Sports streaming in Australia booms as fan sign up to services including Kayo, Stan and Optus

Live sport is the most popular viewing category for streamers with Australians having the biggest appetite in the world for watching sport, new data shows.

Research from data and insights firm Kantar reveals that 25 per cent of Australians put sports streaming as their preferred viewing category last year. Picture: Michael Klein

Live sport is the most popular viewing category for streamers with Australians having the biggest appetite in the world for watching sport, new data shows.

Research from data and insights firm Kantar reveals that 25 per cent of Australians put sports streaming as their preferred viewing category last year, ahead of genres including comedy, drama, reality programs, thrillers and animation.

This is also ahead of other countries where sport is a consumer’s No.1 genre choice, including the US (22 per cent), France (21 per cent), UK (19 per cent), Germany (18 per cent) and Spain (15 per cent).

Of the sports streaming subscription services available, those which attracted the largest contingency of new consumers included Kayo (57 per cent), Stan Sport (19 per cent) and Optus Sport (18 per cent).

News Corp (publisher of The Australian) has a 65 per cent stake in the Foxtel Group which owns Kayo.

Kantar’s consumer director Andrew Northedge said the data is based on a longitudinal study of 10,000 consumers including 1500 new streaming subscribers each quarter, and it shows how critical having access to sport is for Australians.

“We are seeing consumers outlay money for a live sports experience that is ad-free which is the main offering for a lot of these services,” he said.

Just last month paid streaming service Amazon Prime Video announced a four-year deal with the International Cricket Council after obtaining the rights to broadcast all men’s and women’s ICC (International Cricket Council) tournaments.

The federal government is reviewing the anti-siphoning laws which give Australia’s free-to-air TV networks – including Seven, Nine and Ten – the first opportunity to purchase the broadcast rights for a range of “nationally important and culturally significant” events including the major football codes, Test cricket and the Olympics.