Ampere: streamers will spend $8.5B on sports rights across 17 countries in 2023, up 64% YoY; DAZN accounted for 54% of streamers' 2022 sports rights spending
Karlene Lukovitz / MediaPost : Source: Advanced Television .
Context & Ripple Effects
Ampere's sports-rights forecast is the sharpest edge of a spending arc it has been tracking for years: the five major US streamers were already set to spend $23B+ on original content in 2023, and the firm later projected streamers would outspend commercial broadcasters on content overall for the first time in 2025. Sports is where that crossover gets decided first — rights are scarce, exclusive, and the one category that reliably drives simultaneous live audiences.
The 64% YoY jump to $8.5B across 17 countries is not broad-based: DAZN alone accounted for 54% of streamers' 2022 sports rights spending, and the relationships in this corpus show it pairing that buying power with a monetization push — global expansion to 200 territories and an acquisition of streaming-tech provider ViewLift that serves roughly 15 US pro teams. Sports spend is concentrating in one specialist while the generalists build the ad and originals base around it.
First-order effects
- Rights holders across the 17 tracked markets now have a bidding counterparty growing at 64% a year, and DAZN's 54% share of 2022 spend makes it the price-setter for soccer and combat sports rights in particular.
Second-order effects
- Commercial broadcasters facing streamers who outbid them on sports must either raise their own bids or cede live audiences, while DAZN's ViewLift deal signals it will sell the underlying streaming infrastructure to teams, creating a second revenue line that subsidizes rights bids.
Third-order effects
- If the 64% growth rate holds even partially, Ampere's broader projection of streamers overtaking broadcasters on total content spend by 2025 becomes a rights-market restructuring: sports leagues' primary customers become global streaming platforms, with DAZN-style specialists and ad-funded generalists as the two surviving buyer types.
The trend: Sports rights are migrating from broadcast to streaming first, with DAZN's concentration of spend making it the leading indicator of streamers' broader takeover of content budgets.