Wayne Lonstein, CEO, VFT Solutions, Inc. Anti-Piracy, Social Media and Cybersecurity law and practice.
This is the first in a three-part series on how streaming lost sight of its original consumer promise, whether today’s sports and entertainment economics are sustainable and what a more consumer-friendly marketplace might look like.
For more than a decade, I have been trying to answer one question: Why shouldn’t consumers be able to watch what they want, when they want it, and pay a fair price for exactly what they want? In 2015, streaming seemed like a win for everyone because it promised to remove linear television’s constraints, increase competition, expand choice and reduce costs; fans would finally be in control. But a decade later, the central question is sharper: Has streaming delivered that promise, or has it rebuilt the same old problem in a new form?
We cut the cord, but we multiplied the bundle. Consumers now navigate endless streaming providers, with their own subscription, account, password, pricing structure and programming. The cable bill didn’t disappear; it shifted to our credit-card statements.
The data reveals this may be more than fans grumbling. Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends study found that 90% of U.S. homes have a streaming service, averaging four services per household.
Approximately 41% of consumers canceled at least one service during the last six months, while 22% churned (canceled and later returned). That should concern executives and investors. It also suggests a deeper shift: Streaming was built around recurring revenue, while fragmentation encourages consumers to act transactionally without being a transactional product. Subscribe for the show, season or championship; cancel when it ends; and return when a new interest or season premieres. Consumers have effectively invented à la carte television themselves through subscriptions, cancellations and renewals.
Deloitte found that fans with streaming subscriptions spend an average of $71 per month across four services, versus $56 across three for non-fans. Fifty-five percent of fans say their interests take them across multiple platforms, and that number rises to roughly 70% among Gen-Z and millennials. Forty percent of all fans and 49% of younger fans wish they could aggregate all of their content in one place. That suggests consumers never hated aggregation. They hated paying for 100 channels they never watch, leaving them to answer five questions:
1. Which platform owns the regional rights to the content?
2. Do I currently have access?
3. Do I need to subscribe to another platform?
4. How much will it cost?
5. Is there a long-term commitment or a requirement to purchase a bundle of content I do not want, and not a bundle of content I want?
Sadly, many streaming exclusives now exist, such as Friday Night MLB, Thanksgiving, Christmas and wildcard weekend NFL games. Many are exclusively on streaming systems, leaving fans to answer another question: Where’s the game? That’s not a technology failure; it’s proof that the marketplace is built around distribution, not consumers, and Congress is asking questions.
With the ever-skyrocketing cost of content rights, streaming companies can defend their price. The problem is the total: $10 here, $20 there, plus premium sports, making streaming resemble managing an investment portfolio. Price is only half the equation; reach matters, too. Ten thousand subscribers at $150 generate $1.5 million a month. Ten million $4.99 purchases generate $49.9 million. The numbers are illustrative, but they highlight the same question: Are platforms and leagues maximizing revenue per subscriber while pricing millions of potential customers out of the market?
Simply because someone is unwilling to spend another $20 or $30 every month doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to pay for content. The barrier may be another recurring relationship to watch one game, movie or event. The subscription model calls that a failed conversion while I call that losing a potential customer. That distinction matters because it leads to the next problem: a growing pool of consumers who skip payment altogether.
In my opinion, simply treating piracy as a problem is shortsighted. Piracy is competition. I have argued for over a decade that pirates are an enormous pool of potential customers. The unanswered question is whether that consumer rejected paying for content due to fragmentation, price or the friction required to obtain it legally.
A collateral concern is the widespread normalization of piracy and significant changes in the societal mores of younger generations. Fans learn that premium content can easily be obtained for free; they may not care about the ethics of not paying, so their perception of legitimate value can change. The legal product is no longer competing only with another service. It is competing against free. When piracy becomes habitual, it can become an addiction.
Streaming misses a golden chance to fix things; it simply shuffled the deck. The channel became an app, while the bundle became multiple subscriptions and bills. Consumers appreciated one-stop convenience and ease of access of the cable age. While the technology rapidly evolved, the consumer journey worsened.
Deloitte found that 44% of fans find content on social media and then leave those platforms to watch, listen or purchase the content elsewhere. It calls this fragmented journey a “black box” for media companies. I call social media an access drug store of free clips, streams and promotions, which often redirects consumers away from legitimate platforms, directing them to illegal social media content or heavily promoted piracy platforms such as the recently shuttered piracy site Streameast and its progeny.
The result? A commercial architecture focused on platforms instead of consumers. That is the throughline of the problem: Streaming lost sight of its original consumer promise, not just giving them what they want, when they want it, but also what, where and how much.
This is bigger than a fan searching for a game or movie. In part two, I’ll examine how rising rights fees, superstar contracts and soaring valuations collide with economics, and when investors make decade-long commitments to businesses whose customers often churn in a month.
The entire system rests on one assumption: Someone else will keep paying more. Until they don’t.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?