edge cloud provider Fastly is trying to get a fix on the issue with Media Shield, an offering that is akin to a control element to the streaming infrastructure and caching layer even in scenarios in which video traffic from an OTT service is travelling on multiple CDNs.

Fastly, which competes in the CDN sector with companies such as Limelight Networks and Akamai, is looking beyond “raw delivery” with Media Shield, Lee Chen, its head of strategic partnerships, said. In Chen’s view, that’s the “least interesting” technology challenge CDNs face, he said.

Related: Limelight, Akamai Bury the Hatchet

Instead, Media Shield focuses on providing a consistent quality of experience and quality of service as traffic travels to and from multiple CDN providers, ensuring that there’s a balance in elements such as low latency and quick streaming startup times. It also aims to help providers rely less on origin serves and apply more streaming resources toward the edges of the network.

By managing that from the cloud, Media Shield aims to balance the load among CDN providers and to manage and gain visibility into what’s occurring as if that video is being delivered on one unified streaming infrastructure.

Having that sort of control is becoming more important as more and more video goes online.

Related: Amazon’s First Live NFL Stream Solid, Not Perfect

The use of multi-CDNs is also becoming more the norm. All of the big OTT players have been using multi-CDN strategies for years, but even smaller providers are migrating in that direction, Dan Rayburn, executive vice president for StreamingMedia.com and principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said.

“The performance amongst CDNs for video, specifically, is so similar,” he said, adding that it’s become so inexpensive to go with multiple providers that it makes little sense for an OTT player to put all of its traffic on one CDN.

Fastly, whose customers include A+E Networks, Vimeo, Brightcove and Dish Network, isn’t alone with a system that shapes traffic on multiple CDNs.s Third parties such as Cedexis and Touchstream also provide solutions that let partners shift to other providers in real time, Rayburn said. He said Fastly’s launch of Media Shield is an acknowledgement the company won’t be a sole CDN provider to everyone, but it can still play a key role in other ways, given market shifts.

“The reality in the market is that the customers split up traffic, so Fastly is acknowledging this multi- CDN market and making [that approach] easier to use,” Rayburn said.

Over-the-top video still doesn’t scale to the lofty levels of traditional broadcast television, but online video’s ability to support major live sporting events continues to evolve and improve.

The latest example stems from the recently concluded NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. TV coverage of the tourney was complemented by “NCAA March Madness Live,” a live-streaming product developed by Turner Sports in partnership with CBS and the NCAA. That product, underpinned by iStreamPlanet (the online video infrastructure company Turner acquired in 2015), streamed games to more than a dozen platforms, including smartphones, tablets and Web browsers, as well as TV-connected Roku players, and Apple TV and Fire TV devices.

RECORD AUDIENCES
NCAA March Madness Live netted a record 98 million live video streams during the tournament, while the national championship game drew a record 4.4 million live streams, and a 29% increase from last year.

Traditional TV still dominates the viewing landscape, as the tournament averaged 10.82 million viewers, up 16% from last year’s average of 9.37 million. The championship game, won by North Carolina, netted an average of 22.99 million viewers, up about 30%.

While those OTT numbers still have a ways to go before reaching TV-like viewing levels, the partners involved in the streaming project tied together disparate systems to pull it off.

A big difference this year was the shift from the legacy world of SDI/baseband video distribution to IP.

That move “gave us a lot more flexibility on how we structured the workflow” while also optimizing ad insertion and ensuring the associated metadata was supported, Mio Babic, founder of iStreamPlanet, said.

When pulled together, the shift “connected the dots as video flowed from the actual arenas down to the consumer devices,” Babic explained.

Using an IP-based workflow also gave iStreamPlanet and its partners clearer visibility into the video streams themselves and a way to better monitor and understand their performance, so adjustments could be made as needed. That helped all parties involved to deal with traffic spikes in a specific region, for example, Babic said.

The overall aim was to deliver an HD-quality signal regardless of device, whether a smartphone or a 60-inch TV. Multiple streaming profiles were created for each type of supported device, Babic said.

iStreamPlanet and its partners delivered tournament video via unicast streaming delivery. Multicast streaming — the delivery of a stream that is accessible by multiple users — might eventually provide a way to reduce bandwidth requirements.

(STILL) GOING MOBILE
As for surprises during the tournament, Babic said viewing on mobile devices continues to strengthen. “The growth [for mobile] is not stopping … it’s accelerating,” he said. “These devices are now part of our lives. It’s almost like an extension of our hands.”

OTT will continue facing challenges as more viewers veer away from traditional TV and more devices enter the mix. “You don’t build it once,” Babic said. “You have to keep up with the changes … changes in features, changes in requirements, changes in security, changes in monetization.”

Looking ahead, Babic said he expects machine learning to take on a greater role not just in helping to personalize content, but to tap into the workflow in a way that can quickly spot anomalies and trends and make adjustments before they manifest into larger issues.

Laptop and desktop PCs remain the biggest platforms for online ad views, but TV-connected over-the-top devices, such as Roku players and Apple TV boxes, appear to be closing in fast.

OTT devices netted a 27% share of ad views on a per-device basis in Q4 of 2016 in the U.S., up from 22% a year earlier and 8% from Q4 2014, according to the latest Video Monetization Report from FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned ad-tech company.

That surge is encroaching on desktops and laptops, which held a 34% share in Q4 2016, down from 40% in the year-ago period, FreeWheel found in a report derived in part from 54 billion video views during the period and 200 billion views throughout 2016.

SET-TOP VOD ADS GROW
Another big growth area is the set-top box: Set-top VOD ad views rose 4%, to 14% in Q4 2016.

“Our data supports the strategy of putting video content on the big screen, whether it’s through developing a linear TV network or launching an OTT app,” FreeWheel noted in the report, adding that set-top VOD and OTT devices are “the largest disruptors in the market,” rising from just 9% of combined share in fourth-quarter 2014 to 41% in Q4 2016.

Advertising on authenticated TV Everywhere platforms is also on the uptick. Helped in part by live TV “tentpole” events, the share of ad views on TVE platforms for long-form and live content among U.S. programmers reached 71% in Q4 2016, 6 points better than the year-ago quarter.

Those numbers suggest consumers have overcome the “main hurdles” of authentication, Free- Wheel said.

LIVE STREAMING ON THE RISE
That also bears out in the use of streaming for live content, whose growth year-on-year growth of 36% outpaced that of longform and shortform on-demand content. Longform programming (of 20 minutes-plus) held the highest ad views by content duration for U.S. and European programmers.

FreeWheel’s report also found that total video views grew 26% year-over-year, while ad views jumped 24% over that same period.

Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications will begin streaming select live Mexican soccer matches from its Univision Deportes portfolio of Liga MX matches inEnglish via Facebook Live on Feb. 18.
According to Univision, fans will be able to live stream about 46 games – starting with the matchup between America and Chivas this Saturday – throughout the rest of the year in real-time on the Univision Deportes Facebook page and via Facebook’s Video tab.
“Univision’s unparalleled soccer productions and coverage have always garnered great engagement from not only Spanish-speaking viewers, but English-speaking fans as well. Our Facebook partnership is an exciting opportunity for these fans to experience this great soccer in the language of their choice,” said Univision chief commercial officer and president of content distribution Tonia O’Connor in a statement. “TV options have evolved from broadcast to cable to SVOD. Now Facebook represents the next wave of TV and, given its scale, they are an ideal partner to distribute our Liga MX matches in English.”
This is not the first time Univision has streamed content via Facebook Live. Last year’s presidential debates, network newscasts and reality show finales have all been streamed by the network on the platform, according to a Univision spokesperson.But it is the first time the network has streamed live soccer in English.
According to Nielesen , about 18.3 million English-speaking persons aged 2 and over (P2+) watched soccer on Univision Communicatons networks (Univision, Galavision, UniMasand Univision Deportes) between July adn December 2016.
“We’re thrilled Univision is bringing Liga MX matches to Facebook,” said Facebook head of global sports partnerships Dan Reed, in a statement. “The move enables Facebook’s passionate community of soccer fans to watch, share, talk about and react to one of the sport’s most exciting leagues - all in one location. We are also committed to supporting Univision Deportes as it explores innovative ways to complement its television broadcasts. By delivering unique broadcasts via Facebook Live, Univision Deportes is able to further reach new audiences in a truly interactive and social manner.”
Liga MX is the highest-rated club soccer league in the U.S. across all networks, and Univision holds the rights to 17 of the 18 teams in the league.
“We strive to connect our audience with their passions, and we know that Liga MX fans are always looking for more ways to experience their favorite league - whether they are at home or on the go,” Univision Deportes president Juan Carlos Rodriguez said in a statement. “Now Facebook will bring the passionate and loyal fans of the most-watched soccer league in the U.S. their favorite matches to its Facebook Live platform, where Univision Deportes can also be the first to engage a new, dedicated audience in today’s mobile and connected world.”

