The U.S. women’s national soccer team faces off against the New Zealand squad in Wellington January 18, with the match streaming on HBO Max. The game starts at 10 p.m. ET on January 17 in the United States. Coverage begins at 9:30 p.m.

HBO Max parent Warner Bros. Discovery called it the first domestic live sports coverage on HBO Max.

Luke Wileman will provide play-by-play for the match, and Julie Foudy and Melissa Ortiz will be in the booth, too. The pregame comes from Sara Walsh and former soccer standouts Shannon Boxx, DaMarcus Beasley and Foudy.

New Zealand hosts the 2023 Women’s World Cup with Australia. The action starts in July.

The U.S. and New Zealand, the latter known as the Football Ferns, face off again January 21 at Eden Park in Auckland, with the match again streaming on HBO Max. There is a 10 p.m. ET kickoff January 20 for Stateside viewers.

Rose Lavelle, Alex Morgan, Emily Fox and Becky Sauerbrunn are on the U.S. squad. 

HBO Max will have the U.S. men’s soccer team when it plays Serbia January 25. TNT will air U.S. versus Colombia on January 28.

HBO Max and TNT will have more than 20 U.S. men’s and women’s team soccer matches every year in a new eight-year rights agreement between WBD Sports and the U.S. Soccer Federation.

The U.S. women won the 2019 World Cup, with the Americans defeating the Netherlands in the final. The U.S. men lost in the World Cup Round of 16 to the Netherlands in December. ■

Amazon Prime Video will kick off its exclusive NFL Thursday Night Football package on September 15 when the Los Angeles Chargers meet the Kansas City Chiefs. The regular-season schedule highlights the streaming service's growing lineup of live sports programming.

But TNF, which premiered on August 25 with an exclusive Houston Texans-San Francisco 49ers preseason game, is just part of a mix of live sports events the streaming service hopes to use to lure in fans. The Prime Video lineup also includes regular-season WNBA basketball games, mixed martial arts events from One Championship and exclusive in-market New York Yankees baseball games and Seattle Storm WNBA games.  

Amazon VP of global sports video Marie Donoghue recently spoke to Multichannel News about Prime Video’s live sports aspirations and what the genre adds to the overall value of the streaming service. Here’s an edited transcript of that discussion. 

MCN: How do you see live sports programming fitting into the overall value proposition for Prime Video? 

Marie Donoghue: As you know, Prime is a membership benefit, and so live marquee sports is what we call a headline benefit. We have the NFL — probably the most popular sport in the U.S. — with our Thursday Night Football deal, which we’re really, really excited to launch this season with our first game on September 15. It’s a massive investment for us and we've based it on our track record working with the NFL over the last several years, as well as the experience we've had in Europe. We've been showing top-tier sports for several years with the Premier League in the U.K. and the Champions League in Italy and Germany, Ligue 1 in France and the U.S. Open tennis tournament in the U.K. We know for sure that top marquee sports programming really resonates with our customers, so it's become an essential part of our service in several countries. 

MCN: What drew Prime Video to the WNBA and how has it performed for the streaming service?

MD: We’re huge fans of the WNBA, and overall we saw increased viewership this season for the WNBA. Last year they were developing the Commissioner’s Cup (the WNBA's mid-season tournament), so we thought it would be an awesome opportunity to serve our fans. I think fans really liked it because you get to see the top teams compete.

MCN: Along with the NFL and WNBA, Prime Video has also streamed live local games for such teams as the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and MLS’s Seattle Sounders FC. Is that a strategy that you will look to continue with other teams in other sports? 

MD: Yes, we look at everything. We always consider whether there is a way for us to improve the experience, the accessibility and the value for fans. We found with the Sounders, the Yankees and the Storm that that was all true. We were able to reach an audience that isn't reached by the traditional pay TV bundle, and we've also been able to provide great value to our subscribers — you get the games with your Prime membership. 

MCN: Prime Video has also stepped into the combat-sports ring with One Championship. Does that franchise offer a different sports appeal to Prime Video subscribers than the WNBA or NFL fotball? 

MD: One Championship is the world’s largest martial arts organization, and we’re bringing them live in primetime to the U.S. and Canada exclusively. They are primarily based out of Singapore, but next year we’ll have some events from the US. Those fans are incredibly passionate and engaged and the One Championship organization is fairly unique, and I’m particularly pleased that they treat female athletes equally. We’re really excited about working with them. ■

With the shortened Major League Baseball season underway and the reconfigured National Basketball Association season just getting started, telecasts for both will be a smashing success in a live-sports-starved pandemic TV world.

Or will they? While indications suggest they should be, there are some potential challenges.

To date, real-world examples certainly indicate there is pent-up demand.

As NASCAR and golf’s PGA Tour came back into action in June, for example, there was a significant increase in viewership compared to June 2019. Golf saw a year-over-year increase of 27%, and NASCAR a 32% increase, according to an analysis by Alphonso.

But despite this, and the tightening of lockdowns in some regions where COVID-19 is surging, it is still the heart of the summer, and we will be dealing with an audience that has shown it clearly wants to get outside and enjoy daylight that at this time of year lasts well into evening hours.

Summer Viewing Lull

Keep in mind July is traditionally one of the lowest viewing times of the year for this very reason. It remains to be seen if the resumption of live sports will be enough to change this traditional dynamic.

