Streamers battle for sports rights: Media companies are hinting at new plans to use live sports to drive streaming subscriptions, which could grow the audience of sport fans who can be targeted through digital channels.

Business Insider Intelligence senior research analyst Audrey Schomer, eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes, forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom, and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss TV: How are sports audiences changing, and how does that affect pay TV? They then talk about T-Mobile's new skinny TV bundle, Roku's Q3 earnings, and live TV streaming prices.

eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes, forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom and senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Oscar Orozco discuss the gradual return of sports audiences and how advertisers are viewing these marketing opportunities. They then talk about Facebook halting political ads after the election, Twitch selling inventory on Amazon's advertising platform, and out-of-home advertising in Q2.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

However, not all of Twitch’s user growth is coming from GVC, as the platform has become increasingly popular for content outside of the gaming world, such as livestreams of traditional sports broadcasts, live events like concerts, and more mainstream influencer content like product tutorials and reviews.

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.

Earlier this week, Mars Wrigley’s M&M's brand gave fans a sneak peak of its Super Bowl ad via Zoom, its first-ever "virtual" debut. It’s just one of several efforts the company is working on leading up to Sunday’s big game.

“Some leagues, especially F1 and Nascar, have seen a lot of great success as their sports have transitioned from traditional sports to esports viewing,” said Dan Conti, director of sports and live offerings at ad agency Wavemaker.

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.

(By our estimates, the total number of live sports viewers fell 0.2% in 2020 to 154.1 million.) But it’s still uncertain whether the past year will be an outlier or if the downward ratings trend will continue. For CBS, however, the Super Bowl’s smaller audience will likely have no impact on the company’s bottom line since the majority of advertising commitments did not include a ratings guarantee.

There’s no question the 2020/2021 upfronts season experienced a significant dip due to the pandemic’s impact on production and live sports, not to mention the uncertainty advertisers were facing. But to say that the upfronts are going away entirely would ignore the value they’ve long provided for both networks and advertisers, which are after all, essentially futures markets.

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.

Sports fans use ESPN+ to watch on-demand sports content like the “30 for 30” documentary series. But most live sports that ABC and ESPN show are not broadcast on this streaming service. Highly viewed games are still reserved for live TV channels through MVPDs and vMVPDs. ESPN+ features some live sports, but the selection is mostly limited to lower-profile games.