Streaming Platforms Can Beat the Buffering and Avoid Losing Subscribers by Ensuring a Quality Viewing Experience of Live Sports Events for Rural and Remote Fans

Netskrt Systems today revealed how streaming services can avoid churn among their subscriber base by ensuring fans in rural and remote areas don't become frustrated with a poor quality viewing experience when watching live sports events. Content providers who are challenged with harnessing the unprecedented opportunities to grow, engage, and monetize their audiences can now overcome the quality issues of streaming real-time entertainment programming, especially premium-priced live sports events, to the outskirts of the internet. By incorporating an edge-native CDN into their content delivery strategy, streaming services can extend the high quality viewing to subscribers in remote and rural areas, and ensure that the up to 15% ¹ of subscribers living beyond metropolitan areas won't have to suffer from buffering, or lower-resolution video.

An Edge-Native CDN is a CDN specifically designed to ensure a high-quality viewing experience for subscribers on the outskirts of the Internet. It combines cloud-based content- and network- management functions with appliances suitable for deployment into last-mile access networks of all types. Drawing on network awareness, content awareness, and consumer behavior analytics, Edge-Native CDNs intelligently manage live and on-demand content delivery, and ensure outskirt ISPs and content providers alike can verify and validate that all their customers are getting the best possible experience.

"Live sports are creating a battleground for content providers, and they can't afford any buffering or delays when events are streaming," said Jason Thibeault, CEO, Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA). "For streaming services to fully reap the rewards of their significant investments in live events they must ensure a high-quality viewing experience that all paying sports fans expect, regardless of their location."

Research predicts U.S. TV and streaming sports media rights payments will exceed $25 billion in 2023. To attract these large audiences and increase their subscriber base, streaming platforms are jockeying for and inking sports rights around the world. Deloitte estimated they would spend over US$6 billion in 2023 on exclusive major sports rights in the largest global markets. Netskrt has published a whitepaper for forward-looking streaming services on the opportunities they have to protect their customer base and their investment in sports content, and reduce churn of valuable paid subscribers at the outskirts.

"Nothing gives a viewer a worse experience than slow speeds or latency, and we don't want our customers to see any buffering circles or distortion when watching their home football team ? or other live streamed event," said Lou Goetzman, director, network and engineering, Greenlight Networks. "That's why we are driven to adopting the best possible solutions for bringing reliable, high-quality video to our customers in the Buffalo-Rochester-Albany-Hudson Valley regions of upstate New York. For an ISP of our size, CDN appliances, including Netskrt's edge CDN (eCDN) with edge-native caching, are an easy, cost-effective way to make the most of our network's capacity."

"Every major company has experienced serious technical issues when streaming live events that attract large viewing audiences watching simultaneously. While typical CDNs bring content closer to the viewer, Edge-Native CDNs extend that strategy by putting every subscriber within one hop of an edge cache, minimizing latency, enhancing the delivery speed of video content, and improving the metrics that affect QoE," said Steve Miller-Jones, VP of Product Strategy at Netskrt Systems. "Caching is the secret to QoE, and when edge-native caching is in place, viewers in last mile, or ?last subnet' locations have an equally high quality viewing experience as millions of other subscribers in highly populated urban areas."

Netskrt is also addressing this timely topic at SportsPro New York, the annual gathering of industry innovators and digital disruptors in sports media. Taking place March 18-19 at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, key themes of the 2024 agenda include content, monetization, technology, and platforms and distribution.

Here. There. Everywhere: High-quality streaming for hard-to-reach subscribers
Monday, March 18, 2024 ? 3:20-3:40 PM EDT
Interviewer: Steve Miller-Jones VP, Product Strategy Netskrt Systems

During the conversation, Lou Goetzman Director, Network and Engineering, Greenlight Networks will provide answers to:

• Do you know what happens to your subscribers' viewing experience during a live streaming event?
• What's going on in the network during live streaming events?
• How can you ensure that your subscribers get the viewing experience they expect?

Click here to download the Netskrt "How to Ensure Streaming Video QoE for Hard-to-Reach Subscribers" whitepaper.

About Netskrt

Netskrt brings the rapidly expanding universe of direct-to-consumer streaming internet video to previously underserved and unserved locations. Netskrt solutions advance the state of streaming video content distribution to make high-quality streaming video entertainment possible for rural broadband users, and rail, air, and sea transportation passengers. Visit www.netskrt.io for more information.

¹ USDA Economic Research Service