A new announcement from Fubo shows how much sports will remain an enormous part of ad decision-making, even as audiences migrate to streaming environments.

Fubo is now partnering with iSpot to support connected TV measurement, quantifying ad impressions delivered to incremental households beyond linear TV (plus person-level estimates for co-viewing). Key there is the role iSpot will play identifying the incremental reach of Fubo programming. An iSpot study found that on average, 40% of ad impressions served on Fubo reached incremental households unreached on linear.

“Incremental reach” has come up increasingly over the last couple of years, though typically as part of the larger cross-platform TV ad conversation. Of course everyone wants to see streaming ad growth. But buyers also want to be sure that more expensive (and potentially, interactive) ad inventory is creating a stronger tie to sales – and is actually reaching new audiences not already covered by linear.

That last part is what really unlocks the promise of ad-supported streaming today, and where these platforms and vMVPDs find an engine for further growth. Streaming isn’t selling bigger audiences than linear counterparts. It’s the ability to reach the audiences that aren’t watching linear TV at all that provides immense value to advertisers.

You could also argue that both as a group and individually, the viewers themselves are more crucial for brands as well. Many streaming audiences are younger, more diverse and more affluent, so many advertisers can place educated bets on their respective futures by appearing in those environments.

Even as audience behaviors show significant change on streaming, one consistency is the importance of live sports content. To-date, sports rights have fueled big expenditures from the likes of Apple TV+ (MLB, MLS) and Amazon (NFL, New York Yankees) — the latter of which is already expanding its package to Black Friday as well to cash in on holiday shopping synergies. But those two tech giants also aren’t the only games in town – especially when it comes to ad-supported sports programming.

Fubo’s own sports-centric approach to programming would benefit from that sort of shift, and the data iSpot uncovered with Fubo advertisers only helps make that case even stronger. Fubo airs over 55,000 live sporting events each year, and iSpot found that on linear, 17% of Q1 household TV ad impressions were delivered by live sports. So it would stand to reason that Fubo provides a particular benefit as advertisers assess where to buy inventory to gain incremental reach.

As this year’s TV Upfronts get started, it’s only natural that “incremental reach” grows as a key metric for these streaming services looking to differentiate both from one another and from linear TV counterparts. TV’s reach remains superior to all other mediums, even when faced with a variety of changes in recent years. But pursuing incremental reach now could mean big things for advertisers as that streaming future starts to take shape.