For the past decade, the live sports industry has been obsessed with reaction.
Faster highlights, rage inducing talent, bigger social spikes, more cameras, more clips and more prompts to respond in the moment. The assumption has been that intensity equals engagement, and that engagement, measured loudly and immediately, then equals value.
The Stacked Live Experience
But I think in 2026 we will see that assumption no longer holds. Live sport has not lost its power, but the way audiences experience it has fundamentally changed. A match is no longer a single broadcast moment shared by millions at once, it's a multi-layered experience distributed across group chats, creator watch-alongs, mini leagues, third and fourth screens, social feeds and private messages, all running in parallel to the live feed itself.
