A new poll from Fox News finds that 72% of sports fans think major sports events should be required to air on free broadcast television. But cable networks and streaming services continue to acquire major sports rights.
In addition, according to the poll, nearly 60% of sports fans have not watched a sports event because it was too expensive.
The poll comes at an odd time for sports viewership. People continue to ditch cable, but streaming services are still incredibly fragmented. As a result, with sports being split between cable and streaming in many cases, it has become increasingly more expensive to watch sports.
Major League Baseball’s media rights deals show this reality perfectly. There will be exclusive baseball games this season on three different cable networks (ESPN, TBS, and FS1), along with two different streaming services (Peacock and Apple TV). As a result, it is extremely likely that you will need both a streaming service and a cable subscription to watch all of your team’s games.
Fox News sponsoring the poll adds a layer of irony, especially because it has extensively promoted the results on social media. Notably, Fox’s sports division regularly moves sports events off of broadcast television to the Fox Sports 1 cable network. NASCAR races and MLB playoff games have been most impacted by this practice.
Live sports are a major draw for cable networks and streaming services. For cable networks, sports provide one of the few reasons to stay subscribed to the cable bundle. Ditto for streaming services, which have used live sports as loss leaders to entice subscribers.
NASCAR’s recent media rights deal is the pinnacle of this thought process. Fox Sports and NBC Sports paid more for NASCAR while decreasing the number of broadcast races but maintaining a strong presence on cable channels FS1 and USA Network. The USA Network portion of the contract is now held by NBC’s cable spinoff Versant. NASCAR also reached new deals to put even more races on cable via TNT Sports, along with a package of races exclusively on streaming through Amazon’s Prime Video.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Cable networks, while declining, still remain immensely profitable and are more reliant on live sports than ever before. Streamers continue to bolster their live sports portfolios to gain subscribers. It all results in more fragmentation, and a worse, more expensive experience for the fan.
About Manny Soloway
Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.