Live Sports Streaming Market Expected to Surpass $87.3B by 2028

The live sports streaming business has seen significant growth and it doesn’t stop here; according to a recent report from Verified Market Research, the market is expected to quadruple from $18.1 billion in 2020 to more than $87.3 billion by 2028.

The growing interest in sports, higher availability of quality broadband connections, plus a large amount of accessible multi-platform devices are all factors for what is driving the rapid increase of success for live sports streaming services.

Verified Market Research states, “The sports media landscape is changing with television, a prime source of sports viewing after the stadium watching, is rapidly losing to the streaming services, such as YouTube TV, Hulu TV among others. According to Dacast, sports accounts for over 40% of the overall television viewing. More and more sports federations and organizers are moving away from TV and streaming tournaments, games, competitions, and matches via the internet. The growth of the sports online live streaming market is characterized by the shifting of profit from the TV traditional programmers and distributors to digital streaming platforms. The implication of the growth of the market is noteworthy not only for the sports federations who rely on the revenue from the broadcasting rights to run their team and provide payments to players or athletes.”

Paramount+, Peacock, ESPN+, among other platforms feature live sports. Thus, the need for ridiculously expensive cable services is no longer needed. And the demand will continue to increase as broadcasters, sports leagues, and clubs offer direct-to-consumer live streaming services.

We’re also seeing increased competition as streaming services fight one another for various sports rights. Recently, the NBA and MLB Commissioners threw shade at Sinclair's planned DTC streaming product. And the MLB is considering launching its own streaming service by 2023.

These are the major cable channels that broadcast live sports.