Will the Super Bowl be the most streamed event in 2030?

Will the Super Bowl be the most streamed sports event by 2030?

Have you ever wondered which sport will be responsible for the most viewed live event in 2030?

From 1980 through 2023, the five largest professional US sports leagues will have earned more than $210 billion from domestic media rights alone, with the NFL making up a staggering 65%, or one hundred and thirty-six billion of that revenue. In 2023, broadcasters and streaming services will pay $15.4 billion a year for all their sports broadcasting rights. That's billions of dollars for billions of viewers. (Source)

Under some of the most recent deals, TV networks will pay about 2x their current fees to broadcast NFL games, and Apple signed a deal to pay around 3x the value of Major League Soccer's previous contract. That massive premium is because nearly every one of the most viewed live events of all time was a sports event. (Source)

So with all these insane sports rights deals over the last year, where streamers and traditional cable networks alike spent billions of dollars for the rights to stream sports, we had a question: which sport will net the biggest return on investment and become the uncontested champion to win the streaming wars once and for all?

We're going to show our analysis: all the top growing sports leagues, head to head. We'll show our data, then you tell us what you think: What sport league will be responsible for the top streamed event in 2030? Will it be FIFA… Or the NFL? The NBA... or Cricket and the IPL? And how does the transition to sports streaming impact sports viewership in general? Read more below to find out.

First up: Cricket and the India Premier League (IPL)

So let's start our fantasy match-up bracket with two up-and-comers: Cricket and the IPL versus basketball and the NBA. Behind football, Cricket is actually the second most popular sport in the world, with approximately 2.5 billion fans, predominantly based in a handful of countries across Asia Pacific. In fact, the Indian sports market is 90% dominated by cricket. But approximately 2.2 billion people watched the 2015 cricket world cup. (Source)

The India Premier League cricket federation just sold its media rights for $6.2 billion for the 2023 to 2027 cycle in a two-way split between Disney Star, Disney's TV network in India, and Viacom 18. This is a pretty huge price tag indicative of growth potential, but interestingly, Disney decided to pass on the streaming rights for the IPL until 2027, and kept the TV rights instead. Why is that? (Source)

Because 42% of Indians still prefer to watch the sport on their TV. Disney's Star TV service already has the scale it needs to dominate, so it didn't need to break its teeth outbidding Amazon, Viacom18, Sony, and a slew of others to win streaming rights. Cricket currently draws 93% of all sports viewership in India. But does that mean that cricket could be the most-watched live-streaming event in 2030 as Indian fans drop their television remotes and pick them back up to turn on their streaming app? (Source)

Now, let's compare Cricket to Basketball and the NBA

Compare cricket to basketball, which has 2.2 billion fans around the world. That's right behind cricket, but basketball has been able to grow its following in Europe thanks to the inclusion of more European players. China also is a massive market for the NBA, and has grown in prominence ever since Yao Ming joined the NBA (representation matters, as it can expose a whole new audience to your sport). (Source)

Interestingly, a couple of predominant Spanish-language countries have grown their level of interest in the sport, so Latin America could be a big growth area for the NBA as well. So which sport has more potential? Can cricket expand its reach outside of Asia Pacific while basketball grows its reach in Latin America or further into Asia? (Source)

Unfortunately, we don't have updated bidding wars for basketball to give us a clue to what the streamers think. The league most recently renewed its media rights in a deal for $24 billion, which was back in 2016. That's a large amount, but that was over 9 years ago, and it's up for renewal in 2025, so we imagine that's going to see a pretty huge spike up as well. (Source)

If we do want to follow the money, basketball has the highest median salary of any other sports league at $3.8 million. Combined, the NBA's ten highest-paid players are set to collect $751 million before taxes and agents' fees, which is up 122% from ten years ago. Compare that to the $860,000 median salary for the NFL and the $100,000 median salary for cricket players in India. (Source)

Financially speaking, there's strong money behind the NBA, but it really comes down to demographics and which league can grow its appeal in other countries faster over the next seven years. Which do you think wins this match-up? Cricket or NBA? Let us know in the feedback!

