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I recently joined John Bishop of Advertiser Perceptions and TVREV’s Alan Wolk for a webinar about where live sports streaming is headed and what advertisers want next.
We explored findings from our new survey with Advertiser Perceptions, which found that 73% of advertisers plan to invest in live sports streaming and CTV over the next six to 12 months, rising to 79% among agencies.
But the bigger theme went beyond any single data point. The discussion has quickly shifted from whether advertisers want live sports streaming to how we make it easier for more advertisers to access, buy and measure it.
Here are four key takeaways.
1. Live sports still delivers something increasingly rare: a shared moment
Media consumption has become more fragmented and personalized, but live sports remains one of the few environments capable of bringing large audiences together around the same content at the same time.
That matters. Few other environments allow advertisers to reach large audiences simultaneously, sharing the same moment. That combination of scale, attention and immediacy is difficult to replicate. Sports fans aren't simply consuming content. They're invested in what happens next, often watching for hours and engaging with other fans along the way.
Streaming adds another dimension by helping advertisers connect with audiences that may be difficult to reach through traditional television alone. And as more sports rights move across broadcast, cable and streaming, the distinction between those environments matters less to the viewer. Fans simply want to find the game.
For advertisers, the opportunity is to do the same: focus on the audience and the moment rather than the screen delivering it.
2. Live sports streaming is opening the door for more local advertisers
One of the most encouraging shifts we're seeing is the range of local advertisers getting into live sports.
Automotive remains an important category, but we're also seeing local credit unions, personal injury attorneys, HVAC companies and other home-services businesses participate.
Why? Streaming is helping democratize access. Historically, premium sports advertising could be difficult for smaller local and regional businesses to access, particularly if they didn't have the budgets required for a major linear sports buy. Streaming is creating more ways in.
And those opportunities extend well beyond the biggest professional leagues, from college athletics and women’s sports to high school sports, soccer and other events with passionate fan bases. What constitutes a premium sports audience can look very different from market to market.
For a local advertiser, the goal doesn't necessarily have to be getting into the biggest game. It should be finding the sports audiences that matter in your market. That's an important evolution. Democratizing live sports isn't only about expanding access to inventory. It's also about broadening what advertisers consider a valuable sports audience.
3. Total TV is moving forward, but live sports is still complicated
We've made meaningful progress as an industry toward Total TV planning: thinking holistically across linear and streaming around the audience rather than treating them as separate strategies.
Consumers already behave this way. It's all TV to them. But when it comes to live sports, execution hasn't completely caught up. Sports rights are distributed across broadcast and cable networks, streaming platforms, regional sports networks, team-owned apps and other publishers. Available inventory can vary by league, team, platform and market.
That makes live sports more complicated to execute than a broader CTV campaign. Reaching local sports fans requires navigating a web of rights agreements and inventory sources. The industry has an opportunity to simplify that process and turn a fragmented ecosystem into a more cohesive strategy for advertisers.
At Premion, that's a big part of our role: navigating those relationships and inventory sources so local and regional advertisers don't have to.
4. Measurement doesn't have to be perfect to be meaningful
Measurement is another important theme, particularly as advertiser expectations continue to evolve.
Our research found local audience delivery and geographic reporting is the top measurement priority, cited by 57% of advertisers. That makes sense. Before anything else, advertisers need to know they're reaching the right audiences in the right markets.
From there, we can build a fuller picture of performance through attribution, incremental reach, website actions, foot traffic and more granular reporting where available. But not every publisher provides the same signals or level of transparency today.
That doesn't mean inventory without game- or team-level reporting has no value. Measurement should start with reaching the right people in the right market. If a live sports campaign is then driving increased showroom traffic or website actions, those outcomes matter even when every impression can’t be traced back to an individual game.
The goal should be to tell a more complete performance story while continuing to push the ecosystem toward greater transparency.
Where do we go from here?
Advertiser appetite for live sports streaming is already strong. What happens next depends on our ability as an industry to remove the friction that can stand in the way of greater investment.
That will require a collective effort across publishers, agencies, ad tech platforms and partners. We need more consistent signals around live sports inventory, greater standardization in what can be measured and reported, and simpler ways for advertisers to navigate a fragmented marketplace.
There’s still work to do to create a more consistent playbook across the industry. The focus now should be on simplifying live sports streaming: making it easier to access, more accountable to measure and clearer to prove. Do that, and more advertisers can tap into one of the most powerful shared viewing experiences in media.
For more insights, download Premion’s 2026 Live Sports Streaming Playbook.
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