Nick Fitzpatrick, Sam Churney and I spent a great few days in Madrid for the 2019 SportsPro OTT Summit. Here are a few key takeaways from the conference:

1. One-size doesn’t fit all. Rights holders have launched D2C OTT services for various reasons - as a test lab for products, to gain fan data, to raise brand/sport awareness, to complement existing broadcast deals, as the sole form of distribution and/or to provide a premium product to sell to diehard fans. Each OTT product will therefore need to be carefully developed in order to reflect the relevant rights holder’s strategy.  

2. There is a proliferation of OTT products being launched - most are likely to be unsustainable in their current guise but it remains to be seen how and when rationalisation or aggregation will occur.

3. Technology changes but - despite it being confirmed at the Summit that beoutQ is currently still off-air - piracy remains a constant thorn in content owners’ sides. The anti-piracy fight continues and increasingly needs collaboration between rights holders and OTT operators to be truly effective.

4. Despite technological sophistication, the search for a genuinely frictionless, highly personalized and ultra-low latency sports OTT service continues.