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Buzzer App that Provided Snippets of Live Sporting Events for Microtransactions as Little as $1 Shuts Down

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
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David Satin

The Buzzer has been hit for the last time. Buzzer, an app that offered users the chance to stream live sports for as little as $1 per transaction, took to Twitter over the weekend to announce that it would be winding down its operations in the coming weeks.

Buzzer was an app specifically targeted toward Gen Zers, which allowed users to tune in for parts of NBA, NHL, WNBA, ATP Tennis, and PGA Tour events and watch live. Using microtransactions that sometimes amounted to just a buck, users could tune in for parts of games on their mobile devices.

According to Front Office Sports, the app had financial backing from some of the biggest names in the sports world, including Michael Jordan, Patrick Mahomes, Kevin Durant, Naomi Osaka, Wayne Gretzky and more. But the $44 million they raised in seed money for Buzzer wasn’t enough to keep the app on its feet after its launch in spring 2021. The company had already shut down its consumer app in May and tried to market itself to other businesses as a streaming technology platform.

When it was first conceived, Buzzer was thought to be the perfect sports streaming app to capture the attention of Gen Z viewers who grew up watching TikTok and YouTube. Only 56% of Gen Zers prefer watching sports live, and most prefer playing video games or streaming short-form video over watching subscription video services like Netflix.

It would have been hard for Buzzer to continue in the face of YouTube’s new partnership with the NFL this season in any event. YouTube will allow creators access to NFL footage when creating Shorts this fall, meaning the platform will likely become the dominant host of short-form sports videos in short order once the season begins.

Microtransactions for quick snippets of live sporting events may not have been a sustainable business model, but Disney and ESPN are hoping pursuit of the opposite of that strategy will prove more viable. Disney is reportedly in the midst of negotiating to launch a streaming-only version of the full ESPN family of channels, which it will likely have to charge a premium price of $40 per month or more to access.

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Read full bio ›
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