Streaming television services are expected to fork over more than $12 billion for the rights to live sports programming this year, according to a new forecast released by Ampere Analysis.
The forecast claims global sports juggernaut DAZN will lead the pack with its pursuit of live telecast rights, with the company’s recent decision to acquire Australian pay TV business Foxtel solidifying its lead through at least 2025.
While DAZN may be best known for streaming fight-based athletic competitions in the United States, the platform is more well-known overseas, serving as the main distributor of National Football League (NFL) games in Europe as well as pro soccer tournaments from FIFA, UEFA, Copa América, CONMEBOL and similar franchises.
This year, DAZN will serve as the exclusive global broadcaster of the FIFA Club World Cup soccer tournament; in the U.S., it will sublicense the event to Televisa-Univision for distribution on broadcast and cable TV. DAZN is expected to fork over at least $1 billion for FIFA Club World Cup, putting it well above the rest with just that one sport.
Amazon is not too far behind, committing at least 23 percent of its content spending this year to sports programming, Ampere said. Last year, Amazon committed at least 18 percent of its content spending to live sports rights. Later this year, Amazon’s Prime Video platform will host nationally-televised games from the National Basketball Association for the first time; it already broadcasts Thursday night NFL games on an exclusive basis and has the rights to distribute other sports via Prime Video and on its FAST channels.
Google-backed YouTube is in third place, but only because it spends $2 billion annually for the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is offered on YouTube Primetime Channels and YouTube TV. The service is the exclusive domestic rights holder to the package, which was previously available on DirecTV.
Netflix is catching up with the rest, having only recently pursued live sports to boost its ad-supported tier and draw new subscribers into the service. Netflix is expected to drop $500 million annually to distribute live events from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) on a global basis, and also has the rights to NFL games played on Christmas Day. The company is expected to pursue other live sports and athletic competitions, including Formula 1 rights.
All told, streamers are expected to spend $12.5 billion on global sports rights for their services, Ampere forecast, around one-fifth of the $64 billion committed by the television industry on sports this year.
“Over the last five years, streamers’ share of investment in sports rights has increased for two main reasons,” Danni Moore, a senior analyst at Ampere, said in a statement. “The first is the growth of DAZN as a specialist sport streamer. In particular, DAZN has driven investment in top tier sports rights in major European markets such as Germany, Italy, Spain and most recently France. Then, as streaming nears saturation point, general entertainment platforms are adjusting their content investment strategies and have turned to sports as a key part of their subscription growth plans. They are recognizing the benefit of acquiring rights to major season-long competitions for both subscriber acquisition and retention. Netflix, Peacock and Paramount all saw the commercial value of acquiring key sporting tournaments and one-off events in 2024, and we expect more of the same in 2025.”
