A new report published by Ofcom has revealed that tennis and rugby have experienced the biggest decline in viewership among young people watching live sports.
The report, conducted by Ampere Analysis for the broadcasting watchdog, indicates that football remains the most popular sport for both 18-34-year-olds, with a quarter interested in watching it.
For 35-54-year-olds, that figure is at more than a third of all UK viewers.
But among young people, interest in watching tennis has fallen from 13 percent in 2019 to 10 percent in 2024, while rugby witnessed an even starker drop-off in interest, from seven percent to just five percent last year.
Athletics was the main sport to gain popularity over this period, possibly influenced by the success of last year’s Paris Olympics, from five percent to nine percent. The Olympics themselves witnessed a jump in interest, from nine to 13 percent.
The report, which also details the challenges facing the industry, notes that viewership of linear TV has declined over the last decade. Traditional TV suffered an 11 percent drop in the number of viewers between 2010 and 2024, and a 12 percent drop in viewers of sports-specific channels.
That decline has been most noticeable among younger demographics, the report says, with a 34 percent drop among 18-34-year-olds watching linear TV, as younger people turn to streaming instead.
But the report notes that per-person viewing minutes of live sport have increased, amid a backdrop of broader decline for other types of broadcasting.
And in better news, the number of 18-24-year-olds who enjoy watching sport in any format has increased by nearly a third over the last five years. The report notes that “digital platforms will be key” in retaining this interest among younger viewers, such as social media and video.
One success story has been women’s football, with the fanbase skewing increasingly towards younger viewers. The percentage of 18-34-year-olds in the fanbase for the Women’s World Cup went from 26 percent to 29 percent over that five-year period, while for the Women’s Champions League, that has increased from 23 to 29 percent over the same time.
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The Women’s Champions League’s broadcast deal with YouTube and DAZN, signed in 2021, has contributed to this, the report argues: “The partnership between DAZN and YouTube shows that combining premium sport broadcasters with a social platform serves to broaden the demographic audience for a league.”
Female footballers’ strong social media presence has also played a part, according to the report. “Female players have been able to create authentic content and allow fans to get to know them well, which is likely to have a knock-on effect to competition following, particularly one which brings together all the best female footballers in the world,” it notes.
The report downplays the importance of the decline in traditional TV viewership for this age demographic, adding, “Online secondary coverage is key to engage 18-34s and casual sports fans, but is still considered complementary to live coverage and key for broadcasters to obtain as part of the deal.”
Those in the 35-44 age bracket also saw a jump in numbers who enjoy watching live sport, a 19 percent increase from 2019 to 2024, with interest in football – the most popular sport – rising further, from 30 to 34 percent.
Those numbers suggest that this particular sector is relatively healthy compared to other genres of live TV, but that broadcasters and rights holders need to adjust their strategies to appeal to younger demographics, while avoiding/sport/live-sport-tv-gen-z-sports-watching-b2771362.html alienating older, established viewers.
