SportBusiness's Global Media Report 2026, published on 14 October, puts global sports media rights at a record $65.82 billion this year, up 15% on 2025. In the same report the forecast for 2027 is $62.2 billion. A market that sets a record and then shrinks by about $3.6 billion looks like a warning. It is better read as a calendar effect layered on top of a market whose growth is more concentrated than the headline suggests. This piece works through the arithmetic that the coverage did not.

A note on sourcing: we have not accessed the report itself. The figures come from Reuters coverage by Streisand Neto, republished by The Star, and from the Italian trade outlet Calcio e Finanza, which summarises the report in more detail. Derived numbers below are our arithmetic and are labelled as such.

The numbers as reported

  • 2026: $65.82 billion, a record, up 15% from 2025. Reuters ties the jump to two major events in 2026, the soccer World Cup in North America and the Winter Olympics. Calcio e Finanza also credits the new NBA cycle.
  • 2027: forecast to fall to $62.2 billion. The same outlet gives $66.3 billion for 2028 and $65.3 billion for 2029, and describes the market as moving within a band of about $4 billion through 2029 with no sustained growth.
  • 2024: $62.4 billion, the Paris Summer Olympics year. Reuters calls the two-year growth 5%.
  • 2022: $54.7 billion (Calcio e Finanza).

Why a record can be followed by a decline

Start with the arithmetic. The 2027 forecast is $3.62 billion below 2026, a fall of about 5.5%. The 2026 figure is also about 5.5% above 2024 ($65.82 billion against $62.4 billion), which Reuters rounds to 5%. Over two years, then, the market grew by roughly the amount it is forecast to lose in one.

The 15% growth rate allows a further inference. If 2026 is 15% above 2025, then 2025 was about $57.2 billion, which would be around 8% below 2024's $62.4 billion. That is our derivation, and it assumes the report's earlier-year figures were not revised. If it holds, the pattern is a sawtooth: 2022 at $54.7 billion, 2024 at $62.4 billion and 2026 at $65.82 billion are event years, each with a World Cup, an Olympics or both, and the odd years in between are lower. The 15% jump in 2026 is partly a rebound from a low 2025, not purely a new level of demand.

The forecast fits the same pattern. The 2028 figure of $66.3 billion is the next peak and would be only $0.5 billion above 2026. The report does not, in the coverage we saw, give an explicit reason for the 2027 drop, so linking it to the event calendar is our reading. Annualised, the market grows about 4.7% a year from 2022 to 2026 and only about 2.6% a year from 2022 to 2029 if the forecast of $65.3 billion for that year is right. Nominal growth of 2.6% a year is a slower story than a record headline suggests.

A second mechanism is the step change from big contracts. Calcio e Finanza reports that the NBA's new domestic deals total about $76 billion and lift annual domestic rights income to about $6.9 billion from $2.6 billion. That is a one-time rise in the level of the market. Once the new cycle is in the base, it contributes nothing further to growth until the next renewal. The same article says the UFC's $7.7 billion deal with Paramount moved MMA into the global top ten for the first time, ahead of tennis. Each of these is a discrete step, not a trend.

How concentrated the total is

The report's concentration figures are the more important finding, and the coverage did not draw out the implication. The United States accounts for 53.9% of global value, up from 46% in 2022. Calcio e Finanza puts the 2022 share at 46.4% and the 2026 value at about $35.5 billion.

Combine those with the $54.7 billion total for 2022 and the US figure for that year is about $25.4 billion. The US then added roughly $10.1 billion over four years. The whole market added about $11.1 billion, so on this arithmetic about 91% of global growth between 2022 and 2026 came from the United States. The rest of the world went from about $29.3 billion to about $30.3 billion, an increase of about $1 billion or 3.5% in four years. This is derived from rounded shares and should be read as approximate, but even with generous error margins the conclusion is the same: the global growth story is, to a large extent, a US story.

League concentration points the same way. The NFL accounts for 19.2% of global value and the NBA for 11.1%, together about 30%. In dollars that is roughly $12.6 billion and $7.3 billion, about $19.9 billion between them (our arithmetic). The NFL figure is consistent with the roughly $12.3 billion per season Calcio e Finanza gives for its domestic contracts, which run through 2033. Football (soccer) is the largest sport at $25.4 billion, or 38.6%, followed by American football at 19.3%. The Premier League is worth $5.1 billion, 7.8% of the total, and is the richest competition outside North America. The top ten sports make up almost 99% of global rights value.

Outside the US, growth is thin. The five biggest European markets together are worth about one-third of US value, roughly $11.8 billion on our arithmetic, and none is projected to grow faster than 1.5% a year, according to Calcio e Finanza. France is the only top-ten market projected to shrink, at 2.8% a year. The exception is the Indian subcontinent, at 3.9% of the total and projected to grow 9.4% a year from 2023 to 2029, the fastest among the top ten.

What the dip does and does not say about leverage

A forecast decline in the aggregate does not by itself weaken a league's bargaining position. Rights values are set contract by contract. The NFL's leverage depends on how many bidders want its games, not on the global total. Calcio e Finanza reports that the NFL wants to renegotiate early to raise the value of its domestic contracts, and that other major negotiations are coming, including India's cricket rights, the UEFA cycles and European leagues such as Serie A and Ligue 1.

What matters is the buyer side. The report, as summarised, says major streaming platforms are significant but have not yet shown interest in buying entire national championships at current prices, and that traditional broadcasters are consolidating, which reduces the number of potential bidders. Fewer bidders would weigh on future growth in rights values regardless of how the calendar falls. It also means that the US share of 53.9% depends on a small number of renewals. If the NFL succeeds in reopening its deals at higher prices, it could lift the whole total. If streaming platforms and broadcasters hold back, the same concentration works in reverse.

The limits, and the other view

We do not know the report's methodology from the coverage we read: how it values multi-year deals year by year, how it counts streaming and sublicensed rights, whether production costs are included, or how often it revises past years. Those choices can shift the year-to-year shape. The 2027 to 2029 figures are forecasts and the report's earlier editions are revised as deals are disclosed. We also have not seen a split of the total by platform, so we cannot say how much of the value is streaming.

The optimistic reading is that 2027 is a trough in a market that returns to $66.3 billion in 2028. The cautious reading is that, stripped of event years, a market growing at 2.6% a year nominally over seven years is mature, and that the record headline reflects the calendar and one American cycle. Both readings are consistent with the figures. What the figures cannot tell you is which cycle of renewals will break the pattern.

What to watch

  • Whether the NFL reopens its domestic contracts early, the single largest swing factor in the total.
  • The outcome of the India cricket, UEFA and major European league rights rounds.
  • Whether streaming platforms bid for whole national championships, which the report says they have not yet done at current prices.
  • Revisions: if next year's report restates 2025 or 2026, the sawtooth shape will be easier to confirm or rule out.