Live Sports Moved to Streaming (And Your Budget Should Too)
March 2, 2026 - 27 minutes read
NOTE: This blog is a transcript from a podcast and therefore may contain errors.
Shannon Allen: Welcome back to Digital Marketing, ROI. I’m your host Shannon Allen, and I’m joined by Krystal Vivian, who is my favorite co-host. How are you, Krystal?
Krystal Vivian: I am great, Shannon. How are you doing today?
Shannon Allen: I’m good. Can you believe it’s almost the end of February? Where did the time go?
Krystal Vivian: Man, it’s been a great February because of the weather.
I think that’s why it’s gone so fast is because we’re outside. It’s warm. The sun is shining.
Shannon Allen: You know what’s sad is when we go from negative 10 I’m in Michigan. You’re in Indiana. Negative 10 to 38 to 40 degrees, that’s a big temperature change.
Krystal Vivian: Absolutely it is.
It feels like summer.
Shannon Allen: I saw somebody in shorts at the doctor’s. I had to take my daughter to the dermatologist today and he was in shorts.
Krystal Vivian: Michigan
Shannon Allen: Midwest. It’s not warming up for shorts.
Krystal Vivian: No.
Shannon Allen: I’m excited to dive right in if hopefully our listeners tune into part one on the massive shift from traditional tv, cable TV to streaming.
We broke down the data in the last episode talking about that. Streaming being just under that 50%, that 48% where cable is at its lowest ever at that 20% broadcast right there. But today we’re gonna tackle the number one objective that we do hear from a lot of business owners when it comes to cable and broadcast specifically, is, what about sports?
What about, can you get me live sports? Can you guarantee those spots for me? if you think live sports are the last lifeline keeping cable alive or broadcast alive, my listeners are gonna be surprised. We’re also gonna break down some, just some ideas on what to think about as we roll into 2026.
And maybe I’ll do some predictions on where I think 20, 27 will be. And we talked last time about looking up a prediction I made, which was, they’ll come a point that all sports will be streaming.
Krystal Vivian: Yeah. And we’re pretty much there. But let’s start with the big headline, we still hear it from business owners. I need cable for sports. I gotta reach my sports fans. Is that even true in 2026?
Shannon Allen: The answer is yes and no. And here’s why. I’m not telling people don’t buy a sports package with a cable company. I’m telling you, you probably can’t afford both. The cable March Madness and the streaming March Madness, because let’s be clear, the inventory that cable is given is their inventory.
March Madness is almost all CBS, I think it’s CBS and Turner, all of that, Is being on the cable channels on T-N-T-T-B-S, but it’s only 20% of the viewership. Again, we talked about in the last podcast everything has to match that.
So this is a myth we have to bust open because streaming has much more exclusive football and basketball and baseball. Then broadcast or cable ever will have. The 20 25 26 NFL season featured the most streaming exclusive games in league history. 21 plus games you could only watch on streaming platforms.
Not on any cable channel. let’s talk about those games. Amazon Prime Video had 16 games all Thursday night Football plus Black Friday exclusive through 2033. Netflix, two Christmas Day games, Cowboys versus Commanders, and Lions versus Vikings. Both of those helped spike some of the highest streaming numbers on Christmas day of 2025 ever.
Peacock one exclusive playoff game plus a holiday exclusive ESPN plus, which is. the streaming.
Krystal Vivian: It’s the streaming
Shannon Allen: one exclusive Monday night football game. YouTube, one free exclusive international game from Brazil. That’s 21 plus games that cable subscribers literally cannot access unless they also have streaming subscriptions.
So that in itself. Says all. We could stop the podcast right now. All right, see you guys.
Krystal Vivian: A hundred percent. And think about it, that’s just this past season, right? And the NFL made those agreements because they are trying to balance where their audiences are and recognizing all of the splits with the different platforms.
But they had great ratings this season.
Shannon Allen: They did well. Speaking of sports, what if you don’t remember anything from today? I want you to think of this. The game has changed. Sports used to be the reason that you had to have cable.
