Remarkable evolution: M2A Media talks live streaming esports
By Harry McCombe, M2A Media business growth executive.
Esports has undergone a remarkable evolution, captivating millions of viewers globally and reshaping entertainment norms. From small beginnings the genre has become a leader in the sports broadcast ecosystem. This article evaluates the rise, challenges, and technological advancements that have propelled esports into the global spotlight.
In its early phases, esports publishers and tournament organisers prioritised scalability, leveraging the genre’s expansive reach and consumer base. Major tournaments like Riot Games’s League of Legends World Championships drew in millions of viewers, hitting a peak of 5.15 million in 2022 (Statista, 2023).
Similarly, the Free Fire World Series in 2021 attracted 5.41 million viewers (Statista, 2023). The surge in the sports genre’s popularity shows no signs of slowing; in 2023, esports events amassed over 640 million viewers worldwide, marking a 16.9% increase from the previous year (Statista, 2023). This growth is propelled by younger generations, who are drawn to online gaming for social interaction, in effect growing the interest in professional tournaments of these games.
Live streams at scale
The large viewership, comparable to some of the world’s largest sporting events, compelled esports organisers to prioritise the ability to deliver live streams at scale. Tournaments were predominantly streamed on platforms like YouTube and Twitch, offering easy access across multiple devices. Initially, while quality mattered, it wasn’t the primary focus.
Technical issues such as resolution, delays, and occasional stream disruptions were part of the viewing experience (Rodrigues, Telstra, 2020). However, as esports publishers developed their own networks for scaling a low latency experience for their gamers, such as Riot Direct from Riot Games (Riot Games, 2021), there became an opportunity to utilise those networks for live event remote production (Dachman, SVG, 2021).
The complexity of esports live tournaments stems from a playing style that departs from a traditional sports tournament as players aren’t physically on a field, but instead stationary on a stage while the action unfolds in a virtual world. When moving into live events, producers of esports tournaments had to convey the nimbleness, agility, and quick thinking of the virtual world via a physical tent pole event experience. While this poses challenges, this characteristic gives esports a unique edge as there are no boundaries in its coverage as the actual gaming action happens within a virtual world. The producers achieve this by capitalising on the distinctive setting, creating a more interactive experience for the audience through use of visual effects; an ability often restricted in traditional sports broadcasting.
This has led professional sporting rights owners, such as the Premier League, to break into the esports genre by introducing their own competitive leagues. The Premier League, the highest level of the English football league system, introduced the ePremier League in 2019 in collaboration with Electronic Arts’s (EA) annual football video game, FIFA (now known as EAFC). The interest and growing involvement from global sports rights owners further emphasises the obvious untapped potential within the contemporary sporting genre.
Connectivity the pivotal requirement
As esports companies move away from their previous streaming platforms, such as Twitch and YouTube, to global broadcasters such as Fox, Sky Sports or ESPN (Rodrigues, Telstra, 2020), connectivity has therefore emerged as a pivotal requirement to meet their broadcasting standards.
Essential factors like minimal latency and a robust, dependable service that can manage scale, have become non-negotiable. Some esports tournament producers use their preexisting internal infrastructure and networks to manage their live production and adapt it to their audience within the arena. In this case, providing a low latency stream to the large screens at an arena is vital to guarantee no delays between the live audience and the action on the screen.
Additionally, JPEGXs, which improves quality while lowering latency, is used by some esports publishers, due to its adaptability in live editing and seamless transformation across various devices and formats. JPEGXs, being lossless, ensures quality preservation, a crucial aspect in an evolving landscape that values perfection.
Furthermore, it’s crucial to highlight the significance of production in esports. While the professional gamers take the role of athletes, the real action unfolds within the game. Consequently, ensuring continuous viewer engagement with the action in the game becomes essential. Achieving near-perfect synchronisation between low latency and precise frame rates between the gamer and the on-screen events is vital for maintaining an optimal viewing experience.
Conveniently, these methods are being leveraged now for their distribution to broadcast partners across the globe. However, low latency for broadcast distribution presents a significant challenge due to the need for synchronising what viewers witness on screen with the real-time events in the arena. The requirement for a slightly higher latency aims to prevent any potential cheating.
Transition to the cloud
Moreover, similar to other sports rights owners and global broadcasters, the common theme for esports organisations appears to be a transition into cloud-based live workflows for their distribution methods. High-quality live video transport products such as AWS Elemental Media Connect enable esports rights owners with the ability to offer a robust and reliable service for their live distribution to broadcast partners and platforms globally. Distribution is supported across multi-regions for resiliency, platforms, and it simplifies content localisation. This allows the rights owner to focus on the broadcast operations and adding value to the production, which as previously mentioned, is vital to maintaining the quality of the broadcast.
Esports have now positioned themselves as a leader in driving innovation and setting the standard for delivering an immersive, modern experience across the broadcast space. By necessity, esports publishers have to be innovative, however as they have no technical debt from previous deployments, they are able to start from a clean slate.
The potential impact on traditional sports broadcast delivery is already becoming noticeable. For example, the demand for higher frame rates among gamers, prioritising it over graphical quality, will likely push platforms to continuously enhance their frame rate capabilities. The growing popularity of esports as a spectator sport may drive advancements in device capabilities, potentially elevating native frame rates and subsequently enhancing the experience of traditional sports.
The prospect of 240 frames per second opens up exciting possibilities, especially envisioning how sports like tennis or table tennis could benefit from such high frame rates, revolutionising the viewing experience. Overall, the growth of esports as an innovation powerhouse is not only transforming the gaming landscape, but reshaping how we perceive and enjoy sports across all platforms.