Also, we might face an audience that has acclimated, at least to a degree, to the absence of live sports. There may very well be a percentage of this audience that has decided life was just fine without sports and that have actually begun to appreciate the found time to do other things.

Additionally, the availability of the first new compelling content since lockdowns began and productions mostly stopped will provide the real look into the pandemic’s long-term effects on viewing habits.

As we have seen, despite a lack of live sports, and with hundreds of programs interrupted and major TV events canceled or postponed, broadcast television was able to hold on until May. But it has now dipped below pre-pandemic levels. At the end of June, the major English- and Spanish-language networks combined reached 11% fewer households compared to the January/ February average, according to Alphonso’s analysis.

At the same time, basic cable has remained mostly flat in terms of households reached throughout the pandemic so far. While there have been upticks in time watched, primarily in March and April, basic cable hasn’t seen the same growth as other categories nor has it seen any declines.

Similarly, looking at original programming from streaming services, we can see binge burnout continuing as many households have enjoyed a large portion of original programming, combined with the negative impact of productions halting due to COVID-19 restrictions. Streaming services saw unique household reach hit a peak of 29% growth during late March and mid-April. It has mostly returned back to the early 2020 levels and has remained the same throughout June.

Beyond Netflix adding 10 million subscribers, the lone bright spot has been across premium pay TV channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz. Here, unique household reach increased up to 33% in April, hovering in that range throughout May before dropping down as some states began to re-open. As quickly as some re-openings backfired, premium cable viewership rebounded as measured in total time watched. During the last two weeks of June, total time watched went up to 23% over the January-February average.

A New Abnormal

Compounding this, of course, is the fact that these will not be “normal” baseball and basketball seasons. Will fans take these games seriously since they are not being played in pursuit of winning each sport’s traditional championship? Yes, the teams that remain standing at the conclusion of the 2020 MLB and NBA seasons will get a trophy, but will it mean as much to fans? And therefore, will the games leading up to that trophy mean as much and be worth giving up time for?

Finally, both COVID-19 and the current social justice environment will be very evident in the games. Some NBA and MLB players are sitting out and others are wearing masks. Some baseball players and coaches have knelt during the national anthem, while the NBA is putting social justice messages on player jerseys and Black Lives Matter messages on the court.

For fans who have viewed sports as a way to escape real-life pressures and issues, will this be a detriment to viewing? Certainly, real-world events have always been a part of sports and have had a presence in games, but rarely during as trying a period as this nation has faced due to COVID-19.

So while the return of live sports looks like just what advertisers and broadcasters have been waiting for, its success is by no means a certainty. And in this most unusual year of 2020, anything can happen. All it will take is for a percentage of the audience to say “I am fine without sports,” or “I want to be outside,” or “I need a break from challenging issues” to turn what should be a slam dunk success into a blown layup. 

Raghu Khodige is chief product officer and co-founder of Alphonso, a TV data firm. 

The NBA is back. So is the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Nascar, MLB and the NHL. Above all, Football (American football, that is) is less than 100 days away from a planned on-time start. 

There remain question marks as to whether any of the above can complete a full season without having to pull back. Still, this represents real change from where we were only a few weeks ago, in the midst of the most unprecedented absence of the live programming that anchors the media calendar. With major sports set to resume, it’s a good time to take stock of what we learned from the hiatus. And how these learning may influence the TV industry and advertising market for live sports moving forward. 

Lower barriers to entry gave performance advertisers a taste for premium inventory 

The overnight exodus of live sports programming, combined with the rapid retrenchment from major TV advertisers, occurred at the same time as quarantines and stay-at-home orders led to a massive surge in TV viewership. It created a buyer’s market where many small TV advertisers (often performance-oriented DTC brands) could taste premium inventory for the first time. In many cases, it performed quite well. It has been a truly perfect storm. 

When sports return, the market for that (super?) premium inventory will be larger and more diverse than ever before. We have some early evidence from this already: Tatari advertisers were fast to buy into the NFL Draft and Nascar’s return. They are hungry for more and will enter the sports market with less sticker shock (or willing to pay higher CPMs).  

Traditional networks will write blank checks for sports right

Brands understand that no inventory provides the same reach as live sports. To cite a recent example, the average audience of the 2019 NCAA Basketball Championship game is still larger than March 2020’s top two prime-time entertainment shows combined - and that’s with a larger, stay-at-home audience. 

Networks know this all too well, as they struggle to replace the billions in lost ad revenues that suddenly evaporated from their balance sheets. Reruns of old games, video game tournaments, golf friendlies, and documentaries, no matter how compelling, hardly make up for the loss. 

This harsh reminder has come at a pivotal time, as networks prepare to bid on landmark sports rights contracts next year. 2021 was already shaping up to be a bidding war, with networks facing potential competition from deep-pocketed tech companies like Amazon, Twitter, and Apple. Now that networks (and their shareholders) have experienced what it’s like to not have this inventory, it’s a safe bet that they will approach next year’s TV rights negotiations with a new sense of resolve. Sometimes you don’t know what you have, or how much it’s worth, until you lose it. A blank check will give the traditional TV networks the needed life-support in their managed decline. 

