Young Viewers Expected to Flock to Venu Sports in What Could Be Sports Broadcasting Tipping Point?
Young Viewers Expected to Flock to Venu Sports in What Could Be Sports Broadcasting Tipping Point?
New data from Horowitz Research shows that more than half of viewers under the age of 49 are likely to sign up for the new sports streamer.
How disruptive will the forthcoming joint venture streaming service Venu Sports be? It depends on who you ask. If you brought that question to executives from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery — the three companies behind the service — they would likely say its ability to change the pay-TV industry forever has been greatly exaggerated. If you asked Fubo CEO David Gandler, however, you’d be more likely to hear that Venu presents an existential threat to pay TV. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, but new data from Horowitz Research suggests that the service will indeed be popular, especially among younger viewers who make up the most coveted demographics in media.
Key Details:
- Over 40% of all respondents to Horowitz say they’re likely to subscribe to Venu Sports.
- The number jumps to 58% among viewers aged 18-34, and 57% for viewers 35-49.
- Sports has long been seen as the most important content segment to existing cable channel distributors.
Horowitz’s findings back up data from a study conducted by Aluma and published earlier this month; that report found that 38% of customers who are currently subscribed to a live TV streaming service like DIRECTV STREAM, Fubo, or Sling TV would be at least “somewhat likely” to subscribe to Venu Sports.
The data from Horowitz paints a similarly bleak picture for existing live TV streamers. Its survey found that 42% of adults would likely subscribe to Venu Sports once it became available. However, there is even worse news when it comes to an increasingly important subset of streaming consumers.
Horowitz’s data shows that 58% of respondents aged 18 to 34 would be likely to sign up for Venu. That figure stays more-or-less consistent for viewers 35 to 49, 57% of whom say they’d opt for Venu once it came out. The number plummets among older audiences, as only 23% of this segment say they’d want to sign up for Venu Sports when it becomes available.
The numbers also show that Black and Latino viewers are more likely than white or Asian customers to opt for the service. Fifty-three percent of Latino respondents to Horowitz said they’d go for Venu, and 50% of Black participants did likewise. That data reinforces findings from another Horowitz study published in May which shows that Latino viewers are leaving cable for streaming at an even faster rate than the general audience.
“Being able to watch live sports has long been an incentive for sports fans to keep their subscriptions to MVPD and vMVPD services,” Horowitz EVP Adriana Waterston said. “This new service will certainly be a game changer – pun intended – that will further disrupt the media ecosystem and make retention even more of a challenge for all players.”
Venu is slated to launch sometime this fall and is likely to cost around $50 per month. It will include full livestreams of 14 cable and broadcast channels, including ABC, Fox, ESPN, FS1, TNT, and others, offering all of the live sporting events from each network directly to consumers.
Is the Stampede of Sports to Streaming Unstoppable?
For several years now, live sports has been seen as one of the last programming segments holding viewers to traditional pay TV. But the signs pointing to a shift have been growing; a recent survey found that in 2023, fewer than 40% of viewers age 18-24 watched a live sporting event on linear TV.
This data from Horowitz is just the latest sign that sports are ready to make the jump from being offered primarily on linear TV to streaming-first. Its latest report shows that 38% of viewers would make a change to current pay-TV subscriptions in order to make room for a Venu Sports subscription, and the real number could end up being much larger if sports fans see they can save $30, $40, or even $50 per month by opting for Venu instead.
Getting so much enthusiasm from younger viewers is the real prize for Venu, however. Since these age groups grew up with streaming as one of their main sources of entertainment, they will retain a comfort level with streaming services as they age. These groups also tend to have more disposable income, which makes them a valuable target for streaming providers and sports leagues alike. League officials will be forced to consider the popularity of streaming among viewers as they create new broadcasting deals; that’s precisely the reason the NBA carved out a new package of national broadcasting rights specifically intended for a streaming service in its latest round of negotiations with providers.
Fubo and its current competitors could try to make a big deal out of Horowitz’s data in court. It is currently suing to try to stop Venu from ever reaching consumers, and DIRECTV and DISH have filed statements of support, alleging that Venu constitutes a disruption to the industry too large for regulators to ignore. It’s a stretch to say that Horowitz’s numbers prove Venu will demolish the pay-TV world as we know it, but they do show the balance of sports broadcasting continuing to tip in favor of streaming, at the expense of traditional cable, satellite, and live TV streaming plans.
Venu Sports
Venu Sports is the planned live TV streaming service offering sports from ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, and truTV. Programming from ESPN+ and on-demand content will also be available. Users will be able to watch NFL, NBA, MLB, and NCAA games. Subscribers can bundle the product with Disney+, Hulu, or Max. Venu’s launch is on hold thanks to a preliminary injunction.