NAB Show Preview: The business of sports streaming and the adtech behind it

Live sports rights are among the most valuable assets in media.

Platforms that hold them face a specific set of pressures: delivering a flawless viewer experience under peak load conditions while extracting maximum advertising revenue from audiences that are large, engaged and available for only a finite window.

The technology serving those two goals, reliable delivery and effective monetization, has become a category of its own, and it is expected to drive conversations the NAB Show.

“Escalating rights costs are placing growing pressure on platforms to expand reach while protecting margins, and audience expectations — particularly among younger viewers — are reshaping the live experience through interactive overlays, real-time data, and engagement features,” said Benoit Brieussel, product director at Viaccess-Orca. “Balancing premium, low-latency live delivery with new monetization layers such as dynamic ad insertion and targeted fan experiences will position sports at the center of strategic discussions at the show.”

Before monetization can be maximized, delivery has to work.

Live sports streaming operates without the safety net available in on-demand environments – there is no opportunity to re-encode or replay when something goes wrong. Latency spikes, CDN outages, encoder instability and playback errors have to be detected and resolved before they affect the viewer experience.

“Live sports and live event streaming are huge growth areas for the industry, but to preserve revenue streams during these peak monetization windows, video providers need to deliver high quality viewing experiences. Issues such as latency spikes, CDN outages, encoder instability, or playback errors must be detected and addressed in real time before the viewing experience is impacted. This is where observability comes into play, because it gives video providers the insights they need to identify, diagnose and resolve issues in real time. Effective observability is fast becoming a core business driver,” said Ian Baglow, co-CEO of Bitmovin.

The connection between delivery quality and revenue is direct.

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A degraded viewing experience during a major live event does not just affect viewer satisfaction, it impacts the value of the ad inventory surrounding that content and the platform’s ability to retain subscribers who pay specifically for access to premium sports.

The evolution of ad insertion

Dynamic ad insertion has become a central component of sports streaming monetization. Its evolution from a technical capability into a strategic priority reflects how much of the revenue model for sports streaming now depends on advertising rather than subscription alone.

“Live sports has become a proving ground for the next generation of ad-supported streaming innovation,” said Paul Davies, head of marketing and partnerships at Yospace.

“Advances such as server-guided ad insertion, building on established server-side ad insertion approaches and new standards like MPEG-DASH Events, are opening the door for sports broadcasters to combine low-latency streaming with sophisticated, personalized advertising. We’ve just reached a new record of 10 billion one-to-one addressable ads stitched in a single month, which highlights just how important dynamic ad insertion technologies are to advertising value,” added Davies. 

Server-guided ad insertion, or SGAI, shifts where ad placement decisions are made.

Rather than handling all ad logic on the server, SGAI allows the client, the viewer’s device, to participate in the process, enabling more precise placement and reducing the latency issues that have historically affected ad experiences in live streams.

Harmonic has pointed to in-stream ad insertion during live sports streaming as a major development for the industry.

“The successful integration of in-stream ad insertion during live sports streaming marks a watershed moment for the industry,” said Eric Gallier, vice president of video customer solutions at Harmonic. “Sports streamers can now add incremental monetization that won’t disrupt the fan experience.”

Interactive formats and the engagement opportunity

Beyond traditional pre-roll and mid-roll advertising, sports streaming platforms are experimenting with formats that use the interactive nature of connected TV to create new inventory and new revenue streams.

“Rights holders and service providers are keen to experiment with new ways to drive engagement and monetization in order to maximize the value of their sports content. Streaming opens the door to innovative monetization opportunities beyond ads and subscriptions, from interactive video shopping to immersive XR experiences,” said Mrugesh Desai, vice president for North America at Accedo.

L-shaped banner ads, side-by-side formats, pause ads and click-to-mobile shoppability are among the formats gaining traction as platforms look to capture advertising budgets that have historically gone to web, search and social channels.

For sports specifically, the engaged and emotionally invested nature of the audience during a live event creates conditions where interactive formats can perform differently than they would in other content environments.

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Operational consistency and rights value

For broadcasters and rights holders distributing sports across over-the-air, direct-to-consumer apps, virtual pay-TV services and FAST channels simultaneously, the operational challenge of managing versioning, localized advertising and syndication workflows has become a monetization issue in its own right.

Inconsistent production or delivery standards affect not just the current broadcast but the perceived value of the rights themselves.

“As coverage extends across more platforms and reaches increasingly segmented audiences, consistency and technical readiness have become central to how rights buyers evaluate long-term investment potential,” said Rick Young, senior vice president and head of global products at LTN.

“Inconsistent production standards from one game to the next can erode audience confidence and suppress monetization opportunities, especially when buyers expect reliable delivery across linear, digital, and streaming environments. Standardized production models and scalable IP-based distribution support repeatable, high-quality live streams across venues, while managed transport networks simplify feed aggregation and customization at scale,” added Young.

The operational and commercial pressures on sports streaming monetization are expected to converge visibly at NAB Show 2026.

How platforms balance delivery reliability, advertising sophistication and emerging interactive formats, while managing the costs that premium rights demand, is the question that will run through much of the sports-related conversation on the exhibit floor.

NAB Show 2026 opens April 18, with exhibits running April 19-22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Make sure to check out the latest NAB Show News in our dedicated section or visit the NAB Show website to register for the show.