Sports programming remains an important source of viewing of traditional TV. As a genre, it represents an outsized source of costs, revenues and strategic leverage between networks and distributors. We estimate that viewing of sports programming on national TV properties during 2016 amounted to approximately 36bn person-hours on a live+same-day basis across all dayparts and all people, and around 38bn person-hours including time-shifting on a similar basis. This represented 10% of total national TV viewing hours including 7 days of DVR playback, which amounted to 374bn person-viewing hours during 2016. All live and time-shifted viewing (which includes viewing on local properties) amounted to around 490bn person-viewing hours in 2016.
Sports TV Trends – Wall St. Report - Pivotal Research
