Sports streaming is on the rise, but challenges remain – what are they?

Online live streams as a medium of watching sports has picked up steam in the US in the past few years, with a quarter of Americans (25%) saying they do so in May 2024, up from 16% in May 2021. This is according to Global Fan Profiles, which tracks data on behaviors and attitudes towards sports and esports, in 37 markets.

Still, overall adoption rates in the US of live sports streaming lag behind live TV viewing in proportional terms when compared to various other markets. The share of live TV sports viewers in the US in May 2024 was 50%, exactly twice that of the share of online streaming viewers. By contrast, in China online streaming viewers (47%) actually slightly outnumbered TV viewers (43%) in the same month. It should be noted that the pattern in US is mirrored by those observed in much of the Western developed world – for instance, Canada (24% online live streaming vs 50% live TV), UK (25% vs 53%), Germany (21% vs 46%) and Denmark (27% vs 51%).

But focusing on the US, what could be keeping some fans away from adopting live streaming as a way of keeping up with the sporting action in the US? We look specifically at US sports fans who do watch sports live on television but indicate that they don’t use live streaming.

And cost is by far the most commonly cited factor, with more than two in five saying “cost is too high” in response to the question (43%). The second most pin-pointed factor is the difficulty in finding events on streaming platforms (10%).

Poor internet connections (6%), perceived lack of quality or poor viewing experience (6%), small screens (6%) are relatively smaller hindrances. Only 3% say that a lack of compatible devices is an issue.

But notably, a third of these consumers have reasons other than those provided in the survey. More intricate factors such as fragmentation of digital sports rights across various streaming platforms and the lag in live streams – often running between 30 seconds to a few minutes behind compared to linear TV – could be factors.

These are aspects that streaming platforms can explore more incisively by probing consumers using YouGov Surveys, tailoring questions and options to fit their specific context.

Methodology: YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for US is nationally representative of the population and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.