How Live Streaming is Changing Our Entertainment Options

The idea of watching live streams has been around for long enough to make it an established part of the entertainment industry, yet you might not have noticed how this technology has changed our habits and the ways we enjoy our favorite kinds of entertainment. Tech has made a lot of big changes to many industries in recent years – don’t we all know it – but streaming is a particularly huge one.

YouTube Streamers Are Challenging TV Shows and Movies

The arrival of streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime helped usher in a new era of television. We can now watch shows and movies any way we like, even if that means settling down for a ten-hour Bridgerton or Stranger Things binge that leaves us bleary-eyed and confused. However, these platforms are facing a battle to get onto our TV screens since YouTube is now dominating in this area.

Surprising figures from Nielsen in May this year showed that nearly 10% of all viewing carried out on TVs – connected or traditional – is done using YouTube. At 7.6%, Netflix was in second place.  It’s still unclear whether TV production companies see YouTube as a threat or an opportunity.  One of the advantages of YouTube is the immediacy of live streaming. It’s something that the streaming platforms are keen to expand upon but, for the moment, they’re lagging.

A New Way of Watching Sports

It’s fair to say that in the past, watching a sporting event on TV was less enticing than going there. The limited camera angles and the relative lack of atmosphere transmitted on the screen meant that this was always the second-best choice. Despite this, our love of sports meant that the list of the most watched shows in the US is almost filled with Super Bowls. Only the tear-jerking final episode of M*A*S*H breaks into the top 20 as the group – do we need a spoiler alert for a show from 1983? – go their separate ways at the end of the war.

Live streaming has changed this by giving us a new way of feeling completely immersed in the events. The addition of other types of new technology like artificial intelligence and virtual reality promises to make it even more exciting. Imagine you’re looking at the list of upcoming MMA fights. You can easily find the latest UFC odds, with the numbers being constantly updated when anything changes. You can also look up stats on the contestants’ past performances, to get a better idea of where they came from and how the match might go from here. You can access commentary from a wide array of experts breaking down every detail of the match and how it will affect upcoming ones as well. You might even want to look up videos and stats analysis confirming what to expect from each fighter going forward. It almost makes seeing the match in person seem like the lesser of the options available to you.

Watching Games Is As Much Fun as Playing

There are many things about 2024 that people from the past wouldn’t believe if you traveled back in time to tell them. The popularity of gaming streams is one of them, as games were considered in the past to be fun to play but not for watching. The idea of sitting at home watching gamers from the other side of the planet playing never existed until modern technology like YouTube and Twitch made it happen.

The massive global popularity of esports has helped to make gaming a big business. Huge events like The International and the Intel Extreme Masters attract global audiences looking to watch the biggest and best teams playing each other. This look at the popularity of esports suggests that accessibility is one of the main factors making them so widely loved. Anyone can play League of Legends or CS2 and any can tune in to watch the planet’s best players showing them how it’s done.

Different Types of Concerts and Museum Visits

The way that we can watch live-streamed action from anywhere and at any time has opened up incredible new entertainment options that have changed our lifestyles. Take a trip to the museum, for example. Not so long ago, the only way to visit one of these places was to wait for the opening time and physically head there. Yet, we can now take a virtual online tour of the Louvre or wait for a live stream from the British Museum, the Smithsonian, or anywhere else that interests you.

Music concerts have also been transformed similarly to the sports we looked at earlier. It’s possible to feel completely immersed in the event without leaving home, particularly if you use AI speakers. Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in 2019 was arguably the first major music event held in the metaverse and the likes of Travis Scott and David Guetta followed it.

These different ways of live-streaming entertainment have added a huge amount of flexibility to our lifestyles. Since the changes have occurred over a relatively short period, it seems likely that we’ll see further changes before long as the latest technology gets more widely implemented.