The death of sports broadcasting

Latest statistics show dramatic decline in legal sports viewership
Zafir Nagji, Sports Editor |
Sports have become a mainstay in the entertainment industry. From ball sports to motorsports to combat sports, there has never been a more plentiful selection of competitive athletics for fans to enjoy. However, many leagues are experiencing massive declines in viewership, including the NBA, NHL, MLS, and the NFL.
This comes as a massive surprise, as streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Tubi, and others have begun broadcasting sports on their platforms. So, if more sports are available on more platforms than ever before, why are the viewership numbers declining so drastically?
The numbers
According to Sports Media Watch, NBA games on NBA TV, ABC, ESPN, and TNT have seen a 25 per cent decline in TV viewership this season compared to last year. Compared to the ratings in 2012, the association has seen a 48 per cent decline and ESPN alone has seen a reduction in viewership of 28 per cent, according to Front Office Sports.
The NBA is not alone in this, as the NFL averaged 17.5 million viewers per game during the regular season, a two per cent decline compared to 2023. Even the wild-card playoff round, which featured six of the most exciting games of the season that determined playoff seeding, averaged 28.3 million viewers per game, a 9.3 per cent decline compared to the 31.2 million viewers last year.
Despite excitement building around Lionel Messi joining the MLS and Apple TV signing on as a media partner, the North American league saw a whopping 47 per cent decrease in TV viewership for the Cup final compared to last year. Apple TV does not release their viewership numbers, but, according to The Athletic, “a source briefed on the numbers said overall viewership including streaming was down — though not by 47 per cent.”
How did we get here?
Streaming services have all but replaced television networks. According to a study by Nielsen, almost 42 per cent of all TV viewing in November 2024 was on streaming services. Many leagues, like the World Wrestling Entertainment, All Elite Wrestling, NFL, NHL, MLS, and even the NBA’s developmental G-League have all moved onto streaming services.
Additionally, many TV stations, like Sportsnet, TSN, DAZN, and others have made their channel subscriptions available to purchase on Prime Video and other services. Netflix hosted the infamous boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson as well as the full slate of Christmas Day NFL games, while Prime Video shows a selection of NHL games every Monday for all subscribers.
On those streaming services, the numbers look much better for most of these sports. According to PwC, “the number of US viewers who stream a sports event at least once a month is projected to rise to over 90 million” in 2025. Compared to the 57 million in 2021, that growth is exponential.
However, not all the streaming services viewers use to follow their favorite sports are entirely legal. Fans have resorted to illegal streaming services in droves, citing rising costs and regional blackouts as influential factors in their decisions.
Let’s use the NBA as our example. Canadian hoops fans can subscribe to the NBA’s streaming service, NBA League Pass, for a minimum one-time cost of $72.99 or a monthly subscription fee of $19.99 per month. However, to appease their national broadcast networks, like ESPN and NBA on TNT, as well as regional networks, like TSN and SportsNet, some games are “blacked out,” or not available to watch, on League Pass. This includes 511 nationally broadcasted games, which make up over 20 per cent of all regular season games, as well as all 82 Toronto Raptors games.
As a result, Canadian NBA watchers need to subscribe to NBA League Pass, Sportsnet, TSN, and Prime Video in order to legally watch their favourite league. Assuming a monthly subscription model for each of these services, that would cost $75 per month, adding up to a yearly cost of $900.
All of those services, apart from League Pass, do include access to other leagues too, but present a massive monthly financial burden that many people cannot realistically justify.
According to a Synamedia and Ampere Analysis report from March 2021, sports piracy is costing the industry over $28 billion USD. The same report found that, “74% of those who currently illegally stream would be willing to switch to a legal source if one was readily available.”
Plus, with illegal sites no longer suffering from buffering issues and VPNs and ad-blockers becoming more readily available, illegally streaming sporting events has never been easier.
In 2016, the McGregor-Mayweather boxing match saw 239 illegal streams steal three million views, according to Business Wire, with one of those streams alone amassing over 900,000 active users at the same time. That equates to around $100 million USD in lost revenue for Showtime, the broadcaster for the event. 445,000 users also downloaded the fight after it concluded, dealing even more damage to the broadcasting company and reducing post-event views and revenue.
Why does this even matter?
All of these leagues churn billions of dollars of revenue every single year, and the giant national media networks that broadcast their games earn even more. The move to streaming also gives more money to streaming services and some teams, like the Las Vegas Golden Knights, are even offering their own direct-to-consumer streaming platforms to capitalize on this new form of engagement.
As a result, to the average fan, the widespread decline in paid viewership of sporting events may not seem like a cause worth worrying about. However, the rise of streaming services, legal and illegal, is causing a meltdown of regional sports networks. This could result in massive job losses for local sports broadcasters and huge cost increases for consumers, who will have to flock to paid streaming services to legally watch their favourite leagues.
Some might argue that, with the improvement in illegal streaming services, watching sports for free has never been easier. For students and other young adults, this has become the only way to affordably keep up with professional sports. According to Queen’s Business Review, “30 per cent of respondents in a survey aged 18 to 24 admitted to regularly watching sports illegally, compared to only four per cent of those over 35.”
That rising number spells bad news for the future of legal sports viewership, and the United States Government has now begun to get involved on the issue. The Department of Homeland Security is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to take down a number of illicit streaming sites, threatening to prosecute anyone who uses them and stating that even first-time offenders can be subject to up to five years in prison.
Still, many of these sites own hundreds, if not thousands, of domains operating all at once and some have pledged to continue creating more until sports become affordable for all. Until then, the cyber-war between high-cost legal sports streaming services and affordable illegal streaming will continue to rage on.
If you’re looking to watch games legally, consider subscribing to your favourite sports’ respective streaming services. Some services, like Prime Video, offer student discounts and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) provides Hockey Night in Canada as well as numerous other sporting events to Canadian viewers for free through their CBC Gem streaming platform and CBC Sports website.
Bars, pubs and restaurants are another great way to tune in to games, especially if you enjoy watching your local teams around similarly-minded fans, and provide a great way to support local businesses. For the full article, check out TheReflector.ca or download our free app.
Zafir Nagj is the Sports Editor for The Reflector 2024-2025.