American Sports Streamers Bet Big on the Olympics

Now that streaming is all the rage, it’s no surprise that live sports events have become one of the most successful kinds of streamed entertainment. While services like ESPN and Peacock look to host sports streaming platforms, even companies like Netflix and Amazon have been grabbing up streaming rights. Now, a forecast predicts sports streamers will see a boost in subs for the 2024 Olympics.

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Growing Interest in Sports

Sports has always been the home of live broadcasting, and it’s found a new life with video-on-demand streaming services. Those services have also delivered American sports further than ever before, as they are finding more interest in Europe. Interest isn’t just tied to the sport itself, but also the secondary markets surrounding America’s favorite sports. Betting markets that made a similar online transition are known to host promotions and the occasional sportsbook bonus like conditional refunds or boosts on certain bets. Marketing offers like that also contribute to the growing interest in sports observed in recent years.

Figures from data insight group Kantar suggest that 95% of sports fans in the US prefer to stream sports events over catching them on Cable TV. In the US, it’s American football that drives the most subscribers to sports streaming services. For the rest of the world, it’s soccer that takes the top prize. More specifically, Major League Soccer, where the nation’s best soccer players compete. In the US, soccer has become the second most important sport for new subscription service sign-ups.

Other findings from Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand report showed that variety was appreciated and that Europe is the best growth market for streamers in the current day. Through broadcast rights acquisitions, streamers can expand their library and find sports more entertaining to foreign audiences in one swoop.

The 2024 Olympics

This year, the Summer Olympic Games are set to take place in Paris, France. Starting in late July, there’s no prize for guessing that it will be one of the biggest sports events of the year. In March 2024, NBC’s Peacock streaming service revealed that it has made a special deal with sports’ most prestigious competition. They have crafted an Olympics hub on-platform that will cover all 40 of the event’s sports, plus medal standings for each one at the end of every contest. It will also feature an advanced search feature that can search for individual athletes, and a catalog of “key plays” for compatible sports like soccer, basketball, and golf.

Besides Peacock, its owners at NBC will cover a lot of the action on their terrestrial channels alongside a highlight show. Similar arrangements have been made with national broadcasters like France Télévision or the BBC in the UK, who also have online components but not premium streaming services like Peacock. The Olympics will also stream certain events from their official website.

Bango’s Olympic Forecast

In the world of broadcasting, another number cruncher is Bango. They’re a firm that helps businesses grow their subscription base, chiefly through bundling, and so they pay close attention to the wider streaming service ecosystem. Ahead of the Olympic Games, they have released their Going For Gold report tracking consumer interest in the event and the effect it’ll have on sports streaming. It tracked approximately 5,000 people, with 2,000 of them being avid sports streaming followers.

They are predicting that one in four US subscribers will sign up to a streaming service in the summer, for the sole purpose of catching Olympics coverage. As a result, Bango forecasts that sports streaming – dubbed SportsVOD – will see a 66% jump for streamers who have access to Olympics coverage. The report also goes deeper into the finances of customers, discovering that the average US subscriber spends $77 but SportsVOD followers spend almost double that at $120. Fragmentation of sports content across streaming services is an issue, as 87% agree that a singular hub would be better for consumers.

Fortunately for consumers, upcoming Olympics coverage won’t be split between a lot of streaming providers. Instead, most sports streamers who show the Olympics may receive a boost in the summer, if Bango’s predictions turn out to be correct.