Xumo, a company that has developed a free, ad-supported OTT video aggregation service, said it has integrated Cheddar’s live feed into its native platform for smart TVs made by companies such as LG Electronics, Vizio, Panasonic and Hisense.

Xumo, which has also developed apps for mobile devices, said Cheddar is the first channel on its platform to feature live daily shows, noting that Cheddar, a financial-focused network tailored for younger audiences.  Live programming from Cheddar featured on Xumo includes Opening Bell (9 a.m. ET); and Between Bells (Noon ET).

RELATED: Xumo Taps ‘Virtual Input’ to Stream to Hisense and Sharp TVs

Xumo currently features more than 70 digital channels. Parnters include Cracked (acquired in April 2016 by E.W. Scripps Company), Funny Or Die, Time Inc., Condé Nast Entertainment, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, PopSugar, Mitú Network, Machinima, TYT Network, Reuters, Field & Stream, PBS Digital Studios, Network A, Fandor, Outside Television Shorts, Bonnier, Saveur, and Cycle  World, among others. 

For Cheddar, the Xumo deal broadens its platform reach, as it’s also available on iOS and Android mobile devices, Android TV devices, Apple TV boxes, Roku players, along with distribution on OTT services and platforms such as Sling TV, Vimeo and Pluto TV. 

Sports channel SNY will live-stream New York Mets games during the 2017 regular season.

The service is available, at no additional charge, to authenticated SNY subscribers at SNY.tv and on the NBC Sports app. It includes pre- and post-game coverage.

SNY is owned by Sterling Entertainment Enterprises, Charter Communications and Comcast. Bearing the slogan “Get your New York sports here,” SNY is the Mets’s cable home, while also covering the New York market’s other sports teams.

The network is available to subscribers throughout New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania, and nationally on DirecTV, Verizon FiOS, Comcast Cable and AT&T U-verse.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Comcast’s CSN Chicago said it will live stream the upcoing season's Major League Baseball games featuring the World Champion Cubs as well as the White Sox.

The games will be available to authenticated pay TV subscribers via CSNChicago.com and the NBC Sports app. CSN Chicago also will stream its pre- and post-game shows.

Baseball games were not previously available online because of tangled rights issues and legacy issues related to defining each team’s home markets. Last year, Fox’s regional sports networks made deals to stream games, and now the floodgates seem to be fully open.

“With live streaming currently offered for our Bulls [NBA] and Blackhawks [NHL] telecasts, the addition of MLB streaming further illustrates our commitment to provide our viewers with the most in-depth and compelling Cubs and White Sox content in and out of the home and on any device,” said Phil Bedella, VP/GM of CSN Chicago.

CSN Chicago is a partnership of the NBC Sports Group with the Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Free and subscription video-on-demand services sparked a major shift toward over-the-top viewing. Now, the emergence of virtual pay TV providers is stoking another big OTT movement — this time toward linear, live TV services.

This latest trend is shepherded by a new breed of virtual multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) services such as Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, and will now expand with last week’s launch of DirecTV Now, as well as online pay TV offerings coming from Hulu and YouTube.

Though use of OTT services is on the rise, even during highly viewed “tentpole” events, it remains relatively small compared to traditional pay TV audiences. Significant scale is coming, though. Meeting the increased demand for live TV feeds via the Internet presents a broad mix of critical technology and business-related challenges that will need to be addressed as Internet- fed audiences continue to expand in the years to come.

STARTED WITH VOD

For OTT video, on-demand was the first entrée, in part because it was easier to engineer. VOD requires materially fewer moving parts and less complicated workflows, John Bishop, chief technology officer of Akamai Technologies’ media business unit, said.

Next came one-off live events, which were more difficult to handle, though Akamai’s platform now handles tens of thousands of them — perhaps 100,000 — per day.

“But what is new right now is linear [networks],” Bishop said. “They are similar to live events from a functionality standpoint, but when you look at it from a redundancy, planning and maintenance perspective, they are very different.”

Some live events, including NBCUniversal’s expansive online coverage of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero earlier this year, are especially intensive. They also provide windows of inactivity that allow for changes and tweaks, though.

“We don’t have that luxury with linear,” Bishop said. “It’s always running.”

While picture quality, consistency and the quality of the experience are all key “tenets” of live streaming, “scale is always the hard one,” he said.

Online video publishers are seeing a greater push into the live arena. “Most every new customer has a requirement for some kind of live [component],” Arik Gaisler, Kaltura senior director of product management, infrastructure, said.

Even partners that don’t have a live stream are looking to add a live-like experience using preprogrammed VOD content that can be spliced into a linear-style stream, Gaisler said.

Progress is being made. It wasn’t long ago that any streaming number with the word “million” tied to it was cause for major concern, Bishop recalled. “We would’ve all gotten the cold shakes — this was an all-hands-on-deck, student-body-left movement,” he said.

These days, preparing for 5 million concurrent streams doesn’t cause a lot of lost sleep.

“North of 10 million gets me very worried,” Bishop said. “And what scares me online is 125 million coming in possibly for an event like the Super Bowl. We’re not there yet.”

Fortunately, neither is the online viewership of pro football’s marquee matchup. Availability of live Super Bowl streams are now the norm, but they tend to be a complementary option to the traditional TV feed.

CBS’s live stream of Super Bowl 50 in February drew 3.96 million unique viewers, far behind the 111.9 million viewers who tuned into the CBS telecast.

SCALING UP

“We still have a long way to get to the point where we can handle broadcast-level scale,” Devin Poolman, senior vice president of digital platforms at Fox Sports, said. “We’re seeing tremendous growth curves … but we need to start building for [broadcast-level scale] now — not just for ourselves, but as an industry.”

During Game 7 of Major League Baseball’s World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians on Nov. 2 — a tight contest that saw the Cubs prevail by a score of 8-7 — more than 1 million consumers viewed some 3.5 million-plus streams via Fox Sports Go, the programmer’s TV everywhere service. Those were OTT records for Fox Sports, yet relatively small figures placed against the 40 million viewers who tuned in via traditional TV for the series clincher.

“Relative to our past records, over the last six months we have quadrupled our bests in terms of concurrent audience,” Poolman said.

Sling TV, Dish Network’s OTT TV service, doesn’t break out subscriber numbers, but says its totals have been on the rise since its debut in February 2015.

“We have seen continued growth and we’re pleased with how the year has progressed,” Ben Weinberger, chief product officer at Sling TV, said, noting that live events, led by sports, tend to drive traffic to the OTT TV service.

The recent presidential election, and the debates that surrounded it, also created spikes in usage. And, on occasion, sports and the election collided.

A case in point was on Sept. 26, when the first Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton presidential debate outstreamed the New Orleans Saints-Atlanta Falcons Monday Night Football game. On Sling TV, the debate at its peak generated 68% more viewers than the football game. Together, the game and the debate helped to shatter all of Sling TV’s previous viewership records.

Jason Thibeault, executive director of the Streaming Video Alliance, a cross-industry group that counts members such as Comcast, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Charter Communications and NeuLion, is also taking on the scalability challenge that live OTT will face as Internet-using audiences continue to grow.

“We don’t have the infrastructure available to deliver live video to 15 million people concurrently. That would break the Internet,” Thibeault said. “There’s a whole value chain when it comes to delivering live video. It has challenges in front of it in order to make it broadcast quality.”

INFRASTRUCTURE WORRIES

Among the solutions getting a close look are multicast streaming, which is more efficient than unicast streaming because it allows a subset of viewers to share live streams; and LTE-B, also referred to as evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS).

SVA, meanwhile, is focusing on the live-streaming challenge in part through a new Open Caching working group that’s focused on putting caches deep into the network, as close to the user as possible. In addition to helping with concurrent streaming, the project will also target latency so that OTT viewers receive a feed more closely synched to the traditional TV broadcast, rather than one that lags 30 seconds behind it.

SVA is creating the functional requirements and technical specifications to build a new open caching infrastructure for companies in the OTT ecosystem. Next year, several SVA member companies are expected to collaborate on a proof-of-concept/demonstration of the open-caching idea.

