Sports streaming monetization requires a unique approach based on your niche and audience location. You can earn money via various methods, such as ad monetization or affiliate marketing.
Practical tips help you formulate the best approach, and this article provides these valuable tips. Here’s a case study demonstrating how to monetize a live sports streaming site without actually broadcasting events in real time.
| Top traffic | Ad formats | Earnings |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, Germany, and the United States | Banners, Popunders | Up to $2000 per month |
Hi everyone,
To begin with, I will explain the main idea of a website I own. It solely focuses on soccer (football). I observe top matches visitors can watch outside my blog, along with SEO-optimized articles exploring the latest sports events, discussions, and sensations.
I’m more of a sports newsmaker than a fan, which gives me a taste for trending topics. I drive organic traffic solely, making these trending topics easy to find on Google. I also have a secret source of hot organic traffic, which I’m going to tell you about here in the post.
Sports streaming monetization success secret
I run websites in English and Arabic languages. Each of them includes advertising, but I don’t stuff pages with ads. Instead, I chose one Banner size 300×250 and Popunders by Adsterra. I update current events twice a day, providing links to official streaming platforms.
I now make some $1,900–$2,000 monthly, on average, but peak seasons can simply return me some $650 in just 5–7 days.
My advice for sports broadcasters’ monetization is to focus on one topic— in my case, soccer—and use non-irritating advertising formats. Popunders are new web pages that open up when my audience clicks anywhere on the blog. So, users can watch ads later but not close the main content. That’s very important if we speak about video watchers: they don’t want to be disturbed for long.
To Contents ↑A great tip for beginners: read this guide to adding a website to Adsterra platform. It’ll save you time reducing your registration to some 5 to 10 minutes.
My next secret is a choice of countries
What you really need to do to monetize live sports streaming is to select the right audience. Since you’re here on Adsterra’s blog, you know that traffic from the US, UK, and Canada is best-paid. My strategy was also to include Arab audiences. And it was my best shot because people here are big sports fans who love watching matches and reading about their favorite star players and teams.
I managed to increase traffic significantly by focusing on Arab audiences. Here is a screenshot of the countries that sent the most impressions in 7 days. Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are in the top 5.
The next big source of traffic is European countries: I focus on creating blog posts that are highly popular in Germany, France, Spain, and the UK. These are my priorities, not the full list of countries.
Blog articles are one of my main resources for generating traffic from these countries. To monetize sports broadcasts, you will also need a strong content base with powerful SEO optimization.
Top tips for sports streaming websites
First, the basics. If your website is focused on covering the important football/soccer events, you should focus on several factors:
1. User experience
Before doing SEO, make sure the website is lightweight and easy to navigate. Users must access the key information, right after one or two clicks.
Google also pays attention to click depth. The closer your blog pages are to the homepage, the more important Google believes these pages are, and the higher it ranks them.
2. Keywords and trends
Focus on strong keywords in your niche, but don’t forget about topics catering to specific audience interests. Football/soccer sports events coverage may include match results, predictions, players’ profiles, sports fixtures, and so on.
Some of the highest-volume keywords on my site are:
- Koora live
- كورة لايف
- Yalla shoot
- يلاشوت
3. Unique content for each of your audiences
I’m writing for Arab audiences and people from the US and the EU. So, I’m supporting two blogs in Arabic and English. With a sports niche, it’s the only way. You can’t simply translate news or long posts ensuring you provide unique and exclusive content that will stand out from the crowd.
You must know the most discussed events among your audience: this will ensure more blog post views and higher engagement. The most popular soccer events among my Arab audience and my website visitors are:
- UEFA Champions League
- CAF Champions League
- English Premier League
- UEFA European Championship
- Saudi Professional League
- Egyptian Premier League
- Copa América
To Contents ↑Please note: Only some sporting events are allowed to be streamed. Most of them are under strict licenses. Your best option in such a situation is to provide excellent content about this or that match and offer a link to the licensed platform that streams it. If it’s not a giant streaming platform – you can even reach out to them and ask for some win-win options for you since you’re promoting them on your website.
And don’t forget to add a no-follow attribute to your links so as not to share the link juice to a bigger website.
4. Well-structured content for search engines and people
Organic traffic will be your primary source of revenue. Hence, you’ll need a professional approach to creating articles, news, and posts that will generate a buzz on your website. I now share a universal template you can use when writing a blog post.
A template for creating engaging articles
Background: There is an important football match in the Egyptian Premier League between the Pyramids FC and Al-Ahly on July 22nd. How would the article about the match be structured?
