Report: Sports Streaming Revenues to Nearly Double by 2027; Soccer Fans Most Willing to Pay to Watch
Last year was a pivotal stretch of time for sports on streaming. In 2022, Prime Video became the exclusive home of “Thursday Night Football,” and Apple TV+ became the major broadcast home of Major League Soccer for the next decade.
But such transformational periods are always accompanied by growing pains. Prime Video saw fewer viewers than anticipated for “TNF,” and is now reportedly being forced to refund some advertisers' money as a result. Apple was deep in negotiations with the NFL to become the next home of the league’s out-of-market games package NFL Sunday Ticket, but the two sides could not finalize the deal, and Sunday Ticket eventually landed on YouTube TV instead.
Despite inevitable stumbling blocks, the future of sports on over-the-top (OTT) streaming services is a rosy one, according to market intelligence firm Parks Associates. A new report from Parks indicates that OTT sports subscription revenue in the United States was $13.1 billion in 2022. That number will almost double to approximately $22.6 billion in 2027, a projected 73% increase over the next five years.
“Sport media rights holders want to get games in front of as many eyes as possible,” Parks VP of research Jennifer Kent said. “The audience reach of online-only and streaming services is enormous. To compete with the digital titans, media conglomerates with conventional and online services are shifting finances and resources to launch, improve, and develop streaming services targeted at sports fans.”
The report from Parks also shows just which sports fans are willing to lead the charge when it comes to paying for increased access to games via streaming. Over 60% of soccer fans say there’s a high likelihood that they’d pay $20 per month to access all of the games they want to watch. By comparison, only around 35% of NFL fans say they’d do likewise.
The willingness of soccer fans to pay extra for access at a rate that far outpaces the average sports fan may be surprising at first. But a closer look at Parks’ data shows that fans of sports like soccer that don’t have much exposure on broadcast networks were far more likely to pay $20 to see their games.
That’s definitely true of tennis fans, who usually only get to see the sport on broadcast networks like NBC when a major tournament is taking place. It’s also true of MMA/boxing fans, who usually have to shell out pay-per-view fees of between $75 and $100 to watch the biggest fights.
The integration of more sports onto streaming platforms won’t happen overnight. Streamers need to answer questions regarding accessibility, pricing, advertising, and many more factors before they’re seen as a truly viable alternative to broadcast and pay-TV providers. But Parks’ data shows that streamers have more than a foothold when it comes to offering live sports, and over the next five years sports on streaming will proliferate even further.