Across significant sports markets, the broadcast rights to popular sports competitions are increasingly being split across a growing number of services, including streamers, according to Ampere’s research. Fragmentation is a phenomenon affecting content distribution, reflecting the increasing number of platforms across which content is exclusively available to consumers and, thus, the number of subscriptions required to access all that content.
Popular competitions are being split across a growing volume of services in the U.S. and major European markets, making the market less convenient for sports fans. However, Spain’s sports media market has resisted fragmentation, also impacted by the exits of BeIN Sports, Mediapro, and Atresmedia. Australia has seen some new market entrants in recent years, such as Optus Sports and Stan, but top competitions have consolidated in the hands of fewer broadcasters.
Fans now often require multiple subscriptions to different types of services to access all major sports events in a country. New market entrants acquiring rights to significant sports properties and putting them behind a paywall come from various business models. In the UK, France, and Italy, the number of pay TV and premium channels buying rights has increased, highlighting the development of the more traditional TV market since 2014. At the same time, the broader trend of the growth of streaming has also reached the sports broadcasting industry. Across all selected markets, at least one subscription OTT player has rights to a leading sports property. This increased market fragmentation, and in particular the entrance of more paywalled services – suggests that fans face a growing challenge to watch their favorite competitions.
An increasing number of broadcasters are offering live sports content to fans across significant sports markets, including the U.S. and key European territories. Sports coverage can effectively drive engagement and subscriptions, particularly for new entrants in the subscription OTT space, and rights holders are seeking ways to exploit this proliferation in potential buyers to grow media rights revenues.
According to Ampere, new entrants can potentially increase the competitive tension in rights auctions, which in turn drives up the value of rights fees. Innovation around the packaging of rights and increasing the number of televised fixtures have become part of the strategy to attract more bidders. Co-exclusive rights deals can drive rights revenue growth and provide an opportunity to reach a wider audience by selling to bidders with different business models.
As rights get shared by more bidders, broadcasters’ ability to offer a fully rounded sports offering to fans becomes more limited. However, the growing fragmentation of the sports market also allows broadcasters, incumbents in particular, to reduce overall spending on sports rights while retaining exclusive or co-exclusive rights to key properties, especially when traditional TV players face revenue pressures while OTT services focus on profitability.
A more fragmented sports TV offering creates additional cost barriers and friction for core sports fans who may have to pay for more subscriptions to watch their favorite sports and competitions. This poses a challenge at a time when fans are increasingly cautious about how much they spend on watching sports. Sports bodies need to find a balance between taking advantage of growing competition in the sales process and ensuring live sport is still accessible for fans.
