Live Sports Streaming

Facebook set to live stream at least 20 Friday Major League Baseball (MLB) games in their year's regular season.

15:07 19 June 2017

Facebook has partnered with Major League Basketball to live stream at least 20 Friday MLB games during this year’s regular season. The service is only available to users in the US. The games are not exclusive to Facebook, which will stream from the feed of a local broadcast rights holder. LeBron James is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

 

Aside from Facebook, other tech giants that are also aggressively pursuing sports include Amazon. The firm has secured rights to next season’s Thursday Night Football for $50 million. Twitter also has deals to stream games from MLB, the Lacrosse and National Hockey leagues.

 

Because of these services, more and more TV viewers are canceling their cable subscriptions. This pushes more companies, such as Google, in setting their sights on live sports.  

 

According to Business Insider’s premium research, digital disruption and shifting consumer habits is contributing to the decline of cable subscribers. This also attracts new players in the space. However, the report noted that the increasing cost of sports broadcast rights and the higher advertising rates for brands are making the current live sports business model unsustainable.