Now sports is the reason you need to be streaming.
Krystal Vivian: Yes.
Shannon Allen: And more importantly, you need to be buying streaming over cable.
Krystal Vivian: what does this mean for business owners? They’ve been buying sports on cable. What are they actually getting there versus what they think they’re getting?
Shannon Allen: Listen, they’re still getting channels like.
C-N-B-C-E-S-P-N, Fox News, CN, they’re still getting those channels, right? And if there’s a game on them, they’re getting that right. The streaming portion that’s not streaming cable is not streaming. Now, cable companies do have ability to stream programmatically or on their own and operated. So let’s talk about Comcast as an example.
So cable is a broad term, and in whatever market you’re in, they’re different. in the Kalamazoo market, Comcast is the leading cable? I don’t know. That’s part of Xfinity, I don’t know what is it in Indiana? I
Krystal Vivian: think it’s Xfinity. Comcast
Shannon Allen: is leading.
Krystal Vivian: Okay.
Shannon Allen: So we think about that.
They’re actually owned by, they’re tied into the NBC Universal. That’s what Comcast is. So they do have some streaming capabilities through their owned and operated, but it’s still not. On the cable box. it’s done differently, right? You still have to go into a different channel to stream.
So if you really wanna think about what you’re actually getting, as I said, so many of us could be watching March Madness this year, and they’re gonna be right. That’s all CCB s owned. You are watching it. In multiple different places. If you just bought the cable buy, you are getting a March Madness package, but you’re only getting, again, the box.
If you have a box sitting there, you can watch the game. Otherwise, they have to go into a different app and stream it. You’re paying the kind of money. That streaming costs. So why pay that same amount of money for limited viewership? It’s not saying that cable doesn’t have great sports packages.
They absolutely still have it. And you wanna buy it if you wanna buy and hit 70%, buy the 20% from cable and the 50% from streaming and cover it all. But I don’t think people need to do that. something that I always like to make too, is there has to be a really good reason to buy sports.
You have to be definite that your person viewing it wants to buy your product.
Krystal Vivian: Yes.
Shannon Allen: You, I don’t think, the local guy that is selling something very unique, unless it’s a very male dominated sports, it does skew mail. But you have to have a product that you are pretty sure that a sports audience wants to buy.
If you’re gonna go that hard into sports,
Krystal Vivian: yes.
Shannon Allen: Otherwise, run your streaming where your targeted audience is. Don’t choose sports.
Krystal Vivian: Don’t choose what they’re watching, just choose the audience and let the ad play wherever. I know some businesses like to be associated with a sports team though, and just to have that means something to them.
Especially for local.
Shannon Allen: And there is a
Krystal Vivian: local
Shannon Allen: field team. Yeah. Somebody might want in Notre Dame we can put together streaming packages that are very localized that tie into that. You’re a Detroit Lions fan. We run Detroit, you’re Chicago Bears. So there is something that can be attached to it.
What I want business owners to know. Is to ask these hard questions with their cable provider and make sure they’re, if you’re working with cable only and they offer streaming, make sure they’re not pushing you just into the cable box and to their owned and operated. Make sure that you’re reaching that streaming audience, right?
Don’t skew the budget. That’s what I want ’em to take away with their cable. It’s not what they don’t know. It’s the viewership. So start asking viewership questions.
Krystal Vivian: So what does a streaming first sports advertising strategy actually look like?
Shannon Allen: Let’s say this, the way that we do it, and not everybody does it this way. I’m gonna use March manness as an example, but when I’m putting together packages for clients in the life sports world, we are asking them what particular this is, what cable does, where do you wanna be? Right now, Olympics is big.
Then March manness is coming. You got baseball season, you got golf, you’ve got hockey, you’ve got football season, right? I could do bowling if you wanted to. There’s a lot of things I can do. You wanna kinda layer it as opposed to combining things. You wanna a layer of life sports and you probably want a layer of a sports audience or you have a layer of life sports and you just have a layer.
