My new column is live in The Drum:
20 years after the birth of sports streaming, here’s what marketers need to know today
As the World Cup reaches its climax, and 20 years on from the birth of sports streaming, Samuel Scott talks to Nielsen to discover the present and future of sports viewing and what it means for marketers and advertisers.
In today’s fragmented media world, it is now difficult for any program to gain significant market share. That makes sports viewers extremely valuable – and an increasingly fierce area of competition between the linear and streaming TV industries.
On August 26, 2002, Major League Baseball in the US became the first professional sports league to stream a regular season game. (The New York Yankees defeated the Texas Rangers by 10-3.) Two decades later, Americans and those in other countries now have several linear or streaming options for many live sporting events.
Streaming always gets the headlines today. But what are people in the US actually doing? The answer is more complicated. And what can marketers learn? In this column, I look at recent Nielsen reports, review company data and interview an executive there for the answers.