How the Gen Z Playbook Is Reshaping Next-Gen Sports Streaming
Just 48 hours before Netflix kicked off its first NFL Christmas Gameday doubleheader, Emarketer announced that streaming sports viewership had surpassed viewership for sports on traditional TV. Of course, premium streamers are paying an extraordinarily high price to secure that audience, with sports media rights reaching eye-popping levels (Netflix shelled out a reported $150 million for 6 hours of Christmas Day football).
With 2025 and 2026 Christmas Gamedays also on the docket for Netflix, Amazon Prime locked in for 8 more years of Thursday Night Football at $1 billion per year, and Disney, Peacock, and Amazon entering the first season of their 11-year NBA deal this fall, streamers are clearly expected to see their sports bets pay off for years to come.
But what will sports streaming look like in 2036 in the walk year of that 11-year contract? How many old-school fans who transitioned from “traditional TV” to sports streaming this year will still be around to watch in 2037? And more to
the point, as a new generation takes its place as sports streamers’ target demographic, presenting games the same old ways on new platforms won’t cut it. The Emarketer study found that the likelihood of viewers staying tuned for entire games drops precipitously as viewers get younger, and the Gen Z crowd gravitates to highlights, clips, and less linear ways of consuming sports content. With this audience, securing clipping rights—and finding agile, innovative, and timely ways to deliver them—may prove even more valuable than the live broadcast rights.
Going ’round the horn with a handful of strategically positioned industry players reveals a range of emerging strategies in play for attracting and holding the interest of Gen Z sports fans, including building interactive experiences, emphasizing player-centric fandom, and embracing gaming and social media-based fan communities.
The Last Viewing Appointments Worth Keeping
As important as it is for sports streamers that are committing huge sums to securing sports rights to keep one eye on next-gen consumption preferences to protect those investments long term, for now, simply licensing and showing the games looks like a sound strategy.
Hub Entertainment Research principal Jon Giegengack says, “Even as the TV industry is going through this painful contraction, sports is an area where the rights keep getting more expensive, and viewership for sports continues to rise.”
“Sports right now is really the last premium live content that is driving audiences and value for both traditional television and streaming platforms,” agrees Michelle Auguste, NBA VP of media insights. “Sports, along with news, is what’s keeping TV alive, especially cable.”
Auguste notes that 96 of the top 100 programs on TV in 2023 were sporting events. That number dipped to 80 in 2024 only because it was an election year. “But we do foresee sports continuing to dominate the overall TV landscape again in 2025. To be honest, it’s the only genre that is truly appointment viewing, and it brings in the most engaged eyeballs. It’s one of only a few genres where we see CPMs continuing to rise.”
“[Gen Z fans are] our future. So as a result, we’ve had to change our strategies regarding content distribution and marketing.”—Michelle Auguste, NBA VP of Media Insights
Joe Caporoso, president of Team Whistle, a DAZN Group company focused on creating and distributing engaging sports content aimed at younger audiences, says that one reason sports viewership may be continuing to grow as other TV genres falter is a wider “expansion of international opportunities and distribution” and globalization of fan bases. “You’re also seeing a rise of more niche sports leagues that are trying different things that are giving more options for viewership and distribution.”
According to Giegengack, another factor that gives sports its unique appeal may be that with so many “buzzy original dramas” to choose from across so many different streaming platforms, the desire to catch a particular game or follow a particular sport creates a must-have reason to subscribe. “If you want to watch Breaking Bad, but you don’t have that platform, there’s some other expensive drama you can see,” he says. “But if you want to watch the NBA or you want to watch the Philadelphia Eagles or if you want to watch the Premier League, there’s no other alternative. In our studies, about 80% of avid fans of a particular league say that if they needed a new subscription to watch that league, they would definitely sign up for it.”
Giegengack suggests another reason why sports are a “safer bet” for platforms like Netflix than other types of content: the predictable appeal to an almost guaranteed audience that justifies huge spends like the $150 million it dropped on its NFL Christmas Gameday. “Netflix spent $166 million on Rebel Moon, which is a pretty reasonable price tag for a two-part sci-fi movie like that. But it’s only 4 hours of content, and it got something like a 22% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not a lot of people watched it. Nobody checks Rotten Tomatoes before deciding if they’re going to watch the NFL playoffs or the NBA. They just turn up. And so there’s a hugely predictable and big audience every time, and you’re not going to be rolling the dice the way you do with some kinds of scripted content.”
