Streaming services will spend $12.5 billion on sports in 2025

Streaming services will spend $12.5 billion on sports in 2025

New sports rights acquisitions by Netflix and Prime Video are helping to fuel another increase in sports spending.

Last year saw big gains in the amount of money streaming services spent on live sports. According to Ampere Analysis, streamers spent a collective $10 billion on live sports in 2024, and the number is only going up. Ampere’s new data suggests that streamers will spend $12.5 billion on sports rights in 2025, and will account for 20% of the overall sports content spend during the year.
Key Details:

• DAZN will remain the global leader in sports spending in 2025.
• Netflix’s NFL and WWE deals are fueling increases, as well as Prime Video’s NBA rights package.
• YouTube TV’s NFL Sunday Ticket deal is also a big contributor to the overall spend.

Streaming services have never accounted for 20% of the overall sports content spend before. The number has grown steadily, however; in 2021, streaming services only provided 8% of the total spend for sports rights, and that number has increased every year since. In 2024, streamers contributed 18% of the overall total.
The global sports service DAZN will spend the most on live sports in 2025. It will account for one-third of the streaming sports content spend on its own, bolstered by its new deal to stream the FIFA Club World Cup. DAZN also streams NFL football, NBA basketball, top soccer leagues, and more in various global territories outside the United States.
On-demand streaming services are accounting for an increasingly large portion of the sports content spend, as well. Prime Video’s deal to stream a package of NBA games starting in the 2025-26 season boosts its share of the streaming sports spend to 23%.
Netflix now accounts for 5% of that pie, thanks to an agreement to stream episodes of “WWE Raw” weekly for $500 million annually, as well as a deal to offer NFL games on Christmas Day. Netflix was reluctant to spend on live sports for a long time, but recent reports indicate it could jump back into pursuitof Formula 1 racing rights if and when they hit the open market.
YouTube TV accounts for 16% of the streaming sports content outlay, thanks in large part to the $2 billion per season it pays for the rights to stream NFL Sunday Ticket. Whether YouTube TV will ever make a profit off Sunday Ticket is an open question, but there’s no denying it pays a pretty penny for the privilege.

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Streaming services will continue to partner with top sports leagues as league executives increasingly realize that they simply cannot find the same audience on linear TV that they used to. Cord-cutting has had an irrevocable effect on the size of the linear TV audience, and streaming services are ready and willing to step in and pay what would once have been considered exorbitant prices to assure leagues that they won’t have to take less revenue in deals with streamers.

Article: https://thestreamable.com/streamers-to-spend-12-5-billion-on-sports-2025