With Carlos Alcaraz and Markéta Vondroušová winning the 136th edition of Wimbledon, Kantar U.K. Commercial Director for Sport Andrew Brember couldn’t help but notice the change in sports viewers’ behaviors and how events that were once broadcast on linear channels only are becoming available on all platforms and all screens, making cross-media audience measurement crucial to stay on top of the game.
But, is the U.S. an anomaly, given the sudden shift in sports rights away from cable networks to over-the-air television?
Given the news that The CW Network has struck an exclusivity deal with NASCAR for a key series and that Gray Television’s Phoenix stations can move forward with a plan to become the broadcast home of the Suns and Mercury NBA and WNBA franchises, respectively, the “death” of the Regional Sports Network in the U.S. is a topic many across broadcast television have discussed of late.
In Great Britain, and perhaps elsewhere, the conversation is markedly different. There, the Wimbledon tennis tournament was previously only available on BBC’s linear distribution channels. This year, Brember notes, tennis fans could watch any court of their choosing, either live or on-demand.
“More and more sports events are now available on streaming platforms, giving the most passionate fans the opportunity to watch multiple games at the same time,” Brember says. And, given Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night NFL package and MLB games each Friday on AppleTV+, the rise of OTT platforms as homes for league coverage meshes with the availability in France of the Ligue 1 soccer championship in 2021 on Amazon Prime as well as on cable TV channels from Canal+ and BeIN Sports.
While digital-exclusive distribution of sports is indeed a hot topic in the C-Suite, the arrival of Friday night WNBA games to Ion, thanks to an agreement recently forged with The E.W. Scripps Co., suggests the U.S. is paving its own bath when it comes to a global cross-media evolution for sports viewing as seen by Kantar.
In the U.K., the streaming sports only seems to be getting stronger. According to the BBC, Wimbledon was streamed 54.3 million times on the BBC iPlayer. This compares to 30.5 million times in 2021.
Here in the U.S., the Amazon Prime and AppleTV+ sports coverage means advertisers need to consider both streaming and linear opportunities. How they know where their target audience is, how they consume content, how their viewing time is spent across screens and “the sequence in which they watch” will become Paramount, Brember says.
On the other hand, he says, media owners need to know the behaviors of their audiences regarding sports events to value their inventory to advertisers — and to ensure they are delivering the trusted audience metrics to rights holders. “Audience measurement intelligence in the context of sports is vital to guide businesses involved in their strategic decisions,” Brember concludes. “The benefits are in the early insights that it unlocks, thus enabling businesses to reach, engage and ultimately monetize audiences. Next year, one of the biggest sport tournaments will take place in Paris — the Olympics. This leaves us wondering how are they going to be consumed and even more importantly, how are they going to be sold to advertisers.”
