Sports SVOD Services Deep Dive

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The 20,000 Foot View: Sports-centric subscription video on demand (SVOD) services have entered international markets, looking to capture digital-native audiences from pay-TV and other established SVOD services. Eleven Sports’ demise in the UK provides the best case study for how streaming services can struggle when entering a market with insufficient rights offerings. A failure to secure carriage deals with traditional broadcasters was detrimental to Eleven’s offering as rightsholders (demanding reach) rescinded the deals, leaving the service only with non-exclusive La Liga to entice UK subscribers to its platform. Complicating the rights challenge is the essentially different demographic compositions of pay-TV and sports SVOD subscribers, and the specific behaviours these valuable audiences display when considering how to address them.
Key Findings
- ESPN+ leads sports SVOD services in English-speaking markets with weekly active usage (WAU) penetration and subscription penetration in of consumers rank sports as their most preferred genre for a video service
- Eleven Sports in the UK has the lowest WAU penetration for local sports services at and even lower subscription penetration at in 2018
- DAZN in Canada had WAU penetration of in 2018, and subscription penetration of with three or more digital subscriptions decreased from a peak of in 2017 to in 2018
- The decline of binge viewing as an activity from in 2016 to in 2018 highlights the attention economy has reached the year olds accounted for of sport SVOD service WAUs in 2018, with usage still a niche behaviour and at only penetration for the same year olds only account for of those who consume sports on TV; however with penetration the activity is still six times more common than sports consumption on of WAU for ESPN+ in the US, of Kayo Sports WAUs in Australia and for DAZN in Canada are all under years old
- Males are more likely to pay for sports SVOD services, accounting for of those who subscribed in of cord-cutters engage with sports SVOD services, compared with just of pay-TV subscribers
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: AFL, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon, Apple, AppleTV+, Crave TV, DAZN, Disney, Disney+, Eleven Sports, ESPN+, Hulu, Kayo Sports, KFC Big Bash, La Liga, NBA, Netflix, NFL, NHL, Now TV, NRL, UFC, Warner Media.