Live Streaming of Sport Events: Pricing, Quality, and Side Payments

The commercial success of live stream- ing—especially for major sports events—is putting increasing pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and raises questions about pricing, service quality, and network neutrality. A key open problem is understanding how congestion, pricing, and side payments affect user choices and market outcomes. This paper introduces a modeling framework to study in- teractions among users, ISPs, and content providers (CPs) in congestion-sensitive environments. The framework combines quality-of-experience modeling, discrete choice theory, and evo- lutionary population dynamics, with particular attention to side payments from CPs to ISPs and their impact on user allocation and revenues. Using this framework, we analyze how side payments may affect ISP market shares and give rise to potential neutrality and fairness concerns. Results show that side payments can benefit both CPs and ISPs, but that their allocation among ISPs plays a critical role in limiting induced market distortions.