1) Sports fans assume that traditional broadcast or cable networks are generally better at broadcasting sporting events than individual streaming brands.

Hub showed sports fans a list of nine options – “traditional” cable and broadcast TV channels, as well as eight major streaming platforms – and asked them which offered the best sports coverage.

• A quarter (24 percent) of respondents said network television offers the best quality sports broadcasts – more than twice as many as Prime Video (11 percent) and about three times as many as brands like Hulu or Netflix.
• However, overall, almost twice as many chose a streaming platform (59 percent) as network TV (24 percent) – a testament to the brand value that streaming platforms have built with their scripted TV experience.

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2) When it comes to technical problems with sports streaming, “the struggle is great.”

Over a third (37 percent) of avid sports fans said they “regularly” experience at least one of several technical issues when streaming sports – from buffering to app crashes to a delay between the streamed TV game feed and the network broadcast.

But these issues don’t seem to have affected their overall perception of sports streaming – at least not yet.

· Three out of four fans who experience streaming disruptions still say they are happy that more sports are available via streaming.

Statistically, the enthusiasm is similar among those who have *no* technical problems: 68 percent of them are happy to see more sports streaming.

3) However, there are signs of a known impairment to the TV streaming experience.

Just like with scripted television content, fragmentation can make for a bumpier viewing experience.

· 69 percent of enthusiastic sports fans find it annoying to use multiple providers to watch the same sport.

· Nearly 59 percent say it has become more difficult to find the sports they want to watch.

Notably, both have shown trend-setting growth in the six months since the first wave of this survey.

“The reputation that streaming brands have built with their scripts has given them prestige in the sports space,” says Jon Giegengack, head of Hub and one of the study’s authors. “But that prestige is not without conditions: Network television still benefits from the inertia of familiarity that individual streamers can only achieve with a longer track record. Plus, fans are already worried that it will be harder to find their sports – a problem that will be even more frustrating with live sports because finding and watching them immediately is crucial.”