Sports has long been a bulwark for linear TV, ensuring viewers keep their cable bundles even after their favorite movies and series migrate to streaming. But the rapid rise of streamed sports has changed the playing field, allowing advertisers to reach fans in ways that are more native to the viewing experience.
“Today, viewers can make personalized choices and engage with advertisers’ messages more directly,” according to Joe Franzetta, head of sports at Roku Media.
For the past 12 years, Franzetta has had a front-row seat to the wild changes in sports media. In his previous role as a VP at Fox Sports, he worked with NASCAR, Big East, Big Ten and other partners to secure rights. And he’s seen up close how the surge in streaming is changing the game.
That surge is playing out on Roku. With 75+ million global active accounts and immersive hubs such as our Sports Experience, our platform provides engaged reach across a broad swath of leagues and streaming channels: NFL on Peacock, MLS on AppleTV+, Formula E on The Roku Channel and many others.
We spoke to Franzetta about the state of play in sports streaming and how Roku is helping advertisers overcome fragmentation and reach fans.
First, more sports are moving into streaming. Amazon has exclusive Thursday Night Football. Peacock just did the biggest streamed live event ever, an exclusive NFL game streamed by an average audience of 23 million viewers.¹ The NBA is the next big deal on the horizon, and everybody expects a significant streaming component.
The regional sports networks, who hold local rights to Major League Baseball, NBA, and NHL, are going through a seismic shift. They're upside down on obligations to their teams, relative to decreasing revenue from their distribution partners. Everyone knows there's a more significant streaming component to that future.
You'll also see a rise in free, ad-supported sports, such as The Roku Channel with Formula E and Tubi’s deal with the NBA G League.
Sports rights are extremely effective at driving audiences and in high demand, which makes them expensive. The rights’ owners often get the best economics by splitting rights among multiple parties. Roku’s Sports Experience is a response to that fragmentation.
We worked with our distribution partners and their major league partners to marry content and live events in a destination within our platform. If you want to watch a College Football game, you can visit Roku’s Sports experience to find it. Click on that game, and we'll tell you where to watch it. You’ll either have direct access because you're a subscriber, or you’ll need to subscribe, which we can enable. Or it's free and you just click to watch it.
Roughly three-quarters of Roku streamers follow sports, and close to a third are avid sports fans.² Viewers who stream TV sports moments such as the Big Game on Roku tend to be younger compared to those who watch via linear TV.³
Roku’s Sports Zone continues to show growth in visitors YoY. In fact, we’ve seen a 69% increase in monthly unique visits from last year to this year.⁴
All the big tentpole events like the World Series finals and NBA finals still get a lot of attention. Viewership for this year’s College Football Championships grew year-over-year for both traditional linear TV and streaming via Roku.⁵
But the Big Game is still the biggest broadcast by far. The NFL just had over 90 of the top 100 broadcasts last year.⁶
We like to create immersive experiences around those tentpoles. For example, the Rich Eisen show streamed wall-to-wall football coverage in the days leading up to the Big Game. We had multiple sponsors integrated with that show.
In the week prior to the game, Roku’s NFL Zone included lots of Big Game-related content, not only the game itself.
There are many ways for advertisers to surround these experiences and get involved with the transition to streaming. Opportunities like our Sports Experience and Sports Zones provide always-on, immersive experiences with easy access to live games. Advertisers can be adjacent to tentpoles and surround those events.
We also offer opportunities like Formula E where brands can participate on multiple levels: advertising in the live program while buying part of the surrounding experience.
We identified the Formula E championship series as a partner that made sense for our ad-supported model. Formula E has been around for about 10 years, with incredibly high production value and a great product on the track. As they sought to further heighten awareness and engagement, they settled on Roku as the ideal partner to achieve those objectives.
We can highlight Formula E and expose them to a much larger audience by promoting them directly when a race is live. We also built an entire experience called the Formula E Zone, where we've got their live races, replays, documentaries, explainer videos, and past seasons’ races and highlights. We're doing a bespoke pre-event show for Roku called “Recharge,” where we have a host on the ground talking to fans, drivers, and team principals.
Formula E was our first live sports presentation where we were the rights partner. We secured ad inventory on Roku’s platform to promote the race. We can use those levers in unique ways because we have both a platform and a service. When you marry them, we can do interesting things.
Women's sports are poised to grow at a much faster pace than other sports. They’re really getting traction from a viewership and sponsorship perspective. The National Women’s Soccer League and Women's volleyball both have an opportunity to grow. And Women's college basketball and the WNBA are also doing well.
Plus, we have seen big streaming moves around sports entertainment and motorsports. Netflix's 10-year exclusive agreement with WWE to live-stream “Raw” is groundbreaking, and NASCAR’s latest deal includes five premier races that will be exclusively live-streamed.
Rich Eisen all day, every day. And my wife and I are watching “Beckham” together.
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² Roku Internal Data, Based on a survey of 1,307 Roku users in September, 2021/2022
³ Roku Internal Data, 2023
⁴¯⁵ Roku Internal Data, 2024
⁶ Forbes