Sports live streaming is becoming the de facto industry standard, so you need to offer it to remain competitive. Stand out by adding Live Blog updating to it.
Customer Experience
July 24, 2021
Creating a live sports streaming event is vitally important today for two reasons. It helps you to keep fans engaged in your event rather than drifting away to other activities. It is also vital because it is becoming the de facto industry standard, so you need to offer it to remain competitive.
Deeply understanding your audience is the foundation of creating an effective live sports streaming event. Use the following questions to gather information.
Discuss these questions with your coworkers to gain their perspectives. Based on this information, you can start to develop specific engagement ideas in the next step. By the way, don’t be afraid to look at other sports for commentary ideas (e.g., if you usually focus on football, watch a live basketball game and see how other sports journalists comment on it).
With a better understanding of your audience, you can develop some ideas to enhance your live sports streaming. Stay organized by using the following categories.
Before the event, prepare a few ideas for comment and other ways you can engage fans. In particular, keep an eye out for fan favorites
In this critical step, you will need to choose and select your technology for live streaming. For this discussion, let’s assume that the video broadcast itself is in place. Multiple channels and streaming services might be showing the same game. Adding engagement technology is one way to make your event memorable.
Two specific technologies are beneficial in creating an engaging live sports event.
Tip: Make sure you choose a technology that has built-in moderation capabilities to keep profanity under control.
When you first start a live chat, it is vital to have at least a few participants join in the conversation. If your website has high traffic, letting people know about the live chat opportunity might be enough. However, you don’t have to leave the event to chance.
Instead, take a proactive approach and invite a few critical fans to join the discussion. For example, you might want to reach out to smaller influencers (i.e., 1,000 to 10,000 followers on social media) and invite them to your live chat in advance of the event. To make the invitation more attractive, offer to highlight their most insightful comments during the live event.
Learning to use new technology effectively takes some practice. That’s why we suggest planning a practice run. In this way, you can make mistakes and master your learning curve in front of a small audience of colleagues rather than tens of thousands of fans.
To make the most of your practice run, aim to simulate the live sporting event. For example, consider playing a recording of a recent game to simulate a live event. Ask some of your colleagues to act in different roles, such as sports fans, sports commentators, and assistants.
You’ve done your homework, prepared your technology, and practiced your technique. Now you are ready to get down to work. Use the following tips to keep your live sports event running smoothly.
Now you are ready for the final step in creating the best live sports streaming events.
Developing mastery in running the best live sports streaming events takes practice. There is one way you can get better faster. Within 24 hours of the live event, schedule some time to debrief about the event. Ask yourself and others who worked with you three simple questions
What went well?
You might have found that content curation from social media was a big success in keeping fans engaged.
What didn’t go well?
Few live events go exactly as planned. Identify what went wrong (e.g., technical problems) and make a plan to address them next time.
What should we keep doing next time? What should we stop doing next time?
This final pair of questions is an excellent place to end your reflection because it keeps you focused on the future. To keep life simple, limit yourself to one or two lessons learned from each event. By repeating this step with each live event, you will keep getting better and better.
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