Roku wants to eliminate streaming sports confusion

BLANK Roku NWSL Portal WEBP TD — (Courtesy image)

Key Points

Research shows sports fans are open to streaming live games, but find the experience confusing, with rights spread across apps and services.
Roku has developed various ways to cut through the haze, notably with its Sports Zone portal that offers information on game times and availability.
Roku executives say Sports Zone and other features benefit fans, distribution partners and apps alike.

A years-long trend of putting more live sports programming on streaming apps and services has resulted in rampant confusion among fans when it comes to finding the precise game the want to watch.

What might be frustrating for fans is seen as a golden opportunity for Roku to help cut through the noise and better position its streaming platform as the premium destination for live athletic events, executives affirmed on Thursday.

Speaking on a conference call with investors and reporters this week, Roku CEO Anthony Wood said the company has been helping streamers navigate the different channels and apps where many premium live athletic events are offered nowadays.

The trend started around the pandemic, which happened to coincide with a maturing point for streaming video: With people mostly stuck at home, many cozied up to apps like Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video, with apps like Comcast’s Peacock and Warner Bros Discovery’s HBO Max hitting the market with remarkable, coincidental timing.

Over the past few years, larger broadband providers have made it easier to watch live events online by upping their connection speeds and dropping onerous data caps that hamstrung ardent live TV fans to cable and satellite, paving the way for more sports fans to drop expensive pay TV services and switch to cheaper streaming options like YouTube TV, Fubo and online options offered by DIRECTV.

Sports leagues took notice: They inked robust deals with platforms like Prime Video and YouTube to bring more of their programming to those services. Google scored one of the biggest deals by poaching the NFL Sunday Ticket away from DIRECTV for its own YouTube streaming marketplace and YouTube TV. Apple got live baseball and soccer rights, and took U.S. telecast rights of Formula 1 races from ESPN. Hockey fans who wanted access to teams outside their home area were pushed to ESPN Plus (now ESPN Select) after Disney scooped up those rights.

For some sports leagues, most or all of their programming is available through a single app. But for the biggest — the NFL, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, PGA and the various college conferences — rights are spread unevenly across broadcast TV, cable networks and streaming platforms, with occasional overlap.

Gone are the days when a DIRECTV or cable subscription gave fans access to all or most games. Now, sports enthusiasts have to bounce around different platforms and apps to follow the action.

Sports is still a powerful driver of traditional linear TV: More than seven out of 10 people recently surveyed by Hub Entertainment Research said it was important, to some degree, to be able to watch sports content compared to watching other types of programs. Nearly nine out of 10 sports fans said they were more-likely to sign up for a streaming service if it offered the games they wanted to watch.

That said, more than half of people surveyed by Hub said they were frustrated by the growing fragmentation of sports across services. Two-thirds reported it was a hassle trying to juggle different apps to follow a team or sport during a season, and nearly a quarter of sports fans (18 percent) said finding sports online had become a confusing experience.

Roku is one of the largest streaming platforms in North America, with 40 percent market share in the U.S. alone. Over time, the company has worked on various ways to help streamers connect with the shows and movies they want to watch — and, in recent years, it has concentrated that same effort on sports as more events move to streaming apps.

One of its best effort in that respect is the development of various sports-focused portals — the company started with individual sports, and now has an all-encompassing section of its streaming apps and smart TVs just for live sporting events called the Sports Zone.

The whole point of Sports Zone is to eliminate the guesswork when it comes to finding a live sport, according to marketing materials reviewed by The Desk. Sports fans can look for precise events broken down by individual game, team or sport, and are pointed to the various apps and services where those games are available on any given day.

A sizable number of apps hook into Roku’s Sports Zone, including Roku’s own free service called The Roku Channel, which offers a handful of live games from various leagues. Other apps include Paramount Plus, Fubo, YouTube TV, FloSports, Fox Sports, Peacock, NFL Plus, ESPN, MLB.TV, CBS Sports, NBC Sports and FanDuel Sports Network.

Across many apps, sports fans can activate a subscription using Roku Pay, meaning they never have to pull out their wallet or phone to start streaming a live event that moment — which eliminates the friction of signing up for and managing a service as much as it does trying to find a game to watch.

Roku Media President Charlie Collier said the ongoing trend of sports moving to streaming platforms will benefit the platform and its partners as much as it does the fans over time.

“The fact that every NFL game is now available in streaming is nothing but a tailwind for Roku, which, again, represents half the broadband households in the country,” Collier said on the conference call Thursday. “We have tremendous opportunities with sports for a number of reasons…we talk a lot about being the lead into television, and when the last Olympics came, we took great pride in being the fact that we were the front door to everything you wanted to experience. We helped drive that with NBC as our partners. And we’ll do the same for the World Cup (with Fox). That’s coming in, and other opportunities.”

On the business side, Wood said networks and apps that offer their sports content on Roku will be more incentivized to work with the company by promoting its offering through the Sports Zone, as long as sports fans continue to find that tool valuable.

“The fact that sports is and will continue to be fragmented across a lot of apps is a big opportunity for us with products like our SportZone to create a simple experience that allows viewers to find the sports they wanna watch,” Wood said. “It’s also an opportunity for marketing and promotions and advertising and sponsorships as well.”

Roku wants to help eliminate streaming sports confusion

As sports moves across different channels and apps, Roku sees an opportunity to help fans find the games they want.

Key Points

More Stories

Get free breaking news alerts and twice-weekly digests delivered to your inbox.

We do not share your e-mail address with third parties; you can unsubscribe at any time.

TheDesk.net offers the latest news, analysis and commentary on the business of streaming media, broadcast TV and radio, advertising, measurement, journalism, tech and policy.