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Traditional and streaming content and service providers, MVPDs, and other rights holders that dismiss multiview as an unnecessary expense are leaving revenue on the table. Wherever it has been deployed, multiview has delighted customers, driven acquisition, and reduced churn. Just as important, it adds new ad inventory and formats, creating monetization opportunities that weren’t possible in a single-screen world.
The potential extends even further. ESPN Unlimited has shown how multiview can reclaim revenue from the second screens most fans use when watching sports, capturing ad impressions, betting revenue, fantasy integrations, and even merchandise sales. Looking ahead, build-your-own multiview (BYOMV) will be the bridge to true personalization, giving fans control over their experience while providing publishers with richer data and higher CPMs.
This article presents a practical roadmap for monetizing multiview. Ignore at your own peril.
Contents
A Quick Word About Multiview
When most people hear “multiview,” they think of static layouts, like two, three, or four channels pre-packaged by the provider and delivered to subscribers at once. While these significantly enhance the viewing experience, they stop short of personalization and leave much of the monetization potential untapped.
The real opportunity is build-your-own multiview (BYOMV). Here, every viewer designs their own layout, creating not just the optimal fan experience but also the richest platform for monetization. BYOMV supports personalized ad targeting, dynamic inventory, and entirely new formats that maximize the overall revenue potential of multiview.
You can leverage many of the opportunities discussed below with static multiview, but to truly unlock its revenue potential, you’ll need BYOMV.
Customer Acquisition
Multiview directly impacts subscriber revenue in two critical ways: acquisition and retention.
On the acquisition side, the comparison between two leading virtual MVPDs is telling. As shown in Figure 1, YouTube TV launched multiview in March 2023 and experienced significant growth, increasing from roughly 5 million subscribers to an estimated 9+ million by mid-2025. Meanwhile, Hulu, which has not yet announced a multiview strategy, has remained essentially flat in the 4–5 million range, despite strong content bundles and a well-heeled parent company.
As you can see in the Figure, YouTube TV announced Sunday Ticket in December 2022 for the 2023 season, which began in September 2023. While you can argue that the Q1 2023 spike in YouTube subscribers relates to the Sunday Ticket announcement, it seems unlikely that month-to-month Pay-TV subscribers would switch services nine months before a feature actually appeared. Beyond 2023, subscriber growth seems to have benefited from both multiview and Sunday ticket.
It’s worth quickly reviewing the strong tailwinds behind multiview usage. Over 80% of sports viewers, particularly younger demographics, have a second screen open while watching sports. Betting and fantasy sports, which also skew towards younger, more desirable demographics, both motivate watchers to care about multiple games at a time. So while sports rights and pricing play critical roles, the timing and slope of these growth curves suggest that multiview has become a meaningful differentiator in attracting new customers.
Fubo deserves mention as the early pioneer of multiviews. Years before YouTube TV, Fubo introduced the feature to strong reviews from fans, but its implementation was restricted to Apple TV devices, which comprised only a fraction of its ~1.5 million subscribers. Without broad device support, major rights, or a marketing push, multiviews didn’t translate into measurable subscriber growth for Fubo. By contrast, YouTube TV’s scaled rollout across devices, combined with the launch of NFL Sunday Ticket, gave multiview real business impact.
(Subscriber data for this analysis comes from a mix of company disclosures and industry estimates. Google has publicly confirmed YouTube TV milestones at 3 million (2020), 5 million (2022), and more than 8 million (early 2024), with analyst estimates placing the service at roughly 9.4 million by mid-2025. Hulu + Live TV figures are drawn from Disney earnings reports, which show the service holding steady in the 4–5 million range through 2024, with analysts projecting a slight decline to about 4.4 million in 2025.)
Customer Retention
The retention and anti-churn effect of multiview is harder to assess given the limited number of deployments to date. To explore this, I compared subscriber counts from two Tier 1 Pay-TV providers, one of which rolled out multiview in late 2024 and another that did not.
In the quarter immediately following deployment, the operator with multiview reported a noticeable slowing of video subscriber losses, resulting in its smallest Q2 loss in several years. By contrast, the Tier 1 provider without multiview showed no comparable change; churn levels held steady. Admittedly, it’s a very small data set, and more evidence will be needed as operational results come in from Formula 1 and other providers experimenting with multiview.
