The sports industry is changing quickly, but not necessarily in the ways we sometimes think.
New platforms matter. New sports are emerging. Women’s sport continues to attract larger audiences. Major events are becoming increasingly global. But underneath all of these developments lies an even bigger shift:
The sports audience is becoming more fragmented, more digital, more diverse and potentially more valuable.
Nielsen’s Top 10: Trends to Watch in Today’s Sports Landscape highlights ten developments ranging from sports broadcasting and FAST channels to pickleball, women’s basketball and the globalisation of football fandom.
Rather than looking at them as ten isolated trends, we have identified six broader developments that could have important implications for sports organisations, rights holders, brands and professionals working in sport.
- Sport is becoming one of the last major reasons to watch something live
The battle for attention has fundamentally changed.
Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, gaming, podcasts and social media have created an entertainment environment where consumers can choose almost anything, at any time.
Sport remains different.
According to Nielsen, sports represented 29.2% of all ad-supported television viewing among people aged 25–54 in Q4 2025.
That is significant because the value of sport is not simply about the number of people watching.
It is about when and how they watch.
A football match, tennis final or basketball game has an urgency that most entertainment content does not. Fans want to know what happens as it happens.
What could this mean for the sports industry?
The scarcity of live attention could make sports rights increasingly valuable even as the overall media landscape becomes more fragmented.
But there is another lesson here for smaller sports organisations.
You don’t necessarily need millions of viewers to create valuable media.
A smaller but highly engaged audience watching something live can potentially offer sponsors something that is becoming increasingly difficult to find elsewhere: concentrated attention around a shared moment.
For clubs, federations and emerging sports, the question therefore shouldn’t only be:
“How many people watched?”
It should also be:
“How engaged were the people who did?”
- The future of sports broadcasting may be more accessible – not less
One of the most interesting trends in the report concerns FAST channels – Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television.
In February 2026, Nielsen identified 254 sports-related FAST channels, making sport the second-largest category behind entertainment. More importantly, the number of sports FAST channels increased by around 15% during the previous year, from 107 in July 2024 to 220 by February 2025 in the timeline presented in the report.
This deserves attention.
For years, the sports media conversation has largely revolved around increasingly expensive broadcasting rights and subscription services.
FAST offers another model.
Consumers get free access. Advertising finances the content. Rights holders gain another distribution channel.
The bigger trend: distribution is multiplying
The future probably isn’t simply TV versus streaming.
It is television + subscription streaming + FAST + YouTube + social media + direct-to-consumer platforms.
That creates complexity, but it also creates opportunity.
Smaller federations and competitions that historically struggled to secure traditional broadcasting deals may have more ways to distribute their content than ever before.
The challenge will increasingly shift from:
“Can we broadcast our sport?”
to:
“How do we package and distribute our sport so people actually want to watch it?”
That means sports organisations need skills in content production, digital distribution, audience development and commercialisation – not just traditional media relations.
- New sports can become mainstream surprisingly quickly
Pickleball provides one of the clearest examples of how quickly the sports landscape can change.
Nielsen reports that 10% of the US population is interested in pickleball, with considerably higher interest in markets such as Miami (17%), Orlando (16%) and Houston (16%).
More interestingly, television audiences are beginning to follow.
The PPA Masters attracted 791,000 viewers on CBS in January 2026, according to Nielsen’s figures. By comparison, the Major League Pickleball finals attracted 436,000 viewers in August 2025.
Pickleball itself is interesting.
But the bigger lesson may be even more interesting.
Participation can create media demand
Traditional sports often work from the top down:
professional competition → media coverage → fandom → participation.
Emerging sports can develop differently:
participation → community → social content → events → professionalisation → media.
That opens possibilities for entirely new sports ecosystems.
Padel has demonstrated similar dynamics in parts of Europe, while other emerging and lifestyle sports could follow comparable paths.
For entrepreneurs and investors in sport, this means participation data may increasingly function as an early indicator of future commercial opportunities.
Today’s recreational trend could become tomorrow’s professional sports property.
- Women’s sport is moving from “growth story” to sports business
For years, women’s sport has been described as having “potential”.
The increasingly interesting question is whether we should stop treating it as an emerging category altogether.
Nielsen’s data on the WNBA Draft provides another indication of the direction of travel.
From 2025 to 2026, total WNBA Draft viewership increased 19%, while viewership among women aged 18+ increased 21%. Most strikingly, viewership among Black audiences increased 38%. The median age of the broadcast audience also fell from 56 to 53.
Local stories mattered too.
Portland’s Draft viewership increased 40% year-on-year alongside the arrival of expansion team Portland Fire, while Los Angeles recorded a 36% increase as UCLA players were selected fourth, fifth and sixth overall.
Women’s football provides another signal.
Nielsen reports an 11% year-on-year increase in NWSL viewership in 2025.
What can we learn from this?
Growth in women’s sport is not only being driven by the matches themselves.
Players, drafts, expansion teams, personalities, local identities and storylines are becoming commercial assets.
That means organisations need to think beyond matchday.
A player joining a club is content.
A draft is content.
Training is content.
A rivalry is content.
An expansion team is content.
The organisations that successfully build narratives around athletes and competitions may therefore capture significantly more value than those that simply broadcast the games.
