Poker industry veteran Mori Eskandi was appointed of President of PokerGo in February, and while he faced pandemic challenges over the past months, he sees a bright future for sports streaming.
What effect has the pandemic had on the sports streaming industry? I’d say the biggest impact is how much streaming technology had to evolve in a short period of time. Networks and streaming services had to keep audiences without the benefit of many live events. With that streaming evolution, we now have a great base to work with and will continue to work on it in the coming months and years.
What were the biggest challenges bringing poker to streaming?
Certainly one of the biggest challenges during the pandemic specifically was not knowing if a player would test positive for COVID. If he or she did test positive, our pre-production work would go for naught and we’d have to start all over again. As far as general streaming of poker, the good news is that the sport had been streamed for a long time before COVID so we knew what we were getting ourselves into, but live tournaments were probably the most challenging to capture at first, due to the unpredictable nature of anything live. That being said, we have been in an efficient and effective rhythm with streaming live events for a while now and can’t wait to stream what lies ahead in 2021.
What advances do you see coming to sports streaming?
There’s no question sports streaming is going to be bigger and better every year for the foreseeable future. Undoubtedly, there will be improvements in video quality and latency, but I think fans will play a bigger role in what they’re seeing and when they’re seeing it. Changing camera angles, creating their own replays, chatting with commentators on major broadcasts, all of that will become reality and/or more accepted. And, of course, sports gambling, it’s already a major force and will likely grow exponentially in the next 6-12 months, which will change the general sports streaming landscape.
