Younger sports fans who have grown frustrated with trying to find and pay for different platforms to watch the teams and the games that they want are turning to sports highlights on social media and television at a high rate — and they seem perfectly happy with watching highlights compared to the actual games themselves.
That was the overall takeaway of the latest Global Sports Survey released by Altman Solon this week, which found the uptake in sports highlights and related programming was higher among younger sports fans who are accustomed to watching content on social video platforms and streaming services compared to older audiences who prefer traditional TV like broadcasting and cable.
The survey — which evaluated responses from 3,000 global sports fans — found younger audiences prefer watching game highlights over the games themselves. One major reason why has to do with the complicated landscape of live sports on TV, where certain events are available on broadcast channels and cable networks, and others are relegated to premium, subscription-based streaming services.
Rather than deal with the complexity of finding where a game or tournament might be in any given week, younger sports fans are simply turning to sports highlights shows on TV or watching clips of games on social platforms like X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. In some cases, the broadcast and cable channels who own the rights to sports events and tournaments edit and post the highlights on their own accounts, while fans aggregate clips on their own and post them to TikTok, Instagram and fan-created YouTube channels.
“The appetizer and dessert are becoming the main dish for many sports fans,” said David Dellea, a partner at Altman Solon. “This is a serious problem, as short-form content cannot possibly replace the unique commercial value of live sports. We’ve reached the tipping point where content originally created to generate interest in the games has become as sought after as the games themselves. The critical question for rights holders and partners is, how can we navigate challenges of discovery and access to funnel younger audiences to a live product that they want to watch?”
One way might be to bring live sports to platforms that are cheaper and easier to use. Sixty-six percent of sports fans surveyed by Altman Solon said they have regular difficulty accessing live sports content, and 43 percent said they’re unwilling to pay for services that offer sports based on current pricing models.
The obvious solution to both those issues is to move sports to broadcast TV, which is free to access in most parts of the world (although newer digital standards, which allow for encrypting signals, might change that in the future), and free, ad-supported streaming TV channels. The E. W. Scripps Company takes that approach with its Scripps Sports brand, distributing WNBA and NWSL games on its Ion Network, which is available on broadcast TV and through FAST platforms. Around 20 million soccer fans watched NWSL games on Ion and other channels and platforms; of those, around 13 million watched exclusively on Ion. Another 23 million watched WNBA games on Ion, the broadcaster said, citing Nielsen data.
Other broadcasters have leaned into bringing sports highlights shows into their schedule. Nexstar Media Group’s CW Network doesn’t offer NFL games — those rights are held by Fox, Paramount’s CBS, Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ESPN and Amazon’s Prime Video and Netflix — but it does offer the weekly recap show “Inside the NFL,” which it syndicates to the NFL Network later in the week. That helps make the CW Network a central destination for football fans who couldn’t watch certain games on cable or streaming, but who still want to catch up on the action and get a recap and analysis of other games played during the week.
“The good news is that overall interest in sports is still strong,” said Altman Solon Director Matt Del Percio. “Despite lower interest in watching games among younger fans, live sports still move the needle for networks and streamers, but it is now important to elevate the adjacent content and monetize it in its own right.”