At Tatari, we actually don’t believe that the tech companies are 100% ready and willing to write big checks for sports. Unlike DirecTV, whose customer acquisition hinged on NFL Sunday Ticket, technology companies have enjoyed massive growth - so far - without much sports content. They don’t need it, just yet. Furthermore, a total switch to streaming might just be too much for them to swallow. The largest streaming event, as measured in concurrent viewers, took place on April 12 when almost 3 million people simultaneously watched Andrea Bocelli. That’s just a fraction of an average NFL game: 15 million+ (the Super Bowl itself is a cool ~100 million). So let’s give credit where credit is due; today, only traditional TV networks can pull this off flawlessly. Besides, too many fans across the country still don’t have fast enough Internet access yet, and the sports league ought to be careful to not alienate them.  

Lesson Learned 

Sports is indispensable for all marketers. Coronavirus has demonstrated this and given many upcoming brands the needed confidence to take the plunge. In that, sports is equally indispensable for the TV industry, both legacy (cable and broadcast networks) and future media players alike.

Tatari is a TV media buying agency with a growing practice among DTCs. Philip, its founder, previously ran TrueCar and Shazam before exiting both.

As some top sports leagues set plans to get back on the field of play amid the pandemic, others are still exploring options for stepping up to the plate. 

The status of the 2020 Major League Baseball season was unclear at press time as players and owners had yet to agree on finances and safety protocols for a shortened season expected to begin with a truncated spring training in July.

 Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said June 17  he had reached an understanding with Tony Clark, executive director of the MLB Players Association, on the framework of a return to play. The plan calls for 60 regular season games per team beginning the week of July 19, and 16 teams advancing to the postseason. In a June 17 tweet, though, the MLBPA said it was “adamant that no deal was reached.”

Sports analyst Lee Berke said that with other major sports planning to return to sports-starved viewers, baseball needs to find a way to get back on the diamond to remain relevant.

“Baseball is in a real bind,” he said. “There’s a lot of animosity between the players union and the owners — at best the sport will be left with a very short regular season and postseason.” 

NBA Back, Who’s in?

Also uncertain is which players will participate in the scheduled return of the National Basketball Association. The league has said it will resume play in July at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, with an eight-game regular season featuring 22 of the league’s 30 teams before moving into a playoff format. But several players have questioned if this is a good time to return to the court, given the continued protests surrounding the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and continued calls for reform. Other players reportedly were concerned about the safety protocols, as well as the potential living restrictions while playing in Orlando.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said during ESPN’s SportsCenter Special: The Return of Sports that the league is moving ahead with plans, but players who choose not to play would not be penalized.

National Hockey League players have returned to the ice as teams conduct limited workouts in preparation for  a July return, with training camps set to open July 10. A tournament featuring 24 of the league’s 31 teams — in two yet-to-be-named cities, one hosting each conference — will be staged in late July to determine a Stanley Cup champion.  

Other leagues have already hit the field. The English Premier League resumed its 2020 season on June 17 after suspending play in March due to the pandemic. Fans won’t be in the top English soccer competition’s stadiums during games, but telecasts will feature “atmospheric enhanced audio” taken from the league’s EA Sports video game to simulate crowd noise, according to NBC Sports coordinating producer Pierre Moossa. 

In U.S. soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League kicks off a 25-game Challenge Cup tournament on June 27, and Major League Soccer begins its World Cup-style “MLS Is Back” tournament on July 8, also at Walt Disney World. 

The Women’s National Basketball Association said it will play a 22-game regular season tipping off in late July. “We are finalizing a season start plan to build on the tremendous momentum generated in the league during the off-season and have used the guiding principles of health and safety of players and essential staff to establish necessary and extensive protocols,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. 

Lots of Tune-In

The leagues will join other sports such as NASCAR, UFC, professional boxing, the Pro Bowlers Association and golf’s PGA Tour, which have already returned to live play. Thus far sports fans are tuning into live sports in impressive fashion. CBS Sports posted a 50% audience increase for its June 14 final-round coverage of golf’s Charles Schwab Challenge compared to 2019, averaging 3 million viewers — the most-watched final round in 16 years, according to Nielsen. 

“There are a lot of sports entities putting a lot of work in and they seem to be getting some traction as to what works and what doesn’t,” Berke said. “By trial and error, they seem to be getting better at delivering and producing live sports content, and fans are watching.”

Live-streamed Division I men’s college basketball is coming to the Roku Channel this weekend.

A slate of 11 Conference USA, Atlantic 10 and Patriot League games, broadcast live on Stadium from March 2-14, will tip off Saturday in matchup between Fordham and Davidson.

Call it “March Pre-Madness”—the games won’t have the viewer impact of the upcoming NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, but the slate includes quarterfinal matchups of the Conference USA championship tournament—a determiner, at least to some extent, of who gets into the big March Madness 66-team tourney.

A full schedule of Stadium’s men’s hoop slate can be found here.

We’re not talking about the Roku Channel symbolically offering the appearance of getting into live sports. The fast-growing AVOD platform is live-streaming some key conference matchups at a pivotal portion of the season.

Related: Roku Set to Become $1B Company in 2019, Plans Course for International Expansion

The free-to-consumer Roku Channel, which is available as an app in the Roku ecosystem, as well as on the open internet, has been the key driver as Roku transitions from a maker of OTT devices to the operator of an ad-supported streaming platform.

