The Sports Streaming Ecosystem: How sports are going over-the-top and eroding the last bastion of pay-TV

Executive Summary

Live sports is one of the last remaining value props of traditional pay-TV, but like entertainment programming, sports content is starting to migrate to streaming services.

Three Key Questions This Report Will Answer:

• How has the coronavirus pandemic affected live sports programming, and how are advertisers responding to delays and cancellations?
• To what extent does traditional TV still rely on live sports to retain pay-TV subscribers, and to what extent are live sports rights expected to migrate to streaming services?
• What are the key players in the OTT sports landscape?

WHAT'S IN THIS REPORT? In this report, Business Insider Intelligence examines how the OTT sports landscape is expanding and fragmenting, and how the fan experience is evolving on digital services and devices. We discuss how and why traditional TV relies on live sports content; how some sports rights packages have been allocated to digital platforms; and how digital players are expected to vie for live sports rights packages as current rights deals are set to expire. We further lay out the expanding range of OTT video services and platforms that currently distribute live sports and other sports programming. In each section, we explore the evolving roles of existing and emergent players within the OTT sports landscape across both free and paid services, live and on-demand streaming, games or matches and ancillary content. Notably, the scope of this report is confined to the migration of traditional sports to OTT platforms, but we recognize that esports has gained an increasingly empowered status as a standalone opportunity capable of attracting major sponsorship.