Over the last few years, sports consumption has seen a dramatic shift. This has been primarily the result of the emergence of live sports streaming. Fans’ ways of interacting with their favorite teams and figures in sports have been fundamentally shifted. And in what seems almost inevitable, business on “sports TV” has seen significant changes afoot. The bottom line is that the way we watch sports is changing fast—just like the way we watch everything else. Considering all that, the business side of sports broadcasting is having to make some big adjustments.”
With fast internet connections and powerful devices that are nearly ubiquitous, like smartphones and smart TVs, the live streaming of sports events has become more accessible than ever. Today’s fans have never enjoyed such convenience in viewing not only the big games but also every regular-season contest across leagues like the NBA. Even the die-hard Hong Kong-based fan of a team like the San Francisco Giants can find a way to watch all 162 MLB games in a season. However, viewing a live scale of modern sports might be the most attractive option to stream platforms whose content delivery is often bound by fate. Yet what the leagues and networks usually end up pushing on us is a subscription service whose prices keep getting more staggering.
It’s not just the big leagues of popular sports that receive this streaming treatment; niche sports, international competitions, and even esports have their own individual online platforms. This diversification means more viewers-fans of this sports-but also fans who are mainly adherents of the big leagues. When these users log in to view the content on these platforms, they probably have access to content that is only available on that service, which thus fits in very well with the online platform’s strategy to pursue their core profits and makes them a valid competitor to cable. Indeed, services such as ESPN+, DAZN, and even Peacock have customized their offerings of online sports access to better serve subscribers since this has become the ‘hype’-worthy topic in the media.
Live sports streaming is on the rise, but for TV networks, it’s more a question of not if, but when and how much, the shift will impact bottom lines. Audiences, especially younger ones, are clearly forgoing sports viewed via the traditional television set in favor of watching on over-the-top (OTT) platforms. Advertisers are following these eyeballs and worry that if audiences don’t come back to the networks, the ad impressions will be too few and far between. An article in the Monday Wall Street Journal, under a headline about “graying sports viewership,” drives home the impact even die-hard fans have had on the drop in sports viewing via traditional television sets.
As the wave of competition goes up, sports leagues increasingly cut exclusive deals with digital platforms to exclusively stream their live game in exchange for supplemental content such as pregame and postgame discussions, interviews from players, and even odd commentary. These are huge contributors to subscription growth, too. From here to the future with the viewer, platforms are beginning to incorporate AR and VR into their live game presentation strategies. Live sports streaming is the latest global phenomenon. Fans from every corner of the world can now watch the live matches and the types of international competitions that ex-pats in far-flung places might have previously followed only on a grainy, come-and-go TV signal. With the technologies these platforms use to punch through the girth of our walls and the sunny international competition they inspire, we can look forward to boundless continued investment in the broadcast of all manner of sports and competitions as well as burgeoning innovation in the platforms themselves. But we will also see some unwelcome international regulatory issues arising because of these very same technological and competitive aspects of the platforms and their sunlit international access.
Live sports streaming is the big inflexion point in how fans consume their favourite pastimes. From technological marvel to mainstream accessibility, live sports streaming is a sea change in fan consumption and an unprecedented increase in the amount of content accessible through the various platforms. Still, live sports streaming is far from being promised, and the consortium behind 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four will readily attest to the potential pitfalls. What streaming offers, and indeed what it needs to offer, if to be sustainable, is to have igloo loads of more content as fans demand to have access across platforms and paywalls.
