With fan expectations rising and rights values climbing, live sports streaming is under greater scrutiny than ever, as audiences expect immediacy, choice, and confidence that every stream will hold up under pressure. Earlier this summer, DAZN delivered the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 to audiences in more than 200 markets using MediaKind’s MK.IO platform in a live demonstration of what it takes to stream one of the summer’s most-watched tournaments with broadcast-grade quality and ultra-low latency.
On Friday September 12 at IBC2025 at 2.30pm in the Showcase Theatre, the two companies will reflect on that experience and examine what it tells the industry about the future of live sports streaming. DAZN’s James Pearce, SVP broadcast and streaming, and MediaKind’s Paul O’Donovan, senior director, product management, will address the practical challenges of scaling live streams as fan expectations rise and sports rights values soar.
Latency will be a central theme: when social feeds beat the live video stream, the magic of live sport is lost. The session will consider how cloud-native architectures and real-time adaptability are closing that gap, and why the difference between a few seconds delay and a near real time feed can fundamentally change how fans follow the game, from avoiding spoilers to sharing moments in sync.
That shift opens the door to the second major theme: control. The discussion will explore how innovations such as multiview technology are turning passive viewers into active fans, giving audiences more choice over their experience, from switching camera angles to following multiple matches or accessing player stats. The panellists will look at what these tools mean not only for fan experience but also for engagement and loyalty, and will discuss the growing role of freemium models in extending reach and deepening loyalty.
Taken together, these themes point to where the future of sports streaming is heading. As Pearce and O’Donovan will argue, it comes down to three things: trust, fan empowerment, and global scale.
Where: IBC Showcase Theatre, RAI Amsterdam. When: Friday September 12 2025, 2.30pm
