Linear TV Maintains Strong Sports, News Viewing Share

• by Wayne Friedman , November 16, 2023

For all the gains that streaming TV has made with viewers, those platforms are still far behind with sports and news program content -- which remain strong in live, linear TV programming segments.

New research from Vizio's Inscape says cable, satellite, and over-the-air platforms combined posted a nearly 77% share of sports TV and video viewing and nearly 82% of all news TV and video viewing in the third quarter of 2023.

The data came from Vizio's Inscape TV data unit of 22 million opt-in users through Vizio smart TV devices.

When it comes to sports specifically, Inscape says 71% of college football viewing and 72% of NFL viewing is on live, linear TV networks. 

Streaming has a 18% share of news viewing, and a 23% of sports viewing. This includes streaming gains in simulcasting of NFL games of TV networks on streamers -- Peacock and Paramount+ in particular. 

Among other high-profile streaming sports offerings, Amazon Prime Video has aired the “Thursday Night Football” series, with increasingly high ratings, for the past two years. This past year, Apple TV+ and Peacock have each streamed a package from Major League Baseball.

In terms of total streaming-to-linear TV comparisons, streaming had 59% share viewing time, while cable, satellite, over-the-air had a 41% share, according to Inscape.

In the third quarter, Inscape data continues to show viewing erosion on cable and satellite platforms, where nearly 6% of those U.S. households “quit” viewing in the third quarter of this year, up from 4.4% in the first quarter.

In addition, 12% of U.S. cable and satellite households reduced their cable and satellite viewing by 75% or more in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the same period a year before, while another 11% lowered legacy TV viewing by 50% to 75%.