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2025 is a crucial year for Netflix’s future: The streaming leader’s first sports rights deal begins in days, teeing up future opportunities.

Amazon grows ad revenues by 19% in Q3: Sports, shoppable ads, and live news bolster its appeal to advertisers.

Digital sports viewership surpasses TV: Fragmentation challenges consumers, while younger audiences drive demand for highlights and streaming innovation.

Interest in women's sports continues to rise: Media investment and NIL rules drive opportunities for advertisers and growing fan engagement.

Digital execution—mainly digital billboards added to live sports content—is also helping TV maintain its strong revenue position. TV ad spending will decline in the coming years. We expect TV to decline starting next year, with an average drop of 1.0% annually between 2025 and 2028. The triopoly’s share of ad spending in Canada is much higher than in the US and UK.

The news: Amazon is shutting down its standalone free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform Freevee in August. All Freevee content—including original series and live TV—will migrate to Prime Video. Advertisers take heed: As streaming giants consolidate, ad buyers might see fewer platforms but more fragmented audiences. This centralization of inventory boosts scale but narrows options for niche targeting. Our take: Amazon and its rivals are bundling content into fewer apps to boost ad revenue and reduce churn. But for advertisers, viewer behavior is splintering as audiences jump between services each month, chasing new shows, deals, and lower costs.

Commercials appear during live sports shown on Apple TV+, but the sports leagues sell that advertising themselves. In February 2023, The Information reported that Apple hired an executive focused on building an ads business for Apple TV+. In March 2024, Business Insider reported that Apple poached an advertising executive from NBCUniversal.

Teaming up with NBCUniversal for shoppable ads during live sports, including the Thanksgiving Day NFL game. Opening up offsite media to non-endemic brands. Letting third-party sellers purchase onsite display placements on its web and mobile properties for the first time.

More sports are coming to Prime Video. In January, Amazon acquired a stake in the bankrupt Diamond Sports, a regional sports network company. This allowed Amazon to obtain the local broadcasting rights for several professional sports teams.

Amazon is committed to investing in content, with an emphasis on live sports such as the NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and plans to stream MLB, NBA, and NHL games through a deal with Diamond Sports Group. This will be a critical part of its strategic shift to draw more advertisers. To view the full forecast, click here.

Walmart’s $2.3 billion Vizio acquisition will give brands new ways to reach consumers and boost product discovery, while Amazon is reaping the rewards from the launch of Prime Video’s ad-supported tier and its investments in live sports. Other retailers looking to get in on the CTV boom include Albertsons and Instacart. Overall, we expect off-site RMN ad spending to grow 42.1% YoY in 2025.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss what Fortnite developer Epic Games' win over Google means, whether McDonald's new restaurant brand will be a success, why women's sports worldwide are exploding right now, if video streaming bundles are inevitable, how AI rules can keep pace with AI development, who's planning to live underwater in a few years, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Ross Benes, Bill Fisher, and Carina Perkins.

Prior to TikTok Shop’s launch last September, live shopping platform Whatnot earned nearly 100% of social shopping gross merchandise value in 2023, according to a recent Earnest Analytics report. What’s Whatnot? Whatnot is a livestream marketplace platform, specializing in the sale of collectibles including sports cards, sneakers, comics, and vintage clothing.

The league’s share of the top 100 fell to 72 last year due to the Summer Olympics, the US presidential election, and other sporting events like the NCAA March Madness tournament. ³§±è´Ç°ù³Ù²õ’ dominance hasn’t stopped other high-viewership live events from driving up prices for rights.

And sports-centric Fubo TV, the largest digital pay TV provider we have not yet broken out, faces a potentially existential threat from the live sports streaming behemoth coming soon from Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FOX. We plan to forecast Fubo TV viewership soon. Behind the Numbers.

Sports are primary programming. Hulu + Live TV regularly features athletes in its commercials, which underscores how crucial sports are for digital pay TV providers. In 2024, nearly one-tenth of the US population will watch live sports via a digital pay TV service, and around three-fourths of digital pay TV viewers will watch live sports on these services.

Success during the NFL broadcasts could help Netflix recover from this setback, but another failure would likely severely limit its sports ambitions. The difference between streaming on-demand content and live sports has become painfully clear for Netflix.

These figures, drawn from Guideline's data capturing ad agencies’ invoicing dollars, demonstrate both the enduring appeal of sports programming and advertisers' confidence in live sports to reach engaged holiday audiences.

This sponsored article by MNTN will explore CTV and sports.

It plans to expand the capability to other live sports, scripted content, and unscripted shows. Shoppable ads will also be front-and-center during Amazon’s coverage of the Black Friday NFL game. By the numbers: TV is a potent tool for product discovery. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers find new brands or products through TV content, per an Ä¢¹½AV survey conducted with Shopsense AI.

Live programming’s appeal lies in its real-time nature, higher engagement, and communal viewing experience, making it ideal for advertisers. By using programmatic tools and multiscreen campaigns, brands can effectively reach diverse audiences across various live events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

After a slew of technical failures during November's Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match live stream, advertisers are more aware than ever of what can go wrong during a popular event. And with Netflix's "NFL Christmas Gameday" just around the corner, which will feature Beyoncé performing during the Ravens vs. Texans halftime show, brands can strategize to make the most of a potential broadcast outage.