Sports media continue to dominate the US streaming landscape in attracting and retaining viewers and subscribers, but as sports rights splinter across multiple platforms, fan frustration is growing.

Presented at Cynopsis’s ScreenShift in New York, data from Hub Entertainment Research’s Evolution of Sports survey reveals that the fan experience is being strained by complexity, even as passion for sports content in the US remains as strong as ever.

Highlights from the fourth wave of the study include:

Sports fans care more about sports than anything else on TV.

Sports content is unique, and fans view it with a higher level of urgency than other kinds of content.  In fact, almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of avid fans say sports are more important to them than anything else they watch on TV.

Fans will sign up for new subscriptions in order to watch a sport they follow.

Hub asked respondents to imagine that a streaming platform bought the rights to a sport they follow, and they had to subscribe to a new service to watch.

·  87 per cent of avid fans said they were at least somewhat likely to sign up, and two thirds (66 per cent) said they were very likely.·  Among those under 35 avid fans, it’s even higher: 92 per cent said they were at least somewhat likely to sign up, while nearly 75 per cent were very likely to subscribe.
·  42 per cent said that they’ve signed up for a new service specifically to watch sports (up from 38 per cent a year ago).

However, fragmentation is already causing frustration.

·  Two thirds (65 per cent) of sports fans say it’s a hassle to use multiple services to watch games during a season.
·  Half (53 per cent) say it’s become harder to find the sports they want to watch compared to a year ago.
·  Two thirds (63 per cent) say having games on separate apps makes it hard to check on other games that are on at the same time.

“These findings prove once again that sports have unrivaled power to attract new viewers to a platform, and keep them engaged over time,” commented Jon Giegengack, Founder and Principal at Hub and one of the study authors. “But it’s critical for services to remember that with great power comes great responsibility: the splintering of rights is making sports content harder to find. The backlash will come bigger and faster from sports fans than those looking for scripted TV.”

These findings are based on a survey conducted among 3,802 US sports fans ages 13-74.

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Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Content, Headline, Research

Tags: Hub, NBA, NFL, sports