“Hopefully that will solve some of the latency issues and improve the end-user experience for content delivery for both VOD and for live,” Thibeault said. “All of these players recognize that this is what consumers want and this is the next generation of the television experience.”

Bishop agreed. “Being close to the edge matters more and more now,” he said. “Consumers are expecting lower latency and high data rates. All of that needs to be served as close to the end user as possible.”

Bishop and Akamai are also strong advocates of shifting OTT video to the User Datagram Protocol, an alternative system known for delivering lower latencies and being less “chatty” than Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

Bishop sees TCP and UDP as coexisting for a long time to come, but expects adoption of UDP to “start small and then quickly ramp up” over the next 36 months.

Much of that work will need to happen on the client side of the streaming equation — laptop browsers, tablets, smartphones and connected-TV platforms. Google Chrome already has native support for UDP, but other devices, such as the iPhone, will need a software development kit to receive UDP content, Bishop explained. Akamai is making an SDK available for free that can pull UDP-based content off its platform, he said.

Dan Rayburn, executive vice president of StreamingMedia. com and a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, has a different view about the big issues being confronted by live OTT. Some providers are playing it too close to the edge to keep costs in check, he said, which in turn exposes them to unnecessary outages.

Others, like Twitch, the Amazon-owned company behind the popular live-streaming video game service of the same name, rarely run into buffering and capacity issues. Rayburn calls MLB Advanced Media the “gold standard” for live OTT streaming, and a big reason why PlayStation Vue and online video services from the WWE and the National Hockey League use that platform.

“They understand the importance of live. They understand that you get one chance to do it right,” Rayburn said, noting that MLBAM recognizes that underspending on streaming infrastructure and backend workflow systems can harm its reputations and brands.

“Some of the biggest challenges [with live streaming] aren’t technical; they’re business-related,” Rayburn said, pointing out that the vast majority of OTT TV services aren’t adding subscribers rapidly enough to make scale much of an issue — yet.

Some of the newer OTT TV players won’t be able to survive without being subsidized by a well-funded parent, Rayburn added.

Sling TV “wouldn’t be in business if they weren’t owned by Dish,” he said. “They wouldn’t survive [because] their subscriber count is too low.”

And as for DirecTV Now, the new OTT TV service from AT&T? “DirecTV Now couldn’t roll out on its own, because the model doesn’t make sense,” Rayburn said, noting that OTT providers have to pay more in capacity as more and more customers stream content from them.

To its credit, AT&T is nailing up enough capacity to support 1 million simultaneous DirecTV Now users a year from now, he said, citing his sources in the online video industry.

“AT&T is being realistic, internally, in saying, we don’t think we’re going to get that many subs in the first year,” Rayburn said.

AT&T has not made any subscriber predictions for DirecTV Now, other than to say it will be targeted to the 20 million U.S. homes currently outside the traditional pay TV ecosystem.

The company appears confident that it will be able to deliver a high-quality, stable experience for a service that will be streaming more than 100 live TV feeds.

AT&T: WE’RE CONFIDENT

“We do scale at AT&T,” John Stankey, CEO of AT&T Entertainment Group, stressed at the company’s DirecTV Now press event on Nov. 28 in New York. “When you bring a product in, it needs to be scaled.”

Stankey said the new video platform, which DirecTV Now is riding on, will serve as “the foundation for how we’re going to do things in the future.”

Rayburn said it’s important to remember that OTT and broadcast TV are different animals. At a base level, the Internet is open and public, made up of myriad networks and systems. Broadcast television is a closed, standardized and private system that is largely based on fixed costs. “From a cost and infrastructure standpoint, it’s night and day,” he said.

“People always connect capacity with streaming,” Rayburn said, but problems that occur aren’t always with the video itself. Often the problem is an issue with the player, the authentication system or a bad API. “There’s all kinds of steps in the process that have to work perfectly and tie into one another. If any of those don’t work or get hung up, you can’t even get to the video.”

Fox Sports’s Poolman agreed: “Different systems have to work well together. Invariably, there are different failure points or choke points. We spend a lot of our time on how to mitigate that and also have the redundancy and more efficient paths to get to the end user.”

OTT TV providers such as Sling TV need to have a good sense of the average audience to prepare for, but remain agile enough to add streaming and sign-on capacity if, for example, a big breaking news event occurs.

“We have to prepare for normal traffic and we need to prepare for spikes in that traffic because of unexpected events, and we need to prepare for new people coming into the service at the same time,” Weinberger said. “A lot of that has to do with the entire ecosystem that we put in place. There’s only so many things that we can control.”

SIDEBAR: fuboTV Forges a Build-vs.-Buy Path

fuboTV, the self-proclaimed “sports-first” virtual MVPD that launched in January 2015, faced a big challenge in July when FC Barcelona squared off against Real Madrid — a match between popular and rival La Liga soccer clubs that’s known as “El Clasico” whenever it occurs.

fuboTV, which delivered the game via its distribution deal with beIN Sports, ran into some technology snafus: Some subscribers had trouble signing on and others reported different streaming-related issues.

The troubles were temporary, but they happened during a major sporting event and fuboTV made the decision to offer s $15 credit (applied in three monthly $5 increments) to affected subscribers.

It turned into a valuable lesson for the OTT service, which decided it made sense to rebuild its platform in-house rather than relying on one that was largely based on outsourced products.

“When I took this job, I expected very heavily to buy systems from other vendors and put them together,” said Jason Solinsky, a former Google engineer named chief technology officer of fuboTV in August.

“In fact, we’ve gone the opposite direction,” he said, noting that an enormous amount of the software that powers the service’s platform, including its account management and package management systems and code, have been rewritten and developed internally.

“That’s the only way to achieve reliability that’s on par with a cable system,” he said.

fuboTV is about halfway through with replacing its infrastructure, Solinsky said, and expects to complete the job by the end of 2017 if not earlier.

The service now better understands what’s required to develop and scale an OTT TV service and “where the pain parts are,” cofounder and CEO David Gandler said.

Live-streaming, particularly with sports, “requires someone that has access to the full chain of problems that can take place,” he said.

And fuboTV’s internal handiwork is being parlayed into a new, complementary line of business as a streaming platform provider for other services.

“I think we’re a cross-breed between a Sling-type service and BAMTech,” Gandler said, the latter a reference to the tech services and video streaming operation launched by Major League Baseball’s MLB Advanced Media, which recently nabbed a major investment from The Walt Disney Co. “We’ll be focused on building out a fully automated end-to-end solution.”

SIDEBAR: OTT by the Numbers

A recent sampling shows live sports streaming is driving sizable audiences to the OTT world, but those numbers are still dwarfed by traditional TV viewing audiences.

15.2 million: The number of unique viewers who tuned into Yahoo’s global live stream of the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars-Buffalo Bills game on Oct. 25, 2015. Yahoo streamed that game to most regions of the world, but the game was also available on regular TV (via CBS) in the local Buffalo, N.Y., and Jacksonville, Fla., markets. The game generated 33.6 million video streams, and more than 460 million total minutes of video consumed, with 33% of the audience — about 5 million viewers — originating outside the U.S.

3.96 million: The number of unique viewers who accessed CBS’s live stream of Super Bowl 50 between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers across desktops, connected TV platforms, tablets and smartphones. CBS said viewers consumed more than 402 million total minutes of coverage, and watched for more than 101 minutes each on average. By comparison, the CBS Super Bowl telecast averaged 111.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

2.1 million: The number of unique viewers worldwide who watched Twitter’s first Thursday Night Football live stream on Sept. 15 between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills. The feed’s average audience was just 243,000, and each viewer watched an average of 22 minutes of the matchup via Twitter. By comparison, 5.4 million television viewers tuned in to watch the game on CBS or NFL Network.

911,000: The number of Sling TV subscribers at the end of third-quarter 2016, according to the latest estimate from MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett. Dish Network no longer breaks out how many of its 13.64 million pay TV subs take the OTT TV offering.

180-plus: The number of live TV feeds offered via Comcast’s TV everywhere app. The MSO said nearly 50% of its subscribers are using its TVE platforms, up from 30% of subscribers last year, and that customers are viewing 10 hours a month of TVE content on average.

SIDEBAR: Struggling to Keep Popular Streams Stable

While OTT TV service stability has been steadily improving, the struggles have tended to pop up during premieres of popular shows or big sporting events.

