Roku goes wheel-to-wheel with Apple and Netflix with first live sports offering
And this time, we get live sports for free
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Rokuhas squared up to the world’sbest streaming serviceslikeApple TV PlusandNetflixby announcing its first foray into today’s big new TV battleground: live sports.
A new deal with Formula E, which is the electric car sibling of Formula 1, will see Roku and CBS Sports become the exclusive home of the racing championship from January 2024.
As part of the deal, Roku will stream 11 races on the free, ad-supported Roku Channel, while CBS will show five races per season (which will also stream onParamount Plus). Both of these will be available in Roku’s Sports Experience hub, which launched in November 2022 to give users a centralized place for sports streaming.
This new Formula E deal is Roku’s first foray into live sports – and that’s a pretty big deal. The electric car championship isn’t on the same level as Formula 1 (the latter gets about70 million global viewers per raceon average, compared to Formula E’s average of about23.8 million per racelast season), but it’s grown significantly since the series started in 2011.
It also gives Roku a unique live sports offering – and one that’s crucially also free – in a streaming space that’s increasingly becoming sports-obsessed. For example,Netflix is apparently in talksto create a “new, celebrity-driven golf tournament” that’ll be live-streamed and will draw on some familiar faces fromDrive To SurviveandFull Swing.
AppleTV Plus, meanwhile, now hasFriday Night Baseballand the rights to Major League Soccer, alongside some new sports-friendly tricks onApple TV 4K like ‘multi-view’. And YouTube TV hasNFL Sunday Ticket,although the streaming service is alsolosing regional sports channels like SportsNet New York.
So while Roku can’t yet compete with ESPN’s Formula 1 livestreams, or Apple’s Major League Baseball shows, this first step onto the sports grid shows that not all live sport has to necessarily be locked behind a paywall.
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Analysis: Live sport is the new streaming trophy
The world of live sports is changing fast now that all of the big streaming services are looking to play, so Roku’s move into Formula E makes sense. But it’s also potentially a big deal for fans who are worried about the mounting costs of different streaming subscriptions.
Al Griffin, TechRadar’s Senior Editor of Home Entertainment in the US, explains: “Live sports is turning out to be a key selling point for streamers in the US, with Apple TV Plus showing Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer games andAmazonPrime Video gettingThursday Night Football,” he says. “Both of those are subscription-based services, though, so Roku offering live sports on a FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channel is significant,” he adds.
And live sports isn’t the end of Roku’s ambitions. It alsothinks that in the near future"every single home will have anoperating system", CEO Anthony Wood told Axios recently. That’s why it’s been making a newsmart home package that lets you monitor your home through your TV.
For now, though, Roku is focusing on challengingAndroid TVandAmazon Fire TVin the race to become the world’s popular smart TV platform, and Formula E is a helpful turbo boost in that direction.
Mark is TechRadar’s Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at both TechRadar and Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he’s contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph’s Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London’s Square Mile.
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