2026年体育行业六大关键趋势

Table ofContents 01.Executive Summary strategies 03.Distribution models are changing, as direct-to-consumer (DTC) matures 04.European sponsorship revenue grows, while mediarights fees stall 05. Changing audience demand is fuelling media rightsdisruption 06. USholds the cards to football (soccer) revenuegrowth 07.Regulation will impact Premier League sponsorshipin 2026 Executivesummary We’reheading into 2026onthe back of alacklustremacro environment,with linear broadcastersand streamers facingstructural changes in the TV marketwhich has implications acrossmediarights and sponsorship.Ampere has identified some key trends for the year ahead whichwill For free-to-air, commercial andpay TV broadcasters, sport is a key defensive assetfor bothsubscriber retention and advertising revenue. However,as subscriber growth for streamersplateaus,generalist platforms*have increasingly been turning to sport as a way of drivingconsumer growth, through subscription and ad-tiers, in mature markets.However, this benefithas not been felt consistently by allrightsholders, and has been concentrated, mostly in the In the US, however, football (or soccer) is going from strength to strength, and the 2026 FIFAMen’s World Cup is hoping to capitalise onthisfrom both a media rights and sponsorshipperspective. The former has seen its values increase by94%,while Ampere forecasts that thelatter will bring in $2.2bn for FIFA, a growth of 23% from theprevioustournament.In Brazil, thisyear’s tournament will once again return toCazéTV,an influencer-led channel which is now Influencersare alsoemergingas a rising force for new events. Influencer distribution dealshavebeen the backbone of emerging competitions such astheKings League, QueensLeagueandBaller League, all of whom are looking to challenge the status quo. Sponsorship revenue iskeyto thesenew leagues, representing90% of Baller League’s revenue and 70% of Kings League’s. Sponsorship will be a hot topic in the English Premier League (EPL) this year with the gamblingban for Front of Shirt (FoS) deals beginning in the 2026/27 season. In the short term, clubrevenues will beimpacteddue to the large deal values associated with the asset(FoS),but inthe medium to long term, gambling brands will be looking to redistribute that spend, albeit at *i.e.Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+and Apple TV Generalist streamers are turbo-charging their sport Streaming investment in sports is growing rapidly Global investmentin sports rights by streamerscontinued to grow in 2025, from $11.3bn in 2024 upto$13.2bn, boosted by DAZN’s $1bn FIFA ClubWorld Cup deal, and is projected to reach$14.2bnin2026. If we exclude the Club World Cup from the2025 total, the 2026 projections represent a 16% $14.2bn in global investment insports rights is projected linear TV in most markets (although it is likely that these quadrennial events will also be shown onrightsholders’ streaming platforms). It is clear, therefore, that growth in sports rights investment frompure-play streamers is predominantly organic, centred around ongoing, annual eventsoutsideof To look at which companies are driving this growth, it is first helpful to divide the streaming marketinto two categories:Global generalist streamersandLocal streamers. Global generalist streamers aredefinedin this report as streaming services that do not specialise in sports only and are availableacross the majority of the largest global markets, specifically here comprising Netflix, Amazon PrimeVideo, Disney+, Paramount+ and Apple TV. These services havebeen slow in their adoption of live But this is growing rapidly, with generaliststreamers increasingly accounting for a greaterproportion of sport spend, as more servicescontinue to prioritise sporting events. Based ondeals agreed so far for 2026, Amazon will be thetop streaming spenderwith a 27% share, investing$3.8bn in total,over half a billionmore than lastyear’s top investor DAZN. Paramount+ also moves 44% of global streamingspend on sportsrights will come fromgeneralist streamers Why are generalist streamers buying into sports now? Since peaking in 2020, global subscription OTT net additions have been slowing, driving manyservices to search for new ways to accelerate growth.One of the biggest changes to strategy hasbeen that the largest generalist streamers have introduced ad-tiers. Netflix, for example, launched its In the past two years, a meaningful portion of the customer bases of these streamers havetransitioned to an advertising model–with 55% of Paramount+and 82% of Amazon Prime Videosubscribers now on advertising tiers. This has in turn created new strategic imperatives for these players–while previously the focus for revenue growth centred around the two main pillars ofsubscriber acquisitionandsubscriber retention,there is now a third imperative:maximizing First, live sporting events are, arguably, the last remaining appointment-to-view content that canguarantee large c