In recent years, sports organizations have seen outsized performance growth from their vertical video and short-form content output.
Leagues, teams and athletes have been able to report continued follower and consumption growth from the emergence of platforms like TikTok and formats like YouTube’s Shorts and Instagram’s Reels. However, they haven’t seen a meaningful commercial return as of yet.
In 2025, that changes. As with other media in the past, revenue models have lagged consumer attention but next year sports will start to monetize their short-form and non-live rights in a meaningful way.
Short-form video platforms have exploded in popularity in recent years. TikTok now has over one billion monthly active users worldwide and its US revenue alone is reported to have reached $16bn in 2023.
Instagram Reels, which as a format within the main Instagram app is only four years old, reports that 2.35 billion people interact with Reels every month, the majority of these users being in the 25 to 34 age group.
According to Alphabet Investor Relations, YouTube Shorts are viewed over 70 billion times every day with over 910 million Shorts posted to YouTube to date.
Yet, the money creators make from Shorts is typically $0.01–$0.06 per 1,000 views, an order of magnitude lower than for long-form videos where in comparable markets average earnings may vary between $1.25 to $2.5 per 1,000 views.
In digital circles we are used to seeing big numbers and we have become increasingly acclimated to the follow-on question, ‘so what?’.
The industry needs to square the circle between user consumption and the revenue that flows back to IP owners, otherwise all these big numbers don’t add up to much.
$0BN
2025 will be the year when sports starts to see a genuine commercial return from short-form content. We anticipate that the platforms themselves will offer better monetization terms to creators, bringing short-form more in line with long-form.
More savvy rights holders will build short-form content packages into brand partnership agreements as we’re starting to see some already do, using platforms like Greenfly and WSC.
“Short-form content is now a primary way that many fans engage with sports, and rights holders must tap into its media and sponsorship value. It’s no longer just a teaser for live games – it’s becoming a main event. Fans rely on this content to follow and support their teams. And it’s not just repackaged material; it’s a new source of experiences. Rights holders have a prime opportunity to start to capture this value themselves, rather than letting third parties profit, as they adapt to the evolving fan experience beyond the live game.”
Daniel Kirschner, Co-founder & CEO, Greenfly
Putting content in the hands of brand partners
Emerging technology solutions now allow rights holders to easily and quickly route content to new destinations and integrate partner branding and storytelling components in near real-time.
With automated distribution capabilities, leagues can now make highly-engaging short-form clips directly available as brand destinations, complete with brand wrappers and messaging. This will form an increasingly valuable asset within wider sponsorship packages, delivering net new and, importantly, direct revenue from short-form digital content (the stuff the industry is used to giving away).
New distribution channels
As a consequence, we will start to see a market emerging for short-form content, with leagues starting to build packages for third parties to license competitively.
We will see the emergence of new short-form distribution channels (including league-owned services) which will become buyers of short-form content.
Leagues will grow more relaxed about creators accessing and augmenting this content.
Platforms share (a little) more
This will put pressure on the super-platforms to offer more competitive revenue sharing arrangements to sports properties.
Revenues shared by platforms to rights holders will continue to be eclipsed by traditional distribution deals and leave larger rights holders questioning whether platform revenues will ever amount to much.
For others, however, short-form content deals will serve as a much- needed source of revenue diversification to help fund audience growth and engagement initiatives.
