PORTSMOUTH, NH–According to a new survey from Hub Research, sports is having an increasingly larger impact on consumers' choice of streaming services.
The survey—taken in advance of the blockbuster news of Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox planning to launch a new live sports streaming service earlier this month—shows how the decline of “peak TV” is giving way to an even bigger draw: live sports.
In its latest survey, “What’s the Score: The Evolution of Sports Media,” Hub Entertainment Research suggests access to sports does indeed strongly influence viewers’ choice of platform. For example almost 80% of sports fans surveyed said that during the season, content about their favorite sport is more important than other things they watch on TV. More than a third (36%) say it’s much more important than other kinds of content.
Fans are more likely to follow some sports to streaming than others, Hub Research said, but in general, 70-80% of avid fans would at least consider adding a new subscription. And half of NFL, NBA, and Premier League fans say they would be “very likely” to consider signing up if they needed a new platform to watch.
Hub adds that shifts in sports distribution will cascade to engagement with other content. Besides drawing their own viewers, sports content drives discovery of other content on the same platforms with about a third (31%) often watching shows that they see promoted during a game or other sports content. When watching a live game, 27% often stay on the same channel to watch the show that comes on next (and another 38% do so “occasionally”).
In short, sports content is a major tool to solve one of the most persistent problems in the era of streaming: helping new shows cut through the clutter to find an audience, the researcher concluded.
“These findings reinforce that sports content will have a big impact on the next stage of the streaming wars, and might entirely settle them,” said Jon Giegengack, principal at Hub. “There are lots of sports fans, and they care more about the sports they follow than anything else on TV. As expensive as rights have become, they may turn out to be the best investment: hours and hours of unique content which comes with a built-in audience that tunes in every season without fail.”
