Hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s dad taught him to go where the puck is going, not where it has been. 

In the television business these days, the puck, the pigskin, the horsehide and other balls thrown and kicked are going to streaming. 

According to Gracenote, the content data business owned by Nielsen, the number of sports programs–including individual games–has soared 52% on the five leading subscription streaming services it tracks.

At the same time, sports content is up 30% on free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels. 

Sports have long been seen as traditional pay-TV’s last attraction as viewers shifted to streaming. The move of sports to streaming is occurring despite the headache it is giving fans who can’t keep track of which service the game they want to watch is on, not to mention whether they subscribe to it.

The new numbers on streaming programming come from the latest Gracenote Data Hub update. 

Gracenote tracks five subscription streaming services–Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and Paramount+.

Paramount+ now has the most streaming sports programming, with a 219% increase that helped it climb over Amazon Prime and Netflix in the standings. The acquisition of rights to UFC events gave Paramount+ a boost. At the same time, ESPN, which previously had the UFC, was down 23%. 

Overall, content on those top subscription streaming services is up 20% year-over-year. They have 20% more TV shows, and 21% more movies available. 

On the FAST side, the number of channels in Gracenote’s database rose 27% from a year ago to 2,063. The U.S., Great Britain, Germany and Canada have the most channels. Canada saw a 51% increase to 129 and Germany has 148 channels, up 41%. 

The number of shows available on FAST channels increased 32% from a year ago, with sports titles up 32%, movies growing 26% and TV shows up 24%.

What’s also hot on FAST channels is news. There is 58% more news programming on FAST channels, making it the third most prevalent genre behind documentaries and drama. 

Music is the cold genre, with the number of music shows on FAST dropping 18%. Music has dropped from being the fifth biggest genre in FAST to seventh. 

Gracenote also notes that the U.S. content’s share in streaming is on the decline.

Among the subscription services, U.S.-made shows and movies represented 41.9% of available content, down from 44.7% a year ago. 

Japanese content has doubled its share, rising to 6.1%. Japan is now the third-largest producer of streaming content, behind South Korea.

On Netflix, South Korean content, like Squid Game, represents 9.8% of its catalog, up from 8.1% a year ago. 

Japanese content is 9.5% of the Netflix catalog, up from 6.5%. 

If Netflix acquires Warner Bros. Discovery, it will have a lot more U.S.-produced content at its disposal.

U.S.-made shows and movies also lost share on FAST channels. U.S. programming represented 38% of the content on FAST channels, down from 42% a year ago.

Japanese content was the fastest growing on FAST as well, up more than 30% year-over-year. 

 # # #

JWX is helping video creators flip the screen and win the hearts, minds and dollars of viewers by helping programmers create vertical videos.

As seen on zillions of mobile phones, vertical video is extremely popular with social media users, leaving some traditional content publishers behind. 

JWX says its new product puts publishers in the vertical video business with a simple one-line JavaScript that doesn’t require an army of engineers to implement.

Publishers that already create vertical videos for social media will now be able to put that content on their own website, with the ability to brand and monetize the experience.

JWX said it plans to upgrade its new product to enable publishers to create vertical videos from content in their existing video libraries in the near future. 

“JWX is an indispensable partner as we continue to uncover new opportunities for engaging our audience, and Vertical Video is a great addition to their product portfolio,” said Kyle Whitfield, VP/consumer revenue at The Times-Picayune. “Beyond its strategic value, vertical video has been remarkably easy to implement, helping us get more engaging content onto our site without slowing down our workflows.”

JWX said it was able to develop its vertical video product quickly following its acquisition of Aug X Labs, now known as JWX Studio.

“Publishers are grappling with a fundamental strategic shift as they move from simply attracting traffic to deeply engaging audiences across a fragmented landscape,” said John Nardone, CEO of JWX. 

“To succeed, publishers must reclaim the primary role of owning consumer attention and building habitual return behavior. Vertical Video helps them do this, by bringing a social-like experience to publishers’ own properties, ensuring that audiences of all generations have the opportunity to deepen their relationship with content,” he said.

# # #

Operative said it is working with GraySwan to bring AI-based data visualization and business operations observability to AOS and STAQ, Operative’s revenue management and reporting and analytics platforms.

GraySwan’s agentic system will continuously monitor performance signals across supply, demand, pricing and delivery, enabling Operative customers to make more intelligent decisions.

GraySwan was founded by Zeev Neumeier, previously with Vizio and Inscape. 

“Media is now a data-driven business, and power comes from turning that data into action,” said Neumeier. “Rather than spending hours pulling reports or missing real-time signals, Operative customers can continuously observe what’s happening across their businesses, surface new revenue opportunities, and optimize performance automatically.”