Among some examples, Sling TV buckled under the strain last August during the AMC premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, and last year during the TBS telecast of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s Final Four round due to a rush of signups and the resulting spike in streaming demand. In June, HBO Now, the premium programmer’s standalone OTT TV service suffered a temporary outage when streamers swamped the system to watch the a new episode from season six of hit series Game of Thrones.

Notably, that hiccup occurred after former HBO chief technology officer, Otto Berkes, resigned in late 2014 after the programmer opted to shift gears and work with a third-party streaming infrastructure partner, MLB Advanced Media, after its TV Everywhere service, HBO Go, melted down multiple times during the premieres of GoT episodes and other series. HBO confirmed last week that it has developed its own technology stack for HBO Go and works with BAMTech for HBO Now.

Last week’s DirecTV Now launch got off to a bit of a rocky start. While the speed and consistency of the service seemed to vary device to device soon after DirecTV Now’s debut, the service’s first evening saw subscribers head to Twitter to lodge complaints about login troubles, browser compatibility problems, long waits for customer service representatives and error codes, including false messages that customers had reached their streaming limit. (DirecTV Now allows up to two concurrent streams per account.)

YouTube is taking 4K to the next stage by adding a live streaming option that delivers video in the pixelicious format.

YouTube, which introduced 4K video support in 2010, is “taking 4K one step further with the launch of 4K live streaming for both 360- degree videos and standard videos,” Kurt Wilms, senior product manager at YouTube, said in the announcement. “Get ready for 360 concert and event streams that look sharper, cleaner, and brighter than ever before.”

He reasoned that the live capability will be a big hit with creators and content partners. YouTube will show off the new 4K live streaming capability during the Game Awards, set for Thursday (Dec. 1) at 6 p.m. ET. YouTube will stream the entire show live in 4K.

According to Wilms, YouTube’s 4K live streams will pump out 8 million pixels and support up to 60 frames per second.

YouTube noted that creators will need a hefty and constant upload speed – about 12 Mbps to 20 Mbps to send 4K reliably to its platform.

For users, YouTube will use the VP9 codec for 4K livestreams to keep bitrate and bandwidth requirements in check, as it already does for VOD 4K playback. 

Expanding its live streaming platform reach, Twitter has launched its OTT video app for Android TV, which powers devices such as the Nexus Player, Nvidia Shield, Razer Forge TV, select smart TVs from Sharp and Sony, and the new MiBox from Xiaomi.

RELATED: Google Stops Selling the Nexus Player

Twitter, which nabbed streaming rights for Thursday night NFL games, is launching the app in time for tonight’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Carolina Panthers, and spread the word on Twitter:

Twitter for Android TV is available in the @GooglePlay store! Watch #TNF streaming LIVE on Twitter tomorrow night. https://t.co/5Dsxcuh4fUpic.twitter.com/Z6TewE5dkp

— Twitter (@twitter) November 16, 2016

Twitter has also launched live video apps for Apple TV devices, Amazon Fire TV boxes and sticks and the Xbox One.

Twitter, which recently announced a layoff and the shuttering of the Vine mobile app as part of a reorg aimed at driving profitability, hopes that live TV streaming of sporting events, including select games from Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League, will help it grow and expand into new markets.

RELATED: NBA Takes Shots With Shows for Twitter

Twitter’s first NFL live stream – the Sept. 15 game between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets – attracted 2.1 million viewers.

On Sept. 17, the WBO Light Middleweight Championship fight between Canelo Alvarez and Liam Smith was offered via pay-per-view at $65 a pop, with several news outlets estimating that maybe 300,000 people shelled out money for the boxing match.

But how many people watched the fight via illegal streaming online? An estimated 1.82 million, according to data from antipiracy company VFT Solutions, which tracks online streams in real time. VFT found a total of 710 illegal streams of the fight, with one stream alone drawing more than twice as many viewers as had paid for the legal telecast.

And PPV boxing is just the tip of the illegal streaming iceberg: VFT sees regular, linear and OTT broadcasts of everything from the NFL to college football to English Premier League and UEFA Champions League soccer streamed illegally on a regular basis. Millions of consumers are taking advantage of these free streams, risking malware and dealing with poor quality, rather than paying for the channels.

HD STREAMS, TOO

Moreover, more than 12,000 pirated HDTV streams were served in the past month, according to piracy-monitoring firm Friend MTS, which shows that even 1080p resolution isn’t safely in the realm of pay TV operators.

To date, content owners have been left dealing with this problem by employing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown process, with websites, search engines and hosting companies notified of the offending streams. But that whack-a-mole approach can’t eliminate every offending stream, due to the sheer volume of what’s become available.

Enter Cisco Systems.

The networking technology company is now testing a solution to fight streaming piracy that works directly with the service providers distributing content, rather than rightsholders. Called Streaming Piracy Prevention (SPP ), the service’s technology locates illicit content on both the open Internet and in closed networks that might require a subscription.

Once identified, the source is tracked down using forensic watermarking and then shuttered via Cisco’s video security system, “essentially revoking entitlement,” according to Amit Wohl, the video security product manager in Cisco Systems’ service provider organization.

“The ability to do this in near-real time is what makes this solution different, better and more effective at dealing with piracy, especially when you talk about live events,” Wohl said. “The ability to detect that someone is [pirating] an event from your network and dealing with it within seconds is what makes the difference.”

KNOWING WHERE TO LOOK

Asked how the solution differentiates between legal and illegal streams, Wohl stressed that Cisco’s team “knows where to find illegal content.” Sites and services that stream illegally don’t hide themselves all that well, he said.

“Once we know where they are, we can sample the video and compare it with the [legal] content,” Wohl said. “If it’s coming from our service … and once we know the identity of the source device, we can shut it down.”

Essentially, development of Cisco’s offering — which is currently in pilot testing — came about after the company’s service- provider customers expressed concern that their services were being used to steal content. Since legal remedies haven’t been able to keep up with the illegal streams — and as pirate services begin delivering channel packages to connected devices and IPTV set-tops — a technological solution became the best recourse, Wohl said.

There may not be a silver bullet to eliminate digital piracy, but Cisco and Wohl said they hope their solution will at least put a dent into the problem, if it goes to market.

A total of seven networks, along with the Washington Post, will live-stream the final 2016 presidential debate Oct. 19 via YouTube, the Google-owned company announced.

C-SPAN, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, PBS, Univision and Telemundo are the networks that will carry their broadcast coverage live on YouTube, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.

Related:How to Stream a Debate, Gaffe-Free

The Oct. 9 presidential debate on YouTube drew 1.5 million peak concurrent viewers, with more than 2.5 million hours watched. Additionally,  as many as 10 million viewers watched live via illegal, pirated streams, according to VFT Solutions (read more here; subscription required).

Read more on broadcastingcable.com.

It seems like only yesterday that we said “goodbye” to the U.S. political conventions. During the dog days of summer, we had a chance to reflect on what makes live-streaming them so challenging. And as the delivery partner for a lot of broadcasters, with the third presidential debate and Election Day just around the corner, we wanted to offer some hard-won wisdom for others embarking on high-profile live events.

Managing partner-splitters: In politics, people who vote Republican for one race and Democratic for another are called “ticket splitters.” In video production, think of them as programmers who cross partner lines to work with separate vendors for encoding, CDN and network. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It can enable you to work with best-of-breed partners for each phase of workflow and delivery. But it’s not without opportunities for error.

Change you can believe in: For example, many broadcasters have policies in place that prevent changes during primetime or drive time. Believe it or not, that’s not always the case when it comes to live-event time. Actions on parts of your platform — or a vendor’s — that seem totally unrelated to the live event can wreak havoc on the event itself.

For example, a network-wide virus scan can compromise egress bandwidth. This seemingly internal spike in consumption can ripple down to external viewers. Suddenly, the pipe you thought was dedicated from encoder to CDN partner entry point looks a lot less dedicated.

We’ve found three best practices that can help: transparency, telemetry and talking.

The promise of radical transparency: In the months and weeks leading up to a major live event, adopt a default policy of “communicate and share” even at the risk of over-communicating. Ask questions of and offer answers to your vendors. “What does your upstream architecture look like? Where do your firewalls or DMZs live? Walk me through your network tiers. Where does media traffic live, or not?”

Your questions are designed to get at the “itch” spots — the parts of the architecture that are most likely to get rubbed, and fail.

Good telemetry trumps blame: Political conventions are often about blaming the other guy for today’s challenges. In live-event video delivery, there can also be plenty of finger-pointing as well, especially in the multivendor setups we typically see.

