Sports Media Engagement

The New OTT Battleground: Turning Viewers into Participants

0 MIN READ • Jonas Gray on Apr 1, 2025
The New OTT Battleground: Turning Viewers into Participants

Streaming fatigue is real.

Audiences are overwhelmed. Churn is rising. And even the best content isn’t enough anymore.

In 2025, the most successful OTT platforms aren’t just broadcasting—they’re building real-time, interactive ecosystems that increase watch time, reduce churn, and convert attention into revenue.

At PubNub, we help global OTT and live event platforms—from sports streamers to live news, fan-driven networks, engagement platforms, and even betting-enabled apps—turn passive viewers into active participants through real-time engagement, monetization, and optimization at scale.

Engagement Is the New Retention

We’ve seen it firsthand: when a stream becomes a shared, interactive experience—on-screen or second-screen—viewers stay longer and return faster.

Inspired by the social and interactive behaviors users already expect from smartphones, today’s viewers want to react, share, and connect as they watch—not just consume. TV is no longer a solitary lean-back experience; it’s becoming a live, communal, and personalized space.

Whether it’s a sports app syncing fan chat to the game, a watch party for a series premiere, a live news platform delivering audience sentiment during breaking coverage, or a betting app engaging users with real-time odds—PubNub powers experiences that feel alive and emotionally connected.

The platforms that win are the ones that make audiences feel something together. Here’s how our customers are using real-time interactivity to retain and grow their audiences:

  • Live chat and emoji reactions: Synchronized within milliseconds across devices to drive immediate connection and community.
  • Watch parties, companion apps, and influencer streams: Create shared social moments that turn content into a collective experience.
  • Live polls, trivia, micro-predictions, and fantasy challenges: Gamify attention and increase session duration through participation.
  • In-stream rewards, unlocks, and betting overlays: Monetize the moment without disrupting the experience.
  • Sentiment-aware moderation: Keep conversations vibrant, inclusive, and on-brand—even at scale.
  • Smart push notifications: Bring viewers back at the perfect moment with personalized re-engagement triggers.

All of this happens in under 100ms, across any device, for millions of users—powered by PubNub’s globally distributed real-time network.

From Attention to Action—in Real-Time

Engagement is only half the equation. The real magic happens when you convert it into business value.

That’s where PubNub Illuminate for Sports, Media & Entertainment comes in—our low-code decisioning engine purpose-built for OTT and audience engagement teams.

With Illuminate, product and operations leaders across OTT, sports, fan engagement, and betting platforms can:

  • Trigger offers, CTAs, overlays or betting prompts during the stream—based on behavior or sentiment
  • Personalize streams by location, interaction history, or language
  • Launch experiments in real-time—no dev support required
  • Re-engage viewers who drift away with targeted, event-based notifications
  • Visualize engagement patterns as they happen and adjust instantly
  • Sync live odds, predictions, fantasy updates—or betting markets—directly into the stream

That includes operators in sports betting and iGaming, where milliseconds matter and live interactivity directly impacts session length, bet volume, and revenue.

No more waiting for post-mortem dashboards or quarterly pivots.

With PubNub, you optimize while the audience is still watching.

The Future of OTT? It’s Already Here.

The 2025 NAB Future of Television Initiative Report calls out what leading platforms already know: interactivity, personalization, and real-time monetization are essential to the next phase of OTT and broadcast.

Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends report echoes this shift, noting that consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by content overload and expect simpler, more connected, interactive experiences that go beyond the traditional lean-back model.

And Forrester, in its Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q1 2024 report, defines the key technology strategy enabling this evolution:

“Real-time interaction management (RTIM) is enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer lifecycle via preferred customer touchpoints.”

— The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q1 2024

In other words, this isn’t a trend. It’s a requirement.

And it’s exactly what PubNub was built to deliver.

What We’ve Learned

  • The best way to reduce churn? Make viewers feel like they’re part of something.
  • The fastest way to monetize attention? Act on it while you have it.
  • The biggest opportunity in OTT? Turning viewers into participants—and participants into superfans.

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See It in Action at NAB Show 2025

Heading to Las Vegas this April? 

Visit us at Booth W1149 in the West Hall and see how PubNub is helping OTT leaders:

✅ Prevent churn

✅ Boost average session duration

✅ Launch new revenue streams

✅ Power real-time fan engagement, gamification, and companion experiences

✅ Deliver unforgettable, interactive viewing across sports, entertainment, news, and live events

Use our discount code “NS14333” for a complimentary Exhibits pass! Register Here

The era of passive streaming is over.

Let’s build what’s next—together.