Streaming services spent over $10 billion on sports rights in 2024
Streaming services spent over $10 billion on sports rights in 2024
Sports leagues have thus far been hesitant to fully jump into bed with streaming services. Streamers have historically had difficulty matching the audience reach of linear TV, and the revenue offered by broadcast and cable networks for sports rights has been far and above what streamers could offer. But over the last year or two, things have changed. New data from Ampere Analysis shows that in 2024, streamers spent $10 billion on major sports rights, and it seems that leagues are finally comfortable with the idea that they can make good money and reach a sizeable audience by partnering with streamers.
Key Details:
- Five years ago, the combined spend on sports rights by streamers reached just $2.8 billion.
- Prime Video and Netflix’s big sports deals in 2024 helped push spending to new heights.
- Watching the success of NFL games on streaming services is helping other leagues feel more at ease about the medium.
Streamers are spending nearly four times as much on sports rights as they were just five years ago when the total amount spent on sports by over-the-top services was $2.8 billion. As linear cable continues to lose customers, leagues are glad to find streaming services can meet their asking prices for enhanced revenue.
Prime Video is an excellent case in point. The NBA made a combined $24 billion over nine years — $2.6 billion per season in average annual value (AAV) — from ESPN and TNT in the broadcast deal with those two outlets which lasted from 2014 through the end of this current season. The league improved that figure to an AAV of $6.9 billion per annum in the deal it made last summer with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon, and $1.8 billion of that yearly total will be paid by Prime Video to stream games exclusively on its platform.
Netflix also made some expensive sports investments last year. It started in 2024 with a 10-year, $5 billion deal to stream “WWE Raw” each and every week of the next decade, and also paid $150 million to secure a package of NFL games on Christmas Day.
Leagues who were worried they’d have to settle for less by partnering with streamers are thus far not seeing that fear realized. The value of sports rights in the United States rose 21% in 2024, according to Ampere’s data. The analysis firm predicts that streamers will spend $11 billion on sports rights in 2025, accounting for 23% of the global total.
The Streamable’s take
I think the success of NFL games on streaming platforms has convinced other leagues that streaming can deliver the audience they’re looking for. The average audience for “Thursday Night Football” grew by nearly 25% in its second year of exclusive national availability on Prime Video, and last year’s exclusive Wild Card game on Peacock drew 23 million viewers, which isn’t far off from what the league expects to see from playoff games on linear TV.
Leagues like the NBA, NHL, and MLB also got a rude awakening from the Diamond Sports Group — now Main Street Sports Group — bankruptcy proceedings. Multiple teams from each of those leagues were forced to take significant haircuts off the contracts they’d signed with Diamond in years past during its bankruptcy period, for the simple fact that the cable ecosystem no longer pays enough for the regional sports network model to work the way it used to. National broadcasting deals can still pay leagues big money, but in sports that play 80 to 100 games per season, the regional sports network arrangement was a key part of team revenue that now has to come from somewhere else.
The reluctance of top sports leagues to move to streaming has always been more about audience reach and revenue than anything else. Streamers have demonstrated conclusively that they can deliver the ratings leagues are looking for, and that they can come up with the cash leagues need to justify moving at least a portion of their games off traditional TV. That’s why I can’t see streaming’s sports content spend going any direction but up in the near future.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.