Instead of playing the blame game, use good telemetry to isolate problems at their source. For example, set beacons throughout your workflow and tie them to your broadcast operations control center (BOCC). Then, set regular trace route tests to check for latency. Look at the timing of egress from ingest to CDN, for example. If the latency spikes above that threshold or shows a lot of variance, that should trigger an alert that leads to a proactive call from your workflow monitor.

By eliminating the finger-pointing phase, mean time to notify and mitigate should drop significantly. You can do the same with ingest errors by regularly polling entry points. Imagine if potholes could be filled that fast!

Know your moves — communication and operational awareness: Heading into any large live event, there should be a clear picture between the content provider and the CDN of what the contingencies will be used in the event of quality degradation. What are the primary and backup paths for first mile? Do you have backup streams/workflows configured to switch to in the event of unforeseen failures? What are the targeted regions for viewers, and which ISPs will be serving the last mile? What is the security policy for the content, and who is entitled to receive it? What device platforms are important for the event (e.g., Apple, Roku, etc.)?

It’s important to set expectations and be prepared for the order of magnitude of concurrent users — both from a network capacity and tooling perspective, which will ensure proper throughput, alerting and data aggregation as we can now monitor content and traffic in near real time.

Communication continues to be key during the event. For example, establish a live audio bridge between customer and CDN to facilitate any changes in production that may impact the streaming content. Check all available bitrates and latency for primary and backup feeds. Just prior to the start of the event you should know how your content is being mapped at entry point, and periodically checking throughout can give the customer and CDN a level of assuredness as they are executing properly on a key event. Calling out that status on a live bridge is good operational hygiene. It is a good way to stay synchronized. Call and response protocol on an agreed upon cadence is a simple concept but not always applied in this stage of the content supply chain. We believe this should be the norm.

In order to win the viewer’s vote on where they go to get their OTT content, the quality must be there. We know from analytics that when rebuffering spikes or bit rates drop and picture quality is poor, people will leave the stream and go somewhere else. Therefore, it is imperative to provide proactive, real-time monitoring, communication and quality metrics, while ensuring broad interoperability across a fully managed end-to-end, multivendor ecosystem.

Matt Azzarto is director of media operations and Sean Keats is director of industry marketing at Cambridge, Mass.-based content delivery network and cloud services provider Akamai.

While Nielsen ratings were down for Sunday's (Oct. 9) presidential debate from the first debate, live streaming made up for at least some of the slack, according to online analytics company Hitwise, a division of Connexity.

For example, it said, YouTube had a 40% increase in debate content views from the first debate, and Twitter reported a 30% increase in traffic to its live stream vs. the Sept. 26 debate.

Related: Pro Football Trumps Presidential Debate Coverage on Cable

At least 20,000 people in the U.S. searched for where and how to stream the debate, Hitwise said, with the majority skewing young, male, educated and Hispanic. Supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton were 34% more likely to have searched for the stream than supporters of the GOP's Donald Trump.

Read more about the 2016 presidential campaign.

For sports fans, September marks the beginning of fall’s TV-sports nirvana, as all four major pro sports leagues are in play, with college football also kicking off and the college-basketball season soon to ramp up.

Along with the multitude of national broadcast and cable networks, as well as regional sports services, airing live events this fall, a rookie live-event distributor will hit the field with the promise of providing fans with even more access to the sports content they want.

Social-media service Twitter will live-stream the Sept. 15 New York Jets-Buffalo Bills Thursday Night Football telecast, the first of 10 live Thursday night games Twitter will offer to both users and nonusers (i.e., you won’t need a Twitter handle to watch) during the 2016 National Football League season as part of a landmark multimillion-dollar carriage deal inked this past April.

While the NFL has thrown content passes to online platforms before — it streamed a regular-season game last year via Yahoo, and just last month announced plans to launch its own Snapchat Discover channel — the Twitter deal marks a new frontier for both the league and the platform.

The NFL joins Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League in streaming live games via Twitter. And though it doesn’t offer any National Basketball Association games, Twitter has inked a deal with the pro-hoops circuit to air two exclusive series once the 2016-17 regular season launches next month.

No one expects Twitter’s live streaming to cut into national or local viewership of NFL, MLB or NHL telecasts. It remains to be seen if consumers will even consider watching live video content on what has traditionally been a text and photo-based media site for news and information geeks.

But the Twitter deals represent more chipping away at cable’s live-sports value proposition. The more games sports fans can watch outside the traditional cable subscription package, the greater the potential they’ll switch content-delivery teams.

Zype, a cloud-powered OTT video distribution service, has complemented its on-demand capabilities with a product that's focused on live video streaming.

Zype Live, targeted at events and linear channels, handles elements such as ingest, packaging, transcoding, and distribution, data analytics, and the ability to convert those events and feeds to VOD formats after a live program ends.

Zype said its new live platform also supports various business models, including subscriptions, pay –per-view, and free ad-based content, and can deliver that content to a wide range of devices, including Apple TV, Roku players, Web browsers, Amazon Fire TV boxes, smart TVs and iOS and Android mobile devices. Integrated multicasting can also support Facebook Live, YouTube and Twitch, the company said.

Zype got into live streaming after it built a private beta for select customers, including Compound Media, Ed Laczynski, Zype’s founder and CEO, said, noting that supporting live is more than transcoding and analytics, but a suite of orchestration that needs to occur before and after the event.

“We are getting a ton of demand for live,” he said. While Facebook and Periscope now offer live streaming capabilities, content makers have less control of their revenue streams.

Those options are “great for discovery and promotion…but not necessarily where you want to run your business,” Laczynski said.

Other early takers include Texan Live, a service that features live and on-demand high school sports from the Houston area. Texan Live is now poised to run 12 concurrent live streams as it ramps up coverage from eight teams to 42 teams.

Havoc.tv is also tapping Zype Live to launch a free and premium OTT service that’s set to launch this fall. Luis Network and Chukker.tv  are also using it.

Zype’s other announced customers include NBTV Studios, Mill Creek  Entertainment, The Rebel Media, The Film Detective, The Grind House, Brooklyn On Demand, Shout! Factory, and the All Babies Channel, among others.

Zype’s business model for live is based on a per subscriber/per transaction per month basis.  Customers can use their own delivery networks or tap into Zype’s for streaming, charged by the hour.

Zype is a startup in a competitive field of streaming services that support both live and VOD, including NeuLion, Encoding.com, Comcast Wholesale, iStreamPlanet (owned by Turner),  UStream (now part of IBM), and BAM Tech, the technology services and video streaming unit launched by Major League Baseball and now partly owned by Disney.

Zype’s new live product comes on the heels of $3.6 million in seed funding led by Revel Partners.

Zype was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in New York. 

The National Basketball Association  expanded its content partnership with Twitter that features live programming and more video to Twitter, Vine and Periscope, the league announced Tuesday. 

The NBA and Twitter will deliver a free live stream of a new weekly NBA pregame show with elements that were created specifically to drive Twitter conversation, said network officials.

 Ahead of the 2016-17 season, the NBA will announce an additional to-be-determined show that will also stream exclusively on Twitter.

“We’re excited about bringing live content to Twitter, which has proven to be an ideal destination for real-time sports conversations,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver in a statement.  “We’ve seen technology bring fans closer to our game, teams and players in ways we could have only imagined a decade ago. This expanded partnership will help feed our fans’ growing demand for the NBA by more deeply integrating the league across Twitter’s many platforms.”

Broadcast network Fox said it is launching a live stream of its primetime entertainment programming on Fox.com and the Fox Now app, beginning Monday night (July 11).

The stream will be available to pay TV customers in all 210 television markets. Fox said it will simulcast entertainment programming seven nights a week, plus late night on Saturdays.

Fox says that live streaming will be available to 98% of pay TV subscribers, or 96 million homes. The apps needed to view the live stream have already been downloaded 25 million times.

For more of this story, please visit broadcastingcable.com.

YouTube aims to have the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) event being held June 14-16 in Los Angeles covered in spades, with a unique event hub for dozens of live streams from the event.

“YouTube will give gamers around the world front-row access to everything E3 again this year with dozens of live streams scheduled throughout the week,” Ryan Wyatt, global head of gaming content for YouTube, wrote in a blog post. “To make moments like this even better, we are launching event pages in YouTube Gaming, which serve as destinations for watching the biggest gaming and eSports events.”

YouTube’s E3 hub will offer up both live and archived content, live chat options for gamers, catch-up announcements and a spot for gaming trailers, where YouTube users will be able to vote for their favorites.

