MLB's YouTube Deal Is Latest Try to Stem Falling Viewership: EMarketer

YouTube’s announcement last week that it renewed its partnership with Major League Baseball to stream 15 games live and for free this season is part of a race to claim exclusive sports streaming rights that led some sports leagues to become “increasingly fractured across services,” blogged eMarketer Monday. Under the deal, viewers in 182 countries will have access to the games.

It makes sense for MLB, “which is dealing with declining viewership,” to shop around streaming rights to several platforms to see which drives the most new viewers, said analyst Daniel Konstantinovic. But it means die-hard fans have to subscribe to Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video and Peacock plus broadcast services to have access to all games, he said. YouTube is offering the channels for free, but “there’s no guarantee it won’t eventually paywall access," he said.

The trend could lead to future “consumer discontent,” said Konstantinovic. Streamers already feel the market is too congested, and over half said they want a streaming bundle, he said, citing a Nielsen report saying 64% of survey respondents want an option to bundle as many or as few streaming services as they want. As sports leagues and more content continue to fragment across services, that sentiment may grow, he said.

YouTube “can’t be ignored as a streaming competitor,” Konstantinovic said. In addition to being one of the most-used social media and digital video platforms, it’s “also free from the production and M&A costs of its competitors” due to its user-generated content and the recent shutdown of its Originals program, he said. Teens spend as much time watching digital video on YouTube (30%) as on Netflix, he said, citing a Piper Sandler survey. A February eMarketer forecast predicted 230.6 million YouTube viewers this year, rising to 245.6 million in 2026.

Consumers are feeling “overwhelmed” by the growing number of streaming services, Nielsen reported last week, with 46% saying it’s harder to find the content they want to watch because too many services are available.

As competition grows, streaming services have scrambled to expand content offerings, launch new channels and “do everything they can do to draw subscribers,” Konstantinovic said. He referenced Disney’s strategy to make popular shows like Dancing With the Stars available exclusively on Disney+, while Netflix “doubled-down” on foreign-language content, including animation. The Warner Bros/Discovery deal, too, will bring popular movie franchises to HBO Max, he noted.

Despite feeling overwhelmed by the offerings -- some 817,000 unique program titles are available in the U.S. -- consumers’ appetites for streaming content aren’t slowing, Nielsen said. Nearly three-fourths said they “love their user experience” with video streaming services, and 93% plan to increase their streaming options or make no changes to existing plans, it said. Average time per week streaming video content grew from 143.2 billion minutes in February 2021 to 169.4 billion 12 months later, it said.