Sports fans flocked to streaming platforms to watch major sporting events in 2018, with the World Cup, the NFL, Winter Olympics, March Madness and the Masters golf tournament contributing the most.
An annual report from trend tracker Conviva revealed the growth in streaming of live sports. Conviva’s data was collected by tracking algorithms embedded within three billion video apps, and recorded one trillion data events per day.
The World Cup drove the largest global spike among sports with viewing hours up 29 percent on a single day during the group stage of the month-long tournament. World Cup streaming overall resulted in a 12 percent increase in global viewing hours.