RELATED:Disney Earnings Growth Falls Short of Wall Street Targets

Walt Disney Co., chairman and CEO Bob Iger backed Hulu’s plans to offer a bundle of pay TV channels through its own live streaming service, adding the online pioneer could be an attractive alternative for consumers.

Hulu unveiled plans to offer its own skinny bundle of live sports, news and events last week. Disney is a partner in Hulu along with 21st Century Fox and Comcast.

Iger said Hulu had the potential to become a formidable multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) by offer a “best of cable” package to consumers. Hulu hasn’t said how much that package will cost or when it would be released and Iger wasn’t offering any further insight. But he said that Hulu’s moves shouldn’t upset Disney’s current distribution partners, many of whom – like Comcast’s NBC Universal – have their own programming assets.

“We don’t think there will be any negative impact whatsoever to us going into the business of distributing our channels,” Iger said.

Iger said that Disney has had talks with several other distributors about its content, including Sling TV, which introduced a multi-stream package last month that included Fox sports channels but no ESPN. Iger said that Disney had had talks with Sling about the multi-stream product but was not able to reach an agreement by the launch date. However, Iger said he met with Dish Network chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen last week (Dish owns Sling) and has had discussions about being included in the multi-stream product.  

The Disney chief had little to say about the abrupt departure of chief operating officer Tom Staggs, who many believed was Iger’s heir apparent. Staggs announced his resignation in April. His last day at Disney was May 6 but he will remain as an advisor to Iger through the end of fiscal 2016.

Iger said he was sorry that Staggs decided to leave, calling him a “colleague and friend,” but said the Disney board had ample time to find a new successor. Iger’s current employment deal with Disney has another two years left and the chairman and CEO said he has no current plans to extend it. That could leave the door open to him staying on past that date, but at least for now, Iger said he has no plans to stay beyond his agreed upon term.

Taking an enterprise angle on a market made popular by consumer-focused services such as Periscope, a startup called Stre.am said it has optimized its mobile live streaming app for business customers.

Early on, its new live video service platform has netted deals with partners that include The Volvo Car Open, Vainglory (a mobile multi-player game), Arsenic Magazine, and Charleston Battery of the United Soccer League.

Stre.am has also been working with the Jacksonville Jaguars, which is using the platform to boost in-stadium fan engagement by letting fans upload videos to a control room that selects them for display on EverBank Field’s jumbotron.

Stre.am hopes to stand out with from platforms like Facebook Live and Periscope with respect to enterprises with a device-agnostic (including mobile devices and GoPro cameras), white-label strategy that can quickly add live streaming to its partners’ arsenals and to embed that capability into their own web sites and apps, explained Will Jamieson, Stre.am’s chief marketing officer.

Jamieson, an exec who was also on the founding team at Yik Yak (a location-based social network), said Stre.am’s approach, which will be shown at NAB, allows brands and media companies to aggregate content to their own digital properties, and control how it’s being used and distributed.  Under the model, partners go live using Stre.am's general app alongside access to a backend, Web-powered console that allows for customization and control. 

Early on, Strea.am will give the product away to build up use-cases, but is in the process of introducing a business model that sells the product on bandwidth usage and feature sets.

Among other early use cases, The Volvo Car Open is using Stre.am Enterprise to broadcast live video from outer tournament tennis courts, including practice courts.

Stre.am was founded in 2014 and launched a product the following year that was consumer focused. The Charleston, S.C.-based company has about 15 employees and is in the process of raising an “A” round.

Last week’s tipoff of March Madness brought on a mad rush of new apps and services from pay TV providers, ad-tech vendors and programmers that are tailored for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

On the streaming front, NCAA March Madness Live, an app for the tourney developed in partnership by the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports, is available across what they say is a record 12 platforms.

Those lending support this year include the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, Amazon Fire tablets, iOS and Android mobile devices, Windows handsets, Web browsers, and even the Apple Watch. Additionally, viewers can access all games broadcast on CBS “with no registration required” on desktops as well as smartphones and tablets. Live streams will also be offered on digital platforms from TBS, TNT, truTV and CBS, as well as via participating TV provider websites and apps.

The NCAA March Madness Live app for the Apple TV offers a split-screen feature that lets users stream two live games at the same time.

Dish Network is literally doubling that with last week’s debut of “Sports Bar Mode,” a feature for its new 4K-capable Hopper 3 DVR that divides the TV screen into quadrants, with each displaying a different live TV program. That feature, also called “multiview” and offered on any Hopper 3 that’s connected to a 4K or HD set, decodes four streams, stitches them together and displays them simultaneously. The feature takes advantage of the tuner-rich Hopper 3, which sports 16 of them.

Comcast is also focusing on the big screen with the debut of a basketball “Extras” for its X1 Sports app that syncs up stats with live programming and relies on tech from OneTwoSee, the Philadelphia-based startup that Comcast acquired earlier this month.

The interactive app provides in-game, team-by-team stats such as steals, rebounds and foul counts, as well as a view of the updated tournament bracket. Post-game, the app feeds a recap of the matchup, including by-quarter scores and the “Xfinity Player of the Game.”

For the tourney’s Final Four round, the app will also let users pull up full-team rosters and detailed individual player stats, including shooting percentages by court location.

The tourney also created an opening for media data specialist 4C to take the wraps off Sports Sync, a platform that enables brands and other partners to deliver ads on social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in concert with a specific live sports moment, such as a slam dunk or a game-changing three-point shot.

Several brands have signed on for Sports Sync for March Madness, 4C said, but the company wasn’t at liberty yet to name them. 4C also has built a version of its platform that triggers digital ads around political TV spots, as well as shifts in the weather.

Not all ad inventory is created equal, according to Aaron Goldman, 4C’s chief marketing officer. 4C’s approach is about delivering an ad message “when attentions are heightened,” he said.

— Jeff Baumgartner

‘Dirty Charades’ Behind the Scenes of ‘Skin Wars'

 Body-painting competition Skin Wars is GSN’s top original series, and behind the scenes it often takes hours for the painters to create their masterpieces on their nearly naked human canvases.

Host Rebecca Romijn and sejudge RuPaul Charles lamented during the network’s March 8 upfront presentation that episodes could take as long as 14 hours to tape as they literally and painstakingly watched paint dry.

They played games to pass the time, such as “Dirty Charades.” It’s like the traditional pantomime guessing game, but as Charles succinctly described, “It was just dirty.”

Michael Levitt said it was often di_ cult to begin shooting after several rounds of charades, because the host couldn’t stop laughing at the risqué gamesmanship.

Romijn quipped that the game’s content and gestures probably wouldn’t be suitable for air. “I don’t think you’re going to see our game on GSN anytime soon.”

— R. Thomas Umstead

NeuLion and Major League Soccer will keep their streaming partnership going for a seventh year after striking a renewal for the 2016 season that will factor in some enhancements to MLS LIVE, the league's OTT, multi-screen subscription service.

MLS doesn’t break out specific sub numbers for MLS LIVE, but said the over-the-top subscription offering grew its base by more than 60% for the 2015 season.

That offering sees a renewal rate of more than 85% each year, Chris Schlosser, SVP and GM of MLS Digital said, noting that the sales cycle for 2016 is underway and the “numbers are looking very positive.”

“OTT is a very important area for us,” Schlosser said. “We deliver a very targeted millennial audience.”

Heading into the new season, which kicks off March 6, will cost $79.99 per year or $16.99 per month. MLS LIVE streams out seven local games per week (MLS also offers three  national broadcasts per week via ESPN, Univision and Fox that are blacked out on MLS LIVE). About half of the MLS clubs do allow in-market streaming (here’s how the blackout policies for the 2016 season stack up on a club-by-club basis in the U.S. and Canada). All blacked out games do become available to MLS LIVE subs 48 hours after the match.

Additionally, MLS LIVE features an archive of  games from the past six seasons, instant replays during live games, and access to condensed, 15-minute versions of games following live matches. The Web-based version of MLS LIVE also supports a multi-game feature.

This year, the OTT service will tack on some enhancements, including closer integration with MLSsoccer.com via a single sign-on and a cleaner, redesigned interface for the Web and mobile apps.

Last season, about 40% of MLS LIVE subs watched on PCs, and the same percentage watched on smartphones and tablets (Android and iOS), while the remaining 20% watched on TV-connected platforms  such as Roku players, Apple TV boxes, and via the Chromecast streaming adapter.

