What is Multiview?
Multiview lets viewers watch several video streams on a single screen at the same time.
The concept itself isn’t new, but what has changed is the level of control now put in the hands of users. Instead of choosing from a fixed layout, viewers can decide which programs they want to watch and how many views they want to display.
For sports, esports, and live events, this means switching between camera angles or parallel streams in real time, creating a more personal and immersive viewing experience on any device.
Why Multiview Is Becoming Essential for Live Sport
Demand is already there, particularly in live sports streaming, where interactivity and user control are becoming essential.
Research from Parks Associates [1] underscores this shift, ranking Multiview among the most appealing interactive features for sports viewers. In its latest survey, more than half of respondents said that the ability to watch multiple matches at once was appealing or very appealing, placing Multiview alongside in-game statistics and alternative commentary options.
Multiview directly addresses this expectation for flexibility and control by allowing users to track multiple games simultaneously, monitor parallel events, or switch perspectives without leaving the main screen.
Typical Multiview Use Cases
Multiview is designed for situations where viewers don’t want to choose between streams, they want context, control, and awareness. Here are the three main use cases:
1. Following multiple live events at once
A common use case is tracking several games simultaneously. Sports fans often follow multiple matches happening at the same time, whether within the same championship or across different leagues.
During large-scale events such as the Olympic Games, Multiview allows fans to watch several of their favorite sports in parallel on a single screen. This ensures they don’t miss key moments, even when schedules overlap.
2. Viewing multiple angles of the same event
Multiview also enhances coverage of a single event by combining different camera perspectives.
During a high-stakes match, viewers might watch the main broadcast feed while keeping additional angles visible, such as a tactical overview of the field, a close-up of the commentators, or a wide shot capturing the stadium atmosphere and crowd reactions.
3. Keeping secondary content in view
Beyond sports, Multiview is useful for passive monitoring. A viewer might watch a TV series, a concert, or a live show while keeping a news channel or the weather forecast visible in the background, ready to catch breaking updates without switching away from the primary content.
How Multiview is typically implemented today
Most Multiview services available today rely on one of two technical approaches, each with its own advantages and trade-offs.
The first is a multi-player approach. In this model, the client application requests several independent video streams and displays them simultaneously using multiple video players. This method offers a high degree of flexibility, as users can freely choose and arrange their views, and it does not require additional encoding on the backend.
However, it relies on relatively advanced client capabilities and can increase resource usage on the device, such as bandwidth consumption. As a result, support and performance can vary depending on the platform, player implementation, and device capabilities.
The second approach is multi-encode. Here, different views are combined into a single video layout on the backend, producing one stream per predefined Multiview configuration. Because the result is a standard video stream, it can be played on a wide range of devices using a single player.
The trade-off is that flexibility is limited to a fixed set of layouts, and each additional configuration requires its own encoding and operational management, which can affect scalability as the number of view combinations grows.
A different approach to Multiview
Instead of relying on multiple players on the client side or producing a fixed set of pre-encoded layouts, its implementation is built around a lightweight, server-side architecture.
The goal is to allow viewers to create their own Multiview combinations while keeping playback simple and broadly supported.
At the core of this approach is the idea of one stream per screen, regardless of how many views are displayed. This avoids the need for complex client-side recompositions while still allowing a large number of possible Multiview layouts.
Multi-Package: How Broadpeak’s Multiview works
Broadpeak’s Multiview relies on a Multi‑Package approach handled entirely at the packaging stage, rather than pushing complexity to the encoder or the client.
Each video feed is prepared in a way that makes its different visual regions independently selectable, so the platform can combine only the parts the viewer wants to see.
At the packager level, these selected regions are assembled into a single output stream that matches the viewer’s chosen layout. Because this composition happens server‑side and produces a standard video stream, playback stays simple and works on a wide range of devices with a single player.
This server‑driven assembly removes the need to pre‑produce every Multiview layout. It supports many possible combinations without multiplying encoding tasks or operational overhead.
The result: a personalized Multiview experience that stays flexible, scalable, and device‑agnostic, without the limitations of traditional multi‑player or multi‑encode setups.
Multiview at Scale: Personalized Viewing for Live Sports and Beyond
Live sports remain the most obvious use case for Multiview, where fans want to follow several matches, angles, or moments at once. But the same approach also applies to other live content such as concerts, breaking news, and even hit TV shows, where viewers increasingly expect more control over how they watch.
By keeping Multiview simple to deploy and widely compatible, it becomes a practical feature across many types of live and premium content.
If you would like to explore the technical details further, Broadpeak can provide a full end-to-end Multiview architecture walkthrough.
Third Party Content
(1) Parks Associates: Streaming Live Sports: Where Opportunity Meets Complexity
Source: Parks Associates | © 2025 Parks Associates