Roku’s platform revenue increased 85% year over year in 2018, reaching $416.9 million, which accounted for more than 56% of total revenue. In the fourth quarter, platform revenue reached an all time high for the company, $151.4 million, a whopping 77% year over year increase.

In November, Roku announced that the Roku Channel would be adding live sports and entertainment to a programming menu that already included live-streamed news channels. Through channel additions including Adventure Sports Network, Combat Go and EDGESport. Roku touted a flora and fauna of niche competition events that included Street League Skateboarding and the Muay Thai Grand Prix Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship.

Virtually lost in the announcement was the addition of unnamed “live games and events” through Stadium. It's not on the level of the NBA, but men’s college hoop carries national mainstream sports audience weight—consider the 2.12 million viewers drawn by ESPN for game between top-ranked teams Duke and Syracuse. 

Twitter said it has renewed its deal with Major League Baseball and will offer live streaming of out-of-market games weekly starting Thursday (April 5) when the Texas Rangers take on the Oakland Athletics. 

The games will be available free in the U.S. for Twitter users at @MLB and via live.twitter.com/MLB.

Financial terms were not dislcosed.

The live stream will be a simulcast of one the teams’ local broadcast.

Twitter will be making advertising packages available to sponsors.

MLB will also make real-time game highlights available for fans at @MLB on Twitter throughout the season. Spanish-language highlights will be available at @LasMayores.

To help fans embellish their baseball Tweets, Twitter and MLB have created special hashtag-triggered emojis for all 30 teams. Fans can join the conversation by Tweeting to their favorite MLB teams with a unique hashtag-triggered emoji all season long.

[embed]https://twitter.com/MLB/status/978311870288363520[/embed]

Turner will launch the live sports streaming service Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) on April 7.

Turner described the service as “the central hub for both the discovery and consumption of live sports content,” allowing fans to “find and watch their favorite sports content anywhere, anytime and on the screen of their choice.”

Starting this summer, B/R Live will implement flexible pricing options, with direct access to live games for purchase on an a la carte or subscription basis.

The platform helps users find and watch live sports with the ability to scroll through a feed of real-time sports events, and offers personalization features that aggregate live sports content.

Sports on the platform include soccer’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, NBA League Pass games, 65 NCAA Championships and the PGA Championship, as well as the National Lacrosse League, The Spring League, Red Bull Global Rallycross and World Arm Wrestling League.

“As viewing habits continue to evolve, Turner is well positioned to provide fans with direct access to premium live sports content that is highly coveted by audiences of scale, including a high concentration of millennials,” said David Levy, president of Turner. “When we first acquired Bleacher Report in 2012, we knew the definition of a network was changing and we anticipated a time when B/R would become a virtual network. Today is a significant step in that direction and we will fully leverage the reach of B/R and its deep connection with passionate sports fans to provide compelling experiences for them across this new, exciting platform.”

NBA League Pass will allow fans to purchase and watch live NBA games in progress at a reduced price.

“For us, it’s really a question of bringing fans what they want,” said Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, offering the example of a fan tuning in as a star player goes for a historic point total.

Lenny Daniels, president of Turner Sports, called B/R Live "a game-changing product that will serve as the ultimate destination for the sports fan."

Sports, one of the last vestiges thought immune to cord-cutting, is feeling the impact of the changing viewing landscape. Organizations outside of traditional broadcast television giants such as CBS and NBC are grabbing up the rights to live-stream fan-favorite leagues and games. Amazon paid the National Football League $50 million for the rights to streamThursday Night Footballgames this season. Facebook has worked out deals for the rights to stream live Major League Baseball games, Major League Soccer games and an assortment of other college and international sports games. Verizon Communications announced a $2.5 billion deal with the NFL to expand the telco’s current streaming rights, which now include playoff games, the Super Bowl and in-market games on Verizon websites such as Yahoo and AOL. Clearly, the tech giants see the live-streaming opportunity as a way to land more user attention and, hopefully, more advertising dollars.

Still there’s reason to doubt if their investments will pay off. Sports fans are passionate beasts; they won’t stand to miss a moment of the game they’re watching. No fan wants to have the game lag or the stream fail, and thus miss an important play. While the promise of live-streaming sports games would open up more options for people to watch their favorite teams, as the industry currently stands, live streaming is not truly live.

Unsatisfied With Live Streams
According to Phenix’sThe Streaming Wars: Sports Report 2017, nearly 75% of sports fans expect problems when they stream a game. The culprit is latency — delays, poor picture quality and buffering — turning sports fans off from live streaming. Even these tech giants entering the game are plagued by latency, so much so that 63% of sports watchers said they are reluctant to sign up or resubscribe to live-streaming platforms in 2018. A third said they would think about canceling the service that was giving them an issue.

This past year, there have been some devastating examples of live-stream failures, most notably the widely hyped Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight. The main event was delayed due to scattered outages on pay-per-view. And a large number of fans weren’t able to see the Showtime stream of the fight due to technical issues, actually prompting some to sue Showtime, citing poor quality including grainy video, error screens, buffer events and stalls. UFC Fight Pass also crashed multiple times due to overwhelming traffic.