NeuLion’s role is to manage and package the live feeds into different formats and deliver them in a range of bit rates and resolutions for the variety of devices supported by MLS LIVE.

To enable the service to scale and optimize streaming performance, NeuLion uses multiple content delivery network partners (Akamai, Limelight Networks and Level 3 Communications) and has the ability to switch those paths based on how they are handling the load, explained Chris Wagner, NeuLion’s executive vice president, marketplace strategy.

Three new studies dramatically emphasize the rapid adoption of "non-traditional" viewing and the decline of the "TV-centric living room."  At the same time the research underscores how second-screen usage, especially during special events such as the Super Bowl, are attracting more viewers than the naysayers want to believe. 

In the U.K., for example, only 50% of adults online "consider the TV set as the focal point of their living rooms," and 70% of adults routinely used a connected device while watching TV, the Internet Advertising Bureau UK found in a recent study. Among British viewers aged 16 to 34, 87% are using a second screen while in front of a TV set.

Although the data represent the current British experience, the numbers are comparable to North American usage. The situation should also spur programmers and operators to develop multiscreen approaches to content and advertising.  

“Second screening is ingrained to such a degree that all screens are now equal; there’s no hierarchy, only fragmentation of attention – actually switch-screening is a much more accurate term,” said Tim Elkington, the IAB-UK’s chief strategy officer.

“Connected devices have changed the living room and will continue to do so, and advertisers must plan for the living room of tomorrow,” Elkington added. “This requires a rethink about how to command attention in the living room because the opportunity to do so is far more limited, fragmented and competitive than ever before.”

The IAB UK analysis also tracked  viewers' various activities during commercial breaks. They most frequently turn to other online activities via their connected devices (35%). followed by talking to someone in the room (15%), leaving the room (13%) and changing the channel (8%).

To emphasize the U.Kk study, two reports on U.S. Super Bowl viewing attested to the non-traditional viewing patterns -- despite some problems with the streaming video delivery of the big game.

Think With Google,an advertising research unit within the media giant, monitored the ways in which U.S. TV viewers interacted with Super Bowl 50 and found that 82% of ad-related searches conducted during the game telecast were done on mobile phones, compared with 7% on tablets and 11% on desktop computers.  

Separately, Localytics tracked the average number of apps launched during the Super Bowl by mobile users. It found that app usage ran high throughout the game, with multitasking viewers using an average of 3.2 social networks and 1.9 sports apps.

Significantly, the distraction-seeking second-screen users also launched 2.4 music apps and 2.2 entertainment apps while they were tuned in to the Super Bowl, according to Localytics' research.  It found that the great length of "time in app" (measured by average app usage within each hour period) occurred at just before the actual start of the game. The peak average time in app was 8.7 minutes with a spike in usage during Lady Gaga's performance of the National Anthem.

The Localytics data showed that after 7 p.m. ET, fans began to spend less time in apps, "likely to focus on the fast-moving game."

Although these studies, from both sides of the Atlantic, are merely the latest entrants in the ongoing war of dueling data about multiscreen engagement and platform preferences, they add new evidence about the shifting preferences and screen savvy of a growing audience sector.

At first blush, MLB’s recent agreement allowing Fox regional sports networks to stream live baseball games within their respective markets may look like a score for sports fans looking to cut the cord on the traditional cable package.

But in reality, the deal is more like a sacrifice bunt advancing the value of the cable bundle to baseball fans in select local markets. MLB’s new digital pitch allows viewers to move from first base where they could only access their local baseball team’s games on their big screen TVs to second base where they can now watch local games on digital platforms -- but not without a swing from the Fox regionals. Viewers have to be authenticated by Fox and cable operators through their cable subscriptions to access local games online.

In another strikeout for cable cutters, subscribers to MLB’s Extra Innings live game out-of-market package will not be able to access their local team’s games online though the reported three-year deal. 

The ability for in-market fans of the world champion Kansas City Royals, New York Yankees, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers or the 11 other MLB teams with Fox Sports regional network deals to watch games on their iPads, phones and computers is a major development for the league and Fox Sports.

For distributors, the deal further enhances the value of the cable bundle to devoted local sports fans who can’t get enough of their local baseball teams. To put it another way, providing online access to Fox Sports’ live telecasts of regional baseball games allows operators to hit a digital home run for their subscribers.

YouNow, a live social network that “connects audiences and broadcasters in real time,” said it has secured $15 million round of funding led by current backers Venrock and Oren Zeev. Comcast Ventures also joined the round as a new investor, said YouNow, which has raised about $26 million, according to CrunchBase.

YouNow, which competes in some ways with Periscope and Meercat, claims to have 100 million user sessions a month and handles more than 50,000 hours of new live-video content created every day.  On average, the daily user of Younow spends 51 minutes per day on the platform, the company said.

YouNow, which has developed apps for iOS and  Android, has a Go Live option that lets users broadcast video to their audiences, along with a discovery tool to find YouTube and Vine stars.  Audiences are rewarded through in-app “virtual good purchases.”

"The addition of Comcast Ventures to our family of backers underscores our success in building a real-time social network that fulfills the needs of a younger, digitally savvy generation that is eager to participate in media and not just consume it,” YouNow founder and CEO  Adi Sideman, said in a statement.

"YouNow has struck a chord with young audiences who crave and are increasingly willing to pay for real-time video-based interactivity,” added Sam Landman, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “YouNow's virtual goods economy is enabling the most dedicated creators to build rewarding careers on the social network, based entirely on their talents. We're excited to support the team and their vision.”

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“UFC Fight Pass,” the global online content service from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, will look to offer subscribers more live, original and unique mixed-martial-arts events under the purview of its new general manager, Eric Winter. Winter is a former DirecTV pay-per-view executive who most recently co-headed Yahoo! Sports. The $9.99-per-month online subscription service complements UFC’s monthly PPV events and live fights on Fox Sports 1. Winter and UFC chief content officer Marshall Zelaznik recently spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about their plans to expand the service globally and technologically.

MCN: How would you describe and define the Fight Pass service?

Eric Winter: Our vision may sound grandiose, but it's to take our content and to deliver it to users anywhere they are going to be on any device at any time. And I believe the foundation of our product is live streaming, complemented with the historical database of fights that we have — first and foremost the historical footage from the UFC's library, and then all the derivative fight organizations that either [UFC parent] Zuffa owns or Zuffa partners with.

MCN: You mentioned live streaming. Are we talking about streaming exclusive fight cards or more the undercard fights of events that are aired live on PPV or broadcast TV?

EW: Do you remember the Facebook fights that would go on before the live Fox broadcast or the live TV broadcast? Well those have now morphed into Fight Pass. And we've toggled between two live fights or three live fights, but the more fights the merrier.

And then we will have Fight Pass-only cards later this year from Dublin and South Korea, where it's going to be exclusively for the Fight Pass community. That's in addition to partnering with the all-women's fight organization Invicta [Fighting Championships], Shooto in Brazil and Pride [Fighting Championships] out of Japan. So we want to bring live fights to our audience and our growing audience around the world, not just domestic fight organizations.

Marshall Zelaznik: The one thing I'd add, Tom, is that with some of these promotions that Eric has mentioned, like the promotion in Brazil and in Japan, I'm sure you saw recently that we announced all the library and promotional partnership deals that we are adding to Fight Pass. But we're adding more and more promotions every month and soon we'll be announcing another promotion out of Russia.

And if you think about Fight Pass, it's truly a global product. We now have subscribers from over 160 countries, and the content that Eric is mentioning, this live content, we think gives us not only local relevance, but it gives us global relevance.

MCN:  On what distribution platforms can UFC fight fans access Fight Pass?

MZ: We're pretty ubiquitous now. We're on Apple TV, Chromecast, Android, Samsung, LG, Xbox 1, Xbox 360, and we're still in negotiations with Sony on launching Fight Pass. We're really, really happy with our distribution currently but we are always endeavoring to do more. We definitely want to be ubiquitous with this.

MCN:  How many subscribers do you currently have?

MZ:  I knew you'd ask. [Laughs.] We don't tell the numbers but the one thing we say pretty consistently is that all of our expectations with planning and budgeting and modeling are continually exceeded month after month. We see huge subscriber growth around our live streaming content. We have very high — industry-leading we believe, based on the information we can find — churn rates and conversion. So we are very, very happy. And we have no doubt with Eric getting involved with the content mix, with the distribution, with the marketing and promotion, that we'll see churn and conversion continue to improve. We are very, very bullish.