Still, even modest retention gains can be meaningful. Retaining just 10,000 subscribers at an ARPU of ~$85/month equates to more than $10M annually, more than covering the cost of implementing multiview. And that’s before accounting for the incremental ad and affiliate revenue that multiview can unlock, which I’ll address next. The strategic question is whether to deploy it defensively, after competitors force your hand, or offensively, as a differentiator that drives growth.
Revenue Side
We’ve covered the impact on subscriber revenue. Now let’s look at other revenue. As mentioned above, more than 80% of sports viewers have a second screen open during a game, and the numbers are even higher for younger fans. A substantial portion of that activity is devoted to social media, which multiview won’t realistically replace.
But a large share of that 80% is tied to betting, fantasy, affiliated shopping (jerseys, gear), and other shopping like food delivery. Wayne Gretzky is famously quoted as saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” The corollary here is that you miss 100% of the revenue and data from screens you don’t capture.
This is the crux of ESPN’s new Unlimited DTC service. ESPN includes second-screen modules for betting, fantasy, shopping, odds, scores, commentary, and other content, recapturing ad revenue, affiliate sales, and first-party data otherwise lost to external apps. In addition to recapturing that value, multiview also enables unique ad formats, squeezebacks, overlays, and multiscreen takeovers, plus stronger contextual targeting opportunities that should lift CPMs.
It’s easy for engineering groups to focus on cost and kick the multiview can down the road for another season, but marketing teams from all sports publishers should be salivating at the potential that multiview extends. Multiview’s upside is limited only by their collective creativity.
Ads inside Multiview: the MVPD Model
Let’s start with the distributor case, using YouTube TV as an example. When a YouTube TV household pulls up a four-up multiview with CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC, the networks still own their ad pods. Those dollars flow back to them. What YouTube TV controls are the 2–3 minutes of local ad avails per channel, per hour. In multiview, that means four feeds, so yes, more total minutes of inventory.
Here’s the catch: those avails are sold and reported like full-screen CTV spots, even though in multiview they’re a quarter-screen tile, often muted, competing with three other games. Buyers don’t yet see that distinction, but when they do, CPMs will almost certainly shift. So pure distributors may get paid for more avails today, but the long-term value will depend on whether the market accepts those secondary-tile impressions as equivalent to full-screen.
The lesson comes straight from history. When Nielsen began reporting out-of-home viewing in 2017, advertisers quickly demanded different CPMs for bars versus living rooms. According to the Out-of-home Advertising Association of America, in-home TV spots average about $25 CPM, while billboard campaigns, which fall into the out-of-home category, cost between $3.38 and $8.65 per thousand impressions. That gap shows how the market values impressions differently depending on context.
A similar reckoning is likely once multiview impressions are broken out. Buyers will argue that a quarter-screen tile, often muted and competing with three other games, should not be priced the same as a full-screen ad. At the same time, multiview expands the overall inventory. Four feeds instead of one, combined with new frame and overlay formats, create more opportunities to sell. Even if secondary tiles are discounted, the net effect should be additional revenue. And for dominant tiles or sponsorships that surround the entire multiview experience, networks can make the case that these impressions deserve premium pricing.
Ads inside Multiview: the Publisher Model
Now, let’s explore how Multiview should work for publishers like ESPN. When viewers watch four ESPN channels simultaneously in multiview, ESPN owns every ad pod across all four feeds. That gives them a clear advantage: unlike distributors, which only control limited local avails, ESPN retains all revenue and can effectively stand up the entire multiview experience as one package.
Real-world examples reinforce this edge. During the 2025 U.S. Open, NBC and Peacock presented multiview and featured group coverage under a unified sponsorship with American Express, packaging the viewing experience rather than selling individual tile impressions.
That said, the core challenge remains. Four feeds don’t necessarily equal four times the ad revenue. Advertisers may discount CPMs on secondary tiles due to split attention or muted audio. The advantage for publishers is clear ownership and coordination. They can craft cleaner viewing experiences and coherent, high-value sponsorship packages — something distributors cannot offer as effectively.
Ad Formats Around Multiview
The real upside comes once you step outside the feeds themselves. Formats like L-shaped frames and squeezebacks aren’t new; Sky, NBC, and many other sports networks have sold them for years. In multiview, those same formats extend across multiple live games at once. The effect is less about surrounding four tiles and more about owning the entire viewing block. A sponsor aligned with multiview isn’t just tied to one matchup; they become the brand associated with how fans spend a Sunday afternoon watching football.
