Sports Is Traditional TV’s Hail Mary, Despite Pressure From Streaming

Even as streaming platforms have increasingly intercepted key sports rights deals away from cable, the latest Nielsen Gauge figures show sports still score for traditional TV networks.

Back in July, YouTube made history in one fell swoop: It became the first streaming-only company to surpass 10% of U.S. TV viewership on Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge, and it was the first to dethrone Disney since Nielsen began tracking TV usage by media company in November 2023. The milestone was a long time coming, as the video-sharing platform has increasingly established itself as a formidable presence on both computers and TV screens.

Ultimately, though, YouTube held the throne for just a month, as the Olympics boosted NBCUniversal to the top spot. And as we learned last week, Disney is back on the throne after gaining a 17% increase in viewership for September — the largest jump among all reporting distributors for the month.

Unsurprisingly, that shot in the arm for Disney coincided with the return of football. Disney-owned ESPN holds the rights to the coveted NFL “Monday Night Football” games, which helped boost viewership from the previous month for ESPN (up 101%) and ESPN2 (up 165%).

Additionally, simulcasts of “Monday Night Football” gave ABC affiliates a smaller but notable lift (up 25%). Last month’s top cable telecast was the Monday night game between the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles, which brought in over 13 million viewers.

Fox, which holds the rights to the NFL’s NFC Package, also saw a 69% increase in viewership across its broadcast affiliates compared with August, which helped its Media Distibutor Gauge standing grow over a percentage point to 7.3% for September.

These latest Gauge numbers show there’s still some truth in the long-held belief that sports are the last, steadfast glimmer of hope for cable and broadcast, even as rights deals have become more fragmented across traditional TV and streaming. Decentralization is nothing new for sports, but streaming services including Netflix, Amazon and YouTube are now in the mix as they look for stronger footholds in live TV.

As a result, sports are also doing just as much for streamers as they are for cable. “Thursday Night Football,” for instance, is now exclusively on Amazon Prime Video after airing for years on Fox, which seemingly helped Amazon hit an all-time high of 3.7% viewership in September.

We have also yet to see how recent major sports rights deals for streaming platforms will pay off. Amazon forked over another $120 million to air a single playoff game in the upcoming 2024-25 season, while Netflix closed a $150 million deal back in May with the NFL for exclusive worldwide rights to the two games airing on Christmas Day. That was on top of the big N’s historic $5 billion deal with WWE for the rights to “Monday Night Raw,” which will take one of TV’s longest-running episodic programs off the air in 2025.

For now, cable networks can rest easy for at least another year of sports seasons knowing people are still tuning in, but signs do point to consumers being just as willing to watch live sports on streaming.

The biggest question concerning both camps is how willing consumers are to spread their dollars over even more subscriptions in order to watch their favorite teams. As we’ve seen with the ongoing, potentially industry-altering battle over sports streaming between FuboTV and the Disney-Fox-WBD joint venture Venu, bundling may not be the easy fix for streaming as it once was for cable.

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