New Gracenote Data Shows Shift Of Sports To Streaming
New data from Nielsen’s Gracenote unit confirms that streamers are increasing the amount of sports content on their services.
Sports programming on the major services tracked by Gracenote–Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+--showed a 72% increase in the among of sports their streamed in the fourth quarter, according to the latest update to the Gracenote Data Hub.
Disney last year added an ESPN tile to its Disney+ app, which was part of a big 471% increase in sports programming available on Disney+ in January 2025, compared to the first month of Q4 2024. Disney+ now accounts for nearly 33% of the available streaming sports programming behind Amazon, which offers about 35% of sports programming.
“Live sports programming continues to be an important driver of user growth, retention and engagement for streaming services,” said Bill Michels, Chief Product Officer at Gracenote. “We are also seeing that relevant metadata, such as synopses, scores, highlights and imagery have the power to help streamers build world-class user experiences that keep users engaged beyond the live game.”
Since October 2024, sports programming, including exclusive NFL games, WWE RAW events and U.S. Open tennis tournament matches, has moved to streaming.
Gracenote said the amount of content available on the streaming services includes about 3,000 movies, 2,000 TV shows and 500 sports shows.
Amazon Prime Video remains the largest distributor of video content, with 69% of available programming, up from 67.8%m Gracenote said..
Drama is the top genre across the five services covered. Drama used to be the No. 1 genre available on Disney+, but this quarter it was topped by documentary, comedy, children’s and adventure content.
An increase in French content and a notable decrease in content produced in India on Disney+ has made France the third-biggest producer, accounting for 5.6% of the total
Gracenote program metadata covers more than 40 million titles in 260 streaming catalogs in 35 languages and 80+ countries.
The metadata enables content distributors and owners to make data-driven business decisions in a rapidly changing environment.