FAST Sports Programming Surges at More Than Twice the Rate of Sports Channel Growth

New Gracenote Data Hub analysis finds sports program titles up 31.2% and individual games and events up 37.5% year over year, versus 13.8% growth in sports channels

NEW YORK - August 20, 2026 - Gracenote, Nielsen's content intelligence business, today released its Q3 2026 Data Hub analysis, showing that free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) sports growth extends far beyond new channel launches, with substantially more programming distributed across the ecosystem.

The number of FAST channels classified as sports rose 13.8% year over year to 264. Over the same period, unique sports program titles increased 31.2%, while individual games and events distributed across FAST climbed 37.5%.

Each measure captures a different dimension of the FAST sports market. Channel count tracks FAST channels classified as sports, while program title count reflects the breadth of distinct offerings. Because a single sports program title can encompass many games or competitions, tracking them individually provides a fuller picture of the volume of sports distributed across FAST.

In July, sports programming appeared on 20 FAST channels outside the sports category. The pattern resembles traditional television, where sports serves as both destination programming on dedicated channels and as part of lineups centered on other genres.

Sports programming also grew faster than FAST overall. Globally, FAST channel count increased 17.5% year over year to 2,172, compared with 18.6% gains in total video distribution and 19.4% in TV program titles.

The resulting larger sports inventory gives FAST programmers greater flexibility to create varied schedules and reduce reliance on frequently repeated content. More broadly, the findings suggest that competitive differentiation across FAST will increasingly be shaped by the range and volume of programming within the ecosystem-not channel count alone.

About the Gracenote Data Hub The Gracenote Data Hub is a set of data visualizations tracking the volume and composition of programming available across leading global subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD) and FAST channels. Derived from Gracenote Global Video Data and updated quarterly, the Data Hub covers Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney , HBO Max, Netflix and Paramount , as well as more than 2,170 FAST channels.

Q3 Data Hub reporting pairs program title counts with data on individual episodes, games and events, offering a more granular view of programming distribution and revealing changes beneath topline catalog and channel counts.

Explore the full Q3 2026 Gracenote Data Hub update, including the latest trends across FAST and SVOD here

About Gracenote Gracenote is the content intelligence business unit of Nielsen. We standardize the way the global media and entertainment ecosystem indexes content and associated metadata, allowing it to flow between creators, distributors, platforms and advertisers. By providing unmatched depth across 55M titles and 80K channels and catalogs, we power the modern search, discovery and navigation experiences that connect people to the TV, movies, music and sports they love - in 70 languages across 80 countries. For more information, visit Gracenote.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact Mark Yamada

mark.yamada@nielsen.com

LINK:	https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/fast-sports-programming-surge...
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