Tube Trends: U.S. News Publishers Lean Into Sports On YouTube

Jun 26

The month of June has been a busy one in the United States when it comes to sports.

On top of annual events like the Stanley Cup Finals and NBA Finals, the FIFA Men’s World Cup has been taking place across the U.S., Mexico and Canada since June 11. There was also a UFC event on the South Lawn of the White House in mid-June as well.

With so much sports news going on, domestic news & politics publishers have leaned in this June, at greater levels than normal.

Data from Tubular Labs shows that on YouTube, U.S. news & politics publishers have already increased sports-related video views and uploads by over 4x compared to last June (despite a few days left in the month this year).

In June 2025, those publishers amassed 35.3 million views on 524 uploads. This year, the same publishers have 159 million views on nearly 2.3K uploads.

Tubular data shows that sports videos also account for a larger percentage of U.S. news & politics publishers’ views year-over-year. Last June, sports made up 0.7% of those views (No. 12 overall), compared to 5.9% this year (No. 3).

The surge is fueled most of all by soccer, with nearly a quarter of those sports views this year. But after the New York Knicks’ thrilling run to an NBA championship (and the resulting celebrations shared across social), basketball was a strong second at 18.1%.

What’s interesting for these — and other — publishers leaning more into sports content is that it’s not necessarily an efficiency play. If you’re investing in sports content, you’re almost certainly playing a volume game.

Looking back at last June, sports videos had some of the lowest views-per-video rates (67.3K) among major subject categories, while movies & TV (216K views per), pop culture (170K) and news/politics videos (133K) were all far more efficient at garnering views.

With most of these categories having similar rates of views per video upload this year — including sports, which grew by just 2K more views year-over-year — it showcases just how much volume comes into play as views increased this June.

That’s a challenge during months when there aren’t a lot of live sports, since there are fewer newsworthy events to mine content from. And the events that are going on may not have the same importance to news & politics’ publishers’ typical audience. We saw this last June as the same publishers didn’t generate anywhere near as much sports viewership when left with smaller-market championships and regular season MLB and MLS action.

But sports does drive viewership on YouTube overall, despite the volume demands spurred by a need to cover in real-time.

Over the entirety of last year, sports were among the top 10 content categories by views across U.S. YouTube accounts. Granted, that was still by way of uploading over a million more videos than better-peforming (by views) categories like kids entertainment, food & drink, and family & parenting videos. Yet the demand is there for the content if media is willing to get creative with how they cover.

In a sports culture fueled by highlights, there’s a natural aptitude for that audience to watch shorter videos about games and news. Longer interviews about teams and games can be split out into more relevant snippets. Creators that are not endemic to sports can find other ways in by focusing on the personalities behind the games; making competitors relatable to audiences based on what they do off the field as well.

Step one in this process, though, is probably what U.S. news creators are doing already — simply keeping up with the sports news cycle and relaying that information to their audience.

With that idea mastered, though, the next phase of getting more out of sports content requires more time and resources. For those that can afford to take that leap, it’s one worth exploring in the interest of diversifying videos and growing into an already-popular content space.