COVID-19 Trends Could Speed Sports Viewership Declines: LightShed
Entertainment trends accelerated by COVID-19 could speed sports viewership declines, just as the industry's nascent focus on e-betting micro-wagering on in-progress professional games requires better technology, LightShed analysts wrote Tuesday (login required). With more competition for attention, “historically resilient sports…
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TV viewership has been hard hit,” even as “most consumers were stuck at home.” So "with viewership fading and linear TV demographics aging up fast, the pace of advertising dollars shifting away from TV toward digital will undoubtedly accelerate," analysts noted. States legalizing sports wagering expands the market by making it easier to bet, especially on mobile devices, analysts said. More engagement with linear sports TV would be positive for ads and boost long-term values of sports rights, even as cord cutting accelerates, they said. But technology isn’t there yet due to latency, said LightShed. It cited a “significant delay” between broadcast TV over MVPDs vs. over-the-top video streaming, “on top of a delay between what is happening on the field and the broadcast feed."