Finding the right recipe: Synamedia’s tips for streaming success in 2025

By Simon Brydon, head of sport – video network at Synamedia.

The America’s Cup, Euro 2024, the African Games and Paris Olympics – 2024 offered us a Michelin-starred menu of tempting sports specials alongside regular favourites like the Superbowl and Six Nations rugby. Many of these major sporting events attracted record viewing figures with IOC president, Thomas Bach, estimating that over half of the world’s population watched this year’s Olympic Games.

The appetite to consume sports across varied and diverse types of media, particularly on social media, has grown hugely this year. There were more than 4.5 billion video views of Warner Bros. Discovery Olympics posts on social, nearly 10 times more than for Tokyo, with TikTok and Instagram driving most views. TikTok served up an eye-popping 2,000% rise in Paris Olympic posts compared to Tokyo. While this reflects TikTok’s growth since 2021, a key takeaway is that sports rights holders cannot ignore the impact of social on their overall viewing figures.

Although the likes of the Olympics and Euros were among 2024’s stand-out viewing successes, the industry has faced more than its fair share of kitchen nightmares with continual pressure to keep sports fans engaged and coming back for more.

Except for top table players such as NBA and NFL, finding revenue growth remains an ongoing challenge for all. The broadcast rights market for many sports continues to struggle with fees flatlining or reducing. The Premier League released more games for broadcast in the UK to maintain fee levels and we’ve recently seen two major European tier one soccer leagues, Ligue 1 in France and Serie A in Italy, threatening to, or setting up, D2C services in major markets because they were unable to get broadcast television deals.

Faced with cost-of-living crises and subscription-snacking indigestion, providers have needed to tighten their belts to lower costs. However, streaming platforms are very expensive to run with CDN egress costs continuing to rise.  As a result, we’ve seen an increased desire for new monetisation options including ad-supported business models as well as a demand to cut costs by optimising networks using IP, decreasing power requirements, and squeezing more from CDNs through more efficient compression techniques and lower bitrates.

Perfectly balanced diet for 2025

As any video service provider worth their salt knows, the right technology decisions can make or break a service. With this in mind, in 2025 providers need to seriously consider three key ingredients:

1: Bake in social

The biggest threat to the majority of streaming services is going to be short-form social videos. The big platforms like YouTube and Netflix will be important buyers of content and every sports streamer or broadcaster is going to come under more and more pressure to consider involving and integrating a TikTok-like experience for viewers, as the NBA and MLB have already done. Sports rights owners will have to balance the exclusivity of their linear content with the demand for real-time social media distribution, as getting this balance right is crucial for driving engagement and interest in live sports.  And, of course, not only controlling but monetising those all important social media influencers is also essential. Rights owners need to look at providing influencers and major sports personalities with certain media rights in order to get a share of the revenue they bring in via their massive followings.

2: An advertising menu that hits the spot

According to Statista, current US spend on broadcast advertising is around $60 billion annually, while internet advertising is $300 billion. This significant difference underscores the importance of internet advertising for media platforms to engage fans and generate revenue. And, faced with increasing subscription fatigue, securing a bigger audience to drive advertising revenue is critical.

Techniques such as server-side ad insertion offering seamless ad integration within streaming content, and contextual advertising, including overlays, in-game ads, and short-form replays, both prompt fan engagement and enhance the overall viewing experience. Collaboration with third-party providers for overlaying contextual advertising is crucial for delivering targeted ads and maximising advertising revenue.

3: Cooking with AI

AI isn’t just a here-today-gone-tomorrow fad but it is fast establishing itself as a menu staple for sport platforms to offer engaging and interactive content to deepen fan engagement and compete for attention against options like gaming and social media.

AI can help recommend and personalise content based on user behaviour and individual viewer preferences to provide tailored content and enhance the viewing experience.

It can also leverage archives and historical content and drive engagement by surfacing relevant clips and moments from the past. In 2025 it will also have a key role to play in making content more accessible to global audiences through localisation and translating content into multiple languages, including graphics and commentary.

What’s your streaming signature dish?

As for your streaming magic ingredient – well that’s for each video provider to decide. Using a SaaS ‘fixed price’ menu makes good commercial sense to save money by building in flexibility and efficiency – for example only delivering or distributing video streams when a fan requests it rather than using a ‘just-in-case’ model.  And ‘a la carte’ solutions are ideal for those extra special occasions to impress customers at scale with pinpoint picture perfection and ultra-low latency.

Whatever takes your fancy, bon appétit and cheers to 2025.

 

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