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NFL Makes History with First Game Stream on Sports Betting App; Low-Latency Key for Sports Streaming

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 NFL has executed a rather dramatic turnaround on gambling. Its position not all that long ago was that sports betting was a threat to the integrity of the game, but as it has become legal in more and more states, and gambling revenues have climbed, the league has considerably warmed to betting. On Sunday, the NFL partnered with Caesars Sportsbook app to stream a game for the first time, airing the Dallas Cowboys-Indianapolis Colts game.

The stream must have gone well for the NFL and Caesars, because their partnership is expanding. Genius Sports, which operated the live stream on the Caesars app, announced on Monday that the NFL would stream one game each week on the Caesars app, offering in-game betting opportunities and player-props alongside live video to offer the most compelling experience possible.

The key to this partnership between the league and Caesars is that Genius Sports provides a low-latency stream of the games. That means the delay between true live action on the field and when users see the action on their screens. Broadcasters usually build in a delay of 6-8 seconds in live broadcasts, so they can potentially edit any content that doesn’t meet network or FCC standards, but transmission delays for streamed sports games can often climb into the 30-40 second range due to interference, etc.

Having a latency of 30 or 40 seconds is not tenable for a sports-betting site, however. A sportsbook cannot offer up-to-the-second odds on such bets, making it crucial that any stream with integrated wagering must have a low latency time. Also, if betters have access to information from inside the stadium via social media or other means of communication before it happens on the stream, they could be able to execute bets already knowing the outcome.

Caesars and Genius Sports did not specify exactly how low their latency times were, but the NBA app was able to slash its latency time to about 12 seconds earlier this year.

Live streams of games with integrated sports betting content are becoming more common, despite Sunday being the NFL’s first attempt at such a feat. The MSG Network is offering several such streams of Knicks and Rangers games this season, and NBC Sports Chicago is doing likewise for three more Bulls games in 2022-23.

Low latency video feeds are important to the success of gambling feeds of live sports events, but also to the future of live sports streaming in general. Low latency video helps bring the experience of watching sports via streaming closer in line with what people expect when they watch on TV and ensures the action won’t be spoiled by websites or apps that are tracking the action live. The NFL is looking to partner with a streaming service for its out-of-market games package NFL Sunday Ticket next season, so the ability to offer low-latency streams is critically important to the league.

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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