Breaking the Bottleneck: How the Open Edge is Redefining Streaming Quality
As the demand for live-streamed events continues to surge, most notably across the sports arena, many consumers have experienced significant quality issues. A 2024 Hub Entertainment Research US market report, What’s the Score: The Evolution of Sports Media, highlights 37 percent of viewers regularly have some kind of problem (e.g., lag, buffering, crashes) when streaming sports.
Looking internationally, as recently as January 2023, sports streaming platform DAZN was called to a government meeting in Italy to explain its ongoing stream quality problems while delivering its Serie A football coverage. This resulted in DAZN offering refunds to some subscribers. Although this is an example of live streaming at a national level, these quality of experience (QoE) issues are further exacerbated when expanded to a global audience. These cause significant frustration for many viewers, providing a variable QoE that many find unacceptable, not least because of the prices they are paying.