“Nobody checks Rotten Tomatoes before deciding if they’re going to watch the NFL playoffs or the NBA. They just turn up. And so there’s a hugely predictable and big audience every time, and you’re not going to be rolling the dice the way you do with some kinds of scripted content.”—Jon Giegengack, Hub Entertainment Research principal
It’s Not About Attention Spans: Adapting Sports to Gen Z Viewing Habits
As younger audiences enter the mix, sports streamers aren’t only competing for eyeballs and viewing time with cable, other leagues and live games, or even movies and other similarly long-form scripted and unscripted content. Giegengack cites a recent Hub Entertainment Research study that tracks how Gen Z viewers consume entertainment content and notes that “there are a lot of fundamental differences. They spend more time watching short-form social video, and they spend more time on video games than they do watching traditional scripted television.”
As a result, he argues, it makes sense for sports leagues and rights owners to find ways to meet those viewers where they are and “adapt to the way they consume media” if they want to keep them engaged.
The good news for sports content providers looking for ways to connect with younger audiences is that interest in sports remains high. Gen Z viewers, according to Team Whistle’s Caporoso, are by and large “as big sport fans as previous generations. They just approach it in a different way.” He continues, “I think there is more of an interest in directly following players and personalities versus teams and some of the traditional stats and news and scores that you would follow. So, maybe you’re not a huge, die-hard Jets fan who knows every box score, but you are a fan of an individual player, an individual quarterback in the NBA, you’re a Steph Curry or a LeBron fan or a Luka Doncic fan, and you’re going to follow him wherever he goes, more so than a team. Maybe you’re just going to be interested in the full, 360-degree storylines in the lives of athletes and people adjacent to athletes rather than just watching the games.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean those fans won’t watch the live games, Caporoso explains. “It just means that there’s a wider opportunity to maintain that audience’s interest and also accept the reality that a lot of times, the live game could be second-screen viewing for them. They’re going to be scrolling through their phone, they could be watching a different version or an alt cast. And I think we’ve seen a lot of rightsholders lean into the opportunity there. It’s just a different style of sports consumption, and there’s a bit of a wider interest beyond just nitty-gritty stuff that happens on the court or the field.”
“Maybe you’re not a huge, die-hard Jets fan who knows every box score, but you are a fan of an individual player … and you’re going to follow him wherever he goes, more so than a team. Maybe you’re just going to be interested in the full, 360-degree storylines in the lives of athletes and people adjacent to athletes rather than just watching the games.”—Joe Caporoso, president of Team Whistle
Auguste argues that “Gen Z might even be bigger sports fans than the older generation because sports is more integrated in their lives. For the older viewers, I think there’s more of a separation. The older viewers might watch a game, they might watch a postgame show or a pregame show, and they might read about it. But that’s it. The younger generation are following the players on social media, following the league betting, doing fantasy sports gaming. Sports play a much bigger role in their lives compared to their older counterparts.”
The NBA, Auguste says, recognizes how important this younger audience is: “They’re our future. So as a result, we’ve had to change our strategies regarding content distribution and marketing. For distribution, we were one of the last few sports leagues to solely be on traditional TV. The approach that we took originally was that we were going to have the majority of our games on traditional TV and then have a select few on streaming. In our new media deal, we decided to completely change the paradigm and actually flip it on its head where we’re having the majority of the games available on streaming, with a select few on traditional TV. And the reason why,” she explains, “is that we want to be everywhere our fans are. We are reaching out to our Gen Z viewers through the League Pass app and creating that more personalized experience to bring them into the ecosystem and form a stronger connection with them, so they resonate more with our brand.”
Matt Stagg, founder of Bristol, U.K.-based MTech Sport and former mobile and immersive director at Warner Bros. Discovery and BT Sport, says European sports streamers and broadcasters have been slower to adapt and embrace Gen Z fans’ preferred modes of viewing. “It starts from [asking] ‘What’s wrong with Gen Z?’ and explaining why they’re not watching their traditional content. It’s the myth of short attention spans. They haven’t lost interest in sport; they’ve lost interest” in the traditional ways sports are presented. “They reject content that they see as irrelevant, and their forensic is looking at whether something is specifically for them. And they want authenticity. They want reliable voices from creators and people that they understand and influencers that are part of their communities. They’re a lot more tribal with social media and interaction.”
“They reject content that they see as irrelevant, and their forensic is looking at whether something is specifically for them. And they want authenticity. They want reliable voices from creators and people that they understand and influencers that are part of their communities.”—Matt Stagg, founder of MTech Sport
Stagg goes on to say that European sports broadcasters are beginning to wake up but aren’t really assessing the problem. “The first thing that broadcasters used to say is, ‘Well, short attention spans—we’ll send out more highlights.’ Or, ‘We’ll change it so it’s a vertical because people like to watch it on their phones, and eventually they’ll grow into our way of doing things.’” But the real solution, he argues, is that “it should be flipped on its head and [they should say], ‘OK, what are we doing wrong that people we know still like sport aren’t watching and aren’t engaging with our platforms?’ We’re seeing some change, but certainly in Europe, I think we have been behind the U.S. on that.”