Think about NFL RedZone: for years, brands like Amazon Prime and DraftKings have sponsored the show with “presented by” placements, aligning directly with an immersive, thrill-driven experience (Figure 3). This directly ties the brand to how viewers watch several games at once, without breaking the flow.
Multiview can replicate that strategy. Rather than inserting standard spots into four separate games, publishers can offer sponsorship packages; takeovers, integrated overlays, or unified branding, that let a single brand own the multigame block. This creates a premium footprint that commands higher attention than individual tile buys and mirrors successful formats like RedZone’s experience-level model.
New Focused Multiview Channels
Advertising inside and around the pods is only part of the story. The bigger opportunity is weaving in second-screen behaviors that fans are already doing elsewhere. Shopping, live odds, betting, and fantasy are natural fits for multiview and sit at the crux of ESPN’s Unlimited app strategy. Instead of losing that engagement to DraftKings, Fanatics, or Twitter, publishers can keep it inside their own experience and capture both the revenue and the data.
There is also room to build companion channels around major events. Golf majors already package featured groups and holes as dedicated streams, and similar approaches can work for betting, fantasy, or alternate commentary. With a build-your-own multiview model, viewers decide what’s relevant. If betting is of no interest, they can drop it and focus on fantasy or analysis instead. The publisher still benefits by offering new, differentiated content that strengthens engagement around live sports, particularly for events where they don’t have exclusive rights.
Women’s sports provide another clear use case. Interest is surging, with record WNBA audiences in 2024 and a new long-term rights deal beginning in 2026. For now, coverage is scattered across ESPN, ION, CBS, Prime Video, and NBA TV. Multiview gives publishers a way to bundle those feeds into a dedicated women’s sports hub, or allows fans to assemble their own lineup across networks. Four games at once won’t tell a single story, but it makes following the sport easier and more engaging than jumping from service to service.
Shoppable commerce is close behind. For example, Amazon experimented with interactive “shoppable deals” during its Black Friday NFL game, offering remote-clickable overlays that let viewers shop while watching the game. Meanwhile, Fanatics has demonstrated the power of live-commerce with real-time sales surges; in the 2024 NFL Draft, top prospects like Caleb Williams set Fanatics’ draft-night jersey sales records.
CivicScience found that 52% of NBA viewers order food while watching games, in-play bets now account for more than half of wagers worldwide, and 67% of fans say they’re more likely to buy after a timely promo. Put those facts together, and the path is clear: the Boston fan who’s been watching the Patriots and two betting channels for three hours at 6:30 p.m. is a fan you can target with a DoorDash offer, a Fanatics jersey, and a betting prop. all inside the same app.
Multiview for Premium Channels
Multiview has also been a key feature for premium channels that deliver higher revenue. Formula 1’s F1 TV Premium offers a high-end viewing experience with 4K HDR streaming and customizable multiview. The service is priced at $129.99, a 53% increase over F1 TV Pro. Interestingly, ESPN chose to make multiview available in both ESPN Select ($11.99/mo) and ESPN Unlimited ($29.99/month), making content the key differentiating feature between these two bundles.
The bottom line is that multiview unlocks multiple revenue streams at once. Fans are still watching ads, and they are also responding to timely purchase prompts, leaving behind first-party data as they shop, bet, or check statistics. If you restrict them to a single-screen broadcast, that activity moves elsewhere, along with the revenue and data. ESPN’s new app, available to all subscribers, is clear evidence of the company’s strategy to capture those behaviors rather than ceding them to outside services.
Fortunately, the technology to deliver multiview at scale has matured. Server-side platforms such as Skreens’ Tessera™ can roll out multiview across any device without requiring high-end hardware, bringing deployment timelines down to weeks instead of months. That makes multiview a practical option for this football season, not a multi-year roadmap item.
One final note. This article focuses on existing revenue sources, concepts you can reach out and touch on existing platforms today. In the future, multiview will deliver one-to-one personalization on a scale not possible with today’s one-to-many broadcast technologies. Given advancements in data mining and AI, it’s not hard to imagine completely personalized ads delivered at just the right time, increasing CPMs for publishers and ROI for advertisers.
Choosing the right multiview partner is a bridge to that future world, which, like objects in the rear-view mirror, is closer than you think.
