Other articles in this series:

The technology stack involved in the delivery and monetization of Interactive Rights is a mix of real-time data and editorial content inputs, deep understanding of consumer behavior, a detailed set of rules for both content and display, and an activity tracking capability. All these components operate dynamically based on the content that is being displayed in real-time on the device’s screen.

As noted in the first articles in this Interactive Rights series, Sports content owners are the early adopters and pioneers of Interactive Rights. The unknowable nature of sports outcomes with their edge-of-the-seat moments is the ideal environment for Interactive Rights, although this unpredictable environment also drives a level of dynamism that requires special capabilities from the underlying technology.

The Interactive Rights Technology Ecosystem

The technology ecosystem is comprised of a multi-faceted Data Engine, a highly-automated Presentation Decision Engine, a User Interface, and an industrial-strength Financial Engine. Figure 1 shows a version of these components as presented by Play Anywhere, a company providing services in this space.

The Data Engine focuses on data source management, data ingestion, and data transformation for all data types that the content owner includes in the interactivity domain. The Presentation Decision Engine combines compliance data and user behavior data to decide what to present to viewers. The User Interface is how all interactivity elements are presented to each viewer. The Financial Engine is a clearinghouse and accounting system that tracks, reports, and executes every financial transaction related to the Interactive Rights.

The technology stack is driven entirely by the data and rules related to the viewer, the context of the content, and the pre-agreed commercial terms. There is a clearly defined workflow (included in Part 2 of this article) to ultimately present the right information to the right viewer at the right time, with the goal of achieving maximum ROI from the content.

The Data Engine

Interactivity data ingested and used by the Data Engine is the set of all possible data and information inputs that can be used to offer an interactive experience to an individual viewer.

This data set is all about the “art of the possible” for interactivity because it represents the full universe of potential interactivity opportunities that can be offered to viewers. The more data available, the more interactivity can be offered.

The limits on this data set are defined by the access that a content owner has to data before or during a program. The primary consideration is the amount of real-time data that can be obtained. Real-time data is at the core of the interactive experience. Pre-curated content (e.g., trivia questions) is also important, but is less important to the value exchange of the interactive experience.

All data sources are ingested into a centralized engine, running in a Cloud environment for necessary elasticity to support varying spikes in demand that are such a natural phenomenon of sporting events. Leading Interactive Rights systems are currently working with 5 primary Interactivity data source categories:

- Player, Game & Sports Body Statistics
This data holds top spot in the list. It is the primary data about the sporting event taking place on the screen. It combines real-time data, historic data, and carefully curated content. Real-time data is from the in-progress sporting event. Historical data is on file related to the athletes, teams, locations, and other contextual information about the event. Curated content is pre-prepared, ready to be used in real-time for contextual engagement with viewers.

There are a number of real-time data providers, including companies like Opta, TDI, and Sportsradar. The data structures are often sport-specific and are fairly similar on a global basis between different leagues, tournaments, and events related to the same sports.

- Advertizing & Sponsorship
Interactivity data in this category is about matching contextual advertizing spots during the sports event with the relevant advertisements and sponsorship messages. Given that “contextual spot identification and delivery” is the equivalent of addressable advertizing on a performance booster, there is a bespoke engine for Interactive Rights use cases to manage the processing and delivery. This engine helps sports bodies decide which brands should be presented – with which ads, how, when, where (geo-linked), and to whom.

Imagine a contextual ad spot related to a hattrick being scored in a football match. Offering this up in real-time, accepting an ad bid, and delivering it based on viewer personalization, is why a bespoke engine is needed to ingest the data and take action that is aligned with the Interactive Rights requirements.

- E-Commerce
Shopping embedded in sports content has been a thorny subject for many years because of the idea that it might be too invasive for viewers. But the goal of making TV a more important avenue for sales, and not simply for driving awareness, remains very much alive.

Driving e-commerce inputs to the Interactive Rights engine requires integration with the pre-selected e-commerce providers, including brands like Fanatics (sporting goods), Ticketmaster (game tickets), and Amazon (general retail). The retailers are regionalized according to the location of the rights and the viewer’s location. E-commerce interactivity for viewers depends largely on the capability of the e-commerce provider. Do they offer log-in and one-click ordering via an API? Or do they only offer QR codes on the TV screen for mobile devices to use? If the former, this can be made available as part of the viewing screen experience.

