Sports content in free streaming is still relatively scant, but it's growing, right along with its monetization capabilitiesStreaming-tech company Wurl recently shocked the streaming-video business when it released data suggesting that sports usage accounts for only 2.7% of viewership for all free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST).
It's broadly understood that tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Netflix have become a lot more aggressive in acquiring rights to sports content, both live and otherwise, while traditionally rooted media companies are rapidly shifting their multibillion-dollar rights portfolios to their own paid streaming platforms. Nielsen division Gracenote recently released its own data indicating a 52% year-over-year increase in sports content in subscription streaming.
But what about FAST, which accounts for around 6% of all U.S. TV viewing, according to Nielsen. Based on figures just released by the research company, nearly 30% of all sports-TV viewing in the U.S. during the fourth quarter came from ad-supported sports programming watched by adults 25-54. That can't all be linear broadcast and cable viewing, can it?
And what about all those free channels launched over the past several years by big pro leagues, such as the NBA, and more niche-focused channels and platforms from smaller leagues (think competitive lumber-jacking)? Really? Nobody's watching them?
That turns out not to be the case at all.
An Unexploited Opportunity'
Sports [usage] on FASTs is small now, but we do know it's growing, says Daniel Marshall, executive VP, sales, Amagi, a leading streaming SaaS company that provides the main streaming-technology infrastructure for many of the world's leading FAST channels.
If Wurl's 2.7% figure seems small, it's because there's almost an infinite amount of non-sports content on FASTs, he adds. We know that sports usage on FASTs is growing because so much more live sports is coming to FASTs.
The same Gracenote report, released in February, concurs, citing a 30% year-over-year uptick in FAST sports content. Meanwhile, Amagi just released data indicating that, in fourth quarter 2025, overall FAST viewership was up 21% from 2024.
Wurl EMEA GM Keith Bedford says that 2.7% figure does not suggest that there's no business for sports in free streaming. It's just the opposite. He believes that the FAST market remains a vastly unexploited opportunity for leagues and rightsholders alike.
He cites German soccer league Bundesliga's recent proliferation to the UK and Ireland on Samsung TV Plus as a prime example of how a pro-sports organization popular on a mass-TV consumption level locally finds niche audiences in other regions, traveling on the tvOS back of the world's biggest seller of smart TVs.
That has been a high-performing channel, Bedford says. I think that's going to lead to more niche sports rights coming to free streaming.
Exploiting what Marshall describes as incremental reach, Bedford notes, makes it more technologically and economically feasible for sports outfits like Bundesliga to get that kind of far-flung foreign viewership. It's a fairly low lift, he says, noting that Bundesliga is a client. Our technology is pretty good; we make it easy to set up a channel.
Now Every League Has a FAST Channel'
Media executive Cathy Rasenberger once helped lead ESPN's international cable expansion. In 2024, through her joint-venture involvement with Sports Studio, she jointly acquired UK-based streaming platform Sports Tribal. Out of that was launched Free Live Sports, a platform offering, at the time, more than 100 free sports channels and initially distributed in more than 75 countries via OS gateways Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Vizio, and Apple iOS and tvOS. Last October, Free Live Sports signed an agreement with Xperi to distribute 45 sports FAST channels on TiVo-powered smart TVs and automotive entertainment systems in the U.S., Europe, and South America.
Today, Free Live Sports works with more than 260 channels.
Rasenberger is coy in terms of numerical specifics. Actual third-party viewer consumption data for FAST content remains hard to come by, but she remains steadfast in her belief that the opportunity for sports on FAST remains expansive. She says she spent years encouraging major U.S. sports leagues to enter the FAST market: Now every league has a FAST channel.
Most big-league FAST content is still highlight-, analysis-, replay-, and documentary-focused or otherwise not live, serving as a complementary or supplementary element to the leagues' broader content agendas.
Prominent exceptions suggest that that dynamic is changing. The biggest FAST platform, Roku Channel, had rights to more than 18 MLB regular-season Sunday games in 2025, before NBCUniversal reclaimed those rights for Peacock this season. And, last week, Roku signed an expansion of its rights deal with X Games.
The NBA, meanwhile, is now delivering free live access to its minor circuit, the G League, to watchers on Roku and Tubi. Speaking of Tubi, the FOX FAST channel had a major role in FOX's record-breaking audience performance for the Super Bowl LIX last year, delivering 15.5 million concurrent streams of the game.
That's just a few examples.
Rasenberger believes that the real growth opportunity for FAST sports revolves around the emerging live sports leagues: all those fight leagues on Swerve Combat are a good example. This is another area rendered newly feasible via improved economics based on technological advances - in terms of both distribution and production. Live events for niche sports are yielding progressively larger audiences.
Until very recently, she says, there was no way for a pickleball tournament to get on television. But, these days, with AI-d
