Toby Farrington.
Associate Director, Kaimera, Toby Farrington.
We’ve been told linear TV is dying for years now. Audiences are fragmented, everything is on demand, no one watches anything at the same time anymore, and shared moments are apparently a relic of the past, gone the way of DVD players.
But I don’t think that’s quite right.
People haven’t stopped showing up live.
They’ve stopped showing up live for things that don’t matter enough.
And sport proves that better than anything.
Because when something actually matters, people still rearrange their lives around it. They still sit down at the same time. They still watch it live. And they still talk about it the next day like it was an actual event in their life, not just “content”.
The 2026 World Cup is going to be another reminder of that. When the product is big enough, people still make an appointment. They plan around it. They watch it live. They talk about it in the pub, at work, in group chats, on social, and with people they haven’t spoken to since the last major tournament.
That is not dead behaviour. That is mass culture doing exactly what mass culture has always done.
The difference is sport still has something most content is desperately trying to fake: jeopardy.
You can catch up on a drama. You can binge a panel show three days later. You can watch a highlight package and still feel vaguely involved.
But you cannot watch a 90th-minute winner three hours later and pretend it hits the same.
Once the result is out, the value drops off a cliff.
You’re not watching the moment anymore. You’re watching the receipt.
And that’s why sport still matters in media.
Because it is one of the last remaining places where attention is not just available - it is earned in real time.
We saw it clearly with the Matildas’ World Cup run. That wasn’t just a strong broadcast. That was a national viewing moment. Pubs packed out. Offices paused. People who don’t normally care about football suddenly had very strong opinions about VAR, penalty shootouts, and whether Sam Kerr was fit enough to start.
That is appointment viewing. It just doesn’t look like it used to.
It doesn’t have to be every week. It doesn’t have to mimic old linear habits. But when the stakes are high enough, people still gather around the same moment.
We see it again and again, State of Origin, AFL Grand Final, NRL Grand Final, the Ashes. These aren’t just broadcasts. They’re shared rituals.
And that matters for media more than we sometimes admit.
Because as an industry, we’ve become obsessed with the pipes. Linear, BVOD, SVOD, CTV, YouTube, social clips, short-form edits, second-screen content. All of it matters. All of it has a role.
But none of it replaces why people care in the first place.
The platform is not the point. The moment is.
And that’s the bit that gets lost in the “linear is dead” conversation. We talk about behaviour like it’s changed in isolation, when really what’s changed is the amount of things competing for attention.
There is more content than ever. More platforms than ever. More ways to reach people than ever.
Which sounds great, until you realise it’s also made a lot of media feel completely interchangeable.
When everything is always available, very little feels urgent.
Sport is still urgent.
It is live by definition. It has stakes. It has tension. It has consequences. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
That creates something most media struggles to manufacture: shared attention with emotional weight.
And for brands, that matters.
Because not all impressions are created equal.
A 30-second spot in a live final is not the same as a 30-second ad sitting around background content someone half-watches while also scrolling their phone. They might sit in the same report, but they are not doing the same job.
Sport gives brands context. It gives them anticipation. It gives them a moment people are actually present for.
Not interruption. Participation.
And no, that doesn’t mean every brand needs to go all-in on sport and call it strategy. But it does mean we probably need to stop treating live sport as just another reach line on a media plan.
Because the value isn’t just the audience. It’s the behaviour around it.
Origin isn’t just three games. It’s rivalry, identity, build-up, and a week of arguments afterwards.
The AFL Grand Final isn’t just four quarters. It’s the entire day, the BBQs, the half-time takes, and the Monday morning autopsy.
The World Cup isn’t just 90 minutes. It’s kick-off times, sleep deprivation, office sweepstakes, national optimism, and emotional collapse at 2am.
That is where media actually works hardest, not just inside the broadcast, but in the behaviour it creates around it.
So maybe the question isn’t whether appointment viewing is dead.
Maybe it’s whether enough content still deserves it.
Most of it doesn’t.
Sport does.
And as everything fragments further, that becomes more valuable, not less.
Shared attention is rarer now. Cultural overlap is rarer now. Proper mass reach with actual emotional context is rarer now.
Average scheduled TV is struggling. Passive viewing is weaker. Mid-tier content is more disposable.
Fair enough.
But live sport is not behaving like the rest of TV.
It still creates urgency. It still creates scale. It still creates a reason to be there now.
The World Cup will prove it again.
So no, appointment viewing isn’t dead.
Boring appointment viewing is dead.
And P.S. it is coming home, and when it does, I and your other English colleagues will be completely unbearable. Probably just best to let us take the week off.