Lucas Carpignano Sports Editor 

For decades, cable television was the undisputed king of sports. From the exciting Sunday NFL broadcasts to the late-night west coast hockey games, it gave fans a single familiar place to watch their favourite teams. Unfortunately traditional cable sports broadcasts are slowly fading away. Viewership is dropping, costs are increasing, and giant streaming platforms are buying exclusive rights to sporting events. So, where did it all go wrong? 

The broadcast of sports has been around for over a hundred years, but it wasn’t until the late ‘70s that cable sports started to blow up with the launch of ESPN. Within a few years of launching, ESPN became one of the most popular cable networks with multiple channels covering all sorts of sports. With ESPN being an exclusive sports only platform, no matter the time, fans were able to tune in and watch a wide variety of sports. Their flagship program, SportsCenter, covered all the highlights in the sports world each day. In an age without the internet, this show was revolutionary. While ESPN was the first, many other networks in different countries were able to capture similar success. So why are cable sports dying? The most obvious answer, the rise of streaming. 

By the early 2010s, Netflix has changed the way we consume media. Streaming media slowly became more popular with dozens of different platforms to choose from. Since this, cable television has been on the decline. It wasn’t until the late 2010s that saw sports leagues shift their broadcasting priorities with streaming giants. This year in the United States, it is projected that viewers who stream sporting events at least once a month is to be over 90 million users. Four years ago it was only 57 million users. 

The problem with streaming platforms is that there are too many of them. Ninety percent of sports fans use at least one streaming platform to watch live games, according to a study by Performance Research and Full Circle Research. Some of these platforms include; Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, ESPN+, Paramount+, Peacock, YouTube TV, DAZN, Fubo, etc. With all these platforms, it becomes too costly to be a sports fan. 

The rise of streaming sports unfortunately opened the door for users to illegally stream sports. In 2024 it was estimated that over 17 million viewers illegally watched the SuperBowl, in the United States alone. A few weeks ago, the biggest network for illegal sports streams, StreamEast, was shut down by law enforcement. Last year StreamEast had more than 1.5 billion visits to their affiliated domains all across the world. The two men responsible for hosting the websites made over 5 million dollars in the last couple of years. At its peak, every sports fan was familiar with the site, even NBA superstar Lebron James, was photographed using the website. 

While cable sports didn’t collapse overnight, the decades old business model doesn’t attract the younger generation. Streaming revolutionized the media industry with the promise of freedom, but too many players have entered the industry. The rise of sports piracy will forever eat away at profits for the streaming giants, and unfortunately there will never be a solution to fully get rid of them. At the end of the day, true fans will continue to cheer on their team, paying high fees or not.