• by Jon Last , Columnist, July 8, 2025

In my ongoing introspection on the watering down of sports coverage, two recent insights have grabbed my attention.  Pulled from our late June data, nearly half of sports fans (44%) prefer to stream sporting events rather than watch them on broadcast television.  Looking at this with a demographic filter, 58% of those in the coveted age 44 and under cohort prefer streaming. 

This alone isn’t terribly shocking, given both changing media consumption habits in our increasingly mobile society and the push by properties and media to optimize revenue through fragmentation of delivery channels.

More intriguing is companion data from the same study, in which the majority of age 44 and younger fans say they prefer streaming highlights rather than watching the entire game. That’s a significant difference from older fans, who are still in the camp of watching from start to finish.

There’s clearly a lot to unpack here, and it raises strategic questions about the future of sports coverage and how properties can best attract fans.

We live in a sound bite society.  We’re inundated with analytics and highlight packages abetted by the morsels of social content that aim to capture dwindling attention spans. The Sports Center generation has been weaned on the top ten plays of the day and the deification of a select group of athletes who garner disproportionate attention. 

All this surfaces a chicken-and-egg question.  Did anyone initially ask for this?  I’d maintain that this model was created more to satisfy a need to woo advertisers by driving immediate clicks and views rather than in response to actual fan needs.  We’ve long observed a push toward attracting a broader audience of less invested, more casual fans.

Promoting this type of content delivery system has short-term benefit, but at what ultimate cost?   How long will the event enthusiasts stay? I’ve opined here in the past about the growing generational rift between older and younger fan bases.  But when assessing longer-term costs, this focus on game highlights detracts from the broader storytelling and nurturing of team and property-specific brands that have ultimately created deeper and more resonant fan connections.

In the same study, we also found that only a third of fans strongly agreed that they would rather attend a live sporting event than watch it remotely.  Some of that is a function of the companion statistic that nearly three-quarters believe the average fan has been priced out of live sports.

Still, this movement away from immersion may ultimately decrease the stickiness of sports properties, creating a revenue model even more skewed toward digital quick hits -- moving further away from the enduring resonance that nurtured past generations of loyal fans.