\u201cWatching while second-screening already feels completely normal for Gen Z,\u201d says former EE and BT Sport technology director Matt Stagg, referring to the demographic cohort born between the late 1990s and early 2010s, and who cannot remember the pre-internet age.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I get annoyed when I hear that youngsters don\u2019t have the attention span to watch anything all the way through. If they are interested, they\u2019ll watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Do younger viewers care what Roy Keane has to say? (Carl Recine\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Fair point.<\/p>\n
Peter Hutton, who has worked for established broadcasters such as the BBC, Eurosport and Sky and disruptors Meta and the Saudi Pro League, puts it like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no one way of speaking to your audience anymore \u2014 you need different editorial voices across different platforms,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s about accepting that it\u2019s not always about the live game. Clips might be the most important offering. But when you boil it down, it\u2019s pretty simple: you\u2019ve got to get people to care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The risk with pieces like this is that you end up writing something that makes you look as daft as 1985 film Back to the Future\u2019s predictions for the technology we would have by 2015 \u2014 all flying taxis, hoverboards and self-tying shoelaces.<\/p>\n
Here, however, are six predictions for 2035 that I am confident in.<\/p>\n
More, more, more<\/p>\n
Let us start with the safest forecast of all: we will be able to watch more sport and sport-related content, in more places and more ways.<\/p>\n
Just last week, Paramount+ won the rights to show Champions League football in the UK<\/a> for the first time, displacing TNT Sports. But it is not just the platforms that are mushrooming: the volume is, too.<\/p>\n Two Circles, the international sports and entertainment marketing firm, believes global sports consumption will triple between 2014 and 2034, going from 1.3 trillion hours to four trillion hours in nine years\u2019 time. Last year, it says, three trillion hours of sports video was consumed worldwide, with 40 per cent of that on digital platforms.<\/p>\n In the last week, I have watched live football from BBC Sport, TikTok and TNT, NFL on DAZN, school rugby on YouTube, and major World Cup news play out on X. All on my phone. But this was only a tiny fraction of what I could have watched.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last 15 years have been characterised by an exponential growth of content supply that is outstripping demand,\u201d says Two Circles co-founder Gareth Balch. \u201cIn 2024, 114,000 years\u2019 worth of new media was created, up from 15,000 in 2008. This trend will continue past 200,000 years\u2019 worth of new media in a decade, driven by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of this content is being created by athletes, clubs and leagues themselves, as opposed to media companies, and it is pumped out via their own apps, social media channels and websites. But we are all creators now, too.<\/p>\n \n Many fans are also now content creators (Steve Bardens\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a fundamental shift in fandom,\u201d says Lewis Dean, TikTok\u2019s European brand and reputation manager. \u201cFans are more active participants than they were in the past. They are creators, too, and they are always ready to engage.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it goes the other way, too. The whole ecosystem wants to connect with fans, wherever they are, and lots of them are on TikTok, which is great for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Hutton, who was in charge of Meta\u2019s sports partnerships between 2018 and 2023, believes we are going to get a lot more output from the stars of the show, and it will be their contributions that lead the post-match debate, not the likes of me or even the best pundits.<\/p>\n One of the companies Hutton works with now is Greenfly, a Santa Monica-based firm that uses AI to quickly scrape stills and videos of games and send them directly to athletes, or whoever runs their social media accounts, for them to post.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019ve been to see a game, what is it that really resonates?\u201d asks Hutton. \u201cIf a player has posted something about a game, it is much more powerful than if a broadcaster, club or league does.\u201d<\/p>\n Balch sees the increase in the amount of content kicked out by clubs, leagues and stars as a reaction to the fierce battle for our attention.<\/p>\n \u201cThe greater choice provided by modern media means avid fans are likely to know and consume more, and casual fans are likely to do the opposite,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cLeagues, teams and athletes will need to double the amount of content they\u2019re producing, and treble the genres they\u2019re producing it in, to keep growing relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n Hyper-personalisation<\/p>\n When actor Bill Murray filled in for the Chicago Cubs\u2019 famous but ailing announcer Harry Caray<\/a> for a game against the Montreal Expos in 1987, it was a hit. Despite being unashamedly biased to the Cubs and offering little in the way of insight, nobody cared, as it was funny and Caray would be back for the next game.<\/p>\n But what was once a one-off is already common.