The majority of sports fans who pay for a streaming service to watch their favorite team are keeping their subscription active once the season ends, according to a new report released by Parks Associates on Wednesday.
The report — “Streaming Sports: The Fan Experience” — evaluated responses from more than 8,000 broadband-connected households in the U.S., and concludes the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN Plus service is the streaming sports service most used by fans.
According to Parks Associates, around 19 percent of broadband-connected Americans use ESPN Plus, while 10 percent have a subscription to NFL Plus. The data is based on survey responses collected during the third quarter (Q3) of 2024. While both services maintained their leading positions, their use in American homes actually fell when evaluated against Q3 2023, according to data shared by the market intelligence firm.
Still, consumer shifts in favor of streaming platforms have given rise to opportunities for sports leagues and teams to reach fans across different platforms. Some leagues have leaned into the trend by further marketing their own streaming offerings, like NBA League Pass and MLB TV, which are used by around 8 percent of American broadband households.
Others, like the National Football League (NFL), have effectuated deals with streaming platforms like YouTube to distribute their direct-to-consumer products and packages. For the past two seasons, YouTube has offered NFL Sunday Ticket, which unlocks access to games airing on CBS and Fox stations and affiliates beyond a subscriber’s home market. The take rate for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube has climbed from around 5 percent during Q3 2022 to around 8 percent in Q4 2024, according to Parks Associates data.
While broadcast and cable TV remain the dominant delivery platforms for sports, two out of five Americans say they’re watching live sports across traditional and connected TV services, and one-third of Americans surveyed by Parks Associates affirm buying a streaming sport service during the year.
In some ways, the fragmented landscape of sports on TV is effectively forcing fans to grow comfortable with streaming services. Amazon has the exclusive national TV rights to NFL games on Thursday night, and the company will start airing games from the NBA later this year. Netflix inked a deal with the NFL to offer Christmas Day NFL games over the next few years as part of an aggressive move to increase the amount of live content available on its platform, which executives view as necessary for subscriber growth and retention. Four years ago, the National Hockey League agreed to wind down its streaming service NHL TV in favor of a deal with Disney’s ESPN Plus, which now has the rights to out-of-market hockey games.
That said, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), a metric used to evaluate customer satisfaction, tends to be higher across league-backed streaming services and packages compared to general entertainment offerings like Disney Plus, Hulu and Netflix. Two-thirds of sports streamers keep their subscription to a league-backed service active in the off-season, Parks Associates said; among the fans who do churn out, more than half say they intend to restart their subscription in the future.
“As more games move to streaming platforms, the traditional sports viewer — or ‘Sports Traditionalist’ — who watches only via broadcast or pay TV, is becoming a smaller segment of the overall audience,” Jennifer Kent, the Vice President of Research at Parks Associates, said in a statement.
When it comes to the sport that has the highest satisfaction among consumers, it is hardly a contest: The NBA has the most-satisfied subscribers among those offering direct-to-consumer streaming services, Parks Associates concludes.
