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Charter Spectrum will offer Max to its customers: A carriage deal with Waner Bros. Discovery continues the trend of streamers winning out in pay TV negotiations.

DirecTV signals a broader pay TV battle with Disney: The company filed an FCC complaint against Disney for anticompetitive practices regarding carriage fees.

Faced with booming media rights costs and legalized gambling, broadcasters, streaming services, and leagues are navigating how to stay innovative, remain profitable, and keep sports accessible for everyone. Media rights costs for major sports have surged dramatically, posing a significant challenge for traditional broadcasters like NBC and Disney.

In subscription revenues and viewers, YouTube TV has distanced itself from the digital pay TV pack. Digital pay TV is synonymous with a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD). It refers to digitally delivered live TV services like YouTube TV and Sling TV.

Ad-supported streaming and live sports are accelerating pay TV鈥檚 decline: The largest pay TV providers lost 5 million subscribers in 2023, while SVOD鈥檚 market share grew.

CTV to continue strong US growth: Households using the format to more than double pay TV in 2024, aided by tech shifts.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss the takeaway's from this years March Madness NCAA basketball tournaments, what's most fueling a revolution in women's sports, who will rule the new pay TV world by 2026, the likelihood that sports betting faces a reckoning in the next 12-months, the best-selling cars in America, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our forecasting writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, forecasting analyst Zach Goldner, and director of forecasting Oscar Orozco.

Digital pay TV we thought maybe was going to be competitive. Now that's too expensive. These things are free, and they're just sitting there waiting for you," said Cramer-Flood. Reddit defies social media stagnation. While we forecast overall time spent with social media will begin to decline among US users in 2025, Reddit is bucking the trend.

Why it matters: Amazon鈥檚 NBA acquisition is part of a broader strategy to use live sports to expand Prime Video鈥檚 appeal, especially among cord-cutters who retain pay TV subscriptions for this content (see chart). The NBA deal cements Amazon鈥檚 role in premium sports streaming. As traditional TV continues to decline, Amazon is positioning itself as a long-term home for live sports content.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss how all the different TV terms fit together, to what degree subscription revenues are moving from pay TV to streaming, who's winning the "digital pay TV" race, and how the new sports streaming service from Fox, ESPN, and Warner Bros. Discovery could change everything. "In Other News," we talk about what a new sponsor logo placement from the WWE will look like and how the US ad market is getting on to start the year. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Ross Benes.

All the metrics we track for connected TV (CTV) are climbing, including time spent, ad dollars, and users. All this is happening as linear viewership declines, and for the first time, non-pay TV viewers have surpassed pay TV this year, according to our forecast. Here鈥檚 what advertisers need to know to keep up with this shifting landscape.

Sunday Ticket propels YouTube TV to 48% growth: The pay TV service has seen subscriptions jump significantly since it acquired the costly streaming rights.

All eyes are on streaming. Last year, non-pay TV viewers surpassed traditional pay TV viewers in the US, per our forecast. Years of streaming platform proliferation are over, yielding to consolidation and fragmented ad measurement. Bundles between streaming platforms and partnerships with retail media platforms are forming, leaving media buyers with a headache over how to strategize.

In the US, 77% of TV-owning households had a smart TV as of Q1 2023, according to Hub Research. Connected TVs, which include smart TVs, streaming sticks, and other devices, will be used in 115.1 million households next year, more than double the number of traditional pay TV households, according to our forecast.

ESPN鈥檚 new platform marks a bold digital pivot: Meanwhile, Fox is launching Fox One to stay competitive in the streaming era.

Disney鈥檚 domestic parks fueled Q2 strength: International results lagged, but a capital-light Abu Dhabi expansion points to future opportunity.

鈥楽tar Wars鈥� is coming back for another trilogy: Disney is likely to spend heavily, and a pipeline to streaming could bolster Disney+ revenues.

Disney鈥檚 streaming bundle is driving subscriber gains and lower churn: But fiscal caution and ad headwinds may limit future momentum.

鈥淟ilo & Stitch,鈥� 鈥淢ission Impossible鈥� shatter Memorial Day weekend records: The box office hits prove that theaters still have a place amid the shift to streaming.

Whether it thrives will depend on how well it adapts to an audience that has already moved beyond traditional pay TV.

CTV time includes all forms of subscription OTT (sub OTT) streaming, free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST), digital pay TV, apps, and digital audio accessed via a CTV device. It does not include time watching traditional TV (broadcast or cable) via a CTV. Traditional TV time will trail CTV time by 6 minutes this year, after leading CTV by over 2 hours per day as recently as 2020.