“What should we watch?” Three ways to help sports fans solve the paradox of choice

“What should we watch?”

It’s a question familiar to most households, especially now when people are spending more time at home. We recently looked at how to solve the issue in the entertainment world, where Brits alone spend 187 hours a year choosing what to watch (more than a third of the time it takes to learn a language). Referred to as the paradox of choice, it’s important you present your catalog of content in a way that it will excite, rather than overwhelm, users.

The same is true within a sport setting. The amount of time spent on OTT sport services is increasing exponentially, with the number of hours viewed growing by 260% last year. So, what can you do to ensure your sports fans are being targeted with relevant content that will tempt them to stay on your service, rather than distract them from your offering?

1. Offer personalized content

It’s a no-brainer. After all, why should users scroll through pages of content linked to fans or sports that don’t interest them? Personalization is vital to the success of sports streaming services, with 63% of sports fans saying they’d consider paying for a live sports streaming service if it offered more coverage of a sports league or team that interests them.

With our product AXIS Sports, you can simply and easily personalize your OTT service in many ways. End-users can curate lists of ‘favorites’, including teams and athletes. These favorited items are then associated with their user ID, and similar live, VOD, or upcoming content can then be targeted at the user. If an end-user exclusively favorites content related to Liverpool Football Club, for example, then Liverpool-related content will be given precedence over other content. Fans can then view and manage their custom set of favorited items, including adding and removing favorited items as tastes or interests change.

AXIS has also been designed to be used by non-technical operators, so it’s easy to pick where these Sports Discovery rows are presented within the user interface (UI).

2. Data, data, data

Of course, every sports fan is different, and they all consume content in different ways. Some fans devour every minute of a live game; others just tune in for the highlights. With our product, mtribes, you can collect real-time insights to power personalized campaigns. With this information, you can then experiment and validate your ideas and messaging before rolling it out to everyone. You’re in control of what your fans see.

You can also view a dashboard packed with loads of stats, including:

• Served success rate: The number of times a Scenario (an experience that has been configured for a specific audience Tribe and/or scheduled for a specific date and time) was served to or clicked on by your users in the last 30 days
• Weekly activity: The number of times this Scenario was served in the last seven days, with the busiest days and hours highlighted
• Tribe of the week: Displays activity of a specific Scenario against all Tribes containing the same users as in your targeted Tribes

This information can be used to make sure you’re targeting the right content at the right users at the right time. If messaging isn’t on-point, for example, to direct users to a new sports show or round-up, you can adapt it to make sure your users don’t miss out.

3. Put the user in control

These days, your users want to be in control and play their own part in the action. Our advanced OTT player, DIVA, uses live data to provide an entirely new, genuinely interactive experience for users. This feature alone can help your fans choose what to watch, as they can get a far deeper understanding of the game than they would within usual programming. Read on for just two features that enable the fan to drive their own experience.

• The interactive timeline: This gives the user the ability to choose how they watch a game, empowering them to become their own director. The interactive timeline displays live data alongside the action or uses the data to tag ‘clickable’ key events during an event. The fan can then jump to that information for a deeper analysis of what’s in front of them. Maybe the fan wants to jump to a key goal or see all the stats around a player who has just been handed a red card.

• Automatic goal alerts: Maybe your fan has a few games to watch at once, or maybe they’re not able to commit to watching the full game because they have other things on. With automatic alerts, you can quickly and easily keep your users updated with goals, penalties, and other key moments. This useful, time-saving feature means they can jump from one game to another to watch these milestones, helping them decide what to watch.

Conclusion

Fans have never demanded more. And in a world where there’s so much content out there, it's essential to remove the ‘pain’ point of working out what to watch, instead offering them a stand-out sports OTT service. Personalization and learning from the data will help them choose what to watch, and ensuring you’re offering features that give them more control will help them stay on your service rather than exploring elsewhere. As you can see, there are so many ways you can solve the paradox of choice to ensure your fans come back to your platform time and time again.

Have you got any questions for the team? Get in touch or say hello over on Twitter or LinkedIn.