MCN: At some point do you see Fight Pass evolving into an OTT service, which we have seen with WWE Network, where you're moving bigger and more popular content to the service?

MZ:  When we launched this product we wanted to complement all of our current businesses and our partners. Because this is a global product we always want to be sensitive to our primary business, which is the broader platform of traditional television.

The world is changing so fast, as you know — just look at what's happening in the world of media and the stock market. There's definitely a change happening, so we feel like we're ahead of the curve with this product.

In terms of the product mix and what will happen with it, we don't currently have any plans to create a linear network the way the WWE Network has. We will always be looking to bring bigger and bigger events onto Fight Pass but we are committed to our pay per view business now. The good news is with all the weight classes we have and all the great fighters we have and the desire for more events throughout the world, we have the flexibility in all of our deals to bring very big events to Fight Pass.

And that will be something I know Eric will be considering as he builds out his entrepreneurial model and plan for Fight Pass to take it to the next level when the time is right to start bringing even bigger events. We are proud of the size and caliber of events but we know there is room to put even bigger fights.

EW: We're just at the nascent stages of building out Fight Pass. I think to answer your original question about OTT, we have to be realistic here. We have tremendous partners from the cable and satellite side and we can't forget that. But we also have to recognize where the consumer is going, including the cord-cutters and the cord-nevers. And so we want to make sure that we deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time. We are going to continually do research every single day to find out what type of content — live or original programming — to offer. We’re going to cater to the needs of our audience country by country and it's going to vary country by country.

MCN:  Eric, do you see yourself creating original series or maybe interview shows for Fight Pass at some point?

EW: The answer is yes. I love things that are being done by some of the dot-coms out there. There is a really rabid dot-com following and I think they produce really good content for the minimal support that they have. And I think with the power of the UFC we can produce some really compelling content. I also want to think beyond just original programming.

Virtual reality is something we really need to take a close look at both from a live consumer experience in arena and what we can deliver on Fight Pass. I think that’s way down the road but I am really intrigued and very bullish on virtual reality and what we can do in that area.

MCN:  What can you do? Define virtual reality in your mind.

EW: I think we’re talking 4D, maybe 5D here. I want to think creatively and I want to think beyond the octagon.

MZ: And I think to echo that, we have done some virtual reality testing in terms of shooting UFC. We’ve been playing with Google Cardboard, and we’ve been meeting and having meetings with all of the manufacturers out there that are making VR (virtual reality) headsets and we actually like what we’re seeing.

After a debut in May that limited access to X1 subs, Comcast said all customers can now tap into Xfinity Share, the company’s new live streaming app that shares some similarities with Meerkat and Periscope.

The move vastly broadens the availability of Xfinity Share, which uses  WebRTC, an open Internet standard that supports real-time communication via Web browsers.

Update: All Comcast subs can now use Xfinity Share on mobile devices  (the app is offered on iOS and Android, and the new 3.0 version enables users to record live streams), and they can use the platform to send photos or videos to the TV, though the latter group will need Comcast's  X1 service (with a DVR) to watch the stream or receive photos and videos on the TV. Xfinity Share currently lets customers share content on a one-to-one basis, but has plans to let customers send content to up to five people at the same time. 

“Starting today, every Xfinity customer - video, Internet, voice, and home - can use Xfinity Share to live stream and send photos and videos to a TV,” Patti Loyack, vice president of communications at Comcast Cable, said  in this blog post. “They can also use the app to send or receive live streams, photos, and videos on a mobile device. To watch live streams or receive photos and videos from Xfinity Share on the TV, consumers will still need to have X1 DVR capable set-top boxes.”

While Xfinity Share shares mobile traits with Periscope and Meerkat, Comcast bills it as the first live streaming app that lets users deliver that content directly to the TV.

Loyack noted that the spring debut limited access to a smaller subset of customers so Comcast could learn how people were using it.

“So far, our data has shown a huge uptick in Xfinity Share usage on weekends and holidays when people are more likely to share big events – weddings, vacations, and graduations – that deserve to be viewed on the big screen. Plus, the majority of people who tried Xfinity Share are repeat users,” she noted.  “By expanding the number of eligible users to the millions, we can’t wait to see how people will use it next. We’re also working on adding new features that will make the overall Xfinity Share experience even better.”

Comcast hasn’t released more detailed usage figures. According to Google Play, the Xfinity Share app has been installed between 50,000 and 100,000 times. 

NEW YORK – Several “tent-pole” sporting events such as the World Cup, Super Bowl and the Sochi Games helped to up the ante for live streaming in 2014, but anticipated demand for others on the horizon will require that all players in the distribution ecosystem pursue even greater levels of scalability.

That was a key theme here Wednesday morning during a session dedicated to live streaming trends and business models at NewBay Media’s NYC Television Week.

“Scale will be the theme in 2015” and likely beyond as more consumers take advantage of IP-based delivery and alter their viewing habits, Jens Loeffler, principal technical evangelist at Adobe, said.

And it’s not just about scaling up to support more streams, but also the overall quality of those streams as viewers demand a “TV-like” experience from their mobile connected devices,” Eric Black, vice president, technology at NBC Sports Group, said. “But we’re confident that we’re going to get there,” he said, during the session, moderated by Multichannel.com news editor Mike Reynolds.

Adobe’s Loeffler agreed that sports presents a special problem for streaming because a lot of it involves fast-moving content. And with more 4K streaming ahead and the need for rates of 60 frames per second, there will need to be a bigger focus on more efficient video compression technologies.

Matthew Murphy, the senior vice president of digital video distribution for Disney and ESPN Media Networks, stressed the importance of the business model of streaming, noting that his programming properties swaps ads into its digital content using dynamic ad insertion technology and includes those elements as part of the digital ad buy.

That, in turn, causes a greater emphasis on measurement, Loeffler said, referencing the work underway between Adobe and Nielsen to bring digital content ratings to all screens, including OTT devices. That effort aims to “bring the television model to digital,” though the process will create more opportunities to do more targeting and expand, rather than replicate, the traditional TV model, he said.

Murphy was also asked about new projects underway, including Dish Network’s new OTT service and ESPN’s coming NBA OTT service in which the league will hold an equity stake.

“First and foremost, we are committed to our MPVDs and the existing models we have,” Murphy said. But he acknowledged that Disney and ESPN are also attuned to shifting consumer behavior.

As for the Dish OTT service that is nearing launch, he said that will target a relatively small group of consumers who only take broadband service with a slimmed down, entry-level package, while still leaving the door open to fuller pay-TV services. 

Capped by more than 2 million live streams for UConn’s win over Kentucky in the National Championship game, NCAA March Madness Live closed the 2014 tournament with just under 70 million live streams in shattering the old mark for the tourney’s digital product.

NCAA March Madness Live, managed by Turner Sports, set a new record for video consumption during the 2014 event, tallying 69.7 million live video streams collectively across all platforms, a 42% jump from the 49 million live video streams during the 2013 tournament, according to data from Omniture and Conviva.

All told, NCAA March Madness Live counted a record 15 million hours of live video consumption for this year’s tournament, a 7% increase over last year.

Moreover, NCAA March Madness Live dunked TV Everywhere records – authenticated pay TV subscribers gained access to the games and related action on TBS, TNT and truTV, while a subscription was not required for the contests on CBS – in topping platform consumption for the entire 2013 tourney by the close of the second round.

TV Everywhere usage soared 85% in live streams and 72% in hours spent viewing, according to Turner officials. Authenticated users spent more time watching games, streaming an average of 67% more minutes than users who weren’t logged in. TVE mobile usage surged, with such devices accounting for 52% of total TVE live streaming during the tourney.

Overall, mobile – smartphones and tablets --  recorded  a major advance, scoring a 71% rise in live streams, and a 38% increase in the number of hours.

The five most-watched games across digital platforms for this year’s tournament, based on live video streams were: Dayton-Ohio State: 4.59 million; Mercer-Duke: 4.18 million; Harvard-Cincinnati: 2.74 million; Kentucky-Connecticut in the title tilt: 2 million; and Kentucky-Wichita State: 1.95 million. All of those games beat the top streaming contest from the 2013 -- 1.84 million for Michigan State-Valparaiso.

In partnership between the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports, NCAA March Madness Live launched from www.ncaa.com/marchmadness, www.bleacherreport.com and www.cbssports.com, and was available via the Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store, Google Play and Windows Store.  Additionally, fans could watch games via live streaming on TNT, TBS and truTV’s digital platforms, as well as participating TV provider websites.