Today, live sports coverage is no longer the exclusive domain of television broadcasters. Increasingly new digital, social and telecommunications companies are bidding for and often winning the exclusive rights to stream popular sports. While it is true that television networks are still the primary broadcasters of most popular sports around the world, there has been a distinct shift in power in recent years when it comes to the mix of media partners of sporting organisations. With each new media rights deal come new, bold non-traditional organisations who are eager to purchase premium sports content to help attract new customers, maintain existing ones and improve their brand exposure and sentiment.

As such, ‘digital rights’ are challenging ‘broadcasting rights’ as the biggest and most significant contributor of revenue from keenly contested media rights negotiations. In some instances, digital streaming has replaced traditional broadcasting. In contrast, in other cases, the digital component of the sports media rights mix has become increasingly prevalent, with most sports seeing digital streaming as the future of live sports coverage.

Digital Media as the Ultimate Complement

Historically, digital and social media content relating to live sport or analysis acted as an accompaniment to television broadcasts of sport (Perez 2018). While television rights holders would attract millions of viewers to their live broadcasts of sports, many consumers utilised social media for different views, analysis and information. For example, before a football fan watches their team play on television, they might first watch a highlights package of the previous round's match on the team's Facebook page, or they might watch a 15-minute preview program, hosted by members of the team's media department on the club's official website, or even listen to a short podcast produced by a superfan.

Not surprisingly, the most likely demographic of sports fans to watch via social and digital media platforms are millennials and Generation Z. The average Generation Z sports fan utilises an average of 3.1 devices to consume sports-related content. Likewise, 37 per cent of millennials use multiple devices when watching sport, while 31 per cent are likely to consume sport via social media (NBN 2017).