Will Frustrated Fans Find FAST Relief?

Summary below. Full report available upon registration. https://FutureOfTV.Live

Here is a summary

The Power of Free: A Survey of Sports Fans & their streaming habits.

1. The Brutal Consumer: 54% of sports fans don't want to pay anything to watch the games they want. This is similar to how "Brutal Consumers" devalued music's CD era in the early 2000s, leading to all-you-can-eat subscription models. However, that's not going to work for sports. Bolstering sports' value proposition is crucial. When the consumer "needs it," we must use seamless payments, innovative pricing, and reduced friction to extract payment and get them to the content.
2. FAST Opportunity for New Leagues: 43% of sports fans use free streaming TV apps daily or weekly, despite a lack of live events on FAST. New leagues can debut on FAST, as the A7FL (American 7s Football League) announced via LocalNow & HBCU+ partnership. The key will be figuring out the right "Sports Content Mix" for a 24/7/365 feed. Does football go with more football? Or is it better to pair it up with something totally different?
3. Lacrosse's Potential Struggle: Despite being an Olympic sport in LA 2028 and having well-funded professional leagues, lacrosse ranks low in viewing interest, according to my data. Lacrosse may face similar challenges as hockey, with fast movement and gear-covered faces making it less TV-friendly.

Insights 4 - 8 after the jump...

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Hear Pat Crakes, David Giles, Colin Dixon & David Bloom sound off on some stats about the live & linear streaming TV business.

4. CTV Rankings for Sports Fans: YouTube leads in CTV for sports fans, with Roku and Prime Video fighting for second place. Streaming brands from legacy media are a rising third tranche, with Tubi popping up on this report's radarin December - far before others noticed. What about CTV OEMs? Samsung TV Plus, Vizio Watch Free, and Xumo all seem to have very low awareness, suggesting that content-rich, media-owned FAST apps like Tubi and Pluto TV might well win the next front in the wars.

5. Volleyball & Wrestling: Great for Local Streaming: For streaming local high school and collegiate sports, football and basketball are the most popular, followed by baseball/softball, soccer, ice hockey, volleyball, wrestling, swimming, track & field, tennis, golf, and cheer.

6. Platform Demographic Insights: Roku and Tubi skew toward female audiences. Baseball/softball skew male, while swimming and volleyball over-index to female. Football and basketball have roughly equal gender preference. Reach out to walk through the report and the cross-tabs - there is a lot of data here that can impact your distribution strategy.

7. Catch Me Up: Fans want full-length game replays, condensed game recaps, real-time scores, and ticker updates from FAST, AVOD, and Streaming Linear platforms.

8. TV, the Preferred Device: TV dominates device preference for both live sports and highlights by a factor of 3x over mobile. Streaming to a TV is different from streaming to a desktop or mobile device. Keep it in mind!