Sports programming has quietly taken over a significant slice of the global subscription streaming landscape. Today, Gracenote, the content intelligence business unit of Nielsen, published its Q2 2026 update to the Gracenote Data Hub, revealing that sports content now accounts for 5% of all programming across the six leading global subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services. That figure - a seemingly modest percentage - represents a near-tripling of the 1.4% share sports held across the original five platforms back in November 2024, when the Data Hub was first launched.

The Q2 2026 report also marks the first time HBO Max has been included in the analysis. The addition of Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming platform, which will be tracked quarterly going forward alongside Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+, dramatically reshapes the sports content picture. According to Gracenote, HBO Max today holds 35% of all available sports content at the show level across the six tracked services, and 42% at the individual game and event level. Those figures make it, by a wide margin, the most sports-heavy destination among the major global streamers.

How HBO Max compares

The scale of HBO Max's sports catalog relative to its competitors is notable. According to Gracenote, HBO Max has 40% more sports content than Amazon Prime Video at the show level, with Amazon holding 25% of available sports programming. Netflix accounts for 16%, and Disney+ for 14%. Paramount+ - which held the top position for individual game and event coverage in the Q1 2026 Data Hub release in February - now ranks second at the game and event level with 30%, behind HBO Max's 42%.

Including HBO Max in the analysis adds 5.4% to the total amount of content tracked by the Gracenote Data Hub at the show level. At the combined show and episode level, the addition is 12.8%. The sports effect is even more pronounced: sports content on the global providers increases by 52.9% at the show level and 71.1% at the show and episode level when HBO Max is added to the five previously tracked services. HBO Max's sports catalog is double the size of Paramount+'s at the show level, and 42% larger at the show and episode level.

Despite the size of its sports offering, HBO Max remains smaller overall than Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+. Its global catalog sits broadly between those three and Paramount+ in total content volume.

A rapid build-up across five services

Even before HBO Max entered the data set, sports content had been growing fast. In November 2024, sports made up just 1.4% of the combined catalogs of Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+, according to the inaugural Gracenote Data Hub analysis. Over the following 18 months, those five providers more than doubled sports' share to 3.3%. Adding HBO Max pushes the figure to 5% and brings the total to nearly 38,500 sports shows, episodes, games and events available across the six leading global SVOD services.

The Paramount+ sports catalog has been the most dramatically reshaped. According to Gracenote, it increased by 143% at the program level in the past year alone. At the program and episode level, the growth is even more striking: 381% more sports content is available on Paramount+ than was available in Q2 2025. That growth matters in the context of the planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance, which would combine Paramount+'s sports depth with HBO Max's sports breadth. As covered by PPC Land in March 2026, the merger would create a single streaming platform with approximately 200 million subscribers - a combination that could make the new entity a significant force in global streaming sports rights.

Sports on Disney+ moved in the opposite direction: 23% fewer sports shows and episodes are available year-over-year, according to Gracenote. That decline stands against the platform's otherwise strong catalog growth, with Disney+ recording the fastest-growing movie catalog among the five original services at 22.1% year-over-year, and the fastest-growing TV show catalog at the program level, up 47.4% since Q2 2025.

Amazon's dominance in total content

Sports is one part of a broader catalog picture in which Amazon Prime Video holds a commanding lead. According to Gracenote, Prime Video carries 71.2% of what is available across the five original services on the Data Hub - a figure that rises from the 67.4% share Prime Video held a year ago. When HBO Max is included, Prime Video accounts for 66.6% of available content across all six services.

Movies are the primary driver of that dominance. Amazon Prime Video carries 76.4% of the films available across the five original services, up from 73.1% a year earlier. No other service comes close in total catalog volume.

Netflix, by contrast, has contracted its movie catalog over the same period. According to Gracenote, Netflix's film library is now 6.6% smaller than it was in Q2 2025. Amazon Prime Video's TV show catalog grew fastest at the program and episode level, increasing by 24.4% since Q2 2025. Total content across the original five services grew 15.3% at the program level and 16.4% at the program and episode level year-over-year.

Geography shifts: Japan rises, U.S. share falls

One of the less-discussed dimensions of the Gracenote data is the geographic composition of SVOD catalogs. U.S.-produced content on the original five global services has declined from 44.2% of available content a year ago to 42.0% now, according to Gracenote. That contraction is partly explained by the rapid expansion of content from other countries.

Japanese programming has nearly doubled its share, growing from 3% in Q2 2025 to 5.9% in Q2 2026. Japan is now the fourth largest content producer on the five global services, behind the U.S., the UK and India. Japanese content on Amazon Prime Video specifically increased by 154% year-over-year.

Germany made significant gains on Disney+. German programming now represents 6.3% of the Disney+ catalog, up from 2.7% a year ago - a 135% increase - making Germany the third biggest content producer on the platform.

Netflix stands out for its international breadth. According to Gracenote, more than one fifth of Netflix's catalog is Japanese or Korean produced, and only one third is from the U.S. That makes Netflix the most internationally diverse of the six global services. HBO Max, by contrast, has a more concentrated origin profile: two thirds of its catalog is U.S.-produced. Only Apple TV's 83% U.S. composition is higher among the six providers.