First: Write a simple heading using the teams’ names and keywords
Second: Discuss the first team, their history, the recent match between the two teams, the result of the previous encounter, how the team performed, and provide some details. Then, mention the expected lineup of the first team.
Third: Discuss the opposing team. We would talk about the team’s history, their performance in the recent match, how they played, and provide some details. Add the expected lineup of the opposing team.
Finally, add details about the sporting event, the timing of the event, the commentator for the match, and the TV channels broadcasting the match.
At the bottom comes the must-have element: an iframe with a sports march if we’re allowed to stream this event. If this particular event has granted broadcast rights to a limited number of platforms, we place a link to one of such official platforms.
To Contents ↑
SEO for sports streaming websites
Creating powerful, SEO-optimized content is a must for a sports streaming monetization strategy. I don’t pay a dime for traffic, getting solely organic audiences. Well-built SEO plan allows me to get from 100,000 to 300,000 daily visits.
Here is a set of tools and tactics you will also need if you want to grow sports traffic:
- Searching for the strongest keywords and monitoring competitors
- Building strong backlinks
- Creating SEO-optimized blog posts covering the most trending topics
- Indexing websites on search engines, tracking errors, and fixing them
SEO tools that will help you grow traffic
Moz:
- Domain Authority (DA) Checker: This feature allows you to check the domain authority score of your website and your competitors’ websites. Domain authority is a widely used metric to estimate the strength and ranking potential of a website.
- Keyword Research: The Moz Keyword Explorer tool can help identify the most valuable and relevant keywords to target for your sports streaming website’s content and optimization.
- On-Page Grader: This tool analyzes the on-page SEO elements of your website pages, such as title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, content optimization, and more. It provides recommendations to improve the on-page optimization.
- Backlink Analysis: Moz’s Link Explorer allows you to analyze the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to your website and your competitors’ websites. This data helps assess the link building strategy and identify link building opportunities.
- Rank Tracking: The Moz Rank Tracking feature lets you monitor your website’s rankings for target keywords over time, across different search engines and locations.
- Site Crawl: Moz’s site crawl tool can scan your website to identify any technical SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, server errors, and more.
- Competition Analysis: Using Moz’s competitive research tools, you can analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies, including their keyword targeting, content optimization, and link building efforts.
Ahrefs:
- Backlink Analysis: Ahrefs’ extensive backlink database allows you to analyze the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to your website and your competitors’ websites. This data is crucial for understanding your link profile and identifying link building opportunities.
- Keyword Research: Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer tool helps you discover the most relevant and valuable keywords to target for your website’s content and optimization. It provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and other important metrics.
- Competitor Analysis: Ahrefs enables you to analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies, including the keywords they target, the content they create, and the backlinks they have acquired. This helps you identify gaps and opportunities to outperform them.
- Site Audit: Ahrefs’ site audit feature can crawl your website and identify any technical SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, server errors, and more.
- Content Gap Analysis: Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool helps you find content topics and keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but your website is not. This can inform your content strategy and help you create content that fills those gaps.
- Link Intersect: This feature allows you to identify websites that are linking to your competitors but not to your own site. It helps you prioritize outreach and link building efforts. This one I highly recommend to try!
- Rank Tracking: Ahrefs’ rank tracking capabilities enable you to monitor your website’s rankings for target keywords across different search engines and locations over time.
How to stream sports on a website?
Technologies to start streaming
Technology issues are the most challenging. I will help you solve two main problems of a beginner streamer, however.
- First, you need a powerful blogging platform, able to load heavy videos without freezing them right when the last goal is scored.
- Second, you will require a player to deliver videos to end-users and a server to store them.
- Third, you will have to find a way to stream legally or choose official streaming platforms you will be leading audiences to.
All of these mean that the question of speed is essential, if not say crucial.
To Contents ↑Streaming on Blogger websites
One issue we’re about to solve right now. Many of you may think that a specific blog platform is required to run and monetize a streaming blog. Not at all! I drive revenues with a Blogger site for several reasons:
- It’s free
- Easy-to-use templates
- Few tech issues
- Hard to hack, mainly because all assets belong to Google
- Free themes that fit sports-stream websites perfectly
- Ad-friendly templates
- It allows you to stream videos!
Even with fewer tech issues, there’s still the risk of losing some of your website content. To solve this problem, create a backup of all the files, including saving the copy of your blog theme.
How to backup your Blogger website
You need to get an .xml file of your blog’s posts, pages, and comments:
- Sign in to your Blogger admin space.
- Choose the blog you need to back up.
- Click Settings from the left menu.