Of targeting whatever your products are, right? So let’s talk about the layer of life sports. If you’re, if we’re putting together packages from FDS, we’re gonna ask you where do you wanna be? You like March Madness? Great. Give me your budget and I’ll work it backwards, because you’re talking about anywhere from 75 to $120 cost per thousand versus what we’re used to in the.
35 to $45 range of normal, right? it doubles. So right off the bat it doubles. You have to think about that. I think about something like March Madness. I’m a big sneak out party, so those games start on a Thursday you could buy for the next three, four weeks and just focus on those games,
You could buy just as you get down the suite 16 and on and forward. So you could really customize it to when you think you wanna do it. To me with March Madness, not only is the audience watching these live games, they’re also going back later to check ESPN, to see where they’re at on their.
brackets. what we do is we put together and cable does this too, you put together a live layer, one of live sports layer two of what we call a sports audience. And so multiple ways to check those scores and have inventory running, targeting just a very general sports audience as a secondary layer, a little bit less expensive.
then you combine the two and you have a pretty good frequency. So that’s one way to think of it.
Krystal Vivian: Okay.
Shannon Allen: What you could do for football. You might just wanna focus on college football, or you might wanna focus on bowl games and then also do that other layer I talked about it’s the sports audience during that season, right?
Multiple things you can do in the summertime. You might just wanna do more of a sports audience layer if you think that’s where your buyer is, or layer in a couple Sunday PGA games. So again, the package depends on the strategy of what we’re trying to accomplish. So we do at FDS have some general packages, but we, what we like to show what we offer and then put together the strategy as it fits into their budget.
So we need to know the budget first and then what we can do with the budget.
Krystal Vivian: Say ultimately it comes back to the budget and then you’re still, even with buying a sports audience, getting them where they are or whoever they are, regardless of what they’re watching.
Exactly. Including live sports like you.
Shannon Allen: Exactly.
Krystal Vivian: it’s like the best of both worlds.
Shannon Allen: Yeah. So my advice to anybody is. Take what you’re getting for cable and ask your agency, to match what we think we should be doing. And I guarantee you we’re probably gonna save ’em a lot of budget.
Krystal Vivian: Let’s bring it back to the topic of our podcast because all of this goes back to ROI when we’re making advertising decisions.
Whether a business owner invests in streaming sports advertising over traditional cable sports, how are they actually measuring improving the ROI.
Shannon Allen: In the last podcast I talked about the advantage of targeting as well. And part of that was the geo, right? What we can do with CTV streaming.
One of the things, and it’s new, some of this is new to me, with live sports, you can zip code targeting, but it’s not gonna behoove you. You wanna still stick in that DMA. The difference is if you know a local. Tire companies working with us and they wanna hit March Madness in two different markets. We would still suggest probably a DMA in one state and a DMA in another, because you don’t live sports.
You don’t wanna get so granular with zip code because you’re not gonna have as much of an audience. when you’ve already niched an audience down to keep your ROI where you want it, you still wanna keep a good amount of an audience. think about this. We’re trying to reach consumers with your message and your commercial, right?
If we’re layering an audience of somebody that’s shopping for tires right now, that’s one layer and it already starts to bring people down a little bit. Anybody can buy tires. So that’s a pretty big audience. Now you layer on a sports audience. people looking for tires in the sports audience now becomes niche.
If your geo is zip code only, you’re not gonna deliver and your frequency isn’t gonna be there. So I wanna remind people, even though we have capabilities that cable and broadcast do not have, when it comes to streaming, you still wanna think it through because it will affect your ROI, right?
TV is still about the masses, but the beauty is I can add layers and that helps my ROI. we still know that with cable sports buy, with reporting, they’re gonna tell you your number of spots, maybe what games you were on. We have the ability to look at data from live sports and say, we ran here, and here, and this performed really well.
Maybe next year we can do an allow list. we don’t need to be here, or we don’t need that sports audience layer. We’ll just do live sports. Or vice versa. So the data that comes back with streaming life sports versus cable life sports is actually much better. So we still can track some conversions.
