Major Sports Rightsholders Should Be Following Sports on FAST
As FAST makes inroads into the world of premium sports rights and broadcasting, will it eat away at the market share of larger broadcasters and networks? Sports Studio Co-President Cathy Rasenberger contends that with the enormous expense of sports rights and the fragmentation of audiences and fans across multiple platforms, rightsholders who don’t spread those rights around those platforms—including FAST and social—will have increasing difficulty finding their audience and maximizing reach and ROI. Head of Fubo Studios Pamela Duckworth chimes in with examples of how those rights are actually divided among platforms (top-dog and underdog) in creative strategies for reaching niche audiences in this candid discussion with Chris Pfaff Tech Media CEO Chris Pfaff at Streaming Media Connect 2026.
Investments and Fragmentation
Pfaff begins by wondering what sports broadcasters like ESPN and NBC Sports are doing in terms of FAST and social content. “Are they playing catch-up or is it just status quo?” he asks. He references a related discussion from earlier in the panel and adds, “Is FAST eating away at some of these established networks or is it just that audiences will go where they need to go and you’re giving them what they want?”
“I have a point of view about this,” Rasenberger speaks up. “I think that there’s so much money now going into sports. It’s $14 billion in sports rights for streaming this year, growing, doubling, by 2030 to $36 million. But there’s also the understanding that viewership is very fragmented. So if you spend the money on the rights, you then have to actually spread it across different platforms because very different viewers live on FAST, on YouTube, on social media than do on traditional cable.” She references the Super Bowl airing on Tubi, which made marketing executives realize they need to start to understand FAST.
“Viewership has shifted and fragmented across multiple platforms,” Rasenberger reiterates. “Huge investment dollars are coming into streaming. And I think that there’s a catch-up now with the advertising community. They’re realizing this is a place they have to start spending their money in FAST.”
Making Creative Deals
Pfaff asks the panelists to discuss successes they’ve seen with challenger brands with FAST and sports. He invites Duckworth to respond: “To launch some of these new networks or even new channels, I’m just curious how you’re seeing brands play in that space.”
Duckworth points to fellow panelist Dave Stelnik’s FloSports—with whom Fubo Studios had an early partnership—as a successful brand. She also points to Red Bull. “I think Red Bull is almost the perfect example of a brand that stepped into being a content creator,” Duckworth asserts. “But I wanted to touch on one other thing[, which] is, when we were talking about how expensive sports are, you brought up and how NBC and ESPN can afford to go after the NBAs, the NFLs. We don’t have that advantage, correct? So what you do is, you go in and you do creative deals.”
Duckworth explains a deal Fubo Studios did with Fox for UEFA: “So we basically split. So we have UEFA, we have that contract. And then what we did, we even divided it up a little bit more amongst ourselves and we did the biggest UEFA games on … super inexpensive pay-per-view, but just to see if we could get that niche audience to come on board. And that’s been extremely successful.” She says she knows her company “can’t carry the entire load because we’re the underdog, but we can reach out to our friends with all the money and try to make a deal there. So those are creative ways that we’re trying to bring the viewers what they want to see.”
Join us August 11–13, 2026 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect 2026! Registration is open!
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