For professionals entering the sports industry, this also suggests growing opportunities in areas such as content, commercial development, athlete branding, partnerships, fan engagement and digital media.
- The sports fan of the future is digital-first
The FIFA World Cup provides Nielsen with a useful case study for another major shift.
Soccer fans in the US are considerably more likely than the general population to use social platforms for sports information.
For example, Nielsen reports:
Platform General population Soccer fans
- YouTube 63% 80%
- Instagram 60% 74%
- Facebook 50% 74%
- TikTok 44% 63%
- X/Twitter 31% 53%
- WhatsApp 25% 51%
- Twitch 18% 35%
The report also identifies higher usage among soccer fans on Snapchat and LinkedIn.
This tells us something important about modern fandom.
Watching the match is only one part of being a fan.
Fans watch highlights on YouTube.
They follow players on Instagram.
They consume reactions on TikTok.
They discuss games in WhatsApp groups.
They follow breaking news through social platforms.
They watch creators discussing tactics, transfers and controversies.
The sports product therefore no longer begins at kick-off and ends at the final whistle.
It exists almost continuously.
What does this mean for clubs?
Every sports organisation is increasingly becoming a media organisation.
That doesn’t mean every club needs a huge production department.
It means clubs need to understand that their relationship with supporters is built across hundreds of small digital interactions.
The match might happen once a week.
Fandom happens every day.
- The next generation of sports fans will be more culturally diverse – and more global
Some of the most interesting figures in Nielsen’s report concern who is driving football fandom.
Among Hispanic soccer fans in the US, 82% are Gen Z or Millennials, compared with 74% of US soccer fans overall. Nielsen also reports that 39% of US Hispanics identify as World Cup fans, rising to 50% among first- and second-generation Hispanics.
Nielsen finds similarly significant opportunities among Black audiences. Black Americans lead the US in multi-sport fandom, while 28% report being very interested in soccer. Black and Hispanic fans together reach 37% on the same measure.
And the picture becomes even bigger when looking beyond the US.
Football ranks as the number-one sport by interest in several of the Asian markets Nielsen examined, including Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore, while ranking second in India and Japan.
The percentages demonstrate the scale of that interest: 77% of adults in Indonesia, 61% in Thailand, 52% in Japan, 44% in Singapore, 61% in India and 33% in South Korea according to the markets and measurements presented by Nielsen.
Sports organisations need to rethink what a “local fan” means
Historically, geography largely determined fandom.
You supported the club from your city.
Today, a teenager thousands of kilometres away can watch highlights, follow players, buy merchandise and interact with a club every day without ever visiting its stadium.
That creates enormous opportunities – but only for organisations capable of communicating beyond their traditional audience.
Language, culture, platforms and storytelling become increasingly important.
The most successful sports organisations of the next decade may not necessarily be those with the biggest local markets.
They may be those that become best at turning local sporting identity into globally relevant stories.
So what are the big conclusions for the sports industry?
Looking across Nielsen’s ten trends, we see several developments connecting with each other.
Sport is becoming more valuable as live entertainment. In a world of on-demand media, live sport remains capable of creating moments where large groups of people pay attention simultaneously.
Distribution is becoming more fragmented but also more accessible. FAST channels, streaming and social media create new opportunities beyond traditional broadcasting.
Participation sports can become media properties. Pickleball demonstrates how recreational participation can develop into professional competition and meaningful television audiences.
Women’s sport is increasingly becoming its own commercial ecosystem. The growth is no longer simply about match audiences but about athletes, storytelling, expansion, media and sponsorship.
Fandom is becoming permanently digital. Clubs compete for attention every day, not only when matches are played.
And perhaps most importantly:
The next generation of sports fans will not look exactly like the previous one.
They will be younger, more digital, more international and more culturally diverse.
That creates opportunities far beyond broadcasting.
It affects sponsorship.
- Ticketing
- Content
- Technology
- Recruitment
- Fan engagement
- Internationalisation
And ultimately, the types of skills sports organisations will need.
What this means for people who want to work in sport
There is another dimension to these trends that is particularly relevant from a Sportidealisten perspective.
As the sports industry changes, sports jobs will change with it.
The industry will still need coaches, competition managers, administrators and traditional commercial roles.
But organisations will increasingly need people who understand several worlds simultaneously.
People who understand sport + content.
- Sport + data
- Sport + technology
- Sport + communities
- Sport + commercialisation
- Sport + international audiences
The ability to understand the sport itself will remain important.
But understanding how people discover, consume, discuss and pay for sport could become just as valuable.
And that might ultimately be the biggest trend hidden inside Nielsen’s report:
The sports industry is no longer only an industry built around competitions. It is becoming an always-on ecosystem of live entertainment, media, technology, communities and culture.
For organisations and professionals working in sport, understanding that ecosystem may become one of the most important competitive advantages of the years ahead.
Source: Nielsen, Top 10: Trends to Watch in Today’s Sports Landscape. The report draws on Nielsen Fan Insights, Nielsen National TV Ratings, Nielsen Scarborough, Gracenote Global Video Data, Nielsen Big Data + Panel and the Nielsen Global Sports Report, with the specific datasets varying between trends.
