The seven trends in the digital sport world to look out for in 2019
This has been a transformative year for the digital sport landscape, from tech giants Amazon and Facebook making major rights acquisitions to a rise in behind-the-scenes and self-authored content.
Here, Charlie Beall of consultancy Seven League assesses the trends that dominated 2018 and look set to shape the next 12 months.
1. Athletes becoming media
As last week’s launch of player-led content platform OTRO has demonstrated, in 2018 top-tier athletes took a leap forward as media brands in their own right, telling their own stories in their own voices, going direct to fans, rather than relying on their clubs and sponsors.
With new independent platforms, such as The Players’ Tribune – which has featured contributions from Raheem Sterling, Daniel Ricciardo and Allen Iverson – giving athletes alternative outlets to voice opinions, expect the tension between clubs and leagues and their athletes to increase.
2. Voice is everything
Machine learning is driving greater improvement in speech recognition, and the consequences will soon be felt in the sporting industry.
The likes of Google’s Duplex technology and the proliferation of Amazon’s Alexa in the West demonstrate the desire of consumers to adopt this technology.
Voice queries will increasingly be how people discover sporting content, while we also foresee a positive impact in the live event experience. The race to optimise and become the recommended voice result will be critical.
3. Peak stories and docuseries
The stories format pioneered by Snapchat has been universally adopted – see Instagram, Facebook, Google and recently YouTube.
Alongside this we’ve seen a notable rise in fly-on-the-wall docuseries, following the success of shows like Last Chance U and All or Nothing, which recently featured Manchester City.
Both stories and docuseries formats require visual content creators rather than traditional journalists, and many sports teams currently don’t have these.
With so many platforms and content formats to consider, analysing the return on investment from different content formats is going to be crucial.
4. A return to community
What made the internet in its early days an exciting place to be were the vibrant and diverse communities that flourished within chat rooms and on bulletin boards, and we’re now seeing a re-emergence of communities built around passion and interest points.
Facebook’s announcement this year that it would reward more meaningful social interactions was certainly a catalyst.
We anticipate more teams running community networks, with Fifa’s Fan Movement, a global community covering 44 countries, an example of this.
5. OTT: From products and piracy to consumers and content
This year was an inflection point for the fragmentation of the sports broadcast market, with Facebook and Amazon making meaningful rights acquisitions.
The issues preoccupying much of the discussion in this vibrant over-the-top ecosystem surround piracy, product performance and which rights are being carved up and served on which platforms.
As the technology improves and more competitors emerge – DAZN, ESPN+, GolfTV – discussions about streaming quality and piracy will be replaced by conversations about cost per acquisition, retention rates and the development of popular new content formats.
The winners will be those who get the technology, the content and the marketing right.
6. Interactive content overtakes immersive content
This felt like the year in which virtual reality promised much but didn’t fulfil the hype, while there were some interesting applications of augmented reality – for example, StubHub’s AR immersive view app upgrade for the Super Bowl.
Most of us won’t be watching sport with headsets in 2019, but as we’ve seen from platforms like Twitch, we would not be surprised if sports viewing became not more immersive but more interactive next year.
7. The localisers are winning
In 2018, the sports bodies with the most ambitious global expansion goals were the ones doing the most specific, locally differentiated work in key markets.
An example of this is Bayern Munich building a data-light version of its website for emerging markets where data speeds are slower.
It means localised content, a presence on the ground, and it often means different business models.
We expect to see more clubs and leagues operating content channels that are centrally coordinated and locally flavoured, and we anticipate greater adoption of standards like Google AMP and further data light products being released.
To read the seven trends in full, visit: https://sevenleague.co.uk/2018/12/11/7-digital-trends-in-sport-for-2019