We still know the ad was delivered and somebody came back. It’s following that consumer journey. So that is ROI in itself. with a sports package, no matter what you do, you’re gonna be paying more than ever before. So keep this in mind. Your ROI is going to be different in very specific live sports than it is if you’re just buying traditional CTV streaming.
Because that is very strategic on that consumer journey. When you buy live sports, you are guessing that’s the consumer journey they’re taking. That is a big difference in ROI, I always have a better consumer journey of figuring where they’re going and following ’em. The live sports, I’m making a guess, which is what you’ve done in cable for years and what people that have bought live sports for years have always made the guests that we think our buyer gonna is gonna be watching live sports.
Krystal Vivian: absolutely.
Shannon Allen: You can get yourself into trouble with ROI when you’re dictating. The consumer journey or predicting it instead of following it. But I still see value in live sports. And what I also wanna always offer our clients is the ability, if you insist to buy it, let’s buy it more strategically than you’re buying it now.
let’s reach more viewers. Let’s make your money go farther. That’s ROI in itself. We’re gonna make their dollars go farther when you’re buying streaming over cable or broadcast sports packages.
Krystal Vivian: And that’s ultimately what it’s all about. the shift to streaming is making sure that you actually get an ROI and it’s stronger because your money’s being spent better.
Shannon Allen: And it doesn’t mean that either your local broadcast seller or your local cable can’t do exactly what I’m talking about. But what I can tell you is they’re not promoting it the way they are gonna promote their own and operated, right? So they want you to be watching with them first. The local NBC person wants you to just be buying.
The broadcast NBC and not the programmatic, we all can buy the same thing, but that’s not their first priority. ’cause the profit margins go down. For an agency like FDS, our profit margins are, this is what we do. We’re not a broadcast, we’re not a cable box. We don’t rely on subscriptions.
We don’t rely on these contracts. We can buy wherever you need and are happy to sell you what you need, not what’s being sold as the most profit.
Krystal Vivian: Correct. it comes back to their needs and their custom strategy. And it’s also the other thing that I wanna highlight too is that your point is to not just choose one.
Don’t just do sports. Don’t just do streaming.
Shannon Allen: Correct.
Krystal Vivian: Look at your budget. Look at your target audience. Be very strategic and thoughtful about where you’re gonna be allocating those dollars, and that’ll help you as well.
Shannon Allen: Listen, if I’m meeting with a client and they are doing SEM display, CTV, and they want live sports, but they’re like, but I gotta cut budget, where should I cut it?
I’m gonna tell ’em to cut live sports because I would rather see them follow the consumer journey. Now, if we take live sports out of it and just talk about sEM display and CTV that is targeted and they’re like, I gotta cut budget. I’m probably gonna tell ’em to limit their video ’cause it’s much more expensive and until they’re ready to spend that’s where I would layer it out. So we’re always gonna advise our clients where the best ROI is. do I think that live sports is the best use for anybody’s money? I think if you have the money, absolutely. Let’s add that. I think it’s great if I have to choose and I have to cut budget, let’s not try to do too much with a limited budget.
Our company has always been built on. We don’t wanna be good at 20 things. We wanna be great at our four solutions. I advise that in any kind of marketing plan. Don’t overspend. Cut Where you know something you don’t need. It’s like when you’re buying in your budget and you wanna go buy new clothes, maybe stop buying new clothes.
Krystal Vivian: Yeah,
Shannon Allen: pay your car payment.
Krystal Vivian: pay your car payment. Pay your utilities. Wear the clothes that
Shannon Allen: you already pay off your credit cards. there’s a lot of things I could cut.
Krystal Vivian: Thank you Shannon. I think this has been incredibly insightful.
Shannon Allen: I always have fun doing these, so I appreciate it.
Part one, part two, if your listeners didn’t hear, if you’re listening to this one, you could listen to it without it, but they do go hand in hand. Thanks, Krystal. Thank you to our listeners, and join us for our next episode of Digital Marketing, ROI.