The wide world of sports remains a behemoth, with multi-billion-dollar rights lining the pockets of major leagues like the NFL and NBA, but sports has gotten smaller in some ways as less familiar leagues strike deals to increase their reach. It’s all worth watching as sports content bleeds beyond broadcast and into the streaming realm: this week Roku and X Games expanded their U.S. streaming partnership, with a multi-year deal granting Roku Sports Channel exclusive rights to the inaugural MoonPay X Games League, a new global, team-based format spanning skateboarding, BMX, snowboard, and ski disciplines. The XGL’s debut summer season will stream free beginning in 2026, followed by the first winter season in 2027, with the MoonPay X Games League Draft also streaming live from COSM in Los Angeles. The deal extends a partnership that has already delivered outsized engagement: during the most recent X Games Aspen, Roku’s audience grew 149% year-over-
year, with 91% of viewers new to X Games on the platform and female viewership surging 233% YOY.
This week also brought news of SportsCast Global’s partnership with FAST Channels TV to launch a new 24/7 ad-supported sports channel targeting fans of soccer, motorsport, basketball, tennis, and baseball. The channel will carry “classic games,” highlights, commentary shows, athlete profiles, sports talk programming, and magazine-style features. That means no live sports rights but adds to a growing wave of sports-focused FAST channel activity, with brands seeking ad-supported sports audiences outside expensive live rights agreements. And it raises plenty of questions for big broadcasters and streamers paying up big time for major leagues: How much traditional sports viewing will fade away as alternative leagues on smaller (and often free) streaming outlets proliferate? Then again, live sports remains the main game in town, with “classic” sports content appealing to an admittedly small sliver of the sports-fan population. Whether that remains the case into the future is less clear.
Next? It’s not that people will stop watching the NFL and other big leagues; it’s more a question of whether they will keep watching as much as they have in the past when an increasing number of games are exclusive to streaming services that charge monthly fees. M&A activity only highlights the shifting landscape, with NCAA’s release of the full March Madness schedule for Paramount Skydance’s CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports illustrating the breadth of coverage split between CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV, with games also streaming on Paramount+ and HBO Max – two entities that most believe will eventually merge under the proposed Paramount-WBD merger that could close before year-end. That will further consolidate rights even as smaller entities snap up lesser-known sports and leagues. One could argue that there’s plenty of sports action to go around – and that’s likely accurate as consumers constantly search for live TV distractions and look for ways to bet their hard-earned cash as sports gambling proliferates. FAST has yet to make sense for any substantial live sports content, but archival sports shows could seed FAST for a more competitive future, especially as the top FAST channels gain larger audiences and higher CPMs.
All of this comes as a new survey of 59 professionals across streaming services, broadcasters, leagues, and technology providers from research firm Looper Insights found that 40.9% expect global streaming platforms to hold the greatest structural power in the next round of sports media rights negotiations, narrowly edging out leagues and rights holders (39%). Amazon Prime Video ranked as the single platform most likely to lead in sports streaming, with 35% of responses. The survey also identified scale/global reach (39%) and audience data and insights (37%) as the most important factors, perhaps favoring data-rich streamers over traditional broadcasters. As for those smaller FAST channels and platforms nipping at the edges, consider that two in five respondents said marquee sports events tend to produce short-term subscription spikes with limited long-term retention, with cited Samsung Ads data showing that two-thirds of fans who sign up for a sport-
specific service churn out during the off-season. And as customer churn out as the big seasons end, they may just find those smaller outlets like FAST Channels TV and big aggregators like Roku there to fill the gap with lesser-known (but often just as exciting, if not more so) sports entertainment. Brace yourself for continued disruption in 2026 and beyond.