FAST channels: 2,120 and growing

The Gracenote Q2 2026 update also covers the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) market. The number of FAST channels tracked by Gracenote has increased by 21% year-over-year to reach 2,120. The press release cited a 19% year-over-year figure, while the supplementary data document places the growth at 21% - the latter applies to the full set of channels tracked, including those recently added to the monitoring scope.

Entertainment, sports, news, reality and comedy are the five biggest FAST channel genres. News is growing the fastest among them, with 57% more news channels available than in Q2 2025. News is also the fastest-growing program genre on FAST at the content level: news programming increased from 7.8% of FAST content a year ago to 11.2% in Q2 2026. Music, on the other hand, is shrinking as a share of FAST programming - declining from 6.7% of content in Q2 2025 to 4.5% in Q2 2026, a reduction of more than a third.

Live sports events represent a substantial portion of what FAST sports channels actually air. According to Gracenote, more than one third - 37% - of content on sports channels on FAST is live sports. That is a meaningful statistic for advertisers, since live content commands premium attention and reduced ad-skipping behavior. The dynamics of live sports on FAST differ from the same content on SVOD: audiences on free ad-supported platforms have explicitly chosen access without subscription fees, with advertising as the exchange.

The broader FAST market context is relevant here. As tracked by PPC Land, FAST channels had reached 27% of streaming viewing across Europe by early 2026, with news and sports among the primary drivers of growth. The growth of news channels on FAST tracked by Gracenote - 57% year-over-year - runs in the same direction.

Why this matters for advertising and media buying

The Gracenote Data Hub is not primarily an advertising product. It is a content intelligence resource tracking catalog composition. But the data it produces has direct consequences for how media buyers understand the streaming landscape - particularly as CTV advertising budgets continue to grow.

Gracenote has expanded its advertising-relevant product set substantially over the past year. In December 2025, Gracenote launched Content Connect, a platform enabling agencies, brands, SSPs and DSPs to execute program-level advertising targeting across connected television environments. That product relies on the same metadata infrastructure - program identifiers, content taxonomies, genre classifications - that powers the Data Hub's catalog analysis. In September 2025, Index Exchange became the first SSP to embed Gracenote's contextual intelligence and brand safety segments directly into its platform.

The Q2 2026 data on sports' share of SVOD content has practical implications for that infrastructure. Sports programming is one of the most commercially valuable content categories in streaming. A Gracenote survey published in October 2025 found that for sports programming on FAST channels specifically, 68% of content lacked imagery, 55% was missing original air date information, and 39% had no episode title - metadata gaps that impede contextual targeting. As sports content volumes expand rapidly, the incentive to close those metadata gaps increases.

Ad-supported streaming has reached 210 million U.S. viewers, according to a VAB report published in April 2026. NFL streaming viewership rose from 72% to 76% of streaming sports viewers between 2024 and 2026, while NBA and MLB streaming each rose 8 percentage points. General SVOD apps used for sports streaming reached 68% of sports streamers in 2025, up from 61% in 2024. That convergence of sports audiences and SVOD platforms is precisely what the Gracenote Q2 data quantifies at the catalog level.

Gracenote's position as part of Nielsen gives the Data Hub an institutional backdrop. Gracenote launched a Video Model Context Protocol Server in September 2025 connecting large language models to its entertainment database covering 40 million titles across 260 streaming catalogs - a product that extends the same metadata layer into AI-powered discovery environments. The content intelligence infrastructure, in other words, now spans catalog analysis, contextual ad targeting and AI content verification.

About the Gracenote Data Hub

The Gracenote Data Hub was launched in November 2024. It draws on Gracenote Global Video Data and is updated quarterly. The resource now tracks six SVOD services and 2,120 FAST channels. Gracenote describes the underlying data as the industry's most comprehensive content intelligence set, covering more than 50 million titles across more than 80,000 channels and catalogs in over 70 languages across more than 80 countries.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Gracenote, the content intelligence business unit of Nielsen, published the Q2 2026 update to the Gracenote Data Hub. HBO Max, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, is the primary subject as the newly added platform.

What: Sports content now accounts for 5% of all programming on the six leading global SVOD services tracked by Gracenote. HBO Max holds 35% of sports content at the show level and 42% at the individual game and event level - the highest share of any platform. The Gracenote Data Hub also tracks 2,120 FAST channels, up 21% year-over-year, with news the fastest-growing genre. Nearly 38,500 sports titles are available across the six SVOD services combined.

When: The Q2 2026 Data Hub update was published on May 21, 2026. The analysis covers content availability as of Q2 2026 and compares it against Q2 2025 and the inaugural November 2024 data set.

Where: The analysis covers the global catalogs of Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, Netflix, Paramount+ and HBO Max, as well as 2,120 FAST channels tracked by Gracenote worldwide.

Why: The findings matter for the marketing and media buying community because sports content is one of the most commercially valuable categories in streaming, and the rapid expansion of sports across SVOD platforms - from 1.4% in November 2024 to 5% today - signals both content acquisition momentum and growing inventory for contextual advertising. The pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would combine the two most sports-heavy platforms in Gracenote's analysis, with implications for sports rights, ad inventory concentration, and streaming competition with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

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