Live sports ad monetization struggles as traditional revenue models like linear subscriptions and cable rights deals wane,
Transmit Co-Founder Scott Young discusses how the company’s tech integrates ads seamlessly into live sports, aligning with game moments for a better viewer experience.
Transmit’s less-intrusive ad formats outperform traditional ads, with a 17x increase in message recall and purchase intent.
Live sport are no longer the guaranteed revenue generator it once was, and that’s impacting advertisers. The traditional monetization pillars—affiliate deals, cable rights, and subscriptions—are collapsing under pressure, leading to an industry shake-up.
We spoke to Scott Young, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Transmit. The streaming video monetization company partners with rights holders and platforms to keep sports content profitable—without sacrificing the viewer experience.
Where advertising fits: It’s not just that subscriptions aren’t growing fast enough. According to Young, the economics of sports rights themselves are becoming harder to justify. “It’s getting much more difficult to monetize sports rights and generate positive returns on the large deals that rights holders and streaming providers are making,” he says. “So the question becomes: what does the advertising experience look like? And can you supplement those models with ad-supported streaming?”
Building a seamless ad experience: That question is at the core of Transmit’s mission. “What we’ve built at Transmit is a streaming video monetization software,” Young says. “We work with rights holders and streaming operators to help them monetize better. That means creating new in-stream advertising opportunities that maximize both the viewer experience and the impact of ad products for advertisers.”
Transmit’s platform replaces traditional ad breaks with precision-targeted ads triggered by key moments in the game, creating seamless experiences that align with the pace and emotion of live events. The company’s breakthrough approach was recently recognized with a marquee win: being selected by FIFA to deliver enhanced video advertising across FIFA+ and FAST channels worldwide, a move that signals how top-tier rights holders are betting on new models to sustain digital growth.
An organic approach: Rather than relying on traditional commercial breaks, Transmit enables contextual, in-the-moment ads that feel more organic for the viewer and more valuable to the brand. “You can create customized, personalized ad experiences targeted to each individual viewer session—even if they’re watching concurrently,” Young explains. “If a home run or a goal is scored, that viewer can be shown an ad that’s personalized to them—based on what they like, what they’re likely to buy, and what’s happening in the moment they’re watching.”
Everyone’s a winner: That level of relevance creates a win-win: viewers get less disruption, and advertisers get premium placement. “Advertisers get a more prominent presence within sports streaming content, and they’ll pay more for that,” Young says. “They want to associate their brand with that moment—and that resonates with viewers.”
Keeping pace: Long ad pods are also a poor fit for the pacing of most live sports broadcasts. In many cases, there simply isn’t time to slot in a long break without disrupting the game. “There isn’t a lot of time in a live sports event to insert a long-duration ad break,” Young says. “Especially in soccer—before this product existed, you really only had one break at halftime, and that was it. That shows how hard it’s been to monetize.”
Metrics speak: Transmit recently partnered with IPG to study how viewers respond to these new formats, and the results were clear. “They surveyed viewers watching our ad experiences compared to traditional ad pods,” says Young. “They found that 60% of younger viewers—ages 18 to 34—preferred our approach. We saw 17 times the lift over standard ad pods in metrics like message recall and purchase intent. Even with commerce-driven messages like QR codes, we saw 20% of viewers scanning and heading to a purchase page.”
Future needs: For Transmit, the takeaway is obvious: sports streamers can no longer rely on legacy monetization models—and they don’t have to. “I think streaming monetization is critical for any serious streaming rights holder,” Young says. “If it’s not a desperate need now, it will be in the future.”
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