Unpredictable viewing: GlobalM shares how on-demand scaling is reshaping sports consumption

By Paul Calleja, CEO at GlobalM.

In 2025, sports content consumption levels are expected to become less predictable. The rapid expansion of streaming options paired with personalised recommendations enables fans to customise their viewing experience in new ways. This places additional strain on the capacity of content owners to provide a seamless fan experience.

Metrics of viewership and loyalty are increasingly difficult to track and predict. This complicates efforts to meet fan demand with consistent, high-quality coverage across platforms, especially as sports broadcasting expands into niche areas. Content owners frequently need to scale their offerings, without knowing the end number of takers in advance.

Managing fluctuations in demand

As digital innovation, personalisation, and decentralised media reshape how fans engage with sport, fluctuations in viewer demand are inevitable. Unexpected spikes in interest, triggered by social media highlights, influencer commentary, or momentum in the run-up to a match, can bring last-minute rights requests to the table. This poses a logistical and technical challenge for content distribution.

Live sports broadcasting has always been a high-stakes environment. The sheer volume of content generated during matches, ranging from multiple camera feeds to real-time replays, requires robust, scalable infrastructure. The demands increase further with ultra-HD video requirements, real time analytics, and concurrent feeds.

Regardless of whether it is a high-profile international event or a smaller regional match, content owners need to gauge and allocate resources dynamically. Takers can increase in real time, prior to (and even during) a game. Scaling the infrastructure requires networks capable of handling simultaneous, high-bitrate streams without quality degradation or latency. For fans, even a few seconds of buffering or lag can significantly impact the viewing experience.

Responsive infrastructure

The sports broadcasting industry is undergoing a massive shift. Traditional satellite delivery, long valued for its reliability and global reach, is being challenged by flexible and cost-efficient IP-based methods. Rights owners are tapping into a broader spectrum of sports to expand market reach and new audience demographics.

Satellite service providers must constantly adapt their technical infrastructure to remain competitive, and many are leveraging hybrid workflows that integrate complementary delivery methods. By blending the strengths of satellite, fibre, and IP-based systems, broadcasters can achieve greater flexibility. IP-based distribution allows broadcasters to dynamically scale services, contributing and delivering live feeds directly from the cloud.

Cloud scalability is revolutionising how broadcasters handle unpredictable demand. By leveraging software-defined video networks technology, sports broadcasters can flexibly manage feeds and distribute content globally. This elasticity ensures that additional resources are available during busy periods, such as multi-sport tournaments.

Addressing the changing challenges

Sports content owners are embracing cloud-native approaches. These solutions enable real-time encoding, transcoding, and distribution, often bypassing the need for physical infrastructure. Elastic cloud resources allow providers to dynamically respond to demand spikes, ensuring seamless coverage during marquee events or unexpected surges in interest.

Hybrid workflows combine on-prem resources with cloud-based services, allowing broadcasters to optimise costs and performance. During routine operations, local pods can handle most traffic. For peak periods, cloud resources can be spun up to accommodate additional demand.

Advanced orchestration tools further streamline this process, automating resource allocation.

The importance of low latency

Latency is a critical factor in live sports broadcasting, particularly for interactive experiences such as real-time betting or fan-controlled viewing. Achieving sub-second latency requires sophisticated routing and error-correction mechanisms.

Protocols such as SRT and RIST are increasingly being adopted to minimise delays, recover lost packets, and ensure secure feed delivery over variable networks. But these transport protocols need to have the right supporting infrastructure around them. After all, it is no use having the perfect vehicle if the roads you are driving on are sub-standard.

By using redundant internet connections, broadcasters can eliminate single points of failure. Multi-path IP contribution, for example, ensures uninterrupted transmission by automatically switching to backup routes to support primary connections.

Rights management for every scenario 

The unpredictable nature of sports consumption also affects rights negotiations. Broadcasters must weigh exclusive versus non-exclusive agreements while considering the inclusion of digital and social platforms. Flexible infrastructure is crucial in this context, as last-minute rights agreements often necessitate rapid scaling of distribution capabilities.

Scalable workflows empower content owners to adapt quickly to changing rights scenarios. Hybrid setups, where fixed on-prem resources handle routine demands and cloud-based pods accommodate surges, offer a cost-effective solution.

This approach facilitates greater content variety, from niche sports to regional leagues, by enabling a more cost-efficient and responsive approach to distribution. Advanced orchestration tools bring everything together with seamless scaling, to automatically manage resources and meet real-time demand.

A new era of architecture

Traditional broadcasting methods often lack the flexibility required for modern sports distribution. IP-based systems, supported by dynamic orchestration, offer a viable alternative. By leveraging software-defined video network technology, broadcasters can deliver high-quality video to diverse platforms and regions without relying on static, legacy infrastructure.

For example, during a global sports event, IP feeds can be transcoded and tailored for different platforms, HD streams for linear TV, mobile-friendly formats for apps, and interactive features for streaming services. This granular control ensures a consistent viewing experience, regardless of the audience’s chosen platform, and removes the headache for broadcasters and rights holders.

Innovation for the win

Scalable, cloud-native workflows represent a fundamental change in sports broadcasting. With the ability to dynamically adapt to audience demand, broadcasters can meet the expectations of both traditional and emerging viewers. It’s a win-win.

As digital innovation reshapes the industry, flexibility, reliability, and efficiency are paramount. By integrating advanced orchestration, low-latency protocols, and hybrid workflows, the future of sports broadcasting is well positioned to deliver unprecedented accessibility and engagement.

In an unpredictable viewing landscape, the ability to scale seamlessly will be the defining characteristic of success. Broadcasters who embrace this methodology will not only meet the demands of today’s audiences but also anticipate the evolving needs of tomorrow’s fans.