Live Sports Streams Grow, Viewer Losses Continue On Linear TV

Increased viewing with live streaming of sporting events continues to rise. But in many cases, it is not making up for viewing losses of traditional linear TV.

For example, NFL regular-season “Monday Night Football” on ESPN games last season lost 872,000 viewers on average -- but unique viewers from those same games streamed on WatchESPN only pulled in 222,065, according to Magna Global.

In addition, CBS’ “Super Bowl” this past year was down 2.02 million traditional TV viewers, but only gained 1.06 million unique viewers. (One caveat here from Magna Global to note, which furthers its argument: Traditional TV viewers numbers are measured in average viewing per minute; unique viewers data are not attached to any duration.)

Still, overall consumption live streaming of sports continues to grow in terms of unique viewers and total streaming minutes. 

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Unique viewers of live streaming of Major League Baseball on WatchESPN rose 40% to average 86,459 for in 2016 over 2015. The NFL regular-season “MNF” games on WatchESPN grew 67% to 553,505, while the NBA Finals on WatchESPN witness almost double the unique viewers in 2016 over 2015 -- up 84% to 1.16 million.

Total streaming minutes also were up by around the same levels for those sports: NBA Finals (93%), NFL regular season (73%) and Major League Baseball regular season (56%). 

Magna Global says soccer is one of the few growth areas in TV sports -- in particular because it draws in young, multicultural and affluent viewers. 

For example, those who watched the 2016 European Championship and 2015 Copa America events had a median income average between $85,300and $91,800 while NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB watchers had a median income between $62,300 and $79,400.

Over the past four years, TV networks in total have now devoted 13% of their sports time to soccer in 2015-2016 season -- almost double that from the 6% level in the 2011-2012 season.

FS2 and NBCSN are two cable sports networks that have dramatically increased their soccer coverage.

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