Are Premium Sports Events Worth What Streamers Pay to License Them?
Every few weeks we hear about the next extraordinary sum a streaming platform has paid for exclusive rights to stream a premium sports event. But as Media Universe Cartographer Evan Shapiro says, “Everybody has an NFL game now,” so is it worth it? Are streamers really gaining or retaining enough subscriptions by licensing these events to justify what they’re paying for them? Shapiro and Hub Entertainment Research Principal Jon Giegengack debate the value of sports vs. scripted content and other subscriber plays in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2024.
Are the high costs of acquiring sports rights justified by subscriber retention?
Shapiro says to Giegengack, “Is sports worth the price of admission? You see Netflix paying over $200 million for two football games on Christmas. You see Peacock paying over $100 million for a playoff game…is it worth it? Is the retention and recidivism there from a subscriber, do you think?”
Giegengack argues that sports content is unique and irreplaceable, leading to significant subscriber engagement. “We see the numbers that we get with people [stating] the likelihood to keep a subscription once a game is over is about 50% over three months, which maps pretty closely to some of the data that Antenna has come out with. And I do think that the sports rights are worth it because it's really the only kind of unique content that's left. It's sort of the flip side of that problem where everybody has these really buzzy, super expensive dramas, but everybody has one. And if I don't have this platform, there's another analog to that I can watch somewhere else.”
The strategic importance of sports in the competitive streaming market
“Everybody has an NFL game!” Shapiro says. “Amazon has NFL games. Netflix has NFL games. CBS, Paramount, have NFL games…” He notes that Apple is one of the few streamers that lack sports, but they make up for it with great television shows.
“I think that Netflix got a really good deal with the WWE, for instance, because that's 50 weeks a year,” Giegengack says.
He emphasizes that sports programming is not subject to the same critical scrutiny from viewers compared to scripted programming. “Nobody goes to Rotten Tomatoes to decide if they're going to watch the WWE,” he says. “They just watch it no matter what. Or the NFL or the NBA. It's very predictable, and depending on what sports or combination of sports you have, you can fill up a whole year with it, and there's no substitute. So if you want to see a playoff game, like when Peacock bought that game, 2.1 million people signed up because they felt like they had to, and probably not all of them were super happy about it, but they did it, and [Peacock] did a good job of programming with other stuff.”
Join us in February 2025 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect.
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