More Americans say they plan to use a subscription video on-demand (SVOD) streaming service to watch sports programming compared to cable or broadcast television networks, according to a new report from Hub Entertainment Research.
The report — cleverly titled “What’s the Score?” — tracked answers from more than 3,700 sports fans in the United States between January 2024 and January 2025.
According to the report, 69 percent of sports fans say they intend to use a SVOD service to watch at least some games on TV, compared to 62 percent who said the same last year.
By comparison, 63 percent of sports fans said they’d watch live games on cable networks, and 66 percent said the same of broadcast TV. Last year, those numbers were slightly higher, with 73 percent saying they’d watch sports on cable and 72 percent saying they’d watch games on broadcast TV.
Broken down by demographic, 48 percent of fans between the ages of 13 and 34 said they’d subscribe to a streaming service with the specific intent of watching sports, compared to 29 percent over the age of 35. Hispanic streamers are more likely (46 percent) to use an SVOD service for sports, Hub noted.
“Sports is following the same migration paths to streaming as scripted TV – just a lot faster,” Jon Giegengack, the Principal Analyst at Hub and one of the authors of the study, said in a statement. “It took several years before viewers considered Netflix the equal of ‘must-see TV’ on broadcast or cable. But as more big events moved to streaming over 2024, fans have been quickly convinced that streamers will deliver the experience they want.”
Over the past few years, more streaming services have offered sports programming as an added value to their SVOD services. Paramount Global and Comcast have long touted live access to NFL games with a subscription to their Paramount Plus and Peacock services, and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) recently announced a decision to make live competitions from TNT Sports available to premium subscribers of its Max service permanently. The Walt Disney Company makes a limited amount of sports from its ESPN Plus service available to Disney Plus and Hulu subscribers, and Fox Corporation is readying the launch of a new SVOD offering that will include access to its cable news and sports channels beyond the traditional pay TV bundle for the first time.
That said, while fans seem willing to buy sports-inclusive streaming services , data from other sources indicate that traditional linear TV platforms like broadcasting and cable are still powerhouses for live sports delivery.
Last year, during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, Comcast’s streaming platform, Peacock, gained notoriety for offering live access to all athletic events from the tournament as well as a whip-around channel called “Gold Zone” and shoulder programming that was exclusive to the service. But Nielsen and first-party data released by Comcast and NBC Sports showed most people still watched NBC’s prime-time coverage of the games on broadcast and traditional pay TV platforms. Peacock accounted for just one-sixth of prime-time Olympics viewership, according to an analysis of data by The Desk.
The same trend played out last month when Fox Sports offered a free simulcast of Super Bowl LIX through its ad-supported platform Tubi. The stream offered an upconverted ultra high-definition video signal and had some of the lowest latency compared to other streaming platforms — and, yet, Tubi accounted for a little more than a 10 percent share of all Super Bowl LIX viewing that day.
Streamers may account for a larger share of sports viewing as networks effectuate rights deals that include digital distribution, and as more platforms like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video pursue live sports events that are exclusive to their platforms. Amazon has offered Thursday Night Football games through Prime Video and Twitch on an exclusive basis for more than a few years, and will soon offer live games from the National Basketball Association. Netflix has aggressively pursued live athletic competitions, and offered two Christmas Day NFL games last year.
“As more high-profile properties move online, like NBA games on Amazon or the Super Bowl on Tubi, young fans will grow up with streaming platforms as the ‘home’ of their favorite sports,” Giegengack said.