What’s clear is that these platforms weren’t able to handle all the concurrent viewers, and they disappointed their customers. Right now, the AmazonThursday Night Footballstream review rating is only 2.5 out of 5 stars, with many reporting latency problems and stalling. Eventually, people are going to look to watch the games elsewhere or turn back to more traditional platforms.

For organizations spending huge sums of money to stream the games, with the expectation that either viewers will pay for streaming subscriptions or advertisers will pay more to reach those viewers, these issues will result in lost revenue. With so many fans disappointed by the current state of live streaming and willing to give up on live-streaming platforms, we have reason to believe those dollars might be limited and the investments might not pay off.

Real-Time Potential
Fortunately, there’s still time for the industry to course-correct. This means companies need to invest in technology that allows for real-time streaming, which is different than “live” with sub-second latency, at broadcast scale. By doing so, fan engagement can be taken to the next level. Phenix’s research found that more than one-third of fans want to gain insight into player stats and stream more than one game on different devices, offering a multiscreen experience. Moreover, fans are looking to see updates from the locker room or sidelines, and would even want to talk or interact with the players and coaches in real time.

There’s massive potential to improve the overall experience for fans, but the first step is to eliminate latency. By providing streams in real time, major organizations broadcasting games can differentiate themselves and provide more interactivity for fans, achieving true return on investment — more subscribers and viewers equals more engagement, and thus more advertising dollars.

It’s not all grim: Amazon, Facebook, Verizon and others are providing fans the opportunity to engage in games on different platforms, testing new waters outside of traditional big TV players. But the only way these investments will pay off is if they give fans the streaming quality they demand and deserve. Right now, the industry isn’t living up to its promise and consumer sentiment toward live streaming is reflective of the obvious latency problem. The good news is, fans do see the potential in live streaming and want the engagement and flexibility real-time streaming can provide. Sports fans are dedicated to their team, and so platforms need to be dedicated to their subscribers.

Stefan Birrer is co-founder and CEO of streaming systems developer Phenix. Photo of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady courtesy of ESPN.

Twitter has released research showing that it can help marketers better reach viewers when they’re watching live events, particularly sports, on TV.

Data from comScore showed Twitter is the only social network that gets a lift in unique visitors when sports is on the air, Twitter said. During the 2017 Super Bowl, for example, Twitter usage was 19% higher than average while the other social platforms combined were down.

Related: Four Trends in Play for Cable Sports

Twitter commissioned a study from Neuro-Insight, which uses biometrics to gauge the impact the social platform has on sports fans; the company came up with three main findings.

The first is that Twitter makes live sports events more engaging and memorable. When Twitter was used as a second screen to see what others are saying in real time, engagement was up 31% and memorability was up 35% compared with engagement and memorability among fans using TV alone. When a sports event was streamed on Twitter, engagement rose 60% and memorability 59% compared with TV-only viewing.

The second is that when the sports event is more engaging, the advertising in it works harder. Engagement with Twitter ads were up 42% during games on TV, and memorability rose 52%.

Finally, TV ads were also more effective when viewers were also using Twitter during sportscasts. Engagement with TV ads was up 18% and memorability rose 13%.

Related: CES 2018: As World Turns Digital, TV Ads Remain Powerful

“Through our past work, we know that generally the presence of the second screen, specifically with Twitter, helps TV, and we saw a similar effect for live events in this study,” said Pranav Yadav, CEO of Neuro-Insight US. “This means that by having Twitter as a part of the marketing mix, brands can not only reach a bigger audience, they’re actually giving a boost to their original investment in TV. It’s a win-win.”

When ESPN suffered double-digit ratings losses last year for Monday Night Football, industry naysayers immediately began to predict the beginning of an overall ratings decline for live sports content amid a crowded TV environment and growing competition from video streaming services.

Yet ratings numbers from the first round of the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League playoffs during April show that live sports programming can still ring the ratings bell for cable nets.

Both ESPN and TNT generated double-digit ratings gains for their respective coverage of an entertaining and surprisingly competitive opening round of the NBA Playoffs. TNT averaged 3.4 million viewers during its first-round coverage, up 13% over last year — the network’s most-watched playoff coverage in three years.

TNT’s first round NBA postseason games also helped the network dethrone Fox News Channel atop cable’s weekly primetime ratings chart for the past two weeks.

ESPN averaged 3 million viewers for its first-round NBA postseason coverage, up 14% from the 2.6 million viewers in 2016. The network’s increases came as ESPN also posted several live streaming records during the first round, including a whopping 135 million total minutes streamed for its games, up 40% from last year.

NBC Sports Group’s coverage of the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs also skated to strong first-round ratings performances. The group averaged 557,000 viewers for its first round coverage across NBCSN, USA Network and CNBC, an 11% increase from the same period last season, even with the inclusion of five Canadian teams compared to an all-American playoff lineup last year.

Related: NBC Chases The Cup Across Platforms

NBC’s cable networks were able to televise first round games side by side with regional sports networks in most markets (excluding Pittsburgh and Boston) for the first time, helping the group to post its highest first round audience since 2012, according to network officials.

It remains to be seen if cable can continue its ratings streak as the NBA and NHL playoffs enter the later rounds, but early results show that its still game on for live sports on cable.

