NOTE: This post includes Antenna data first reported by Bloomberg on October 12, 2023.
Sports leagues are wrestling with complicated dynamics of the changing media landscape that are upending the strategies and business models for managing sports rights that have been in place for years. As media audiences fragment, leagues are building a new playbook for how to reach fans of all kinds, from the casual observer to the die hard supporters. Antenna Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Carson shared a first look at how U.S. consumers are responding to some of these changes during Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles.
In particular, it is interesting to track the results of the significant product changes that the National Football League (NFL) has launched in the past 15 months.
Last Summer, the NFL pulled its mobile-only offering out of a distribution partnership with Verizon, and brought it in-house as an owned and operated product. As of the end of September 2023, Antenna estimates that NFL+ has just over 2M Subscribers. That is up from a high last season of 1.7M Subscribers.
The NFL turned heads in December 2022 when it announced that YouTube would be the new home for the NFL Sunday Ticket. The service, which gives football fans access to games outside of those available in their local TV market, had previously been available exclusively through DirecTV, and the move to YouTube marked a major milestone in the shift from traditional TV to streaming media.
Antenna has observed 1.3M Sign-ups for NFL Sunday Ticket since it came to market in April 2023, through October 1, 2023.
These findings, along with other data presented at Screentime, are a preview of Antenna’s upcoming Q4 State of Subscriptions report focused on sports streaming and set for broad release in November. If you’re interested in receiving a copy when it’s released, be sure you’re signed up for our mailing list!
For more detailed information on Antenna’s methodology and definitions of core metrics, please visit http://www.antenna.live/methodology.
Brendan Brady is a Content Strategy Associate at Antenna, a measurement and analytics company providing insight into purchase behavior and subscription metrics across the new media landscape.
