With sports viewing expanding to include non-live formats, Altman Solon has released the second part of its report exploring the revenue gap facing rights owners.
The 7th Annual Global Sports Survey, Part 2: Unlocking the Full Value of Sports IP makes three key predictions:
- Streamers will deepen their sports bets, but won’t replicate peak pay-TV investment levels.
- Digital creators will become standard top-of-the-funnel licensing partners, but monetisation will lag.
- To close the monetisation gap, rights owners will aggressively diversify revenue streams.
Conducted with partner research agency, IRIS Sport, the survey questioned 6,000 consumers and 250 senior sports executives across the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and France and found the sports sector to be entering a new growth cycle. Industry confidence was high, with 88 per cent of leaders optimistic about the outlook over the next 12 months and 43 per cent more positive than last year.
Key findings of Part 2 included:
- 42 per cent of fans were very willing to pay for live sports, with 30 per cent very willing to pay for highlights and non-live content.
- Streamers are pursuing sports rights selectively, with high impact rights taking preference over volume.
- Sports streaming has overtaken linear TV in Spain and Italy and, with less than 14 minutes per week disparity, is close to parity in the US.
- Piracy is a problem with more than 1 in 5 viewers using unofficial channels
- More than half of executives believe creator-led and AI-generated content will increase the value of sports IP in the next 3-5 years.
Commenting on the findings, Andreas Kaeshammer, head of football, Infront Sports & Media AG, said, “Gen Alpha would rather pay 50 cents for a 15-minute reel of their favourite strikers’ touches than a $30 monthly subscription. Rights holders need models for this.”
Fabien Robineau, CCO, Eurovision, added, “We’ve got to tackle piracy by making it easier to access legally: create lower friction entry points (freemium, etc.) while protecting premium rights. We’re in the ‘Napster’ era—sports needs a ‘Spotify’ model.”
The full report is available to download here.
