As Sports Move To Streaming, Roku Wants To Bat Leadoff

Bold prediction: 2 of 3 sports hours will be streamed

With the NFL streaming on Christmas Day and Amazon getting a big piece of the NBA next season, Roku is predicting that in 2025, two out of three sports viewing hours will be streamed.

Wait a second. What’s Roku got to do with sports? Maybe it’s not top of mind among sports fans, but Roku does have a package of Sunday morning Major League Baseball games,The Rich Eisen Show, Good Morning Football and content from leagues including the NFL and NBA.

Oh and by the way, if the right deal presents itself, Roku wants to take a swing, Roku's Head of Sports Joe Franzetta said. No sooner had he said that, then Roku announced becoming the exclusive U.S. streaming home of X Games Aspen and an X Games event coming this summer. 

But more importantly, as the predominant device people use for streaming, Roku views itself as the lead-in for all TV – including sports. Roku’s home screen is the first thing 120 million people a day see when they sit down to watch. 

According to Nielsen panel data, 55 million people stream sports on Roku in the first half of 2024 and 26% of all U.S. TV sports households used Roku to stream sports in the first six months of the year.

Franzetta said that in 2024 more than 50% of sports was viewed via streaming. “We’re pretty comfortable saying that by some time in 2025, you’ll see about two-thirds, or two out of every three hours of sports content will be streamed,” he said.

Franzetta noted that all of the sports rights deals made recently include a streaming component, and that gives Roku a chance to be the “glue guy” who helps bring leagues, networks, sponsors and viewers together in what has become a confusing, fragmented sports landscape.

“Everybody recognizes that that’s the future and is navigating the best way to get to that future,” he said.

For Roku, here’s what the future looks like: Sports is built into the platform in a way that’s personalized for fans. Through the Roku Sports experience, they can find their favorite teams through the “featured free” or “what to watch live” menus or through an overall Sports Zone or more specific area, like the MLB Zone, NFL Zone or NBA Zone. 

Roku also has a dedicated linear 24/7 Roku Sports Channel as part of The Roku Channel, where the day’s top live and pre-produced programming can be found.

As part of its X Games deal, Roku launched an X Games free ad-supported streaming TV channel and will curate a dedicated X Games Zone that will feature programming highlights, clips, interviews and archival content.

A “challenger sport,” like Formula E racing streaming on Roku, has received a lot of exposure from Roku’s home screen, and the basketball G-League was just launched as part of the larger NBA Zone experience.

Because Roku is an interactive platform, there is “more ability to personalize and you’re going to have more high-value user engagement,” Franzetta said. “There are a lot of things that you can layer into the experience that you can’t do in traditional television, whether its sports betting, merchandise sales, ticketing, food delivery or affinity programs.”

And once a viewer jumps into the platform, they’re able to have interactive experiences with advertisers.

“The advertiser can integrate into those experiences in interesting ways,” Franzetta said. During the Olympics, for example, Roku made a deal with NBCUniversal to create a medal counter that was sponsored by Delta. 

Looking ahead, the sports experience on Roku will feature more personalization. That will benefit both viewers by making it easier to find what they want to watch, and advertisers, who want to target consumers likely to engage with their messages. 

The Super Bowl is the next huge sports event, and Roku plans to go big, Franzetta said. Rich Eisen will have special broadcasts from the Super Bowl and Roku City will be dressed up for the event. Last year, TurboTax sponsored a stadium in Roku City and right now, with the college football playoffs starting, there’s a Nissan-sponsored Heisman House in Roku City with mascots and other features.

“In 2025, you start to see us diving down into those experiences a little bit more meaningfully,” Franzetta said. 

“I like the idea of making a bid for a Super Bowl, or maybe the NFL draft in Roku City. We’ll have to see,” he said.

After the Super Bowl, it won’t be long until pitchers and catchers report for spring training and the baseball season begins. The Sunday morning package fits what Roku sees as its role in the TV business. 

“This package was literally called Sunday Lead Off, so it really made sense that we have the first game on a Sunday when all MLB teams play,” Franzetta said.

Last year, during its first season streaming MLB games, games are produced by MLB, but it turned out there were differences between handing a production to a broadcast network and a streaming platform. There were also things learned on the ad tech side. “It’s just a constant evolution,” Franzetta said. 

Roku noticed some things about baseball viewers. “Obviously, there was a lot of viewership in the markets of the teams that were playing and that gives us an opportunity to expose The Roku Channels and other content we have available to a new audience every week,” he said. “There is some overlap from week to week, but you also get a lot of new viewers from week to weeks. It was a good learning experience for us to understand how to market the platform to these new viewers who are coming into the games.”

In the upcoming season, “we’re continuing to add layers of personalization into our overall sports experience,” Franzetta said. That means enabling users to pick favorite teams, which in turn elevates the content delivered to the viewer, including clips and highlights of games involving the team they root for.

The personalization will enable Roku to enable merchandise sales, ticketing and other features that make sense in an interactive sports experience. Roku is looking at alternative telecasts and betting as well.

“We’re like everybody else exploring what the boundaries of that are and what makes sense. That’s an ongoing process,” Franzetta said.