A whole new ball game: when your living room becomes the sports stadium

Sports leagues and broadcasters face two major challenges. The first is the ongoing shift in demographics, as the 55+ age bracket –the engine of pay-TV revenue – will inexorably decline to be supplanted by the Generation Z and millennial cohorts. This will erode the monetisable base for leagues and broadcasters, which remains perilously over-reliant on the baby boomer generation. The second is that social distancing measures in place to mitigate Covid-19 transmission may reduce, eliminate (even if temporarily) or alter the capacity and set-up of in-person attendance at games for an indeterminate period of time. This presents a new and uncertain challenge that could potentially accelerate the move towards immersive virtual reality (VR) to allow viewers to feel as though they are at an event in person –a would-be game-changer for the industry.