From the NFL to the Olympics, sports drove the most streaming signups in 2024

Live sports remains the gift that keeps on giving for streaming platforms.

With Super Bowl Sunday around the corner, we looked back at the five biggest streaming subscription drivers of 2024, thanks to data from analytics company Antenna.

Surprise, surprise: they were all live sports events. Last year’s Super Bowl was the biggest driver, adding 3.2 million members for Paramount+ from Feb. 10 through Feb. 12, 2024.

In fact, three of the events were NFL games, including Peacock’s exclusive AFC Wild Card playoff game last January and Peacock’s exclusive regular season game in Brazil in September.

Peacock also notched big numbers thanks to the Paris Summer Olympics. The Games drove about 1.8 million subscribers during their first three days last year, from July 26 through July 28.

Punching up signups

Notably, three of the top five events were exclusive to their respective streaming platforms (the Super Bowl and the Olympics also aired on linear networks).

Netflix has been steadily wading into the waters of live sports with event programming, such as its boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. The fight, which streamed live on Nov. 15, drove over 1.4 million signups for Netflix from Nov. 14 through Nov. 16, according to Antenna.

The Antenna report called the fight the “single largest acquisition moment” in the U.S. for Netflix since the company started observing SVOD signups in 2019.

That said, Netflix doesn’t seem in a rush to go after expensive sports rights, instead focusing on live event programming like Christmas Day NFL games.

“If there was a path where we can actually make the economics work for both us and the League, we certainly would explore,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the company’s most recent earnings call. “But right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be, and sports is a very important part of that.”

Getting FASTer

These subscriber acquisition moments likely won’t slow down, as digital live sports viewing is projected to soar in the coming years.

This year’s Super Bowl is even streaming on a FAST platform, Tubi, for the first time (And Tubi owner Fox is planning to launch an SVOD later this year).

“The credibility we will get in the space [from streaming] the game…that is going to go miles further than anything else,” CMO Nicole Parlapiano tells The Current. “Showing these advertisers that we have the chops to stream the biggest media event of the year, then you think of us in the same mind space as Netflix and not Pluto TV or Roku.”