A South African sports Internet streaming start-up hopes to attract the interest of the industry’s emerging video-on-demand (VOD) players, as well as telecommunications operators, as it seeks to provide a platform for niche sports that don’t get coverage on mainstream television.

The Pretoria-based Streamit360, founded by Apples Appleton, started the business in 2014 when he was first exposed to live-streaming technology. “I jumped in, bought a lot of gear and started to live-stream sports events,” he says.

Now, Appleton says, he’s secured interest from a range of sporting codes, including tennis, para-cycling and bodybuilding federations, and has already live-streamed a number of events to tens of thousands of viewers.

“You see rugby soccer and tons of overseas sport on SuperSport. The tragedy is that the rights agreements prevent the sporting associations from allowing us to stream their events,” he says.

“But there are a number of sporting bodies that are crying out for exposure. They have events, but they have no sponsorship. Sponsors say they’ll give them money if they bring them viewership. It’s like a dog chasing its own tail, going around in circles.”

But increasingly, viewers are turning to online streaming to watch less mainstream sports, says Appleton — and combined audience is potentially huge.

Indeed, when South Africa earlier this month hosted the third leg of the 2015 UCI Para-Cycling Road World Cup, Streamit360 covered it live and registered more than 15 000 viewers from all over the world. And when it covered a recent bodybuilding event, it had more than 10 000 viewers.

Appleton says the cost of producing a live-streaming event is a fraction of that of linear broadcast television — Streamit360 has only five full-time employees, bringing in freelance help as and when required — although the high cost of data for end users remains a problem, particularly those on mobile connections.

Streamit360 does its streaming in two ways. The first involves laying kilometres of fibre along a route and “tapping off that” as its cameras follow the action. That fibre is connected to a fully equipped outside broadcast van, from where the video is streamed live onto the Internet through a server located centrally at Teraco’s data centre.

Watch a highlights package from the UCI Para-Cycling Road World Cup:

Where fibre isn’t feasible, Streamit360 uses a combination of mobile broadband and satellite technology. In rural areas, it’s exclusively satellite based, says Appleton.

The company typically puts together a highlights package after an event, too.

Appleton, who has a background in sports administration and management consulting, says live streaming could have a huge impact on smaller sporting codes. “In BMX, there are heroes that no one knows about. Surfing used to be one of South Africa’s major sports attractions. Today it can’t even get a sponsorship. The big boys don’t even look at it.”

Now, Appleton wants to attract the interest of the industry’s gorillas and is seeking investors to help take the company to the next level. Until now, it’s been self-funded.

He’s in talks with a “major company” — he won’t say which one — about potentially zero-rating data for viewers watching Streamit360’s content, similar to what MTN did recently for its FrontRow VOD service. He says he’s also in talks with a wide of range of sports federations in an effort to get them onto the platform. “There are lots of sports out there with small viewership, but they have a huge viewership when combined.” — © 2015 NewsCentral Media