Roku continues its expansion in the sports sector. The streaming company has left its mark on the sports landscape both through central navigation zones (from the general sports zone to the NBC Olympics Zone, the NFL Zone and more) and through specific programs (from MLB Sunday kickoff Games to Good Morning Football: Extra Time And The Rich Eisen Show to documentaries such as NFL Draft: The pick is here). Now they are launching a 24/7 free, ad-supported streaming TV channel (FAST), Roku Sports Channel, which will go live next Monday, August 12. For more information about it, check out a press release they issued on Wednesday:
Roku Sports Channel will feature a wide range of popular sports programming owned and licensed by Roku. Featured content includes live Major League Baseball games with MLB Sunday Leadoff, the Emmy-nominated talk show “The Rich Eisen Show,” “GMFB: Overtime,” live Formula E racing, and sports-related Roku Originals produced with some of the most popular leagues in professional sports, including “NFL Draft: The Pick Is In,” “WWE: Next Gen” and “Fight Inc: Inside the UFC.” The channel will also include exclusive partner content, such as classic boxing matches from Top Rank, combat sports from Swerve Sports and high-stakes poker entertainment from PokerGO featuring the most popular Player.
“The Roku Sports Channel is a curated, always-on channel that guides our viewers through the wide variety of free premium sports content on The Roku Channel. It’s an exciting addition to our growing sports offering,” said Joe Franzetta, Head of Sports at Roku Media. “We continue to see viewers enjoy the familiar, relaxed experience that FAST provides, especially when it comes to sports. Sports is one of our most popular channel genres on The Roku Channel, so we’re thrilled to make it even easier for viewers to immerse themselves in Roku’s outstanding programming.”
Roku will continue to update and expand the Roku Sports Channel with new and upcoming exclusive programming, including NBA G-League games and the Roku Original WNBA documentary “Renee Montgomery: A Radical Act.” The Roku Sports Channel is available on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Streamers can access it through The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide.
FAST channels will become an increasingly large part of the TV experience in 2024, and it seems to make sense for Roku to launch a 24/7 sports channel, given their general approach to free, ad-supported programming (including GMFB: Overtime And MLB Sunday kickoff). And sports is a key area for the company. As Roku Product Director for Sports Drew Adams recently explained to AA on their NBC Olympic Zone, they see sports as an area where they can make an impact by simplifying streaming:
“We understood that sports was becoming more and more fragmented week-to-week, month-to-month, because different rights holders were coming into play or leagues with different distribution points. So when we assessed where Roku could add value here, this was an area where we said, ‘Well, we can really help, right? We can help the user here by making it easy for them to find all the sports content in one place.'”
And now, in addition to custom navigation to events, Roku’s own sports content will be accessible on a 24/7 FAST channel. Like all Roku Channel programming, this Roku Sports Channel will be available on Roku devices, the Roku app on other TVs and devices, and on TheRokuChannel.com. We’ll see how much traction they can get with this, but the idea has some merit.
