Industry Insights: New data shows that sports is becoming more central to streaming strategies, while Super Bowl LIX was the most streamed ever thanks to a high-quality, low latency feed.
Streamers will spend $12.5bn on sports rights in 2025
With rumors circulating that Netflix is considering a bid for the US rights to Formula One when the current deal with ESPN finishes at the end of this season, new analysis shows that streaming is becoming an increasingly important component of global sports rights deals. Indeed, Ampere Analysis estimates that the combined spending of all streamers on sports rights in 2025 will reach $12.5 billion, one fifth of the global annual TV spend. Furthermore, much of that is being driven by the expanding sports budgets of Netflix and Amazon.
DAZN still unsurprisingly tops the streaming tree, accounting for one third of the streaming spend on sports. Following them comes Amazon, whose share will increase from 18% to 23% following its acquisition of NBA rights from the 2025 to 2026 season onward. That’s something in the region of $2.8bn per year.
YouTube TV remains in third place, driven mainly by its deal for the NFL Sunday Ticket games in the USA which is worth a reported $2 billion per season. Netflix is now the fourth biggest streaming investor in sports rights thanks to its three-year agreement to show Christmas Day NFL games and its $500m per year deal with WWE which started in January.
Will Netflix really make a high-profile bid for the F1 rights? Its Drive to Survive show is credited with building F1’s current popularity in the US, so on the face of it, it would be a good fit. And at $90m a year the rights are comparatively cheap. However, F1 rights are also complex and increasingly controlled on a country-by-country basis by pay-TV providers, meaning that the global rights that Netflix favors are off the table (this, incidentally, may also prevent Apple from thinking about pitching). So, in the end it’s probably unlikely, but the fact that it’s even being talked about shows how much the industry is changing.
Why this matters: Sports is becoming increasingly important to streaming — and streaming is becoming increasingly important to sports. We are steadily moving closer to the point where a big deal will take place that will see a major league move onto a streaming platform.
Super Bowl LIX: the most streamed ever
[Stream TV Insider, nScreenMedia, Streaming Media Blog]
Taylor Swift might not have had the same effect on Super Bowl LIX viewing figures as she did at last year’s game, but the match still managed to deliver a second consecutive record audience. Nielsen estimates that 127.7 million viewers tuned into the game, while this year’s host, broadcaster Fox, reckons it was the most streamed Super Bowl ever. Viewing on its FAST service Tubi delivered a 13.6 million average minute audience and peaked at 15.5 million concurrent streams.
The patchwork nature of US Super Bowl rights means that there was more than just Tubi streaming the event, giving a range of companies and analysts a perfect opportunity to test the latency of different streaming services. Several have been quick to point out that Tubi performed excellently, partly as a result of being able to tap into the same technology stack as Fox was using for the linear broadcast.
Even though it was taking a risk by committing to UHD (an upscaled feed from the 1080p capture), the Tubi signal was by far the fastest.
“The Tubi stream was consistently at or slightly ahead of the OTA (over the air broadcast),” wrote Colin Dixon in nScreenmedia. “The Tubi browser was three or more seconds ahead, while the connected TV app was about a second behind. Even T-Mobile’s network delivered slightly ahead of the OTA broadcast. These delays are very small, and stream viewers had no reason to worry about social media posts calling a play before they had seen it.”
Analyst Dan Rayburn meanwhile offered the following table: 
All this is significant because data from elsewhere suggests that under a third of the Super Bowl audience utilized a single content source, whether television, radio, social media or something else. That means that the TV coverage is part of a whole connected ecosystem that spans platforms and media and where viewers increasingly expect a seamless experience without lag ruining the experience.
Why this matters: Tubi’s success at Super Bowl LIX and its low latency stream seem to point to the fact that viewers will embrace services with minimal latency on live content where possible.
Kantar: ‘significant momentum’ in ad-supported streaming
Finally for this sports-themed post, Kantar Worldpanel's Q4 data shows robust growth in paid ad-supported streaming, with the research saying that live sports is significantly impacting figures.
This confirms data we’ve already reported on, the analyst reporting that paid ad-supported services were chosen by 35% of new VoD subscribers in Q4 2024, up from 21% in the same period the year before.
American football emerged as the fastest-growing sport in terms of viewership, with YouTube TV seeing a 48% surge in subscribers, following its acquisition of NFL’s 2023/24 Sunday matches. The growing appeal of the sport is also reflected in the 42% of households watching sport in Q4, up 6 percentage points on the previous quarter.
Elsewhere:
- Apple TV+ and Paramount+ were the fastest growing major VoD streamers year-on-year
- Prime Video achieved the highest share of new paying subscribers, with Paramount+ second and Netflix third
- Paid ad-supported subscribers rose by 3% quarter-on-quarter
- 38% of new VoD users opted for premium subscription models
- FAST accounted for 20% of the global market, while virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) services that offer TV over the internet claimed 7%
“Our Q4 2024 data unveils a significant shift in the global streaming landscape,” comments Andrew Skerratt, global insight director at Kantar’s Worldpanel. “Bold, innovative ad-supported models, live sports integrations, and an unyielding commitment to premium content are rewriting the rulebook on consumer behaviour. Giants like Prime Video, Netflix, and Apple TV+ are not just in the game – they’re redefining it by capturing fresh audiences and igniting relentless engagement in a fiercely competitive arena. The future of streaming isn’t a distant dream – it’s a dynamic revolution, balancing stellar content with unparalleled viewing flexibility, and it’s already in full swing.”
Why this matters: The streaming landscape looks rather different to how it did a few years ago. Success with audiences in 2025 requires a nuanced offering that folds in ad-supported tiers, while sports is becoming an increasingly key driver of growth.