ESPN on Monday (Jan. 9) will air live the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the Clemson Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide (pictured) amid questions regarding the continued value of live sports programming on linear TV.

UPDATE, Jan. 10, 2017: ESPN Scores 24.3 Million Viewers for Clemson-Alabama Game

The ratings gravy train that sports networks and the TV industry in general have enjoyed over the years may soon come to an end, MoffettNathanson senior research analyst Michael Nathanson warned in a recent report. Given the ratings falloff for 2016 regular season National Football League games, as well as silver-medal level ratings for the Summer Olympics — and the potential of digital companies such as Facebook and Twitter vying for sports properties and driving up rights fees — TV sports is heading into its future with two strikes already against it, Nathanson argued.

Related: Units of NBC Sports Digital, Turner Expand OTT Sports Deal

In addition, a recent Thuuz Sports survey reported that 84.3% of pay TV subs with DVRs used them to record sports. The results cut into the cable-industry narrative that live sports programming is “DVR-proof,” so the sports-heavy traditional cable bundle is invaluable to fans.

The fact is, some “skinny bundle” offerings are drawing subscribers without a robust lineup of national and regional sports networks, including ESPN.

Live TV sports undoubtedly faces some challenges, but it’s still very much game on for the category, at least in terms of its huge appeal and value to viewers and distributors. When the ratings come out for ESPN’s Clemson-Alabama telecast, it will most likely secure the top spot as the most watched show on cable for the year, beating out Nielsen live-plus-7 ratings for the more than 400 scripted series that will air on cable in 2017. Last year’s CFP National Championship game garnered a cable-best 25 million viewers, and expectations are that this year’s rematch will match or surpass that number.

ESPN’s combined 36.6 million viewers for its two CFP semifinal telecasts on New Year’s Eve topped the disappointing 34.1 million viewers the network generated a year prior for the games.

The year is just getting started, but with live telecasts of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, National Basketball Association games, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League playoff contests, soccer, Ultimate Fighting Championship and boxing events and yes — Monday and Thursday night National Football League games — on tap for 2017, it’s not too early to predict that live sports programming will continue to score big audiences and drive valuable appeal for distributor packages offering such programming.

Much has been made about declining ratings and audiences for cable-network programming amid competition from digital over-the-top services such as Netflix and Hulu.

Yet cable shows were among the most popular in the digital arena during the 2015-16 television season, according to a recent Nielsen report on Twitter usage.

AMC’s veteran zombie thriller The Walking Dead (pictured) was on average the most tweeted series on television for the third consecutive year, averaging 435,000 tweets per episode and besting the 387,000 tweets averaged for Fox’s highly-rated series Empire, according to Nielsen.

HBO’s Game of Thrones, USA Network’s WWE Monday Night Raw, FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel, MTV’s Teen Wolf and VH1’s Love & Hip Hop all finished among the top 10 most tweeted TV shows during the season, which covers the period of Aug. 31, 2015, to May 29.

Twitter users also gave some love to Netflix-distributed shows, including a whopping 1.2 million tweets following the February release of Fuller House and 526,000 tweets that accompanied the Dec. 15, 2015, release of the OTT service’s documentary Making a Murderer.

Viewers are engaging with their favorite shows and spreading the word about every big character reveal, riveting storyline and crazy, season-ending cli_ anger on social media, which bodes well for the viability of such content going forward. For network executives and showrunners, social media attention is almost as valuable a tool in determining the success of a series as overall viewership numbers.

That’s especially true for live sports content, based on the category’s huge social media performance during the television season. Sports fans are not only watching live sports in record numbers, but they’re also talking about the games on social media.

ESPN2’s April 13 telecast of Kobe Bryant’s final NBA game drew 3.4 million viewers despite a late 10:30 ET start time. More impressively, the game — in which the Black Mamba scored 60 points — generated a whopping 4.5 million tweets, second in the live sports category only to the 16.9 million tweets drawn by CBS’s Feb. 7 Super Bowl telecast. Beyond live sports, it was the fifth most-tweeted event on television, behind the Super Bowl, Grammys, Oscars and American Music Awards, per Nielsen.

Overall nearly 1 billion tweets were sent about TV content during the 2015-16 season. With more video content being viewed than ever before and with no decline in social media usage on the horizon, it’s almost certain that TV content will continue to be a major source of discussion for viewers on all social media services, including Twitter, regardless of which platform viewers choose to watch on.

To read the headlines, operators and cable networks are on the ropes these days, given recent trends toward time-shifted viewing and its negative effect on ratings.

Still, several networks are fighting back with the power ratings punch of live ring sports.

Live boxing, pro wrestling and mixed-martial arts (MMA) programming continues to deliver healthy ratings numbers for networks like FS1, Spike TV, USA Network, Showtime and HBO as sports fans gather in front of large screen TVs to watch action-packed — and unpredictable — DVR-proof live events that help drivesocial media discussion before, during and after the fisticuffs.

Moreover, distributors are experimenting with new technologies like 4K and virtual reality for live ring sports events, while others are exploring OTT options to allow fans to watch all the action on multiple screens.

“It’s unscripted, it’s live and it’s real,” FS1 senior vice president of programming, research and content strategy Patrick Crakes said. “Two people in the ring together trying to test each other — anything can happen at any second.”

