Roku Introduces New Way To Navigate Game Day

As more live sports programming migrates from linear TV to streaming, Roku is rolling out a new area within its streaming interface designed to help fans follow the action.

Dubbed a sports “experience,” the area within Roku is a centralized hub for sports programming, with the goal of reducing the friction of toggling between separate apps in order to track various events.

This year alone has seen an explosion of streaming exclusives, from NFL Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video to Major League Baseball on Apple and Peacock to a wide array of ESPN+ games, among them NHL and college football. Netflix has also quietly been exploring adding live sports programming.

In a blog post, Alex Hill, Roku’s director of live & sports, said the new offering encompasses pro and college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, baseball, and soccer. Streaming providers include DirecTV, Fox Sports, FuboTV, Paramount+, Peacock, Prime Video, Sling, The Roku Channel, TNT, TBS and truTV, plus over-the-air broadcasts via an antenna connected to Roku smart TVs. Hill said “more sports and viewing options” are on the way in the coming months.

In addition to games, the zone inside Roku will feature sports and entertainment talk show The Rich Eisen Show, which is now exclusively on The Roku Channel, plus the new Roku Original series Emeril Tailgates, hosted by Emeril Lagasse.

Roku had 65.4 million active accounts as of September 30, making it one of the primary gatekeepers of streaming in the U.S. In addition to its connected devices, Roku’s interface is on more than one-third of smart-TVs in North America.

“We know that keeping track of where sports are being streamed has only become more fragmented over the past few years,” Hill said. “Watching your favorite teams should be simple, so we’ve made it a priority to build out a more seamless and streamlined way to discover and watch sports on our platform. Sports are a vital part of the streaming experience, and we will continue to make enhancements to that experience, like adding more supported providers and finding new ways for our users to follow their favorite teams.”