Content, Not Platform: How Live Sports Became the Streaming Subscription Driver
•February 9, 2026
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Why It Matters
Live‑sport streaming is becoming a primary subscription driver, reshaping revenue models for broadcasters and forcing public‑service channels to accelerate digital transformation. The trend determines how audiences will access culturally significant events in the 2020s.
Key Takeaways
- •Streaming replaces linear TV for Winter Olympics
- •HBO Max expansion targets digital‑native viewers
- •Live sports drive subscription growth across platforms
- •Public broadcasters forced to accelerate digital strategies
- •YouTube spikes sports viewership during Olympic months
Pulse Analysis
The evolution of Winter Olympic consumption illustrates a broader industry pivot toward streaming‑first strategies. Traditional broadcasters once dominated with scheduled prime‑time slots, but today’s platforms deliver simultaneous live feeds, on‑demand replays, and algorithm‑curated highlights. Data from the 2022 Beijing and 2024 Paris Games show seven billion minutes streamed across Europe, a clear indicator that younger viewers prioritize flexibility over linear appointments. This migration not only expands total engagement but also creates granular audience insights that advertisers and rights‑holders can leverage for targeted campaigns.
HBO Max’s recent European launch arrives at a critical juncture, positioning the service as a key destination for the 2026 Winter Olympics. By bundling premium sports with its entertainment library, HBO Max aims to convert sports fans into long‑term subscribers, echoing the success of NFL and boxing rights on other SVoDs. However, this strategy also fragments viewership, scattering audiences across multiple platforms rather than consolidating them under a single national broadcaster. The competitive pressure forces legacy players to reconsider pricing, packaging, and the balance between live rights and original content to retain relevance in a subscription‑driven market.
Public service broadcasters (PSBs) face a dual challenge: preserving free‑to‑air access to culturally significant events while competing with well‑funded streamers. To stay viable, PSBs are accelerating digital rollouts, forging partnerships, and prioritizing high‑cost drama that can attract advertisers. Meanwhile, ancillary platforms like YouTube experience notable spikes—up to 27 percent in France—during Olympic windows, highlighting a consumer appetite for complementary highlights and user‑generated content. As streaming solidifies its role as the primary conduit for live sport, the industry must balance subscription growth with equitable access, ensuring that marquee events remain universally reachable while capitalizing on the data‑rich opportunities streaming provides.
Content, not platform: how live sports became the streaming subscription driver
How has TV viewing of the Winter Olympics changed over the past decade with the introduction of the streamers, and how do you expect it to continue during the 2020s?
Over the past decade, TV viewing of the Winter Olympics has shifted from a predominantly linear, scheduled experience to a more flexible model driven by streaming platforms, which allow on-demand consumption. Where traditional broadcasters offer curated highlights and prime time coverage, streamers can provide multiple simultaneous live feeds of different events, for a more personalised viewing experience.
Matt Ross, chief analytics officer at Digital i
As a result, viewing to Olympics events has begun to decline on linear services while growing on streamers, as witnessed during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and 2024 Paris Olympics – which, as WBD reported at the time, generated seven billion minutes of coverage streamed across Europe.
While this has fragmented the audience, it has increased overall engagement, particularly among younger viewers more likely to watch on streaming services or turn to social video platforms like YouTube for supplementary viewing or post-event highlights. This trend is likely to continue, with streamers growing to become the primary way for global viewers to watch the Olympics.
What impact do you think the launch of HBO Max across much of Europe is likely to have on the Games’ audience?
Live sports have become a big subscription driver for global streaming platforms – as we have seen with events such as the NFL, WWE and boxing on Netflix in 2024 and 2025. HBO Max’s recent expansion in Europe, and its carriage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, has come at just the right time to broaden the audience for the games for digital native viewers, time will tell as to how effective the Winter Olympics are at driving subscriptions compared to major sports rights such as NFL and Boxing.
HBO Max will be an appealing destination to watch the Winter Olympics for audiences that do not typically engage with traditional broadcasters. But, as previously mentioned, this will likely increase reach and engagement at the cost of fragmenting viewing, spreading the audience across platforms rather than a nationally shared broadcast experience.
How has the emergence of the streamers impacted public service broadcasters in Europe?
Global streamers have driven down linear TV viewing not just in Europe, but worldwide, with audiences, particularly younger viewers, favouring services like Netflix and YouTube over public service broadcasters. The traditional broadcasters have been forced to accelerate their digital adoption plans and strike new partnerships to compete with the global streamers. They are also having to prioritise investment in high-cost, high-engagement drama and entertainment programming, and their BVoD services – at the cost of more niche content – to mitigate audience declines.
However, PSBs still play a pivotal role in the TV landscape, by offering free-to-air access, trusted news sources and strong nationally-focused storytelling. In the context of the Winter Olympics, concerns have been voiced that access to culturally significant events could be lost if coverage moves exclusively to subscription-driven streaming services.
What are the biggest trends you’re seeing in the way viewers watch live sport?
Audiences are concerned with content, not platform, so when SVoDs moved into live sports, the fans followed. According to our data, 79 per cent of European viewing (we measured the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Nordics, the Netherlands and Poland) of the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight in December 2024 was live. This was Netflix’s big move into live sports, and it paid off, with the fight landing in the top 5 first-watched titles on the platform during Q4 2024.
Live sports can act as an audience unifier, with the fight acting as a European subscription-driver despite the varied cultural interests of these different markets. That fight was an anticipated landmark event, so not all live sports events hit that same level of audience reach and live viewing – but shows such as WWE Monday Night RAW have maintained a lower, but stable ongoing audience.
In what way might the Winter Olympics have an impact on other content (eg, sports documentaries have become increasingly popular in recent years)?
While our own data does not indicate any notable increase in viewing to other sports or sports-related content on SVoD services following the last Olympics event – Paris 2024 – we do see a clear corresponding rise on YouTube. We recorded a 14 per cent rise in viewing to sports content on the platform from European users between June and July 2024, from before the Olympics began to when they were taking place.
This rise was even more pronounced in France, where the 2024 games were taking place. There was a 21 per cent rise in viewing to sports content on YouTube from June to July and a 27 per cent increase between June and August. These increases had dropped by September, once Paris 2024 was over, and suggest YouTube was a go-to platform for viewing to Olympics and other sports content during the two months that the games were taking place.
The post Content, not platform: how live sports became the streaming subscription driver appeared first on TVBEurope.
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