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SPOILING FOR FIGHTS

Viewers, it turns out, like a good fight, and lots of them are tuning in to see the action. Spike TV’s Feb. 19 Kimbo Slice-Dada Bellator 149 MMA telecast drew a record 2 million viewers — the biggest audience for the general-entertainment channel this year outside of its hit series Lip Sync Battle. The event was part of the network’s Friday-night lineup of live MMA and pro boxing events.

FS1’s live Ultimate Fighting Championship telecasts in 2015 generated 15% of the network’s viewing audience, while comprising just 12% of its programming schedule, according to Crakes. In 2015, FS1’s 26 live UFC events in primetime averaged 1 million total viewers.

So far this year, four live UFC events on FS1 have averaged nearly 1 million viewers. The network is set to air live coverage of the preliminary bouts for UFC’s 12 pay-per-view events, as well as 15 additional live UFC fight cards.

“All of the network’s UFC programming is trending up year to year,” Crakes said. “It really became a phenomenon — it provides a lot of high-quality content.”

Ring sports — especially pro wrestling and MMA — draw the younger viewers who are tuning out of traditional TV programming more often than not, UFC executive vice president and chief content officer Marshall Zelaznik added.

The median age of UFC’s viewer audience is 37.8 years, which skews younger than that of the major U.S. professional sports leagues by 4.8 to 12.1 years, according to the company.

Meanwhile, boxing is gearing up to build on arguably its most successful year ever, from a pay-per-view revenue and ratings standpoint. HBO has already slated two PPV fights in 2016, the April 9 Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley Jr. fight and the May 7 Canelo Alvarez-Amir Kahn bout. It hopes to ride the coattails of last May’s record-setting Floyd Mayweather- Manny Pacquiao event — which generated more than $400 million in PPV revenues — as well as last November’s Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez bout, which drew nearly 1 million PPV buys.

RELATED:HBO's Nelson Looks to Pack a Punch in ’16

A WINNING SEASON

The mixed martial arts and pro wrestling categories are also coming off strong 2015 PPV campaigns, and are looking ahead to big revenue and buy returns this year, Mark Boccardi, In Demand senior vice president of programming and business development, said.

“Ring sports are by nature cyclical, but we’re at a point now where everything has been clicking for these distributors on PPV,” Boccardi said. “UFC had an incredible bounceback year; boxing had its best year ever, due mostly to Mayweather-Pacquiao; and with WWE we still do significant buys for those customers that aren’t subscribing to [the WWE Network over-the-top service, which carries that company’s PPV events].”

As the TV marketplace continues to evolve, network executives said, live ring sports will remain a valuable programming asset for networks looking for a relatively low-cost sports offering — compared with the billion-dollar rights fees commanded by pro sports leagues — that will deliver a unique and loyal audience.

“The value of having a cost-effective sport in today’s sports marketplace can’t be overstated,” said Stephen Espinoza, executive vice president of Showtime Sports, which will mark its 30th year of championship boxing coverage in 2016. “We all know where the industry trend is going in terms of rights fees, so it seems like many programmers have discovered a relatively low-cost barrier to entrytype of sports programming.”

Indeed, networks like AXS TV have relied on live ring sports programming to help build their brand with would-be affilliates and viewers. The Mark Cuban-owned entertainment service has been offering live MMA, boxing and wrestling events on Friday nights for more than a decade.

This year, the network will air 42 live ring sports events, AXS TV Fights CEO Andrew Simon said. The immediacy of the events, and the need to watch them as they’re happening, have helped put the network on the map.

“In today’s television world, we don’t know many people who are watching TV in real time outside of sports,” Simon said. “It’s sports that you have to watch live. You do not want to hear that Holly Holm beat Ronda Rousey and then watch a replay of the fight — you want to watch that live and then be able to join in the social engagement afterwards.”

Even pro wrestling, a heavily scripted but still action-infused genre, has benefited from providing live content to its legion of fans. USA Network continues to draw more than 4 million viewers a week for its weekly, live WWE Monday Night Raw series, which is now in its 23rd year.

The live Raw telecasts allow WWE fans to engage with must-see television every week, while affording USA Network an opportunity to showcase its other programming to pro wrestling’s loyal and committed viewer base, NBCUniversal Entertainment Networks president Chris McCumber said.

“As the most-watched regularly scheduled year-round program on cable, Monday Night Raw is an extremely valuable franchise, with three hours of live, high-octane entertainment airing on USA every Monday night, 52 weeks a year to a massive, passionate, loyal and engaged fanbase,” McCumber said in a statement.

Added WWE chief revenue and marketing officer Michelle Wilson: “While the TV landscape continues to evolve, live, DVR-proof programming remains extremely valuable to both our partners and fans. Live programming also serves as the core of engagement across digital and social platforms and drives the conversation all week long, 24/7.”

SOCIAL-MEDIA STRENGTH

Live content is also a major driver of socialmedia action. Of the 10 most-discussed TV shows on Twitter in 2015, six were live sports telecasts, according to Nielsen.

“It boosts social traffic because people are talking to each other about what they’ve seen on the live telecast,” Spike president Kevin Kay said. “If you have a great knockout or great submission, the first thing that happens is somebody says, ‘Did you see that?’ and that drives viewership and conversation on social and drives up traffic during the fight and after the fight.”

