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How Sports Broadcasting’s Move Towards Streaming Could Affect Advertising

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One of the most significant changes to television in the 21st century has been the removal of pretty much all “appointment” or “water cooler” TV. Save for the rare HBO/Max Sunday night prestige show, streaming in 2025 typically means a long weekend, on your couch, Donald Duckin’ it, and watching every episode in a single sitting. As “fun” as that is, it has removed the sense of urgency that was once a hallmark of the medium, and that’s when “sports” enters the chat. 

Live sports, especially NFL football, has risen from the ashes of prime-time TV to become the highest rating television product and because most of the television viewing world has moved to streaming, sports is following. ESPN and Fox Sports plan to launch standalone streaming services, à la Netflix but only sports. In this blog, we’ll explore how we’ve got here, what changes advertisers can expect and what it all means for the future.

Why Cable Channels Are Also Cutting the Cord

Not news: the number of cable subscriptions nationwide has been steadily declining. Cable has been the dominant method for consumers to get their TV for decades, but the number of cable subscriptions in the U.S. appears to have reached its peak at 93,400,000 in 2018. It has since fallen to 66,100,000 at the end of 2024, a 29 percent decrease in just six years.

With so much content being exclusive to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, and with the average cable subscription costing $83 per month, consumers are dropping the latter. Instead, they're using their money to subscribe to multiple streaming services.

Declining cable viewership has made the business model for channels like ESPN and Fox Sports less viable. ESPN wasted no time getting in on that sweet, sweet streaming service action, launching ESPN+ in 2018. That wasn’t a replacement for the cable channel, but rather, supplemental programming that there wasn’t room for in their cable programming. Sure, Alabama may be playing Georgia on ESPN, but if you want to watch your alma mater, the Fighting Ocelots of North by Northwest Montana Technical College, you’d need ESPN+.

It has long been speculated that ESPN will eventually leave cable altogether… Well, the CEO of Disney, ESPN’s parent company, recently confirmed as much, calling the move an “inevitability.” 

A Brief History of Sports Broadcasts Moving to Streaming

The move didn’t happen overnight, as it was a real frog-in-a-boiling-pot effect. Little by little, sports leagues would dip their toes into streaming, starting with MLB in 2022. From the makers of the MacBooks, comes Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV. 

The NFL wasn’t going to be left behind, and went to the digital retail giant and former online bookstore, Amazon, to make the move to streaming. Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime added yet another day of the week to the NFL schedule.

Apple’s taste for sports didn’t end with baseball. After Lionel Messi moved to the MLS, joining Inter Miami CF, made the league a lot more attractive, Apple came in and signed a deal to stream games starting 2023.

The true crossing of the Rubicon moment for sports would be the first league to put a playoff game behind the paywall of a streamer. The NFL once again showed its dominance by becoming the first league to stream a postseason game on Peacock. Of course, it was record-breaking. And you probably forgot to cancel your subscription.

Proof of Concept for Moving to Streaming

These successes emboldened several of the largest networks to combine forces and create a streaming service together. Or at least they attempted to. ESPN, Fox, and Warner Brothers created a joint venture called “Venu Sports” that was set to launch in Fall of 2024, which would include streams of all the sports networks owned by these three media giants. 

The service would be subject to an antitrust lawsuit that ultimately led to them canceling the launch. The plan with Venu Sports wasn’t that these networks were going to stop their cable broadcasts once this service was launched, but it was definitely a precursor to them cutting the cord. And the fact that this joint venture failed doesn’t mean that these companies aren’t individually planning to launch direct-to-consumer services. 

Change Is Already Here for Advertisers

For advertisers, the most significant change is the ability to use more targeted ads, meaning fewer wasted impressions and a data goldmine that cable never offered. On streaming, advertisers can serve up ads based on a user’s actual viewing behavior, geography, and sometimes, depending on how much data is being shared, even purchase history. It’s not just “buying a broad spot during Monday Night Football” anymore. It’s serving up a Gatorade ad to 28-year-old males with Gatorade tattoos in central Ohio watching Ohio State highlights on a Tuesday afternoon.

This also means greater flexibility—and higher expectations. Brands won’t just be buying airtime, they’ll be buying data-rich, real-time engagement opportunities. Want to run a campaign that adapts based on whether a team is winning or losing? That’s on the table. Want to geotarget fans in one city with a local activation while showing a different spot to the rest of the country? That’s a thing now, too.

For advertisers, the streaming future of ESPN and live sports in general isn’t just a new platform—it’s a brand-new playbook.

In ESPN’s Q4 2024 earnings report, advertising revenue was up seven percent year-over-year, outpacing their overall revenue growth of one percent. This is largely due to ESPN’s ad space becoming more valuable, despite the decline in cable subscriptions.

How Will Advertising on These Networks Change Once They Cut the Cord?

Although many other streaming services have tiered plans, where users can pay more to have ad-free versions—that hasn’t yet happened for live sports broadcasts. Commercials are baked into the pie. Many sports even have “media timeouts” which are regular stoppages in play specifically for the broadcast to cut to commercial. All that is to say that any fears that a move to streaming would lead to less ad space are unfounded.

Advertising, particularly during live broadcasts, is a massive revenue stream for these networks. Placing a 30-second ad spot on a Monday Night Football broadcast, a property owned by ESPN, costs over $500,000 on average. The increased revenue these networks would get from having 100 percent direct-to-consumer subscriptions, they would be leaving a substantial amount of money on the table if they included ad-free options.

Moving to streaming will likely lead to several benefits for advertisers who use the platform. Streaming services tend to offer more robust analytics suites and more accurate data. Hulu, a steaming service owned by Disney, ESPN’s parent company, uses its extensive user data to allow advertisers to more accurately target their ads. It also offers ad types that aren’t possible on cable, such as pause ads, and giving users the option to select the ads they’re seeing and their distributions (one long ad at the start and then no breaks, or various short commercial breaks). Though admittedly a bit speculative, the ad-included tiers of Disney’s other streaming services such as Hulu and Disney+ could be indicators of the types of ad space we could see on a direct-to-consumer ESPN.

Local Advertising on Streaming

Currently, if you stream ESPN online, commercial breaks will include “commercial break in progress” messages, likely during times reserved for local advertising on cable. Once there is just one platform on which you can watch ESPN, local advertising spots will likely be on streaming, similar to Hulu. 

Do Consumers Like Sports Broadcasting’s Move to Streaming?

No. No, they do not.

The recent examples of sports being broadcast exclusively on streaming services means fans need to buy more subscriptions in addition to paying for cable, where most sports broadcasting still resides. Live sports broadcasts are actually the biggest reason that people still subscribe to cable.

If the most popular live sports broadcasting channels leave cable, then that could potentially lead to a significant decrease in cable subscriptions, affecting the value of ad space on all cable channels. Though that’s a bit speculative. While there will certainly be some people who cut the cord when ESPN leaves cable, the exact number remains to be seen.

It’s important to note that these national carriers are not the sole carriers of live sports. Pretty much every professional team in the U.S. has a local channel that broadcasts all of their games, while the national carriers broadcast a select few for each team. Or that’s what we would’ve said, but many of these local networks are also coming out with direct-to-consumer options. 

Are you ready for streaming sports as the only way to watch? More importantly, are you ready to advertise there? Still struggling to take advantage of advertising on streaming platforms? Working with Mad Genius is a slam touch-run. Fill out the form below and connect with a genius today.