FutureSPORT 2025: Caretta Research on Why Streaming Won't Save Broadcasters

FutureSPORT 2025: Caretta Research on why streaming won't save broadcasters By Jo Ruddock

Monday, November 10, 2025 - 14:37

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Caretta Research's Rebecca Jackson treated the audience at last week's FutureSPORT event to a comprehensive deep dive into the trends impacting European sports production and distribution.

Developing key points highlighted at last year's event, including how online viewing is giving more vendors the opportunity to enter the sports sector, budget pressures and how experimental trends need to pay their way, she was quick to point out that streaming has not saved broadcasters despite a lot of investment into it.

What we've seen over the past year, and what we predict going forward, is that revenue is all coming from streaming, she said. In the past few years we've seen broadcasters really flatlining, but we're also seeing streaming on an upward tick. We saw the point of convergence in 2023 to 2024 and it's only going to continue up from there. What's interesting about this is not only that revenue growth is coming from streaming, but more so that streaming growth is not coming from broadcasters. If we look at the top revenue coming from streaming, we see that it's primarily coming from major streamers, and that growth is set to continue.

Broadcasters themselves are increasingly investing in live over streaming.

This makes a lot of sense, and we've definitely seen the flatlining of investment into online video platform technology, whereas we're seeing increased investment into live production, she explains. This is broadcasters' biggest advantage so that does make a lot of sense, and it also makes sense because that's what we're seeing is driving traditional content creation.

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However, Caretta's research, including sizing the rights landscape, also reveals that live content is under attack. As expected, Europe and the US have the biggest rights spends, followed by Asia, the Middle East and LATAM, with growth expected to continue in a similar trajectory. The UK is Europe's biggest buyer of rights by deal value, highlighting that specific regions are prioritising their investment into rights.

This growth over time is really going to drive what happens within the market, Jackson continues. Now it's not only broadcasters that are buying rights; premium live rights are moving towards streaming as well. Streaming providers are growing the most in terms of their investment in rights, and we're seeing that growth at a pretty stable percentage, which puts a lot of pressure on those broadcasters who are very much relying on rights for one of their major streams of income.

Indeed, it's now not only the major streamers who are investing in rights.

What's super interesting is that smaller organisations are also investing in rights and creating new experiences with them. So you've got Caz TV who's bought different rights for the World Cup and different Premier League rights, as well as rugby rights for Eggchasers. And, generally, we're seeing this big shift towards it not only being content that's there for tier ones, but all the way down to the lower tiers as well. And that's really changing the way in which, firstly, rights are monetised, but secondly, the way in which rights are consumed.

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Jackson says this move also aligns with how younger generations are consuming content.

They want more from the way that they consume content, she says. They want to have multiple things going on on the screen at the same time; they want to have stats coming up; they want to be able to engage with content more actively. I think that's going to be super important in terms of maintaining that competitive edge.

These evolving viewing habits also mean that tech needs to drive engagement and protect experiences. When it comes to the technology helping to do this, sports data tools are showing the most growth, because they allow people to have additional experiences when watching sports , according to Jackson. The same goes for live graphics and live sports graphics. Anything that can pull in different audiences by adding to their experiences is really, really powerful, and it's what's going to help people the most when it comes to keeping those views on their content.

Highlights clipping and reversioning is also important because if you've got a live match and you haven't got the tools to clip, reversion or change your content into a different format, you're going to be missing out on viewers and pulling viewers into the longer form content .

The importance of MAM systems was also highlighted by Caretta's research. Anything that allows you to do the most with the content that you have is what's really going to support that growth of the content, but also the growth of your viewership, the growth of the fan base, and ultimately allow you to further monetise that fan base on top of traditional ways of viewing.

Investing in that right tech is what's going to separate people and offer that opportunity to keep thriving in an incredibly competitive space, she concluded.

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/futuresport-2025-caretta-rese...
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