Streamers Eye Sports Rights as a Way to Stand Out With Subscribers

Paramount+, formerly known as CBS All Access, has always had live sports on its service, thanks to the string of rights agreements that brought live match-ups to the streamer. The company saw subscriptions spike after airing every game of the 2020 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Challenge Cup, giving it proof of how much value live sports can bring to streaming. “We found pretty quickly that the [NWSL] audience exceeded our expectations,” said Jeffrey Gerttula, the evp and gm of CBS Sports Digital. “There was an audience that was more willing to spend, was bigger, and that was more valuable than anticipated. We quickly saw that, and that just sort of sharpened and increased our appetite for the sport.” Happy accidents like this are shaping the future of sports viewing, as media companies weigh all the ways they can build up their subscription bases and keep consumers coming back for more. And while live sports are still a mainstay of linear television, streamers are looking at sports rights as a way to stand out in a crowded market by offering super-fans programming in one place. Sports fans sign up It’s a simple calculation, said Adam Deutsch, a managing director at Deloitte: Sports come with their own built-in audiences, which can help drive subscribers to streaming services. “You don’t have to do anything on your platform to make people care, or get them invested, or do a bunch of marketing,” Deutsch said. “If you can harness that built-in demand, get people to test-drive your platform, understand that it’s the exclusive place to gain access to something that they care about, you can really build and accrue a nice audience on that platform.” In the wake of women’s soccer’s success on the service, Paramount+ has bet squarely on soccer. In recent months, the service, along with CBS Sports, has struck multiple rights deals in an effort to make Paramount+ home to hundreds of high-demand matches. Last month, CBS Sports and Paramount+ acquired the exclusive U.S. rights through 2024 to Serie A, Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana, with plans to deliver more than 400 club matches live each season. The streamer also became the English-language U.S. home of Argentina’s professional soccer leagues Liga Profesional de Fútbol, Copa de la Liga Profesional and Supercopa Argentina (starting in 2022)—bringing to the service an additional 423 soccer matches in 2021 alone. In February, Paramount+ and Concacaf struck a deal for more than 200 matches, including the qualifiers for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 and matches of 41 national teams from North America, central America and the Caribbean. Paramount+ also holds the rights to every men’s UEFA Champions League and Europa League match. Gerttula says the approach is based on a long-term effort to court soccer and sports fans. “The economics towards streaming services, it’s not just the acquisition, but it’s the lifetime value—the idea being that if we could provide more sports, we could increase the value of that sports consumer,” Gerttula said, adding that the current strategy centers on "aggressive soccer rights acquisition.” There’s also a programming reason behind snapping up lots of rights all at once, instead of cherry-picking a few matches here and there. “You can own pretty much all of it,” Gerttula explained. “When we buy these rights, we have every game or almost every game, and then you can program around that. We think that through our ability to tell stories and through our production capability, we can raise the standard [through] which soccer is presented to the public.” Other match-ups make the shift Paramount+ is not alone in its pursuit of soccer. NBCUniversal is also diving into soccer coverage, and CEO Jeff Shell previously said the Premier League performed particularly well for the streamer (although top games usually air on NBC Sports Network.) The company is increasingly shifting other sports programming away from its linear channels, too. In January, NBCUniversal announced it would shut down the sports cable network (home of NASCAR, the NHL and some live Olympic coverage) and move the programming to USA Network and Peacock. The company also rerouted content from the subscription service WWE Network to Peacock to bulk up sports offerings further. Slowly but surely, American football is also making its way onto streaming. NFL’s recent rights deal with broadcasters made that clear, offering enhanced streaming rights to NBC, ESPN and CBS. As part of the deal, CBS will stream its games on Paramount+. All ABC and ESPN games will be simulcast on ESPN+ (with ESPN+ subscribers able to stream one international series game exclusively every season). Fox’s Tubi will deliver NFL programming on digital platforms, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock will have “an exclusive feed” of a select number of games. By 2023, it won’t just be simulcasts. Amazon Prime Video, which has been simulcasting Thursday Night Football games since 2017, will have the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football, marking the first time ever that a streaming service is in a primary position for an NFL rights deal. One major test of broadcasters’ trust in sports as a streaming business driver will come this year with the summer Olympics on NBCUniversal. While the games will exist in some form on Peacock, the company has not yet detailed exactly how much programming will exist there compared to its wall-to-wall linear coverage. Weighing the risks Surrounding sports’ slow migration to streaming is the concern that over-the-top services cannibalize linear network ratings and programming options, one that Deutsch acknowledges may be an inevitability. “It might risk the size of the audience that goes to your core dedicated sports network,” Deutsch said. “I just don’t know if that’s happening in the next three to five years, but I think there’s a trend in that direction.” For now, though, broadcasters say streaming and linear sports can exist in harmony on both platforms. “[Broadcast] is a great business, it’s not going anywhere for a long time, and on the cable side too,” Gerttula said. “ESPN, CBS Sports Network, FS1—there are audiences there, and putting sports on those networks is going to make sense so long as the distribution’s there.” Fox RSNs Rebrand to Bally Sports, Just in Time for MLB Opening Day