Why watch a game when you can play a game?
Broadcasts, particularly sports and game shows, are going to change dramatically in the next few years. The convergence of legalized gambling, low latency video distribution, and interactive technologies will transform passive audiences into active participants.
The Gamification of Sports.
Today we receive our sports broadcasts through any number of cable, satellite, or OTT services. Each with their own latency in getting the ‘live’ video to our screens. Latency is the lag, or the time it takes to process the video, send it from the camera to the satellite and transmit it down to your screen. Cable companies do this the fastest, but it still takes around 6 seconds. While OTT distributors can take over a minute.
If you have ever watched a game and received a notification about the game you are watching, but it still hasn’t happened yet, that is latency.
The legalization of gambling is allowing us to rethink what production looks like. How audiences can engage and interact with the action on their screens moving forward will have an incredible impact on retaining and growing new audiences to these sports. Bringing in video game production and mechanics into broadcasts will draw younger audiences and allow them to compete as the action unfolds.
At the moment, broadcasters make the majority of their revenue from advertising sales, but the potential of gambling and gamification could make advertising revenue pale in comparison to what can be generated.
We already see strategic partnerships being formed in the gambling space, from Caesars, DraftKings, and FanDuel signing deals with the NFL, to Sinclair selling the naming rights to their regional sports networks to Bally’s. Even advertisers themselves are seeing the potential of making their messaging more interactive and driving audiences to interactive experiences baked into their apps or online.
The Q is facilitating this revolution in interactive programming. We are an interactive platform that distributes low latency video in real-time (2 seconds), allowing audiences to interact with the action they are seeing on the screen. Our proprietary technology allows us to send video across the world, instantaneously, and at scale. The interactive layer is paired with the video and a full suite of gaming/gambling mechanics have been built into the backend to facilitate real-time odds, wagering, and multiple game modes.
Never again will audiences be willing to simply watch a game show on television, they will insist on participating and having a chance to compete for real prizes.
Americans wagered more than $3 Billion in a single month for the first time in October of 2020, with less than half the US having legalized gambling. As more states adopt legislation, it is projected sports gambling will generate $2.5 Billion in annual revenue in 2021 and $8 Billion by 2025.
If you want to add gamification, gambling, or more interactivity to your content, you can reach me at jason.aspes@stream.live
