Sports, Concerts, and Live Events. Live events, including sports and esports, concerts, festivals, and conferences, present perpetual challenges for broadcasters. Not only do the most-watched ones, such as the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and Tour de France, put stress on networks, but they often have poor in-venue service for fans who attend them live.

Digital sports viewership continues to grow in the US but is also growing abroad—and both Disney+ Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video offer live sports streaming to Indian subscribers. Netflix, known for investing heavily in original content at home, is now beginning to do the same in India, but it may be too far behind the curve to compete with two existing services that have proven cultural impact.

This forecast includes livestreaming activity on social networks and video platforms, as well as other live content such as news and sports that are streamed on virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) platforms, like Sling TV and Hulu + Live TV.

In 2020, TV ad spending in Canada cratered, falling by 16.2% YoY—the postponement of professional sports league games and the Olympics was a major factor. Live sports prop up TV viewership and ad spending: There’s a nationwide audience for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays. Meanwhile, the NHL’s seven Canadian franchises draw committed regional TV audiences.

Throughout March and April 2020, live sports stopped, content production was shut down, and thousands of companies both small and large culled their marketing budgets as an economic recession and health crisis placed the viability of their businesses in doubt.

“We think the return of sports is a major factor, since at least 20% of national TV spend is linked to sports events.” Q3 TV spending activity supports the importance of live sports.

With an increase in live events, sports, and product launches in 2021 over 2020, advertisers flocked to Twitter due to increased demands for advertising campaigns on the platform. This was big for Twitter, given that advertising will make up 89% of the platform's total revenues in 2021. We expect that figure to flutter above 91% in 2023.

The pandemic has brought an influx of new users for subscription OTT, live videos, and video games in 2020, but other activities such as social networking, mobile messaging, and digital video haven’t seen the same bump.

In 2020, US live sports viewers will decline slightly, by 0.2%, to 154.1 million. Next year, live sports viewers will grow 1.4%. Almost half of the US population watches a live sport at least once per month. Digital sports viewership is growing, but it is still a small portion of total sports viewers. This year, digital live sports video viewers will increase 14.2% to 36.5 million.

A growing availability of content, including live sports, on streaming platforms has also made CTV an attractive option. Because of these considerations, we made a sizable upward revision to our CTV user forecast for 2020 to 2024. The 40.9 million CTV users we now expect for 2020 is up by 2.3 million from our previous forecast of 38.6 million.

YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV receive about three-fourths of total vMVPD subscription revenues. These services have heavily marketed themselves around live sports and leaned on their experience with digital video advertising. OTT subscription revenues will still grow this year but not as much as they did during 2020 stay-at-home orders.

As more people cut the cord, viewers are increasingly tuning in to live digital video services.

The pandemic led to the cancellation of live sports and upended programming schedules during 2020. This in turn led to double-digit declines for TV ad spending across the six markets we forecast in Latin America. The TV ad markets in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru were hit hardest, while Chile, Mexico, and Colombia saw double-digit decreases in the mid- to high teens.

The number of people watching live video of any kind (including sports, news, video games and other types) was already growing in the US before the pandemic, and it stands to increase even further afterward. In our March 2019 forecast, we predicted that in 2020, 48% of digital video viewers would watch live content each month.

In the absence of live sports, the media was quick to champion esports as the obvious alternative. However, according to a May survey from GlobalWebIndex, only 4% of US internet users said they were spending more time on esports. Will heightened publicity during the pandemic be enough to draw larger and more diverse audiences into competitive gaming for years to come?

DePaoli of RBC discussed the challenge of having to “navigate the enormous strategic and logistical complexities of winding things down,” including newly launched ad campaigns for credit cards, and a number of initiatives such as live music events and sports partnerships.

On today's episode, we discuss whether sports are the key to moving viewers from TVs to streaming platforms, if online audiences can ever rival TV viewership, and whether people will want to watch user-generated or professionally made content online. We then talk about the most interesting part of The Walt Disney Co.'s streaming endeavors, how HBO Max stacks up so far, and how this second year of virtual upfronts might be different. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Ross Benes.

Amazon’s Amp looks to differentiate itself in the crowded live audio field: Mobile app lets users play DJ and leverage retail giant’s mighty song catalog.