For decades, live sports were the last stronghold of traditional linear television. That’s no longer true. More people in the United States now watch live sports via streaming than through linear TV: 114 million in 2025 compared to 82 million on linear TV. Just three years earlier, traditional TV still led by double-digit margins. By 2027, the gap between streaming and linear TV is expected to climb 62%.
To consumers, the shift seems seamless: the same game, the same commentary, even the same screen. But behind that smooth experience lies enormous technical complexity. For internet service providers (ISPs), every major sporting event now means a surge of unpredictable demand that tests the very limits of their networks.
What ISPs Are Saying
Netskrt’s State of the ISP Industry Survey set out to quantify what many in the broadband world already suspected: Live sports are stressing networks more than any other content category. Consider:
- 78% of ISP respondents said sports cause them the most concern when it comes to streaming reliability, far ahead of major video game drops at 20%.
- Nearly 75% reported that network traffic spikes by as much as 200% during major sporting events, amplifying the risk of congestion and buffering.
- More than half cited traffic congestion and buffering as their top technical worries during live streams, and one in three named buffering alone as their primary issue.
In other words, the excitement of a championship match looks very different from an ISP’s vantage point. When hundreds of thousands of households in a region all tune in at once, local nodes can be overwhelmed within seconds.
Why It Matters to Content Providers
For streaming platforms, winning sports rights is a major coup. Exclusive live games attract subscribers, increase engagement, and command premium ad rates. But every new contract also brings new operational responsibility.
When a stream falters, viewers rarely blame their ISP. They blame the streaming platform. A single high-profile outage can trigger social backlash and subscriber churn. That’s why content owners entering or expanding their live sports presence need to think beyond rights acquisition and video production. They must consider how their distribution strategies affect the downstream networks that ultimately deliver the experience to fans.
Today’s delivery ecosystem is interconnected: Streamers, cloud providers, CDNs, and ISPs all share accountability for Quality of Experience (QoE). Yet many of those relationships remain siloed. ISPs have little visibility into the event-specific demands about to hit their infrastructure, and content owners have limited insight into last-mile conditions.
What Content Providers Should Consider
Survey respondents made clear that the problem is not just capacity but coordination. Even well-provisioned networks struggle when traffic patterns change abruptly. A more collaborative approach between content providers and ISPs, supported by their content-delivery partners, is essential.
As live streaming becomes the centerpiece of sports distribution, content owners should apply the same diligence to delivery that they apply to content acquisition. Key questions to ask when evaluating CDN or infrastructure partners include:
- Are they purpose-built for video? Many legacy CDNs were designed for general web content and struggle with the low-latency demands of live streams. Platforms need partners engineered specifically for high-bitrate, real-time video.
- Do they have deep visibility into ISP networks? CDNs that integrate closely with ISPs can pre-position content and steer traffic intelligently, reducing last-mile congestion.
- Can they scale dynamically? Elastic capacity and real-time traffic management are critical when audience size can triple in minutes.
A Shared Responsibility for a Shared Audience
The migration of live sports to streaming is irreversible and still accelerating. For ISPs, it’s a technical and financial challenge. For content providers, it’s an opportunity tempered by risk.
The only sustainable path forward is partnership: clear communication among streamers, CDNs, and ISPs; smarter use of data; and investment in delivery architectures built for volatility.
Live sports have always united fans across regions. Delivering them flawlessly in the streaming era will require that same spirit of teamwork behind the scenes.
