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carriage deals with traditional broadcasters was detrimental to Eleven’s offering as rightsholders (demanding reach) rescinded the deals, leaving the service only with non-exclusive La Liga to entice UK subscribers to its platform.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 SVOD services in English-speaking markets weekly active usage (WAU) penetration subscription penetration in 2018 of consumers rank sports as their most preferred genre for a video service
- Eleven Sports the UK has the lowest penetration for local sports services and even lower subscription penetration in 2018
- DAZN in had WAU penetration of in and subscription penetration of
- Consumers with or more digital subscriptions decreased a peak of in 2017 in 2018
- The decline binge viewing as an activity in 2016 to in 2018 the attention economy has reached peak year olds accounted for of sport SVOD service WAUs in 2018, with usage still a niche behaviour and at only penetration for the same demographic 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 SVOD 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 likely to pay for sports services, accounting for of those subscribed in 2018 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.