Real-Time Interactive Streaming Brings College Sports to Life

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Nothing beats the camaraderie and excitement of watching your favorite college team win game after game. But after saying goodbye to campus life, it becomes more difficult to replicate that experience when watching from a distance. Red5 wants to make virtual watch parties with friends as realistic as possible to capture the joy of college… Continue reading Real-Time Interactive Streaming Brings College Sports to Life

Nothing beats the camaraderie and excitement of watching your favorite college team win game after game. But after saying goodbye to campus life, it becomes more difficult to replicate that experience when watching from a distance. Red5 wants to make virtual watch parties with friends as realistic as possible to capture the joy of college sports even when you’re following them remotely.

Connecting Fans with Their Teams via Real-time Interactive Streaming

Real-time streaming allows for seamless playback with smooth video during live sports broadcasts. It is essential to the live sports experience so that fans never miss a play. Real-time streaming also ensures that stats and commentary are synchronized with the video to mimic the experience of attending the game and listening in person. With real-time streaming, families can watch and support the players on game day no matter where they are, and college sports fans can keep up with their alma mater from afar.

Additionally, real-time broadcasts keep college sports interactive and social. A big part of the charm comes from engagement in the game and being involved, whether that’s on the court, behind a camera, or in the stands. For alumni who are keeping up with their team from a distance, real-time interactive streaming (RTIS) helps them connect with their friends virtually to enjoy the games remotely. One way to do this is through a watch party implementation of live streaming software.

A watch party helps recreate the group experience: the energy of the crowd, connecting with other fans, and cheering with friends. Over WebRTC it feels natural, with latencies under 500ms using Red5 Pro’s software. It’s also reliable as all the major browsers have built-in support for WebRTC. It allows for synchronized playback to all members of the group so that they can view and react to the game at the same time. Red5 Pro showed how this is possible with watch party demos last year.

Customizable Streaming Software

Red5 prides itself on being fully customizable and developer-focused. With server-side customizations, developers can build on top of the Red5 Pro software to add features like dynamic ad insertion and player stats, and almost anything else they dream up.

One way to customize the Red5 Pro software for college sports is to incorporate multiviewer technology to create an application that allows fans to select multiple games to display on-screen at one time. Multiviewers combine multiple video sources into a single video output. So, in this case, if two different games are happening simultaneously, fans no longer have to choose which to watch; they can watch both at once. Alternatively, they could opt to add a video stream from a student group that provides commentary throughout the game. That way, fans can support their friends and classmates, and students who wish to go into sports commentary can gain practice during live broadcasts.

Scalable and Flexible Server Options

Depending on the size of the school, the popularity of the commentators, and, of course, how well the team is doing, viewer numbers may fluctuate from game to game or even throughout a single game. To handle this, Red5 Pro’s autoscale solution increases and decreases the number of servers as needed based on the current connection count. This way, no resources are wasted, and high numbers of viewers are supported as the game picks up. Costs stay down, and no one is disappointed.

Additionally, since college sports games happen on different scales, Red5 Pro supports a variety of stream sources, such as WebRTC, RTMP, and IP cameras. It also allows for compatibility across platforms so that fans can watch from any of their devices, switching from a laptop at home to a phone while they’re on the go. They never need to miss a moment of the game.

If this sounds exciting, please feel free to reach out to our team at info@red5.net or set up a call with us to discuss your ideas. We’d love to help!