Third up, American football and the NFL

Finally, our main head-to-head challenge: the NFL versus FIFA. The NFL is the most profitable professional sports league in the US. The NFL revenues reached nearly $18 billion in 2021. Of the top 100 most-watched live broadcasts in the US between 2018 and 2021, the NFL counted for over 300. And globally, it's estimated the NFL has over 400 million fans. (Source)

Forbes estimates that the top-paid player in the NFL this season, Aaron Rodgers, makes approximately $68 million, while Lionel Messi makes just about double that at $130 million. That also puts Messi just ahead of the NBA's Lebron James, the highest-paid NBA player ever, who stands to net pretax earnings of $124 million from his 2022 to 23 on-court salary and off-the-court endorsements. While the average salary in the NFL is more like $2.7 million, players in the UK's Premier League make an average salary of $3.9 million, the highest-paying league in Europe. (Source)

The NFL makes more per year in the US than every other major sports league. Second is the NBA, with $2.6 billion per year. The NFL renewed its media rights contract last year to the tune of a $105 billion TV deal from 2023 to 2033. That's $10.5 billion per year. The Premier League, the most-watched football league in the world, recently renewed its own global media rights deal, where its international streaming rights sold for $7.1 billion and domestic rights for $6.9 billion. This will bring the league a total of $14 billion over the next three years. But that's $4.6 billion per year compared to $10.5 billion. A sport with 12x fewer fans making 2x as much could be indicative of growth potential. But is money alone a good enough indicator? What really matters for 2030 here is growth potential. (Source)

For example, will the recent Amazon Prime deal for Thursday Night Football to be streamed on the international streaming platform help the NFL grow its audience outside of the US? Considering the fan base of American Football is heavily concentrated in North America, Australia, and some countries in Latin America and Europe, the sport holds huge growth potential in Asia. The NFL still trails the NBA in popularity in major Asian markets like China. The only other single market with a similar (and soon to be more) market share than China is India. (Source)

India actually launched its own American Football league back in 2011, but it only broadcast one season to households in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka before it was put on an indefinite hiatus. The big issue with the NFL in India is unfamiliarity with the sport. But two trends could change this: the rise of fantasy gaming in India and the battle to control India in the streaming wars. At last tally, Amazon sits at around 13.6 million subscribers in India and is flatly sixth place as far as India's streaming market is concerned. Disney's Hotstar service is currently number one with about 50 million subscribers. Interest in Amazon Prime in India has continued to grow, and as Amazon grows its marketing in India, there's a chance the easy access to Thursday night football over the next ten years could lure new fans in. (Source)

Alternatively, the rise of fantasy sports betting throughout both the US and India could contribute to a greater interest in the NFL. There were 90 million fantasy gamers in India in 2019, and it is estimated that by the end of 2022, there will be nearly 150 million fantasy gamers in the country. Disney (under Bob Chapek) had its sights set on sports betting as a growth avenue for its streaming content, and previously said that the Under 35 demo wants sports betting as part of their sports lifestyle. In 2021, a lot of the NFL's viewership gains came from the average fan watching 20.3 games instead of 18.8, which some have attributed to the gamification aspect of fantasy football, which increases engagement in every game as opposed to just those played by your favorite team. But we'll see if Bob Iger, Disney's new CEO, agrees with that strategy. (Source)

Final match up: NFL versus FIFA and the UK Premier League

So, is all that enough for the NFL to compete with the world champ? While the NFL might be the biggest sport in the US, it's not the biggest in the world. Far from it. That title goes to actual football, also known as soccer, with an estimated 3.5 billion to even 4 billion fans around the world. To put that in perspective, 3.2 billion people watched the 2018 world cup. The only other major sporting event, or live event period, to attract more viewers was the 2016 Summer Olympics, which saw 3.5 billion viewers tune in. And get this: it's estimated that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (airing at the time of this report's publishing) will likely be watched by 5 billion people.(Source)

2023 Update: According to Arab News, the 2022 World Cup was viewed by 5.4 billion people, so that's the new number to beat. The website Sporting News estimates that 1.5 billion or more global viewers could have watched the final match alone.

Money-wise, between 2015 and 2018, FIFA generated nearly $6.5 billion dollars, with over $5 billion generated by the 2018 World Cup alone. If you've seen our World Cup economics video, then you'll know the last Super Bowl generated 4x less. Soccer is also played worldwide, while American football is still unknown or unfamiliar to many. While the monumental popularity of football is not going away anytime soon, it's also a detriment to its growth. Football is the most popular sport in nearly every continent except North America, which might explain why Apple spent 3x more on the media rights to major league soccer in the US. (Source)

But the fate of one streaming service could determine not only the direction of global soccer fandom but the streaming wars itself. FIFA just launched its own completely free subscription service earlier this year called FIFA+, and plans to grow it to 200 million subscribers by offering 40,000 live games per year. For instance, if Amazon or even Apple were to eventually purchase FIFA+, they could make larger bets to acquire the media rights to Premier league games. Then comes the 2030 World Cup and it is game over. If the 2022 World Cup will be watched by 5 billion, do you really think the 2030 Superbowl has a chance against the 2030 World Cup? (Source)

Well, what do you think? Really, what do you think? Who is it going to be? FIFA? The NFL? The Indian Premier League? Or the NBA? Let us know your draft picks in the feedback to this report. Thanks for reading!