I spend most of the year speaking with sports leagues, broadcasters, rights holders, and platform operators about the challenges of running live video at scale.

NAB is where patterns become clear.

This year, one shift stands out. The conversation has moved on.

For years, the central question in streaming was reliability. Could IP delivery support premium live and linear workloads at broadcast standards? 

Today, that debate is largely settled. 

The real question now is how to make streaming more economically efficient and operationally scalable as rights costs rise and distribution expands, and operational environments grow more complex.

‍Revenue Pressure Is Real

‍Rights costs are increasing. Ad loads cannot grow indefinitely. Viewer tolerance is limited. Monetization must improve without degrading experience or introducing operational friction.

At NAB, we’ll demonstrate new ad formats, including Squeezeback and Picture-in-Picture, integrated directly into the Uplynk platform. No new vendors. No parallel workflows. No additional revenue share.

When monetization innovation requires stitching together multiple systems, margin disappears quickly.

Our focus is simple: Help premium content owners increase yield while keeping more of their revenue.‍

We’ve also invested in deeper ad visibility. Revenue teams should not have to wait days to understand fill rates, delivery gaps, or performance issues. Operational clarity and revenue insight must live in the same system. 

‍Distribution Is Expanding ‍

FAST is no longer experimental. It has become a legitimate distribution and monetization channel for sports and linear brands. 

For many rights holders, it has also become a discovery engine for audiences that no longer live inside traditional bundles. 

But expansion often creates complexity. New endpoints. New platforms. New operational overhead. Our view is straightforward: FAST should not require a separate operational universe. 

If you are running live or linear channels today, expanding into FAST should leverage the same pipeline, the same ad stack, and the same monitoring environment. 

Distribution growth should not require rebuilding your workflow. 

Operational Efficiency Is the New Differentiator 

As environments scale, operational complexity becomes the hidden cost center. 

Every new rights deal should scale revenue, not headcount. 
Every new channel should not require another control room. 
Every new distribution partner should not introduce another integration layer. 

In 2025, Uplynk supported more than 35,000 live streams across premium sports and linear environments. That scale reinforces a simple belief: 

Operational confidence must live alongside the stream itself. 

That’s why we continue to expand StreamOps. It combines platform capabilities with workflow design, event execution, and 24/7 monitored operations. The goal is not to replace what customers already use, but to help them operate and scale without increasing complexity. 

What We’ll Focus On at NAB 

At NAB 2026, our conversations will center on three outcomes: 

• Increasing monetization yield without adding friction 

• Expanding distribution without expanding complexity 

• Scaling live operations without scaling headcount 

Streaming has matured. The question is no longer whether it works. 

The question now is whether it works efficiently, profitably, and at the pace modern rights environments demand. 

If you’ll be in Las Vegas, I look forward to continuing the conversation. 
- Eric Black