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2024 EDITION
Altman Solon's
Global Sports Survey
Our latest edition of Altman Solon's Global Sports Survey delves deep into an industry that is rapidly transforming. In 2024, we surveyed over 3,000 sports fans located in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Saudi Arabia, and China and spoke with over 220 senior sports executives globally, including rights owners, media distributors, and investors.
The sports media sector is undergoing rapid change, with streaming aggregators attempting to reconsolidate the landscape for greater efficiency but still falling short of traditional broadcast models in reach and revenue. This shift underscores the need for a broader commercial framework between rights owners and media partners, moving progressively to new distribution and monetization strategies from legacy ones. The industry must stay relevant to all fan segments, especially younger fans and niche communities, by embracing growth and innovation drivers like AI, private investment, and geographic expansion.
We are delighted to present the findings of our 2024 Global Sports Survey:
For the sports industry to meet the unique challenges of a global and increasingly decentralized marketplace, we believe stakeholders should strategize collectively and challenge conventional wisdom.
Our findings focus on the following areas in the sports sector:
Changing Media ConsumptionRights Owners Perspectives
Media Companies Perspectives
Investor Perspectives
Key Innovations
> Evolving Fan Habits
> Sports Rights Monetization
> Investor Perspectives
> AI & Innovation
> Middle East Sports Perspectives
Live sports still draw audiences, as seen during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, which broke viewing records on both linear TV and streaming worldwide. Our survey findings confirm that interest in live sports remains high across all generations, with approximately 60% of sports fans across all geographies saying they tune in to televised sports at least monthly.
However, younger generations show less interest in live sports than their elders, potentially endangering the lifeblood of the industry. Our findings show that younger fans favor short-form and on-demand sports content, like highlights, citing the convenience and the abbreviated "to-the-point" nature of short-form video. Emerging categories of sports lifestyle content, like the hit sports docuseries pioneered by Netflix, further contribute to changing sports media habits and preferences.
But beyond evolving content preferences, today's fans face two major hurdles in engaging with sports: content discovery and access. Sixty-six percent of sports fans report having difficulty accessing their favorite live sports, many of which sit behind subscription paywalls. Among the fans who struggle to watch live sports, 56% say they would spend more time watching sports if available on their main viewing platform.
What's more, today's pricing models, which often require fans to take on multiple "all-you-can-eat" subscriptions, are turning them off. Some 43% of sports fans say they're unwilling to pay for content at current pricing models. If converted, this segment could be a sizable opportunity for the sports industry.
Sports executives are worried. Sixty-five percent of them see the erosion in relevance of live sports as a problem.
"The old models will have to change and, to achieve this, giving more attention to fans is key, including by leveraging data around live experience—both broadcast and on-site—and through first-party digital platforms."
Sandy Case, SVP Sport, Creative Technology
We believe it's essential for media rights owners to sustain and grow their fan base by building a path from top-of-funnel interest to paid subscriptions. The properties who do this will emerge as clear winners in fan base growth.
To address these challenges and retain fan loyalty, rights owners should act urgently. We recommend the following:
- Elevate the core live product while treating adjacent content—lifestyle documentaries, highlight reels, etc.—as standalone verticals. Take into account diverse consumer profiles (from avid fans to casual fans, older generations, and younger generations) and media buyers.
- Build a balanced consumer journey that starts with top-of-funnel channels (like social media) and ends in paid subscriptions. Consider various platforms, niche content creators, and communities.
- Engage price-sensitive and casual fans through differentiated products and pricing. Prioritize content value (e.g., advertising experience, resolution, shared accounts) over volume.
- Expand distribution efforts beyond legacy media to target smaller, more niche communities of fans. Experiment with business models that can incentivize content creators and hyperlocal media gatekeepers.
While Gen Z and millennial sports fans may not share the same appetite for live games as their predecessors, media rights holders can find ways to ensure that sports content remains discoverable and accessible across a range of platforms and at multiple price points.
RIGHTS OWNERS PERSPECTIVES
Rewriting the Monetization Playbook
“Rights owners need to think and act like entertainment franchise owners. Creating more assets and inventory with relevant products and services to attract, entertain, and retain new, adjacent and younger audiences.”
CEO, Sports Media Company
Media rights have long been the main source of income for sports organizations. But in today's fragmented and economically challenged media landscape, some rights are facing potential devaluation. Factors like cord-cutting, market saturation, and competition from other sports have already led to flat domestic rights revenues for four out of five European soccer leagues. Even though rights deals continue to climb for top-tier U.S. sports, some 85% of industry leaders believe that rights owners are not actively addressing the changing needs of their media partners.
