There’s a lot of talk right now about the potential business applications of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchains, virtual reality, augmented reality, and the metaverse. However, businesses can already make quite the stark technological leap while keeping just ahead of the curve with an application that we’ve had for decades.

Live streaming has been used in less-than-proper circles online for decades, but now, the technology has become mainstream, accessible, and high quality enough to facilitate more professional pursuits. The global market for live streaming is on a starkly upward trajectory, expected to hit a compound annual growth rate of 23 per cent from this year to 2030, with much of this growth being attributed to the increase in its applications.

Expansive Applications of Live Streaming

Most people are familiar with what is essentially the base level of live streaming. Someone sets up a microphone, a camera, and their computer – likely two screens – signs in on a specialised platform or social media site, and presses the ‘go live’ button. From there, they’ll chat to anyone watching and probably have an activity on the go while they do – like play a video game or watch a live event.

It’s this form of live broadcasting that was bubbling up before the turn of the decade and then exploded in popularity and variety through 2020 and 2021. Once everything opened up, it would have been fair to assume that many people would leave live streaming behind. Instead, people got hooked and stuck around. In Q3 of 2023 alone, there were over seven billion hours of live content watched across the major platforms.

With such traction and accessibility, it’s not a surprise that businesses are looking to support live streaming. Some will put on live shows and demonstrations, but where the technology has been stretched the most is in iGaming. The live streaming used by top online casinos allows for people around the UK to play table games in real-time at a physical table manned by a professional croupier at a studio somewhere else in the world.

Live casino studios have been set up around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe – which has become a promising location for new businesses – to meet the demand. To make them function with this real-time play, optical character recognition tech and a game control unit were incorporated to allow for wins on the table to instantly translate to the on-screen UI of each user as necessary.

Naturally, this is a very specialist application, but it does show that live streams can become even more interactive and immersive with the right additional tech applied. The next mainstream leap in this regard looks to be in the burgeoning live shopping scene. Already a colossus in China, the Western world hasn’t quite caught up yet. The scene appears to be waiting for an entrepreneur to crack the code and make the experience as two-way and immersive as live casino gaming, for example, but so far, it’s very niche with untapped potential.

Legal Considerations if Your Business Goes Live

As you can see, the applications of live streaming are growing and millions of people are engaging with the format every day. Still, as a business, it’s not quite as simple as just getting a Twitch account, a good camera and microphone, and then going live. Some of the main points that anyone getting started would want to safeguard against is incorrect or improper speech.

If a presenter, guest, or viewer says or comments something offensive, inappropriate, defamatory, that is factually incorrect, or breaches the rules of GDPR by revealing personal or financial data, legal issues could ensue. So, it’s important to fact-check and create scripts for the live presenters, thoroughly brief guests, and utilise a form of live monitoring or live moderation for comments. Only allow through those that can safely be shown to the public.

Live streaming as a business will also fall into your usual bracket of advertising and marketing laws within eCommerce, intellectual property laws if you choose to include content from elsewhere, and data protection laws for you and even your viewers. It’s key, when setting up the stream, that you ensure that all parts of it – from images shown to background music – are licensed properly and that, if you’re paid to promote, you clarify this.

There is a vast and growing consumer base that regularly interacts with live streams, so it’s not a leap to see the technology as a path to increasing business engagements. On the legal side, there is more that you need to safeguard against as opposed to what you’d expect in a physical store, but most of it is quite intuitive and straightforward.