Live sports is drifting from linear TV to fragmented streaming. That’s raising costs, confusing viewers, and forcing leagues and advertisers to navigate new tradeoffs between reach, revenues, and shifting time spent.

Ad-supported streaming is on the rise: New data shows ad-supported viewership was up compared with other OTT services in 2020, opening up more inventory for linear TV budget shifts—and that trend is likely to only continue in 2021.

The pandemic led to lower TV ad spend and increased connected TV viewing this year. The shift in TV viewing means TV audience measurement gaps must be addressed to keep pace with how, what, and where consumers are watching TV.

We previously expected there to be 80.5 million US pay TV households this year. We updated our forecast in August, and we now believe that figure will decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million. Our pay TV figures exclude virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), which deliver live TV over the internet.​

Sports are on hold in the US due to the coronavirus pandemic, but digital live sports viewership will still rise more than 14% this year thanks to continued organic growth and accelerated cord-cutting.