Despite this challenging media environment, the reach of top leagues and athletes has never been more global, with fans in some markets willing to pay hundreds of dollars a year to stream games and events from their favorite leagues. Sports organizations can innovate their product offering and experiment with new direct-to-consumer distribution models geared toward these fans – especially given that elite domestic leagues, like the NFL and major European football leagues, appeal to over 80% of fans in their respective domestic markets.
For rights owners to mitigate market risks, they should expand their addressable market by:
> Looking towards international distribution deals and investing in marketing their league/teams on a global scale.
> Packaging and negotiating media rights to bring more bidders to the table, including upstart tech platforms, streaming services, and gaming sites.
> Focusing on long-term partnerships, with longer media rights cycles and performance-based variables. Deals, like that between Major League Soccer and Apple TV, amounting to $2.5 billion over ten years with potential upside based on subscriber growth, are largely seen as the future of rights deals.
> Creating new categories of rights in emerging areas like gaming and Web3.
The sports industry is undergoing a massive transformation, and sports organizations must adapt their business models accordingly and take a more active role in their media rights. By better understanding who their fans are, and getting clarity on their business model, including distribution strategy, buyer profiles, and ways to innovate, sports rights owners can thrive in uncertain times while rewriting the playbook on monetization.
“Single-mindedly focus on fans, obsessively build strong products/propositions and seamlessly collaborate with stakeholders including licensees, for maximization of value (commercial and non-commercial).”
Sanjog Gupta, Head of Sport, Disney Star
Sports Media in the Age of Unbundling
Premium sports rights remain must-have assets: they deliver high-value programming and attract big audiences on a repeatable and predictable basis. Deals like the recent record-breaking $8.5 billion broadcast rights agreement for the English Premier League with broadcaster Sky and TNT Sports are evidence of the value of live sports. However, the rise of streaming has impacted legacy media companies’ economics, and even premium sports require new strategies to boost viewership and increase monetization opportunities.
Sports fans are an important audience segment: they dedicate more than one-third of their TV and video budgets to sports content. Broadcast networks and cable providers have courted sports fans for years, and streamers are also keenly interested in growing and diversifying their subscribers by appealing to sports fans. But attracting and retaining sports fans has become more complicated. With media fragmentation on the rise, sports fans are now more likely to become free agents: nearly 70% of fans are willing to switch television providers to retain access to one or more of their essential sports.
Broadcasters and media companies should optimize their rights portfolios and diversify their strategies for engaging fans across viewership levels. While more avid fans who watch sports multiple times a week are often laser-focused on their favorite teams, they represent less than 15% of the global fanbase. Casual sports fans who watch games less than weekly are a potential growth opportunity for media companies and rights owners.
Over 70% of the media executives surveyed believe casual fans should be catered to through expanded content offerings, like pay-per-view options, augmented live experiences, personalized content recommendations, and ad-supported models. With rights costs per subscriber on the rise, the question remains as to how media companies can sustain their current levels of live sports programming in today's streaming ecosystem. While legacy media has led the pack in broadcasting sports content, tech aggregators and OTT streaming services are uniquely positioned to exploit live rights over the coming 5-10 years. This is thanks in part to streamers’ ability to capture fan data and experiment with new in-stream features (e.g., stats, overlays, adverts) and offers adapted to fan profiles.
Media companies can no longer rely solely on traditional monetization strategies for sports rights. Instead, broadcasters must rethink their monetization models, optimize their rights portfolios with a disciplined approach to content acquisition, and reduce discoverability costs with streamlined distribution models. By centering the needs of avid sports fans while experimenting with ways to engage more casual fans, media companies can continue to monetize sports rights.
“Investors can find new ways… [to] create an ecosystem that has a good floor of guaranteed revenues for clubs, but works with upside sharing so incentives between clubs, rights owners, and broadcasters are better aligned.”
SVP of Strategy & Business Development, Media Company
Consistent revenues, popularity among advertisers, and loyal fan bases make global sports an asset class with significant upsides. Over the past 18 months, the launch of dedicated investment funds that focus solely on sports, from athlete-led initiatives like APEX Capital to funds dedicated to women's sports, signal an even greater deployment of capital and the rise of sports as an investment class. In fact, over 60% of sports executives believe that private investment in the sector will accelerate over the next 5-7 years. As far as investor typology is concerned, 39% of sports executives see institutional private equity dominating sports properties, followed by 35% who believe sovereign wealth funds will lead investments in sports.
