Through October, we were shocked, shocked I say, to see all these people watch free sports. I mean, we were told that streaming free sports is a BAAAAD idea — fans WANT to pay another subscription fee because the only way to show REAL support for a sports team is via their wallet. Also, no advertiser would want to advertise on a free service. Why would they!

/rant

Here’s what’s been happening. On the sports streaming service I am part of in my day job — Victory+ — we are seeing many times the audience watching every live game than across all media vehicles last year. It isn’t 2x. It is many-x — and it isn’t because we have a perfect service, or because we smarter than anybody else.

I want to share something that came up during the Diamond Sports bankruptcy hearings:

In the last five years alone, 42% of subscribers to the traditional cable/satellite/telco-TV bundle have cut the cord, with the national base shrinking from 85.4 million homes to 49.8 million. And the churn rate shows no sign of slowing down, as 12% of the bundled subs ditched their traditional video provider over the last year.

Thus, if/when Diamond emerges from Chapter 11—whereupon they’ll have a new naming-rights partner in FanDuel—the prognosis remains bleak. If the current rate of decline holds up through next year, operators could be down to some 42.3 million bundled subs a mere 12 months from now, which would bring overall penetration of the bundle to around 33% of all U.S. TV homes. Ten years ago, nearly 90% of all American households subscribed to the bundle.

So. Cable households have ALREADY halved — and cable will only reach a third of US households.

According to Pew 99% of Americans use the Internet, and eight out of ten homes in America have a broadband connection.

Sports works.

What’s changed is how people watch TV — to be clear, they still watch TV, just more YouTube than EVERYTHING else combined.

And they’re watching Victory.

As we add more sports, teams, leagues, documentaries etc — we don’t see why more people don’t watch for longer.

And the advertisers that are buying our inventory (and bidding 1.5 times what we expected) seem to agree.

But hey, maybe we’re wrong. The TRUE sports fan REALLY wants to pay. Ask the local basketball team’s fans — I’m sure they will agree.