FAST is scaling faster than the infrastructure designed to support it. Audience adoption is real, advertiser interest is rising, and channels are multiplying but discovery, measurement, and standards remain uneven. Through my experience operating the FAST channel Swerve Sports, an important market reality has come into focus: success in this market isn’t just driven by content launches but also how content is surfaced, packaged, and understood.

These fundamental infrastructure realities are is already changing how Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) operators think about programming, production, and discovery. Here are practical lessons this reality is forcing FAST operators to address:

Discovery is still driven by people, platforms, and the guide

One of the most consistent drivers of viewership we’ve seen is still the simplest: When athletes tell their social followers to tune in, viewership spikes. Across every sport Swerve has worked with — from boxing and MMA to volleyball, basketball, and football — athlete promotion reliably moves audiences. In a crowded FAST environment, social influence remains a key discovery engine. Leagues and rights holders that understand how to activate athletes have a meaningful advantage.

Platform promotion matters too, and it often favors live events. Swerve streams more than 300 live events per year on average, and there’s tremendous opportunity for expansion in live events on FAST. But one of the more important realities we’ve observed is that live isn’t always the top performer. Across many types of sports, replays often outperform live events. A major reason is straightforward: Viewers are discovering content by browsing the on-screen guide. That behavior underscores the importance of detailed, accurate, informative metadata and the UI decisions that determine whether content is findable in the first place. FAST may be delivered through streaming, but discovery often functions like linear television: What’s visible wins.

Libraries and replays are doing more work than we expected

Because guide browsing is such a powerful driver, FAST can create unexpected opportunities for content that already exists. For new and existing leagues benefiting from investment and momentum right now, FAST provides another shot at reaching a wider audience, especially for rights holders with video libraries of competitions they haven’t showcased because they’ve had other priorities. Replays and libraries don’t just fill hours; they create more entry points for discovery, and more chances for viewers to stumble into a sport or league they didn’t know they’d care about. The fundamentals are there, but channels and rights holders need to package that depth in a way that supports browsing behavior.

Audience appetite is broader than legacy assumptions

With two quarters of data, we’re seeing clear patterns in what performs, while we continue to test and refine programming. Some of the results have been surprising. STIHL Timbersports events, featuring competitive wood-chopping with chainsaws and axes, defy geographic boundaries, with competitions from Benelux countries performing as well as competitions from the U.S. and Canada. Other top-performing standouts include Women’s Football Alliance and Athletes Unlimited basketball and volleyball.

The range of competitions that can perform well — from trampoline to poker to pool — also reflects research Swerve conducted in 2025 showing younger audiences’ willingness and interest in following more than a handful of sports. We’ve leaned into that insight through our partnership with Rebel Girls, launching a weekly family program featuring outstanding women athletes in a Saturday-morning time slot. The point isn’t that every niche will break out. It’s that FAST audiences appear more open than many operators assume. Channels that program with curiosity, consistency, and clear packaging can unlock demand that looks invisible in other distribution environments.

Production investment is a key threshold for success

Another key lesson for new and evolving sports leagues is the importance of production. This is true for long-form live matches, but it’s also true (and increasingly urgent) for short-form video, particularly for anyone trying to capture attention among younger audiences. For newer and smaller leagues seeking to build fandom, production can make or break their ability to develop relationships with fans who are used to established norms.

Production investment also allows rights holders to control their IP, which matters for developing leagues where image and storytelling are inseparable from growth. Not every league has the financial capability to shoot with more than one camera, and some struggle to finance production for an entire season. But technology can help: from AI captioning to cloud production, newer, lower-cost tools have lowered the barrier to entry. What hasn’t changed is the underlying reality that production quality shapes trust and trust shapes retention.

Infrastructure is a barrier to FAST growth

FAST is in a convergence moment, with platform growth, live content appetite, and expanding libraries colliding with a persistent lack of standardization and robust infrastructure. Tracking analytics across different platforms remains challenging. The lack of third-party metrics is maddening. And the industry’s unwillingness to agree to and adhere to common standards creates friction for creators, platforms, and audiences alike.

The live events and libraries are there. The athletes are there. The audience appetite is there. What we’ve learned so far is that the constraint is less about supply and more about infrastructure: standardization, data sharing, and discoverability. FAST’s next phase of growth will depend on whether those systems evolve fast enough to match the pace of the market.

Putting Swerve’s FAST lessons Into practice

Swerve’s early experience on FAST has reinforced that growth alone isn’t the differentiator. Planning full seasons, pairing live events with replays, and making content easy to find has mattered as much as launching more programming. As FAST continues to scale, the operators who win will be those who understand that programming, production, and discovery function as one system and build accordingly.