The Real Cost of a Dropped Live Feed, and Why That’s the Question That Actually Matters Broadcasters distribute live sports globally without owning a single satellite or teleport by booking managed transmission capacity per event — a model called Occasional Use. But the executive decision here was never really about capital cost. It’s about what … Read more
From Pitch Side to Living Room: The Six Stages Every Live Signal Survives (or Doesn’t) A live signal travels through six distinct stages between a venue and a global audience, and each one can fail independently — the executives who actually protect a broadcast aren’t the ones with the best gear, they’re the ones who … Read more
Five Vendors, One Channel: Fixing the TV Distribution Overload Problem Ask most Heads of Distribution how many vendor relationships they manage to keep one channel on air, and the answer is rarely fewer than five — satellite, playout, EPG, monitoring, and OTT, each with its own contract and support line. Consolidating that stack under fewer … Read more
Why Renting the Satellite Beats Owning One: The Economics of Global Live Sports Delivery Short answer up front: no rights holder needs to own a satellite, teleport, or fiber network to distribute live sport globally — the entire chain can be rented per event through Occasional Use, and with the sports rights market projected to … Read more
The Real Infrastructure Bill Behind Every FAST Channel The roughly 1,900 global FAST channels running in 2026, up from 1,610 the year before, didn’t launch on marketing alone — each one depends on seven interdependent infrastructure layers, and the gaps between them are where ad revenue and airtime actually get lost. Here’s what the stack … Read more
Occasional Use for Live Sports: A Risk Framework Before You Book Anything Live sports Occasional Use (OU) distribution fails at the coordination layer, not the technology layer — the fix is picking a provider who owns and monitors the full signal chain end to end, and pressure-testing that claim before the event, not during it. … Read more
The Single-Stack Broadcast Buyer’s Guide: What Unified Operations Platforms Actually Deliver in 2026 A genuine unified broadcast platform puts ingest, playout, monitoring, delivery, and monetization behind one login and one accountable vendor — but unified is claimed far more often than it’s actually built. This guide breaks down what the model really solves, who it … Read more
Decomposing the Occasional Use Invoice: Five Line Items That Actually Set the Price Occasional Use pricing for live sports distribution isn’t a single sticker price — it’s built from five distinct variables: booking duration, bandwidth and quality, coverage and routing, bundled managed services, and commitment terms. The first four determine the quoted rate. The fifth, … Read more
The Six-Point Audit for Distribution That Isn’t Converting to Ad Revenue Wider content distribution increases ad revenue only when it creates additional viewable and measurable advertising inventory — adding platforms alone does not guarantee higher income. When distribution expansion isn’t showing up in revenue, the cause is almost always one of six specific, diagnosable gaps … Read more