ESPN’s Revamped DTC App Delivers Multiview, Live Game Stats, Highlight Replays
Multitude of features hit Smart TVs while mobile leans into vertical video
Story Highlights
When ESPN flips the switch on its new direct-to-consumer streaming service app tomorrow the centerpiece will be access to ESPN’s 12 linear channels of content that have previously only been available to pay TV subscribers. But users are also going to experience a redesigned ESPN app that delivers a robust set of features designed to personalize and deepen the sports-viewing experience.
ESPN’s Brian Marshall walks through the new features of the ESPN App during a media event in New York City on Tuesday. (Photos: Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
“We are really at the cusp of a new era across three dimensions: distribution, access, and experience,” says Adam Smith, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Disney Entertainment & ESPN. “For distribution, for the first time ever, all of ESPN’s programming will be available to all fans directly from ESPN—12 networks, 47,000 live shows, originals, and documentaries. And that required an incredible amount of engineering and re-engineering so that we could have unified systems and platforms powering all of the ESPN streaming ecosystem.”
The upgraded app offers multiview streaming, a stats panel synced to live action, live betting info via ESPN BET, fantasy team integration, and QR code commerce opportunities. And a personalized “SportsCenter for You” highlights feed, powered by AI, generative AI, and ESPN talent voiceovers, tailors content to the individual fan.
ESPN’s Adam Smith speaks about the thought process behind some of the features that will be available at launch for the ESPN DTC service.
“SportsCenter for You expands the iconic SportsCenter show by personalizing it for each fan,” Smith notes. “We combine AI technology, ESPN’s digital video library, and the iconic voice of our on-air talent to deliver millions of personalized SportsCenter experiences.”
The familiar ESPN ecosystem on both mobile and TV gives the company a leg up in this roll out, too.
“If [the user] want scores, schedules, stats, news, and analysis, the ESPN app is best in class,” says Brian Marshall, Vice President, Sports Products & Strategy, Disney Entertainment & ESPN. “If they want to play fantasy, we are leaders in that space. If people want to bet, our partnership with Penn and ESPN BET allows them to do that. And if they love to follow sports on social, our digital social team is the number one sports brand in that space.”
Multiview, Squeeze-Back, and Catch-Up
Among the most tangible upgrades is the expansion of multiview. Fans who don’t own Apple TV (which offers users the ability to create a personalized Multiview) will now have access to formatted layouts — two games side by side, three games on screen, or the familiar four-box that will deliver various Multiview experiences. Viewers won’t be able to personalize them by dropping one game and adding another, but they will be able to experience a Multiview with simultaneous events.
The remodeled ESPN App includes a multitude of features for the TV screen environment.
“That will be big for college football and then the U.S. Open starts next week and that will be a big time for us to tap into this sort of feature,” says Nicole Pelaez-Dandrea, VP, Audience Engagement for ESPN.
The team also added squeeze-back functionality, which allows fans to keep a game visible while pulling up data, stats, or a list of key plays that can be replayed on demand. A “play from the start” option and a catch-up button give late-arriving viewers easy ways to get back up to speed.
“We have a team dedicated to pulling those highlights in and even later in the game you can go into the squeeze back and replay some of the highlights that you want to share and relive with your friends,” says Donny Guy, VP of Product Design for ESPN. “And at any moment you can just jump back live.”
Building a Smarter, More Interactive Feed
The app also introduces a new vertical video experience called Verts, a personalized feed of news highlights, viral clips, analysis, and curated social content. Coupled with a new personalization algorithm, it aims to make ESPN the premier destination for digital sports video.
“This is an enhancement to the ESPN app that exists today,” says Marshall. “Fans can always choose to watch live, jump to the beginning of a game, or use our catch-up-to-live experience. Now, with interactivity layered in, the app becomes a true hub for fandom.”
ESPN’s Donny Guy and Nicole Pelaez-Dandrea (bottom right) demos the multiview feature of the revamped ESPN App.
The “Sportscenter for You” feature also promises to be a hit either streaming on a TV in widescreen or on a phone in vertical video. Four ESPN talent have leant their voices to the initial offering whereby a generative AI backbone will create narration for each highlight which, in turn, be part of the “Sportscenter for You” personalized experience.
Behind the curtain, teams are iterating constantly on how best to deliver these feeds. Jay Donnell, ESPN Software Engineering, says personalization raises important creative questions: How many highlight segments are ideal? How long should they run? And which AI models do the best job of generating authentic voiceovers from ESPN talent?
“The shocking thing to me is it only takes about 10 seconds of the talent’s voice to generate the voice and in fact if you give it more than that it can sometimes make the quality worse,” Donnell says. “We created a framework that has a number of [language models] plugged in and we evaluate them constantly. And we can easily switch to whatever is working best at any given time.”
The Road Ahead
For Guy, the real significance is that the platform is designed to evolve. “When people ask me the question about my favorite product idea that we have I say it’s the one we’re getting closer and closer to connecting to the ecosystem,” he says. “This is a new era of tech that we’re going into and we’re bringing in folks from the tech world but also media tech and those who make the product and technology work because this is actually very hard to do.”
One feature already on the roadmap: device sync. Fans watching on the big screen while scrolling on their phone or tablet will no longer risk seeing a push notification about a touchdown before the play happens on TV, provided the devices are on the same Wi-Fi network.
And as multiview expands, ESPN is exploring ways to bring in partner content, if rights deals can be secured. “This is where we want fans to watch as we’re here to create the best viewing lean back experience possible, whatever the transactional relationship,” says Guy.
