Sports Fans Can’t Find the Game, and That’s an Advertiser Problem

Sports fans have never had more ways to watch, and never had a harder time figuring out where. A recent study by Gracenote found that 26% of sports fans have trouble identifying which channel or service is carrying a specific event, and that figure climbs to 36% among fans ages 18 to 34. A third of U.S. sports fans also spend more than 5 minutes looking for any given event. The cause, in this case, is abundance rather than scarcity. Teams and leagues have created more ways to watch than ever, but rights are spread across a growing list of services. 

Despite this friction, there’s still a real appetite for sports content. As Gracenote found, 68% of fans say they are paying for at least one service because of its sports offering, and half say they would likely add another to get the programming they want. They are also clear about what they’d like to see fixed. 85% of fans want their TV home screen to show upcoming games and where-to-watch information, for the teams they follow, and 91% say centralizing that information would make games easier to find. The rights themselves may stay split across platforms, but EMARKETER expects about 122.7 million U.S. live sports viewers will watch through digital services this year. That means the platforms that make those games easier to find stand to turn a navigation problem into a reason fans stick around.

Our Take
Following the rights around is an expensive way to find a sports fan. One fan carries an average of 3.6 sports streaming apps, so the advertisers who reach them consistently this season will be the ones targeting the viewer rather than the platform. And the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to sports streaming audiences, which have long over-indexed on receptivity: 67% say they pay more attention to ads that match their interests, and 62% have discovered a product through a streaming ad. We think that makes audience precision the smarter buy.

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