What’s Next for Interactive Live Streaming in 2025
“Everyone’s trying to figure out new revenue streams and where that goes,” says Play Anywhere's CSO Pete Scott, who expects to see more niche sports leagues and betting and creator economy content driving growth for targeted audiences in 2025, while Fox TV Stations’ Stephen Brown sees sweepstakes betting, second-screen experiences among other areas primed for explosive growth as they reveal all this and more in conversation with Ring Digital’s Brian Ring at Streaming Media Connect 2024.
Why lower streaming costs are increasing the popularity of niche sports and content
Scott mentions a recent conference where he saw how niche sports and content are becoming more popular.
“I was on a panel with a woman from QVC, and never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that they would've bought pickleball to distribute on there,” he says, “So, I think everybody is trying to figure out new revenue streams and where that goes. Obviously, women's sports is so popular. There's a new women's baseball league that might be coming up. There's a new volleyball league that's coming up, and we know that the cost of streaming has come down.”
The advertising shifts towards mid-level influencers and highly targeted, personalized audiences
Scott emphasizes the growing influence of mid-level influencers. “Influencers with 200,000 followers or less [have] advertisers going to them because they're driving that impression to performance marketing. So I just think you're going to see more and more of that and money moving in those directions to experiment with very highly targeted, personalized audience, whether that be in sports [or] unscripted.” He says that for advertisers, this approach is almost like “direct mail on steroids.”
User-generated content on platforms like Twitch, podcasts, and YouTube is gaining traction
Brown of Fox TV Stations agrees with Scott and adds his observations about the increase in niche audiences driven by user-generated content along with betting-related interactivity.
“If you look at Twitch and the micro audiences that some of these players, they're getting money for it either from the players themselves or from sponsors,” he says. “That is a big thing. And then, with this election came the rise of podcasts and YouTube. So I think you're going to see much more content that's created by users and adopting that YouTube model.”
He also cites the increasing popularity of sweepstakes betting, especially with the assistance of second screens. “79% of viewers have a second screen in their hands while they're watching game shows, [so] you're going to see an explosion of that,” he says.
Join us in February 2025 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect.
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