TV sport, which has long been seen as being immune from the pressures facing linear TV is under pressure from a young demographic more interested in movies and series.
Ampere Analysis has interviewed nearly 32,000 consumers in the United States and Europe over the last 12 months. It says that sports fans and viewers are underindexing amongst young millennials
“Young millennial identification with strong sentiment questions is lower for sport than it is for other forms of content. Just 14% of consumers professing to ‘love sport’ are in the 18-24 age bracket, compared to 22% of those indicating that they ‘love TV shows’,” says Ampere’s Richard Broughton.
TV viewing figures appear to support what consumers have been telling the analysts. It has been widely reported in the US that broadcast audiences for NFL matches have dropped across all major networks. Across the first four weeks of the 2016 season, NBC’s Sunday night games were down 13% year-on-year, ESPN Monday night games were down 17%, CBS Thursday night games down by 15%. Fox and CBS Sunday nights were the best performers, down 3%.
A longer-term trend across UK sports channels is also apparent. Assessing September viewing of a basket of sports channels, including Sky Sports, BT Sport and Eurosport channels, reveals 2016 average weekly viewing is down by 9% compared to 2010.