- Under “Manage blog,” hit Back Up Content >> Download.
How to make a copy of your theme on Blogger
- Hit the blog you want to save.
- In the left menu, choose Theme.
- At the top right, hit More >> Backup >> Download.
Embedding live stream videos to Blogger
If you’re using Blogger, you can find a template that allows for streaming in real time. But I advise choosing the most simple template as any Blogger theme is capable of embedding videos.
Files to stream
I can recommend you try M2U8 links that are easily added to any players (like JW Player) or iFrame codes. You can choose from various providers of such links with live streams. Ensure your provider is credible, though, by looking through several reviews or forum threads.
To Contents ↑M3U8 files are playlists used to organize and stream multimedia files. M3U8 files don’t contain actual content. They consist of plain text that specifies the locations of media files, usually in a sequence that media players can follow. These files are commonly used in streaming applications because they enable efficient loading and playing of parts of video or audio streams.
Players or iFrame code
Then, you will add a streaming page link using an iframe code like this below or via your player.
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="video-iframe" frameborder="0" height="500" mozallowfullscreen="" name="search_iframe" scrolling="no" src="ADD YOUR LINK HERE" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="100%"></iframe>If you require a professional player, then it’s better to check its official tutorials and watch a high-rated educational video, like this one, for JW Player.
To Contents ↑Server capacity
Many still believe they need a self-hosted server to stream sports or movies. It’s a perfect option, by no doubt. But it’s also a very expensive option.
If you’re not aт OTT publisher or a large streaming platform, you can choose a less costly way: use a third-party legal server where videos of your niche are stored. In other words, you don’t produce the streams, but rather take the m3u8 format link and add it to our website. You will then have to continuously monitor and update it, replacing it with another link when the sporting event is over.
Streaming links and files
The last and the hardest step is to get familiar with streaming licenses. You’re only allowed to show sports events in real time if you’re under licenses.
- For local and less popular events, it’s sometimes enough to get a permission from a sports team or association of your region
- You will hardly afford a license to stream global sporting events if you’re a beginner. Hence, it is more reasonable to add links to official VOD platforms to your blog posts about sports matches.
- App and website marketplaces like Envato Market provide templates for streamers where licensing and fees are already included. But mostly, these are app templates.
With Adsterra Direct Link, you can make money on your app or APK traffic, as well as on social media audiences!
To Contents ↑New source of organic traffic for a streaming site: Telegram
I mainly drive traffic from Google, but as promised earlier, I now will give a clue for an additional source of hot traffic. It’s a Telegram app. Telegram is a messaging app like WhatsApp but more flexible. Here you can find channels related to sporting events in your niche and find insights for the most engaging posts.
How to find Telegram groups
- Just enter #sports #football in the Telegram’s search field and you’ll see posts related to this topic. Dive deeper and check the channels these posts belong to.
- You can simply enter the keyword (without a hashtag) in the search field tap Enter. Ensure you swithed the Global search or Show more mode.
- Find Telegram groups with Google search: use this formula “t.me/joinchat + your keyword”. Example: t.me/joinchat football.
- Finally, you can monitor websites that aggregate Telegram groups and channels by niche. One of these is Telegramchannels.me.
- Teletagbot is a bot you can join to look through available and searchable
How to use Telegram traffic
I use Telegram to promote my own channel and find subscribers who I then lead to my blog with sports streams. That’s it. Telegram is highly popular in Spain (and that’s one of the main countries I target) and Arab countries. That’s why I post teasers of streams of the forthcoming matches that are highly likely to send me visitors from these countries.
News and sports predictions also come as teasers: I post only a short part of the story, engaging Telegram users come to read more. Keep in mind: if you promise your visitors a sensation or breaking news, you must provide it. So work hard on finding juicy news, do fact-checking, add nice photos, and try to satisfy readers so thay come back for more!
One final tip to all who want to monetize sports streaming websites or platforms: sports traffic monetization is an everyday job. You really need to keep an eye on trending teams, most discussed players, and most expected matches.
Though it may seem complex in the beginning, when you simplify and plan your activities, the way will be much easier. Take a simple Blogger theme, focus on one niche, carry out an SEO-research and add strong pieces of content. Then, start streaming videos that are highly demanded among your audiences. Finally, choose an ad network to partner with.
Thanks to our expert, we now have a universal guide to starting out as a streaming publisher. You can apply these tips if you monetize a movie website, or run a sports blog with news and forecasts. Another universal rule is adding Adsterra Popunders, Push Ads, or Banner to your site, if you’re willing to cash in on your business, of course 😉
