Ticket prices and streaming services are squeezing fans out of sports

The World Cup, the NBA playoffs, and baseball remind us how exhilarating sports can feel. But behind that emotion is a business reshaping fandom: following a team now often means navigating a maze of streaming subscriptions, paying steep ticket prices, and watching stadiums tilt toward luxury customers — a shift that risks forgetting what made sports valuable in the first place: the masses.

Technology has made more live sports available, but also harder to access. To watch the NFL, fans need a dizzying combination of broadcast television, cable, Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount+, and/or YouTube TV. The league says that 87% of its games are available for free on a broadcast network; critics call that claim dubious, and the remaining 13% is still a meaningful chunk.

Messing with streaming settings isn’t how many people want to spend a holiday. Ticket prices compound the squeeze.

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