<\/p>\n When Amazon Prime Video started streaming Premier League games in 2019, one of the surprises it delivered was the option to turn off the commentary team and have \u201cstadium atmosphere\u201d instead. In 2021, children\u2019s TV network Nickelodeon simulcast CBS\u2019s coverage of the Chicago Bears-New Orleans Saints play-off game, but with added slime and SpongeBob SquarePants<\/a>. There have been five more NFL games on Nickelodeon since then, with more planned.<\/p>\n Next month, ESPN2 and various Disney Channel options will simulcast a Monsters Inc.-themed version of ESPN\u2019s Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers. You can decide if that is a sillier alternative than the iShowSpeed stream<\/a> YouTube offered for its first NFL global exclusive, the season-opener in Sao Paulo between the Kansas City Chiefs and Chargers, or the Mark Goldbridge stream the Bundesliga is offering<\/a> in the UK. The point is that we have options.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big trend is hyper-personalisation,\u201d says Stagg, who now advises companies on their digital and fan engagement strategies. \u201cI call it \u2018skinning\u2019 your content because it is similar to how gamers customise characters with skins they have bought or earned.<\/p>\n \u201cA super fan might want a feed with loads of data, heat maps and xG. A more casual fan might want to watch along with their favourite YouTuber.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Influencers such as IShowSpeed are increasingly significant (Wed Al Shehri\/Getty Images for GEA)<\/p>\n Hutton agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you watch a game on linear TV in the traditional way, you are watching what the broadcaster thinks you want,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the viewers of tomorrow will want to choose. NFL Multiview (four games on one screen) is already massive in the U.S, but some viewers will want a feed with the latest betting odds, others will prefer fantasy football updates. It\u2019s all storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n For TikTok\u2019s Dean, the trend is clear.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are already seeing broadcasters and streamers provide quick and easy access to data \u2014 ball-tracking, player speeds, distance travelled,\u201d he says. \u201cWe are going to see all of that information go from the big screen to the palm of your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n For many, it will be more expensive<\/p>\n If there is one thing we can be absolutely sure of, it is that the good stuff will not be getting any cheaper.<\/p>\n But while the super fans will get hit hardest, more casual ones\u00a0are likely to find they can get all they need without paying much at all, or certainly no more than they already do.<\/p>\n This year, we have already seen DAZN, flush with new Saudi investment, stream FIFA\u2019s expanded Club World Cup for free<\/a>, while the BBC has started publishing the same highlights packages it uses in Match of the Day on its website, hours before the flagship TV highlights show runs. The Saudi Pro League has been sharing long highlights packages of its games on YouTube for two seasons.<\/p>\n And if all that is not premium enough for you, DAZN teamed up with TikTok last week to stream Southend United versus Carlisle United<\/a>, with 70,000 unique viewers enjoying that clash of the titans free of charge.<\/p>\n Now, none of this is strictly free as Brits have to pay for a TV licence \u2014 \u00a3174.50 a year \u2014 to access BBC content, while all these other \u201cfreebies\u201d are supported by advertising.<\/p>\n Casimiro Miguel is Brazil\u2019s version of the aforementioned Goldbridge and the YouTube channel he has built, CazeTV, is big enough to sell its own advertising. This revenue has enabled the channel to buy the Brazilian rights to the 2022 World Cup, 2024 Paris Olympics, and this year\u2019s Club World Cup. It also had the non-exclusive rights in Brazil to the Chiefs-Chargers NFL season curtain-raiser.<\/p>\n \n Kansas City Chiefs\u2019 trip to Los Angeles Chargers was streamed live by a Brazilian YouTuber (Alexandre Schneider\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n But while these are the ad-funded success stories sport is happy to publicise, Hutton raises another type of viewer that rights-holders are going to have to learn to accommodate.<\/p>\n \u201cPirate fans<\/a> are valuable fans, too,\u201d he says. \u201cSport will have to accept the reality of their existence and build in commercial content to monetise them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think about it, they are examples of fans who care, as they have sought out pirated content. So how do you bring them back into the fold so they contribute? Some leagues have started to put L-shaped advertising around live feeds, making the adverts part of the stolen content, so the pirates\u2019 eyeballs are monetised.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother way to do it is to count them properly. Videocites is a firm that uses AI to track all usages of IP (intellectual property). It is helping the NBA count its total audience properly, which then helps it extract full value from its commercial partners.<\/p>\n \u201cThat data also helps the sports know which influencers and content creators are the best at telling their stories \u2014 they are the ones you want to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n It will look like gaming<\/p>\n Electronic Arts, the company behind some of the most popular video games of the last 4o years, announced something during the NBC broadcast of the recent Detroit Lions-Philadelphia Eagles slugfest<\/a> that would have gone over the heads of half of the TV audience.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-2245711103-scaled.jpg\")
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