Several networks are working toward making sure viewers can see those big knockouts through technological enhancements like 4K and virtual reality.

UFC will look in the near future to implement virtual reality and 4K-enhanced video for live events offered on its Fight Pass OTT service, UFC’s Zelaznik said.

The subscription-based Fight Pass will offer live coverage of the undercard fights for UFC’s more than 41 live events, as well as more than 110 shows for non-UFC MMA events.

“We think we can provide more value to Fight Pass subscribers and continue to experiment with the new technologies,” he said. “What we can deliver digitally is really high-quality clarity.”

Executives from FS1, AXS TV and Showtime also confirmed experimentation with either or both 4K and virtual reality for their live ring-sports events.

“Virtual reality provides some real opportunities because of its ability to immerse people at home to the experience,” FS1’s Crakes said. “We always hear from our fans that they want the telecast to bring them closer to the event, and virtual reality — if we can make it work inside the home — has that potential. To be able to give everybody a ringside seat is pretty appealing.”

Even more distributors are getting into the live sports ring. Pop will offer its first live TNA Impact Wrestling telecast on March 15. It launched the pro-wrestling series, which had previously aired on Spike TV and later Destination America, in January.

“Impact Wrestling on Pop is must-watch appointment television that delivers a consistent, loyal audience every Tuesday night,” Pop president Brad Schwartz said. “It is 52 weeks a year of original content, including many weeks that are live, like the upcoming live event on March 13.”

El Rey Network may also look to develop live pro wrestling shows based on of its original wrestling series Lucha Underground, according Eric Van Wagenen, showrunner and executive producer for the Mark Burnett-produced reality series.

The sophomore series, which features Mexican pro wrestling content, deliberately does not market or promote episode highlights in advance of its premiere in an effort to replicate the excitement and must-see appeal of a live wrestling telecast.

“It’s absolutely conceivable that we would get to a point of offering a live event,” Wagenen said. “We’re taking a measured approach. The advantage of shooting a season is that it gives us an off-season — we could conceivably supplement the series with live events during that time.”

Also lacing up its live-event gloves is digital company Flipps Media, which earlier this month launched the FITE TV app offering select PPV ring sports events via mobile devices.

Just this past weekend, the service offered six live PPV combat sports events, including Ring of Honor professional wrestling and World Armwrestling Championship events that were also distributed by In Demand, DirecTV and Dish Network.

The FITE TV app can be downloaded from iTunes or Google Play, and provides users the option of streaming a live show on a phone or connecting directly to a Smart TV, FITE senior vice president of marketing Michael Weber said.

Along with live PPV programming, the service has deals to distribute free, ad-supported VOD combat sports content.

OTT IN THE RING

“You can’t be in this business doing live event PPV programming and not look for alternatives to cable and satellite,” Weber said, adding that the company is hoping to secure rights deal with other PPV event distributors.

“We all know cable subscriber numbers are shrinking every year, so this makes sense for all the programmers to be looking at new ways to deliver programming,” Weber added. “We’re not trying to replace cable, we want to supplement it.”

With networks and distributors offering content on multiple platforms, it looks like live sports programming will continue to pack a major punch in the television marketplace for several more rounds.

“There’s more content on cable and over-the-air broadcast networks than ever before,” FS1’s Crakes said. “I’m bullish on ring sports because I believe they are the cornerstone of live sports programming.”

The year 2015 will go down as a championship campaign, ratings-wise, for live sports programming — and particularly for live sports telecasts emanating from cable networks.

Live sports telecasts represented 19 of the top 25 programs on cable this year, according to ESPN, which is poised to finish as the most watched network on cable for the year in primetime.

Most cable networks carrying live sports events this year either set ratings records or generated strong performances from their coverage. ESPN set an all-time cable ratings record by drawing 33.6 million viewers for the Ohio State-Oregon College Football National Championship game on Jan. 12, while TBS garnered a network-record 16.7 million viewers for the Kentucky-Wisconsin NCAA men’s basketball Final Four national semifinal game on April 4.

Sports fans dished out record amounts of cash for pay-per-view events in 2015, bolstered by the May 2 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which obliterated all pay-per-view event-revenue records by generating $400 million.

Sports fans also chatted up the year’s biggest sports events on Twitter, including NBC’s Feb. 1 New England- Seattle Super Bowl telecast, which drew a television show-high 25 million tweets, according to Nielsen.

With increased viewing via digital video recorder, video- on-demand and TV everywhere platforms taking a bite out of traditional TV entertainment-network ratings in 2015, sports telecasts remain one of the few video properties that continue to be DVR-proof and more than hold their value in the evolving television marketplace.

As more live sports games make their way onto digital platforms through TV Everywhere services like Watch ESPN and over-the-top game packages like “NBA League Pass,” the value of such content undoubtedly will continue to rise as distributors jockey to secure rights to content that will draw not only hard-to-reach male viewers, but legions of casual sports fans across all demos.

The beat will seemingly to go on in 2016 as big events such as Super Bowl 50 and the 2016 Summer Olympics — along with technological advances such as 4K and virtual reality — promise to further enhance the broad appeal of live sports programming and provide a win-win ratings scenario for distributors across traditional and digital platforms, as well as social media.