E-commerce promotion to the viewer can be very granular in its implementation. Viewers can be presented with the shirt of the player on the screen, or with general purchasing options related to the sport. The decision is made by the sports content owner in conjunction with the broadcaster and e-commerce providers. The goal is to promote products and services to viewers yet ensure they can remain immersed in the sports moment without undue interruption. Offering options to “add to basket” or “save to review at an appropriate break” are ways to bring e-commerce conveniently into the game-time experience. Ideally promotions are presented on the first screen utilizing the retailer’s APIs, but where this is considered infeasible for technical or viewer experience reasons then the second screen option can be utilized.

- Free-to-Play Games
Gaming is a critical part of engaging the modern viewer in the new value exchange that combines content, gaming, and social. In this category, 3^rd party data is ingested from different gaming sources and presented to viewers, typically in three levels. First is a simple trivia-style question that is not contextual to the moment in the game but is contextual to the sporting event in some other way – e.g., how many times has an American player won this tournament? Second is a poll-style question that requests an opinion from the viewer – e.g., Do you agree with the Referee’s decision? Who will win this game? And third is a highly contextual prediction-style question related to a specific moment or person in the sports event – e.g., How often do you think Carlos Alcaraz plays a dropshot per match? How many goals will Real Madrid score?

Experience so far has shown that this gaming category is highly engaging. That results so far suggest that 30-60% of all viewers engage with the gaming offerings presented to them, and that the viewers who do engage are watching the content for 20-30% longer than viewers who do not engage.

Experience from presenting these trivia, poll, and prediction offerings at the 2024 Olympics showed that questions must be carefully curated before the event and ingested in preparation for the event, rather than allowing AI engines to generate and present them automatically. While AI can be used to generate the questions, it is important to have careful editorial curation and fact-checking to ensure trivia questions are correctly phrased, offer correct answer choices, and avoid being silly or boring. A specific challenge is to deliver multi-lingual trivia when translation engines must correctly manage technical sports-contextual translation. For example, a “chip and charge” play in tennis cannot be translated literally into another language.

Gamification alongside program content can also come with a social element and prizes. Playing for points is a simple approach, where points for correct answers to trivia questions must be awarded (“settled”) immediately, while points for correct answers to prediction questions are awarded when the prediction is complete. When games include prizes, the engagement level is supercharged. Results so far show that up to 80% of viewers engage when prizes are involved with the games.

- Sportsbooks
Betting on competition and sports has been popular for millennia. Therefore, Sportsbooks are an obvious part of the interactivity ecosystem, although only offered to viewers that are watching from areas where betting is legal. The level of technical integration into the video delivery platform depends on the capabilities of the Sportsbooks used by the sports content owners.

Bets from Sportsbooks are ingested into the Data Engine, then surfaced to the selected viewers at a frequency that is decided by the content owner. There are three typical levels of integration offered. First, the viewer is taken from the bet to the Sportsbook’s own application or website to place their bet. Second, the viewer can sign-in to the Sportsbook’s app or website from the screen on which they are watching the content, where they can then place a bet on the specific bet that was presented. Third, based on a full integration, the viewer can log-in, see their balance, and place bets on the same screen as they are viewing on. If the Sportsbook has the technical capability for a full integration, then this approach is preferred.

Data-Led

As with most online activities, data drives decisions. The availability and quality of data is critical to a successful user experience, and the subsequent business result. Interactive Rights are taking data-led decision-making to a new level in the sports industry.

The data sources available to the sports content owner drive the universe of possible interactivity options. While the 5 categories listed in this article are current best practice, and even though we are only at the beginning of the Interactive Rights journey, various enhancements are already envisaged and planned in the coming years. For example, an important development will be to ingest social group information that enables gamification to be managed between groups of friends watching a match together.

With all this data available, and considering the live and real-time nature of sports, the Presentation Decisioning Engine must process data quickly. How this works is where the second half of this article will begin.