An opinion piece by Damien Sterkers, vice president for product and solutions marketing at broadcast technology and streaming video software firm, Broadpeak.
When Netflix streamed the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight to over 60 million concurrent users globally, it wasn’t just a milestone for direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming – it was a seismic stress test for live sports streaming infrastructure.
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From DAZN’s billion-dollar Club World Cup investment to Disney+’s move into live sports with the UEFA Women’s Champions League rights, digital platforms are reshaping the economics of live sports. But a fundamental question remains: are all platforms ready to reliably, securely, and sustainably deliver premium-quality streams to millions of fans, all at once?
Streaming is quickly becoming the home for major live sports tournaments – but that’s not without its growing pains. Buffering issues remain all too common. Securing the huge network capacity required to deliver popular events often comes at a premium.
Profitability and subscriber retention are persistent challenges, even with the allure of premier sports. And with fans spending a significant amount on multiple, often fragmented subscriptions, expectations have never been higher. The future of sports streaming depends on smarter economics and better scale.
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By GlobalDataLive events generate massive audience spikes that can overload traditional streaming infrastructures. When millions of viewers simultaneously tune into the same match or fight, conventional delivery methods send an individual stream to each device – a wildly inefficient approach that strains networks and drives up costs, causing viewer experience issues while limiting profitability.
So, what’s the alternative? Multicast adaptive bitrate (m-ABR) technology offers a logical, game-changing approach. At a basic level, the technology allows a single stream to be delivered to millions of viewers simultaneously, on any type of screen.
It’s crucial for scaling, but it also fundamentally reshapes the economics. Content providers and telcos we’ve worked with, like DAZN and Orange, have seen up to a 90% drop in network traffic (and the associated costs) and improved quality of experience (QoE) during peak events.
While that may sound like a quick fix, there are several obstacles to adoption. One is mindset. Often, content providers with valuable live event rights think that a necessary first step is to ask their general-purpose content delivery network (CDN) partner for more network capacity. While it may do the job in many cases, simply adding more capacity misses a trick. Instead of racking up a higher CDN and energy bill, why not optimize the entire delivery process by using m-ABR?
The second factor is about putting the right building blocks in place – let’s call them the ‘pipes’ that all content travels through. To be most effective, m-ABR needs to be embedded in the regional internet service provider’s (ISP) infrastructure.
The good news is that m-ABR is a win-win. If you’re an ISP and you design your pipes with support for m-ABR, you’re a more attractive partner for the biggest streamers that want a more efficient delivery model. For rights holders, choosing to deliver sports with an m-ABR-ready internet provider gives you more bang for your buck – without compromising on quality.
Sustainable streaming is everyone’s problem – and opportunity
Live sports streaming doesn’t just demand high performance – it also comes with a high carbon cost. Network delivery servers used by content providers are often over-provisioned to accommodate peak traffic and sit idle the rest of the time, driving unnecessary energy wastage and spiraling costs.
Estimates show an idle server can consume up to 80% of the energy of a fully active one. Instead of over-resourcing for peak demand, only using what you need reduces hardware requirements and lowers carbon footprint.
The good news? Smarter delivery models can reduce energy consumption during streaming by as much as 80%. That’s according to results from an industry-wide collaboration project we were a part of within the TM Forum Catalyst program, using technologies like m-ABR and harnessing shared internet infrastructure rather than duplicating it.
While there are several other groundbreaking initiatives underway to create better ways to measure and reduce the carbon impact of streaming, there’s still much more to be done. On the content provider side, that means taking more of a data-driven approach, tracking power usage across networks and vendors, and aligning internal departments – often fragmented between cost and environmental priorities – around shared goals. In many cases in streaming, the most efficient route is often the greener and cheaper approach too.
Taking the fight to the pirates
Just last month, the world’s biggest sports piracy network, Streameast, was taken down. Today’s illegal streaming networks are industrial-scale operations. At a panel during IBC2025, a representative from the Sports Rights Owners Coalition explained that streaming piracy may be the third largest source of revenue for some criminal groups in Europe, behind only drugs and human trafficking.
Anti-piracy technology is a top investment priority for major streaming companies. We see a growing demand for closely integrated security solutions – at the core of the streaming technology workflow – to identify and combat piracy in real-time.
The uncomfortable reality is that additional network traffic driven by pirates can actually contribute to revenues for traditional CDN providers as their overall bandwidth use increases, reducing the incentive for them to prevent illegal usage. So, if you’re a content provider, double down on your security measures by looking for anti-piracy tools that are video-centric rather than general-purpose.
Make sure those tools don’t compromise your ability to scale. Go beyond table-stakes security by combating token sharing and taking proactive measures that make pirate streams unwatchable while protecting the experience for paying customers.
Sports streaming is maturing fast – and with it, expectations are rising. The biggest streaming platforms need not just more capacity, but better capacity. Profitability and retention challenges make network optimization a crucial battleground for operational costs and viewer experience. Content providers in the next phase of live sports streaming need to scale smarter, or risk failing.
