In 2025, FreeWheel powered advertising across more than 600 live events spanning 20 major global networks – from marquee sports moments to award shows, live news, and cultural tentpoles. With rising viewership, increasingly complex distribution environments, and growing advertiser demand for real-time relevance, live events continued to test the limits of premium video infrastructure and monetization.
FreeWheel’s role throughout the year was clear: apply reliable, scalable technology; deepen partnerships across the ecosystem; and help advance the standards that support live streaming at scale. The result was a stronger, more resilient foundation for live video as the industry enters an even bigger year ahead in 2026.
Leadership in Technology: AI‑Driven Innovation for Live
This past year, FreeWheel continued to expand the role of AI inside our platform and across partner workflows. While AI has been foundational to our technology for years, we took an important step forward by integrating more deeply with the proprietary AI systems of our clients and partners through open protocols like the Model Context Protocol (MCP). These capabilities help streamline planning, activation, and optimization across screens – reducing tasks that once took house into decisions made in seconds.
This evolution enabled a notable industry first: a pilot demonstrating AI‑orchestrated media activation in a live football playoff game across both linear and digital. In this collaboration, FreeWheel’s AI-based sales agent worked with a buyer agent from RPA, supported by technology from NBCUniversal and Newton Research. This workflow shows how agentic systems can support real-time decisioning in moments that require speed, precision, and scale.
Leadership in Partnership: Powering Innovation With the Biggest Names in Live
FreeWheel’s leadership in live didn’t just come from technology – it came from the strength of our partnerships. In 2025, we worked closely with major media companies to bring sharper targeting, more automation, and better monetization to some of the most-watched live events of the year.
One of the standout moments was our work with Scripps. Together, we worked to enable programmatic advertising access to live women’s sports on ION, including the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). This partnership builds on the rapid rise of women’s sports and makes these high-intent audiences more accessible to a broader range of advertisers.
By powering consistent, scalable access across screens FreeWheel helps ensure that live women’s sports benefit from the same automation, targeting, and monetization capabilities that underpin other major live events. This momentum reflects a growing shift in how advertisers invest in live sports and the infrastructure required to support it.
Leadership in Standards: Building the Live Infrastructure of the Future
Live event streaming continues to grow in complexity and scale, and to meet the moment, the industry needs shared standards that support reliable, low‑latency ad delivery. In 2025, FreeWheel worked alongside partners including the IAB Tech Lab, Amazon, NBCUniversal, and Index Exchange to help advance the Live Event Ad Playbook – an effort designed to establish the foundational building blocks for live event advertising in streaming.
The beginning of this work includes two important API specifications. The Concurrent Streams API provides real‑time visibility into active live audiences, improving the accuracy and responsiveness of ad decisioning during major moments. The Live Events Manifest API introduces projected viewership estimates ahead of upcoming events, helping publishers and advertisers better prepare for traffic spikes and optimize delivery strategies.
Together, these standards make live advertising more predictable, interoperable, and scalable – laying the groundwork for the next generation of live video.
A Breakout Year Behind Us, and a Big Year for Live Ahead
2025 underscored the importance of reliable, scalable infrastructure for live events across streaming – and highlighted how essential collaboration and shared standards have become for the industry. As we move into a year shaped by global tentpoles like the Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, World Cup, and a packed live sports calendar, FreeWheel remains focused on supporting our partners with the technology and frameworks needed to meet growing demand.
From strengthening the foundations of AI-enabled workflows to expanding programmatic access to live sports and helping advance industry standards, FreeWheel enters 2026 with a continued commitment to powering the moments that bring audiences together.
