Only about 2% of the sports broadcast options we track are free to watch.

What the Paywall Index measures

The Paywall Index is a recurring read of how much live-sport broadcast access is free versus paid — measured across the broadcast options Matchcast already tracks for fixtures in 14 sports and roughly 80 competitions, localised to 120 countries. It counts broadcast options (a broadcaster-plus-country listing against a fixture), classifies each as free-to-air or paid, and reports the split. It is not a licensing or rights ranking, and it does not name individual paid broadcasters.

The paywall split

Of the broadcast options we track, over 97% sit behind a subscription or pay-TV package (aggregate). Streaming/OTT is the single largest slice.

The primary free-to-air measure classifies a listing free when the broadcaster itself is a free-to-air network. A sparser per-listing “free game” flag gives a lower cross-check (under 1%); the union of the two — the most generous reading — still leaves free access under 3%. We publish the primary measure so the paywall is never overstated.

Where free access shows up

In only 25 of the 120 countries we track does any free-to-air option appear in our dataset — about 1 in 5. Even on the most generous free measure, that rises to just 33 of 120 (about 1 in 4).

Among the highest-volume markets we track, free access is comparatively strong in:

The free-to-air broadcasters carrying the load

The free side is thin, but it is real. These are free-to-air broadcasters that appear across the listings we track, each independently verified this quarter against a public source. Listing counts are from our dataset as of 2026-07-17.

A broadcaster’s name links to the public source used to verify it is free-to-air. Paid-side broadcasters are reported only in aggregate and are never singled out.

Free-to-air, sport by sport

The free-to-air share of the broadcast options we track, broken down by sport.

Questions

Methodology & limitations

Every figure on this page is produced by a single read-only query pack over Matchcast’s own broadcast-availability database and committed to a pinned data file; nothing is estimated or invented. The report draws only on observed broadcast listings (match_broadcasts joined to broadcasters, competitions, countries and sports). Season-level broadcast-rights tables are deliberately excluded.

Classification rule

A broadcast listing (match_broadcasts row) is counted free-to-air when its broadcaster (broadcasters.type) is classified 'free_to_air' in Matchcast's broadcaster taxonomy. This is a curated, entity-level attribute — the network itself is a free-to-air broadcaster (e.g. BBC, ITV, ZDF, TF1, TV Globo, SBS). All listings NOT free-to-air under the primary rule are treated as paid access (subscription/pay-TV type='tv', plus streaming type='streaming'). Paid framing stays AGGREGATE — no individual pay broadcaster is singled out.

Reconciliation note

Two columns can signal “free”: the broadcaster-type rule (our primary, about 2%) and a sparser per-listing free flag (under 1%). We publish the broadcaster-type rule because it is a deliberate curated attribute and the more inclusive of the two, so it does not overstate the paywall by leaning on an incomplete flag. The union of both — the most generous reading — is reported as an upper bound (under 3%).

Limitations

• As-of 2026-07-17T04:12:20.440Z. The corpus grows ~2x/day via the sync pipeline; bands hold near this date, exact values drift.
• FTA share uses the broadcaster-type rule (broadcasters.type='free_to_air'); the per-listing is_free flag gives a lower ~0.78% and is reported only as a cross-check.
• Paid-side framing is AGGREGATE only — no individual pay broadcaster is named negatively.
• FTA taxonomy contains network/sub-brand duplicates (e.g. BBC vs BBC Sport, ITV vs ITV Sport, Globo vs TV Globo) — these inflate the FTA broadcaster COUNT slightly but not the listing counts.
• Some FTA candidates carry a modal country that needs a human eye before naming (e.g. "ITV Sport" resolving to Azerbaijan listings) — that is exactly why the list is pre-verification.
• Distinct-in-listings counts (1,701 broadcasters, 54 competitions) are lower than table totals (1,993 / 88) because not every catalogued entity currently carries a listing; the report publishes the observed-in-listings figures.