COMMENTARY How Important Will Sports TV/Streaming Be 10 Years from Now?

COMMENTARY

How Important Will Sports TV/Streaming Be 10 Years from Now?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

Increasingly, you can see why pay TV distributors and their long-time subscribers can be of two minds when it comes to the importance of live sports.

Of 1,206 pay TV users recently surveyed by Aluma Research, nearly 50% say the airing of live sports is “very/extremely important;” with 19% saying it is “moderately important” and 32% “not/slightly important.”

 

The desire for live sports is the most intense with NBA: 68% says the NBA is “very/extremely important.” The NFL also scores well: 59% on the same "important" scale.

 

The results are somewhat less for Major League Baseball and NCAA football, which get a 54% and 52% score respectively. 

 

The report didn’t disclose when the survey was taken other than a 2024 noted year. One can assume that much of this research could have gathered when the NBA was in full-throttle of its season-ending games.

 

Many sports leagues/teams know the strong negotiating position they are currently in. The NBA, in particular, has it figured out, perhaps expanding its TV networks/streaming platform exposure to possibly four media outlets from the current two. 

 

This would mean ABC/ESPN, NBCUniversal, Amazon Prime Video, and Warner Bros. Discovery TNT each gets a piece of the action.

 

Cost for the existing NBA TV rights holders ABC/ESPN and TNT would almost assuredly nearly double in the annual rights fees they pay -- possibly as high as $2.5 billion a piece for each TV/video platform. That said, reports suggest WBD’s TNT might still be hedging a bit, on the fence in deciding whether to make such a high-priced deal.

 

Currently, sports viewing is extremely important and strong, which has big brand advertisers spending ever higher media dollars on this live content.

 

The question for many business analysts is whether the possible decade-long or more contract deals will track with consumers' continued sports viewing behavior. 

 

On the other end of the business equation, what if there is a growing alternative for major advertisers? Current new tests in factoring AI (artificial intelligence) into designing media plans could make a big impact. This could shift more media spending into social media, digital audio or outdoor, or perhaps another media innovation that lurks in the weeds looking to explode.

 

TV/streaming platforms can only hope their now customary financial burdens -- and losses -- don’t get wider. Perhaps the umbrella effect of sports viewing will allow them to package even more advertising and sponsorship into other areas of the companies business efforts.

 

Play the odds in this current business environment? Maybe all these high-price content moves are just a random jump ball.