The NFL is predicted to become the world' s most valuable sport in terms of media rights revenue by 2030 according to a new report from Rethink TV, which estimates that global media rights revenue (MRR) for the Top 17 sports leagues will grow to $96.3 billion by 2035, more than four times its 2015 total.

Despite surging valuations, the sports media market is at a critical crossroad, the researcher said. The Pay TV rights holders that once underpinned sports broadcasting are rapidly eroding, but the transition to Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) streaming remains fraught with technological and financial hurdles. OTT players like Amazon and Netflix have driven record-breaking deals, yet even DAZN, the most aggressive pureplay sports streamer, is still struggling to achieve profitability.

By 2030, the market will hit $73 billion, with American Football set to overtake the combined MRR of the world’s top nine Soccer leagues for the first time in history. These two sports, along with Baseball, will further cement their lead as the three most valuable sports in terms of MRR, Rethink said.

The shift to D2C streaming remains constrained by infrastructure limitations and escalating content costs. While sports leagues are eager to take control of their distribution, few are ready to match the reliability and scale of legacy broadcast networks. Multicast ABR and Open Caching solutions remain in early stages, delaying full-scale adoption of D2C platforms from rights owners.

OTT giants like Amazon and Netflix continue to sign multi-billion-dollar deals, but sustainability is questionable as ad-based models fail to offset soaring rights costs. Hybrid models are expected to dominate the next decade, with leagues selling partial rights while experimenting with their own D2C platforms.

At the same time, shifting consumer habits pose new challenges. Younger audiences increasingly favor short-form, on-demand highlights over full-match broadcasts, forcing leagues to rethink their monetization strategies. This transition is already underway, with sports documentaries, behind-the-scenes content, and interactive digital experiences becoming key revenue drivers, Rethink said.

The market for technology for improving streaming video is expected to peak over the next five years but growth will flatten after that, according to a new report from researcher Rethink TV.

The Service Obtainable Market (SOM) for Embedded QoE Agents is set to hit over $9 billion by 2028, but strong growth over the next five years will flatten off towards 2028, in the face of a sharp drop in pricing for vendors and an OTT video market entering maturity.  

Considering that the term “broadcast quality” is the gold standard for television, Rethink TV says streaming services have yet to achieve that goal. 

“Amid the unstoppable rise of OTT, it is too often forgotten that IP-delivered video still has a long way to go when it comes to catching up with the reliability of linear, Pay TV networks,” the researcher said. “OTT services have usurped Pay TV when it comes to offering consumers an endless buffet of choice, but they still regularly suffer from infuriating buffering windows and highly variable picture quality.  

“In many ways, this poor user experience is the final obstacle to OTT wiping out Pay TV altogether, and yet these issues have persisted for over 20 years,” it adds. “While Quality of Experience (QoE) is no longer a bleeding-edge technology, it is no less essential than it was at the dawn of streaming. “

However, QoE is now amid various layers of consolidation, the researcher said with QoE tools are being folded into wider analytics suites with tools like Quality of Service (QoS) and customer management. Meanwhile, analytics technologies have become one of many modules available via the ‘end-to-end’ video technology suites that are generally referred to as online video platforms (OVPs).  

This consolidation will continue to lower the price of the standalone technologies, with QoE being no exception. Add to that a maturing OTT market, where brand new, rapidly expanding vide services are increasingly rare, and Rethink TV sees a QoE market that is soon to plateau.  

Rethink TV’s report examines the market for “embedded agents”—QoE systems that report performance data directly from within the video player. Once integrated with the player, Embedded Agents can report metrics such as re-buffering ratio (which is the buffering time versus playback time), video start time, video start failures and average bitrate. 

However there are other vendors in the QoE ecosystem—”external agents” such as Witbe, Suitest and (arguably) SIMMWave, also assess QoE, but this using external software and hardware tools to imitate an end user. 

Although the end goal is similar, these two camps offer entirely different business models. Embedded agents are employed to monitor all activity on a video service whereas external agents are deployed far more sparingly due to much higher integration and upkeep costs.  

Despite the irrefutable tide that will propel OTT video to become the dominant form of video consumption, IP-delivered video still has a long way to go when it comes to catching up with the reliability of linear Pay TV networks, the researcher said. OTT services have usurped Pay TV when it comes to offering consumers an endless buffet of choice, but they still regularly suffer from infuriating buffering windows and highly variable picture quality. In many ways, this poor user experience is the final obstacle to OTT wiping out Pay TV altogether, and yet these issues have persisted for over 20 years.  

While perfecting network infrastructure is essential, any such repairs are being done blind without first knowing how and when the user experience suffers. Quality of Experience (QoE) tools therefore arrived soon after IP-delivered video, around 20 years ago, and while they are no longer a bleeding-edge technology, they are no less essential than they were back then, Rethink TV concluded.  

A new report from U.K. media research firm Rethink TV estimates that global SVoD services will top 1.9 billion subscribers by 2028, in a market worth $171.9 billion.