Eager for growth, these new investors have been quick to launch products and test partnerships designed to attract fans, expand reach, and optimize monetization. Liberty Media Group's 2016 acquisition of Formula 1 resulted in new Grand Prix events in Miami and Las Vegas, as well as IP expansions in the form of a buzzy Netflix series, leading to an increase in revenue and visibility. While investors are typically drawn to established leagues, emerging sports with niche fan bases, like drone racing, are seen as interesting long-shot bets to attract venture capital-style investment.
As private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds continue to invest in sports, league management will shift away from traditional models. The emerging generation of sports investors can optimize revenues by:
- Adopting a portfolio-management approach that leverages synergies in areas like media, technology, intellectual property, and analytics
- Identifying areas for expansion to grow the fanbase and improve distribution
Growth in the global sports industry and recent deal activity show no signs of slowing down. US sports franchises have an enterprise value that's tenfold of their current revenues, and European football clubs have the potential for a fivefold enterprise valuation. As the industry becomes more global, investors should expand the ecosystem through targeted investments in leagues and adjacencies in technology and media.
“Investors can contribute to a more sustainable sports ecosystem with a focus on optimizing new, underleveraged digital opportunities for rights owners.”
Managing Director, Sports Investment Firm
“Transformational changes in sports media will be driven by AI that will deliver automatic content production (from filming to production and targeted distribution).”
CEO, Sports Technology Company
Sports media is innovating at a rapid clip. New technologies, including AI capabilities, virtual production tooling, and cloud-based workflows, are transforming content production and distribution. Meanwhile, digital native sports fans are consuming content in new ways, ranging from ultra-personalized feeds and streaming subscriptions to Web3 fan communities. The landscape is in flux, experiencing top-down and bottom-up changes, and is ripe for new products and revenue streams.
An overwhelming majority of sports executives see change on the horizon: Some 79% believe automated content creation will have a major impact on their business, and nearly as many (74%) believe remote production technology will be just as game-changing. Both capabilities can lower costs while producing content at scale and unlocking new revenue streams, giving rights holders the ability to create differentiated products from a single sports event. The partnership between WSC Sports Technology and the NBA, which provides customized in-game and post-game highlight reels, is just one example.
Similarly, content localization technologies like Virtual Board Replacement (VBR)—where physical objects like edges of the playfield are replaced with virtual advertisements—are now reaching maturity. As media production and distribution workflows move to the cloud, rights holders and their media rights licensees will have greater opportunities to acquire new, hyper-local advertisers.
“Personalized live feeds in combination with no latency virtual advertising has the potential to significantly change the sponsorship and media rights landscape we see today.”
Head of Marketing, Sports Federation
On the consumer side, just over half (52%) of sports executives believe content augmentation (AR/VR, gamification, and advanced stats) will impact sports media. This tepid response is due in part to low consumer adoption of mixed reality products. However, continued innovation in mixed realities and launches of devices like Apple's Vision Pro headset signal emerging opportunities in the area.
Sports executives are less bullish on blockchain and tokenization, with only 26% thinking that Web3 technologies and ownership models will move the needle. This is largely due to low adoption among fans (only 6% surveyed have purchased a sports NFT or fan token). However, executives believe that in the future, blockchain-based loyalty programs hold great promise and have the potential to create synergies with gaming and live events. Our survey of sports fans shows interest in a hypothetical "digital fan ID" that can unlock personalized content and experiences for sports fans. Leagues like the NBA, along with technology companies like Sportradar, are already experimenting with this concept and are testing ways to provide tailored experiences to individual fans.
Rights holders and sports media groups have an opportunity to innovate, thanks to advances in enabling technologies and major shifts in consumer habits. To take advantage of a rapidly changing landscape, sports business actors should invest in a well-defined innovation roadmap that targets areas with long-term growth potential. Identifying interdependencies between innovation in production, distribution, and consumer behaviors is key to thriving in a changing ecosystem.
“Cheaper production and augmented reality will drive major changes in the sports media landscape.”
CEO, Sports Marketing Agency
About Altman Solon
Altman Solon is the world's largest strategy consulting firm focused exclusively on the Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT) sectors.
As trusted advisors to major media players and leading investors, we have helped to identify, develop, and implement many of the era-defining strategies that have shaped the sector over the last twenty years. We offer precise, rapid, and tailor-made solutions, from strategy development to investment advisory.
Leveraging data and industry expertise, we help media companies understand how to anticipate and invest in the evolving nexus of audience consumption, content, and media technology.
Altman Solon has an extensive international reach with offices in Amsterdam, Boston, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Warsaw, and Zurich, with successful projects completed across the globe in more than 100 countries.
Leadership & Oversight
David Dellea
Matt Del Percio
