Roku Launches New Cross-Service Hub for Centralized Sports Streaming
Roku Launches New Cross-Service Hub for Centralized Sports Streaming
Fall is the biggest time of year for live sports. The NFL, NBA, NHL, and all the major players in the college sports world are active, and this year, sports fans also have the FIFA World Cup to look forward to as well. To ensure that fans don’t miss a second of the action, Roku is launching a new sports streaming hub that will make it easier than ever to access their favorite sporting events.
The new sports experience on Roku will integrate live and streaming events from multiple channels and platforms, and consolidate them all in a single, dedicated location. Customers will be able to access events like the biggest NFL matchups on FOX Sports right next to the day’s slate of NBA games on TNT and much more.
The rollout of the new sports hub was prompted by fan engagement. An internal Roku survey found that over 60% of the company’s users wanted a centralized sports-viewing location where they could specifically track their favorite teams.
“We know that keeping track of where sports are being streamed has only become more fragmented over the past few years,” Roku’s director of live and sports programming Alex Hill said. “Watching your favorite teams should be simple, so we’ve made it a priority to build out a more seamless and streamlined way to discover and watch sports on our platform. Sports are a vital part of the streaming experience, and we will continue to make enhancements to that experience, like adding more supported providers and finding new ways for our users to follow their favorite teams.”
How to Use the New Sports Experience on the Roku Platform:
- Users can scroll down to Sports on the Home Screen Menu, or search for “sports” or associated words like a team or league name in Roku Search or using Roku Voice.
- Within the new Sports experience, users will see live and upcoming games for an initial roster of leagues, conferences, and more.
- When a user clicks on the tile for a game that they are interested in watching, they’ll be presented with watch options for that event from supported channels. If they have not subscribed to the service the game is being presented on, they will be prompted to do so.
- Users can also choose to select various Zones specific to individual sports or leagues to view live and upcoming games or events, discover content specific to their favorite leagues, or explore rows of free sports content.
This is just the latest addition to Roku’s sports offerings. In September, the company added a channel dedicated to “The Rich Eisen Show,” a sports variety radio show hosted by analyst Rich Eisen. Roku also recently debuted an original show called “Emeril Tailgates,” in which the iconic chef Emeril Lagasse cooks up the best in football eats.
Roku added 2.3 million users to its free ad-supported TV (FAST) service [The Roku Channel] in the third quarter of 2022, and the new sports experience could bring even more in Q4. Live sports are a huge draw for streaming platforms, and having the best live sporting events gathered together in a single hub will be an advantage for Roku moving forward.
Roku Channel
The Roku Channel is a free, ad-supported streaming service that offers a broad mix of movies, TV shows, live linear channels, and original programming. Available to all viewers — not just Roku device owners — the service features licensed content from major studios alongside Roku Originals, which include exclusive series, movies, and specials previously produced for Quibi, as well as new original projects developed specifically for the platform.