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Originally Posted by Jason14h
Maybe? There's a shift in how people consume pro-sports for sure. Whether less or watching is up for debate.
How elastic is the demand for sports on TV is the real question. If people have to pay $500 a year to stream NHL would they vs having other cable subscribers subsidize sports
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/s...gs-sports.html |
The end of that article said that total time spent watching pro sports is up, but that individual sports are down. Having them all on at the same time that makes sense - most people are going to watch one thing at a time. They also mentioned that news ratings are way up, which makes sense in a US election year with a pandemic. Neither of those factors is likely permanent.
The factor that is likely permanent is cord cutting. As people cancel cable, it doesn't seem likely that individual streaming service deals will make up the revenue. Many casual fans won't subscribe, and those who were paying for sports channels as part of their cable package but not watching them definitely won't.
The leagues won't be able to take more revenue than they generate for their partners for very long.
The x-factor here is the big diversified streaming services. Amazon has been buying NFL games, and if Netflix started producing sports they could bid significant amounts. I think if Netflix was going to do live events they'd probably start with news (no rights cost) before sports, but who knows.