The cinematic trope of people stopping to watch the news on a storefront TV display feels pretty out of date today. But sometimes, life can still imitate art – like in New York City when the Knicks started winning the playoffs and massive, impromptu watch parties popped up throughout the city.
Even City Hall joined in on the fun when Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the broadcasts of Games 4 and 5 would be livestreamed for free on select LinkNYC screens. For the out-of-towners, these devices are digital kiosks that offer complimentary WiFi, audio calls and out-of-home advertising displays. Essentially, they’re meant to be the modern answer to phone booths.
The sports coverage didn’t stop when the Knicks won, either. Now the kiosks are playing weekly World Cup matches from Telemundo every Friday afternoon from now through the finals on July 19. And because the streams use an HLS feed that comes directly from the broadcaster, they run all the same ads that get shown to audiences at home on linear TV devices.
To learn more about the tech that made these out-of-home (OOH) TV experiences possible, I reached out to Intersection, the company that manages LinkNYC’s content and marketing support. (Another company, Boldyn, manages the WiFi infrastructure.) From talking with Intersection’s CEO, Chris Grosso, I learned that LinkNYC didn’t need to do much to prepare – the kiosks were already capable of livestreaming.