“Everyone thinks [Gen Z’s] attention span is much shorter compared to the older generations, but if there’s a reason for them to come, they will come, and they will come in droves,” Auguste says. “For the NBA, our viewing levels are twice as high for Gen Z as our overall TV viewing levels.”
Succeeding Through Social
“Of all the major sports [leagues], NBA fans are the most ingrained in getting content from social media,” Giegengack says. “They’re also the most likely to say that they would switch to a streaming platform because they’re comfortable with them already if they needed one in order to watch. But it’s not just as easy as taking content and jamming it onto a phone or jamming it onto the internet,” Giegengack continues, echoing Stagg’s point. “In our experience, some companies have done that, and they’ve failed pretty hard, but the NBA has done a really good job at creating content specifically for that environment.”
Caporoso agrees that one reason these “jamming it onto a phone” approaches fail is that the companies don’t really think about repackaging the content for different audiences beyond the basic mechanics of, say, reformatting for vertical—especially when it comes to delivering on social. “I think it has to feel native and optimized to the specific platform that it’s going on. You can’t just cut and paste the exact same segment on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Meta, or wherever you’re putting it. Each platform has its own nuances, its own way to edit, and its own personalities to amplify the content.”
“360 degree” player storylines on Team Whistle’s YouTube channel
Caporoso says that with YouTube, for example, “You have to be able to verticalize clips that are 3 minutes or less for Shorts to take advantage of the distribution there. And then you have to find creative ways to package videos horizontally that are longer than 3 minutes that are going to enhance your watch time and take advantage of lean-back viewing. And maybe the Short that you’re using is going to have an influencer speaking over the highlights in some capacity and sharing it to help bring their audience to it.”
Other platforms require their own unique strategies. “When you’re packaging [content] for Instagram, TikTok, or whoever you’re using to help boost your post in any capacity,” Caporoso explains, it’s important to recognize that “different people have different scaled audiences on each of the platforms. There’s going to be a mix of vertical clips and horizontal clips. Some of them are just going to be straight game footage, but others need to be edited in a creative way that adds your own voice and personality to it.”
In all of these instances, Caporoso insists, “You need to make authentic content that’s going to resonate with the audience. It’s table stakes to look at the different trends on the platform, see what is clicking in other comparable areas to what you’re doing, and try to utilize that versus just thinking one size fits all. A lot of it happens at the postproduction level and [identifying] the kinds of individuals you’re going to engage with to speak over your content, share your content, and amplify your content in the main four or five social platforms that you’re going to prioritize.”
Stagg points to Germany and the U.K.’s Baller League, a six-on-six football (aka soccer) organization, as an example of a league that has really leaned in effectively on social strategy as it has built its presence and fan base “from the ground up. They’ve got lots of influencers managing teams as well as ex-Premier League footballers,” he says. “They’re really quick games, there’s a lot of interaction, and [fans] can influence the last 3 minutes [of the matches]. They have power plays or different types, so it can go to three-on-three, and that gets a lot more engagement. It’s built around that tribal engagement. And if you’re really following your teams, there’s a lot of content about those teams, but all in the wrap of the league, which is unusual because there’s a real integration of the teams into the federation, and it is built with interactivity and authenticity. There’s always something for someone to engage with that isn’t just ‘That’s the best team’ or ‘That’s the team my dad liked, so that’s the team I like.’ There are some really interesting things that are coming out that traditional sports and broadcasters can learn from to see how you get that engagement.”
Baller League UK’s MVPs United club’s co-managers are Swiss footballer Alisha Lehmann and British TV show host and radio DJ Maya Jama.
Measuring New Touchpoints Of Fan Engagement
All of these new and more diversified strategies for engaging fan bases and bringing them closer to the leagues, Giegengack says, “strike me as really interesting, because in the world of scripted content, all of this competition from social and from streaming is more bad than good because you’re going to consume in one or the other. The day is still only 24 hours long, and a minute spent here can’t be spent where else.”
He continues, “But with sports, when you create so many new ways to engage with people, the advantages outweigh the challenges to the traditional business model. You lose that traditional linear TV audience—or some of them—but you gain all of these other ways to not only capture fans’ intention, but to interact with them and build relationships.”
“The one challenge that we have as a league, as our definition of fandom changes, is how do you measure [fan engagement]?” Auguste asks. “How do you measure how engaged people are with your brand and how many people are engaged with your brand? Because right now, from a viewership point of view, we’re only able to measure the linear component, somewhat the social component, and somewhat the digital component.”
The league needs to find a way, Auguste says, to “aggregate all that together and say, ‘On an average day, 10 million people engage with the NBA brand.’ This is a challenge that we have, and this is something that we’re working to really capture and measure engagement across all platforms and with any touchpoint in the NBA ecosystem.”
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