The media and entertainment industry has always existed in a virtuous circle of innovation and transformation. More recently, the economics and opportunity born out of IP, cloud and AI are redefining not only how broadcast technology stacks are being built, but which broadcasters survive and thrive. As the industry experiences greater levels of consolidation and divestiture, the role that technology vendors play within this shifting landscape has never been more important.
The current state of play
With Nielson reporting a 71 per cent rise in streaming usage from 2021 to 2025, it’s clear that the industry is evolving at a rapid pace. Traditional broadcasters face huge competition from newer, more radical entrants. If disruption first came from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, imagine what a Netflix or Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery could do to the media universe. Meanwhile, YouTube TV and niche owned-and-operated streaming platforms add to the fragmentation of audience share. Many broadcasters are adopting an ‘if you can’t beat them…’ approach that fully supports content aggregation to other platforms, securing new channels to market and strengthening recognition of their brand.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing sports rights-owners taking advantage of the new digital landscape with global deals that are taking everyone by surprise. Paramount Skydance’s bid for the UEFA Champions League being a case in point. In the same vein, Apple’s $750 million streaming deal for Formula 1 is a clear indicator of both brands’ growth ambitions. It’s no surprise then that recent forecasts from Ampere Analysis predict that global spend on sports media rights is expected to top $78 billion (€73 billion) by 2030, as competition mounts for premium live sports.
Within all of this, advanced advertising and monetisation models are of paramount importance. Broadcasters and rights owners now have access to a depth and complexity of audience data that can be game-changing.
Survival of the fittest
The broad decline in linear broadcast revenues, coupled with fierce market competition and consolidation, presents broadcast CTOs with a particularly tough set of challenges. How do you move from monolithic systems that were originally built for linear broadcast to systems that support an online-first approach and can dynamically reach and monetise fragmented and global audiences, and where linear is just one of many other outputs? And how do you do this rapidly and at scale, when the industry is experiencing a skills crisis? Add to this the wave of AI technology that, yes, presents enormous potential, but also its own set of challenges, and you could have a perfect storm.
A catalyst for change
In the recent DPP Media Tech Survey, global broadcast CTOs surveyed stated that content management and processing, as well as streaming technologies, were expected to be two of the three areas that would see the biggest growth in investment, perhaps reflecting their answers to the challenges above. Equally, Devoncroft’s 2025 Big Broadcast Survey identified IP networking and content delivery as the top trend amongst technology purchasers.
With demand for innovation acceleration in these areas, establishing deep technology partnerships is an effective strategy. Some 85 per cent of media tech CEOs are now proactive in seeking supplier partnerships; they see participating in vendor ecosystems as central to their growth strategies and essential for coping with the increasing innovation demands from broadcasters and streamers.
But whether you’re a broadcaster or a technology vendor, the key is flexibility—a partnership approach demands it. Solutions and systems need the capacity to flex if they are to adapt and evolve at pace, be it through the use of microservices and open standards or avoidance of single-vendor lock-in.
Thankfully software-defined workflows that can be deployed across multi-cloud, on premise or hybrid make this easier. They offer the opportunity for deep partner integrations resulting in solutions that best fit customer need. Have we reached a tipping point in the adoption of software-defined workflows for valuable live broadcasts? We are certainly heading in that direction, and as we do, the importance of FinOps comes into sharper focus.
FinOps 2.0
FinOps helps organisations track their existing cloud costs, anticipate future ones, and improve deployment strategies to meet operational and business objectives. Cloud workflows offer impressive global scalability, rapid elasticity, and the ability to spin up complex media workloads as and when needed. This is difficult and can be costly to replicate on-prem and in 2026 we will no doubt see a rise in broadcasters’ dependency on cloud. But as the most progressive organisations build deeper, more sophisticated FinOps capability, they will also start to see where software-defined on-prem infrastructure can complement or replace cloud by offering stable or lower cost profiles.
Trusted expertise
The rise in software-defined products and solutions that run consistently across cloud, edge, and local compute promotes even greater flexibility and can be supported by a full range of adaptable software licensing options. This growing adoption of modern on-prem software—alongside ongoing investment in public cloud—will drive a more intentional, mature, and measurable approach to live media infrastructure.
Technology vendors who have the expertise and depth of experience to offer this to broadcasters as they navigate the market challenges ahead will be the trusted partners our industry will rely on to guide them through this next transition.
