While leagues and broadcasters doubled down on digital streaming this year, the vast majority of sports fans continued to pay for cable television. But their loyalty to cable may be waning as fans discover alternative ways to watch live sporting events.
In a poll of consumer viewing habits taken this October by PwC, 81 percent of sports fans said they subscribed to Pay TV in 2017. That was higher than the 73 percent of participants overall who identified as Pay TV subscribers, which was down from 76 percent in 2016.
However, fans said they’d willing to trim down on cable packages or cut the cord altogether if they no longer needed Pay TV to access live sporting events, according to PwC, which surveyed nearly 2,000 Americans ages 18 to 59 with annual household incomes above $40,000.
Sports fans have been among the biggest holdouts to cord cutting because they’ve had to rely on Pay TV to watch live games. But as internet companies snap up digital rights for live events, leagues explore new ways to get content into the hands of fans and traditional broadcasters, such as ESPN and CBS, launch over-the-top options and skinnier bundles for sports, the scales are finally tilting.
“Live sports is keeping people tethered to the cord — but for how long?” PwC wrote in the report. “They realize that other options are available and are willing to cut the cord once it becomes unnecessary.”
Of those polled, 82 percent of Pay TV subscribers said they would trim or cut cable packages if they no longer needed them to access live games. The average sports fan said they’d pay around $23 a month for unlimited access to live sports on any platform.
A problem lies, though, in the possibility that the streaming market could become too fragmented, which would overwhelm consumers and cause them to pick-up and ditch over-the-top services with a higher frequency than they might have with their subscriptions to cable.
Seventy-five percent of consumers in the study said they “can’t handle” using more than four services in addition to Pay TV, which raises the question of how all of these streaming services will fit together — and whether some will reign over others — as new options continually flood the market.
Netflix has long said it isn’t interested in live sports, while Amazon, which won to streaming rights for 11 NFL Thursday Night Football games this season, has been doubling down on sports in recent months. ESPN and CBS both plan to launch streaming services for sports subscribers soon, though CBS executives in August said they didn’t yet view internet companies, such as Amazon or Facebook, as competitors.
ESPN, which plans to roll out a Netflix-like subscription service to premium live sports and original content starting in the first half of 2018, which will up the network’s live event count to 26,000 annually from 16,000 a year currently, has yet to determine a price for its new service.
Companies offering these packages might want to focus on how they can differentiate their products from the competition, or offer second-screen experiences and original content that might draw fans to one service over another. Fifty-six percent of sports fans said they would like to have access to more interactive content, stats, exclusive interviews and the ability to chat with other fans while watching live sports.
Amazon is experimenting with something like this for traditional sports through its social streaming platform Twitch. This month, the service began hosting Thursday Night Football games and streaming NBA G League games. Twitch, which has long been popular among esports fans, enables live fan chatting and interactive stats. Through G League, Twitch will test live co-streaming, in which top Twitch video game personalities will stream their typical broadcasts alongside basketball games.