Julia Stoll
Research expert covering TV and video media
Sports streaming in the United States - statistics & facts
Live sports programming attracts millions of U.S. viewers every year, occupying the first spots of the most watched shows in the United States. Sporting events are often linked to traditional cable networks as they own the rights to the most popular sports leagues, such as the National Football League (NFL) or the National Basketball Association (NBA). However, streaming services increasingly saw the potential in recent years and grew their spending on sports rights worldwide by over three billion U.S. dollars between 2022 and 2023. With leagues spreading out over several months, add-ons and other special offers as well as events like the Super Bowl help streaming platforms reduce churn.
Consumers can choose to pay for each single game or buy season tickets. The latter are in total much cheaper, and analyses found that this option drives subscriber growth of a certain service. For example, the number of MLS Season Pass sign-ups of Apple increased by over 200,000 between June and July 2023. Meanwhile, the share of NFL Sunday Ticket sign-ups of all new YouTube Primetime sign-ups jumped to 80 percent in September 2023, right at the start of the new NFL season. This demonstrates that sport leagues’ seasons and sporting events have a huge impact on the streaming viewership.
Special offers drive engagement
Peacock, Hulu + Live TV, YouTube, and ESPN+ were the most popular subscription services offering sports content in the U.S. after cable and satellite TV as of April 2023. While Peacock and ESPN+ have been essential to consumers watching games and events for several years, more and more large media companies recently jumped on the bandwagon and now provide live sports via their streaming services. Amazon, for example, made a deal containing exclusive rights for showing the Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video, valued at 13.2 billion U.S. dollars. Apple, on the other hand, spent over 2.5 billion U.S. dollars on a 10-year deal on exclusive rights to broadcast Major League Soccer (MLS) games on Apple TV+.Consumers can choose to pay for each single game or buy season tickets. The latter are in total much cheaper, and analyses found that this option drives subscriber growth of a certain service. For example, the number of MLS Season Pass sign-ups of Apple increased by over 200,000 between June and July 2023. Meanwhile, the share of NFL Sunday Ticket sign-ups of all new YouTube Primetime sign-ups jumped to 80 percent in September 2023, right at the start of the new NFL season. This demonstrates that sport leagues’ seasons and sporting events have a huge impact on the streaming viewership.
Most streamed sports
The Super Bowl – the yearly championship game of the NFL – remains the undisputed winner among sporting events in terms of TV audience in the United States. With the number of viewers nearly doubling between 2020 and 2023, this big match is also increasingly popular among streaming consumers. Unsurprisingly, younger audiences in particular tend to watch the Super Bowl via streaming services such as Peacock. However, American football is not the most streamed sport among the U.S. population, but hockey and soccer as of March 2023. Furthermore, the survey showed that although consumers still primarily use traditional methods to watch events and games, the gap between traditional TV and streaming for sports enthusiasts is closing.
