Cory Gunther
The ever-expanding Roku platform just got even better. Today the company announced an all-new Sports category that aims to simplify your viewing experience by putting all your favorite sports content in one central location.
After adding several new free local news stations to the Roku Channel and improving content discovery earlier this year, Roku now wants to help sports fans enjoy the big game unlike ever before. As we all know, streaming services and subscriptions are getting out of control. It’s increasingly difficult to find live or upcoming games between all the different services available.
If you have a subscription to fuboTV, pay for ESPN+, yet also have Fox Sports, your Roku device can find live and upcoming games from all those platforms and display them in the new “Sports Experience” category on your Roku’s home screen.
In addition to your favorite sports channels, users can see live and upcoming rosters or schedules for a league, conference, and more, thanks to being highly customizable. Users can even select different zones they’re interested in, like the NFL, and find content related to the National Football League. This new sports category will even have a row showing optional free sports content. You can even find and watch a game all by using your voice.
We’ve seen stuff like this before, where a platform wants to aggregate all the content and display it in one helpful location for users. And like many times before, this looks promising but certainly has a few downfalls. Roku says it’ll “give sports fans instant access to their favorite sporting events from supported channels across the platform,” with the keyword being “supported.”
Unfortunately, not every streaming service or channel will be supported, at least not at launch. So while the experience will undoubtedly be better, you still may have to go hunting and open different apps or services to find what you want.
Roku says this new Sports category has support from big players, including DirecTV, Fox Sports, fuboTV, Paramount+, Prime Video, Sling TV, and the Roku Channel. Then, the company hopes to add more viewing options and partners in the coming months.
Source: Roku Blog