In its “Subscription Video on Demand Market Forecast 2023-2028,” the researcher examines the impact that the emergence of advertising tiers from the likes of Netflix and Disney+, as well as the increasing popularity of FAST channels will have on the traditional subscription video on demand market. 

“Just prior to releasing last year’s SVoD forecast, Netflix confirmed its first subscriber loss—of 200,000 subs, or around 0.09% of its total,” the researcher said. “This prompted a wave of hysteria, and in the year since, Netflix’s return to growth and confirmation of its advertising strategy has largely set the market at ease.”

Netflix’s ad-supported tier, which launched in November 2022 for $6.99 per month, is part of a boutique of four levels of subscriptions, with premium currently priced at $19.99 per month. Although it didn’t offer specific numbers for the new tier,  the company saw the number of subscribers worldwide increase by 7.66 million in its latest quarter. Disney+ launched its own ad-supported subscription tier for $7.99 per month in the U.S. in December. 

But there’s another threat on the horizon—the increasing popularity of FAST (free-ad-supported TV) services that mimic traditional pay-TV channel EPGs, but without the subscription fees. These services are most often accessed through smart TVs from Samsung, Vizio, Roku, etc. 

This new normal could upend the SVoD market, Rethink says.

“Complicating counting is the fact that we are about to enter a phase where SVoD services have ad-supported customers, AVoD services have subscription tiers, and FAST will undoubtedly start playing with on-demand video. The clock is also ticking until these VoD services have live linear feeds, and Netflix is due shortly to launch its first live stream,” it said. “Disney and Netflix are now in the early stages of their advertising expansion. Both have chosen to price their ad-supported bundles at a slight discount, to ensure that they can maintain their ARPU via the ads served. In time, we suspect that the SVoD platforms could see significant lifts in ARPU via advertising.”

With Netflix, in particular, moving to eliminate password sharing, Rethink suggests that the service offer a free ad-supported tier to which it could move those sharers to. 

“Neither Netflix or Disney have opted for an entirely free tier, supported by a much heavier advertising load,” Rethink said. “This is significant, because the issue of account sharing has raised its head in the past year. With free options, SVoD services would be able to migrate a user from an existing SVoD subscription and into a free account with only an email address and basic account details. This would serve to keep the number of subscribers high, and potentially provide a significant boost, if the estimates of ‘freeloader’ accounts are as high as some in the industry maintain. However, as soon as a payment method is required, the success of converting a freeloader into an active subscriber plummets.

“Netflix has not broken out detail of its conversion rates, but there are nascent third-party estimates of the proportion of new additions that have chosen the ad-based tier,” the researcher added. “The coming quarters will likely provide some insight, via investor call disclosures, but the SVoD platforms will be tightlipped in the meantime.

Rethink says that Netflix will continue to boast about its profitability, especially when compared to competitors which are still operating at a loss, including Comcast, which just reported full year revenues that showed $2.1 billion earnings for Peacock, but was hamstrung by an attributed loss of some $2.5 billion. 

“To this end, ARPUs across the board need to rise, and advertising is going to play a major role in this regard,” it said.

BRISTOL, England—Traditional broadcast’s days as king could be numbered. Projections in viewing hours per day by Rethink Technology Research’s Rethink TV service indicates that SVOD viewing is likely to match that of traditional broadcast across the globe by 2023.

In its report, “The Rise in SVOD Viewing to Swamp Traditional TV by 2023,” Rethink TV sees the 478 million subscribers of SVOD today to grow to 743 million over the next four years. It projects that China will have the most SVOD subscribers, but that North America will continue to drive the largest dollar volume. That group is expected to watch between 2-3 billion hours of ad free SVOD per day, while traditional ad-based TV will decline to similar numbers by that point.

The U.S. market, which combines paid SVOD and vMVPD services, is projected to grow from 146.5 million to 236.6 million during that time frame. Europe and Asia will be about even in SVOD revenue, but with prices in Europe much higher as Asia’s market features a large number of Advertising VOD streamers.

Chief among the subscribers in this projection is Netflix, which with an estimated 194 million SVOD subscribers globally by 2023 would make up 26 percent of total global subscribers. In the U.S., Netflix currently makes up 44 percent of subscriptions but is only expected to be 31 percent of increased U.S. subscription levels by 2023 as new streaming services like WarnerMedia and Disney+ are launched.

Netflix, Amazon and other U.S. services have a presence in Europe, but other local broadcasters and pure play SVOD players like Maxdome, Sky, Zatto and Rakuten TV will result in a more spread out distribution of users.

Elsewhere, China’s projected growth of 245 million subscribers will make up 72 percent of the Asia Pacific region, though average monthly spending for streaming will be just $2-$3. Latin America’s growth, meanwhile, is expected to be driven by one of either Netflix, America Movil’s Claro TV and Televisa’s Blim.