Appear’s Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen on DTC shift in sports and virtualization

Rising production costs and the need for technological differentiation are reshaping broadcast technology strategy, with sports broadcasters and leagues seeking more efficient solutions, according to Appear CEO Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen.

During an interview at the 2025 NAB Show, Jørgensen identified two trends reshaping the broadcast technology sector: the push for cost-efficient solutions amid rising production costs and the need for differentiated services among connectivity providers.

“As production value goes up, production costs go up,” Jørgensen said. “Much more technology needs to be deployed to create that value… At least in the broadcast rights holder side of the market, I see a need for cost-efficient solutions.”

Sports leagues embracing direct-to-consumer model

The changing dynamics in sports broadcasting, with leagues increasingly going direct-to-consumer, has expanded the market for technology providers like Appear.

“They produce their own content and they deliver it,” Jørgensen noted. “They acquire the signals, they produce the content and they deliver it in addition to selling rights to broadcasters and cutting up the cake in the normal way.”

This trend has broadened Appear’s potential customer base beyond traditional broadcasters.

“It expands the market for technology because you don’t just have the traditional broadcasters investing in infrastructure, but also the rights holders,” said Jørgensen.

Democratization through virtualization

Virtualization is enabling what Jørgensen described as the “democratization of production capabilities,” allowing smaller sports leagues and properties to create professional broadcasts.

Advertisement

“A lot of the new virtualized production workflows are pay-per-use, and the vendors and suppliers provide the workflow support and user interface that will simplify the entire production value chain,” he explained. “That democratization of production and workflows is helping drive lower costs into Tier 2 or Tier 3 sports.”

This has reached the grassroots level in some markets, with Jørgensen sharing that in Norway, a company has installed cameras at sports venues nationwide, allowing audiences to subscribe to streams of various competitions regardless of size.

Appear’s market position and future direction

Appear has established itself particularly strongly with Tier 1 players in sports broadcasting, according to Jørgensen. The company’s X Platform, which he described as “by far the market leader in providing low latency, high density,” delivers the efficiency larger broadcasters need for streaming live content.

“Our platform scales extremely well with volume,” Jørgensen said. “The bigger productions you have, the cost goes down.”

The company is expanding its offerings with the introduction of a smaller solution aimed at Tier 2 broadcasters, which recently won industry awards. Looking ahead, Appear’s strategic focus centers on VX, a software component described as a “pure compute, fully virtualized, containerized software solution.”

Jørgensen outlined a 3-5 year vision to develop “a fully virtualized suite of production applications,” though he noted certain specialized functions like graphics might remain outside their development scope.

“Hopefully we can democratize the use of our technology into the Tier 2s and the full virtualized sources,” he said.

Jørgensen characterized Appear as one of “the fastest-growing company in this industry by far,” citing significant market share capture, particularly in North America, where they’ve gained the trust of “most of the big players in sports production and sports broadcasting.”

The company’s customer base also includes streaming companies that have entered the sports market, such as Amazon and Netflix.