My current sports diet is vastly different than it was 5 years ago in some ways, but in other ways it is exactly the same. The first major difference is how I watch sports. 5 years ago, I lived with my parents still, so I was able to watch any sports game I wanted on our network. Today, however, I am a Grad Student with a budget and have to watch my sports events in less conventional methods.
My means of viewing sports events such as football and basketball games, UFC fights, or NCAA wrestling is through a streaming service called StreamEast. Using this website, I am able to watch any event I want without having to pay anything; however, the broadcast is riddled with advertisements, the streams are faulty at times, and the broadcast is ALWAYS behind.
The second major difference in my sports diet is how I get information about sports. 5 years ago I was watching ESPN talk shows and analysts almost exclusively on TV. On the other hand, today I listen to the same types of shows, and in some cases the same people, through podcasts on Spotify. There has also been a large boom in the amount of sports podcasts that exist because of the popularity of TikTok, which is another part of my sports diet I use mostly for fantasy football information.
Despite some of these major changes to my sports diet, one thing that has remained the same is the way Breaking sports news is released: Twitter. Twitter is a large part of my sports diet, and was a large part of my sports diet 5 years ago because of how quickly news can go viral on the app. Free agency, trades, injuries, and all other kinds of events are able to spread so quickly on twitter that it has sustained its presence as a dominant platform for sports communication.
5 years from now, I believe there will be more changes in the way sports are consumed and I think the first thing to die off will be a majority of these podcasts. A lot of podcasts do not have a sustainable business model, and therefore it is hard to create a stable company and most of them will not be around 5 years from now because of a new innovation that makes them obsolete. I believe that Twitter will continue to be the dominant method of sports communication, and I think it will expand to have additional capabilities.
If there was one thing I could change about the way sports are consumed, I would make all sports games and events free to watch for college students because there is no real way for them to pay to watch games without their parents having to pay an entire separate cable bill.