How Magnite’s Live Scheduler Powers and Simplifies Scripps’ New Sports Channel

Live sports have become one of streaming’s clearest growth engines because they still deliver the trifecta marketers want most: scale, attention, and immediacy. That matters even more now that streaming has overtaken broadcast and cable combined in total TV usage. Meanwhile, sports fans in key demographics are watching ad-supported content: sports represented nearly 30% of all ad-supported TV viewing among adults 25–54 in Q4 2025. 

The opportunity is obvious. The sticking point has been execution.

Sports buys are often splintered, spanning FAST channels, broadcaster apps, virtual MVPDs, connected TV platforms, and local and national distribution points. That is great for reach, but harder on seamless ad delivery. When premium live inventory is spread across platforms and formats, brands want more than access. They want to know where their ads are running, what event they are attached to, and how those moments can be planned and measured with more precision.

That is where Magnite is moving the chains.

As the largest independent sell-side advertising company, Magnite launched Live Scheduler last fall within SpringServe, a first-to-market capability that helps media owners plan, activate, and measure advertising around live events through a more standardized workflow. 

By surfacing details such as event name, date, time, sport, league, broadcaster, and expected concurrency, Live Scheduler gives buyers and DSPs a clearer view into upcoming opportunities and a smarter way to transact on them. Put simply, it helps make live sports less of a black box and more of a scalable marketplace.

Scripps Partnered With Magnite to Make Live Sports More Buyable

That value proposition is already playing out through Scripps Sports Network, a new, premium 24/7 ad-supported sports streaming channel. Scripps Sports Network blends live competition with sports storytelling and original programming, with a particularly strong emphasis on women’s sports, including a lineup of live games from the Professional Women’s Hockey League, National Women’s Soccer League, Major League Volleyball, Athlos track and field, Pro Cheer League, and women’s college basketball. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) will play a prominent role on the new network with more than 100 hours of WNBA encore telecasts of games originally aired live on Scripps’ ION.

Programming originating from other Scripps Sports partnerships – including the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights, the NCAA’s Big Sky Conference, and more – will also be part of the Scripps Sports Network lineup. 

Scripps is backing that lineup with broad distribution across national streaming services and platforms.

By allowing Scripps to organize and signal upcoming live inventory with details such as event name, timing, sport, league, broadcaster, and concurrency, Live Scheduler gave the Scripps team a clearer understanding of what they are selling and where their ads were likely to run. 

That precision is especially useful in a sports environment that includes both live and non-live programming. It lets marketers think more strategically about the full mix: live sports for immediacy and cultural relevance, and adjacent sports content for continuity and frequency across a broader 24/7 offering.

For Scripps, that approach fits neatly with its broader sports strategy and leadership in the streaming space. On the connected TV side, Seth Walters, Scripps’ head of CTV sales, has been focused on making that live inventory more accessible to programmatic buyers.

“Live sports is the most powerful environment across the free streaming landscape,” said Walters. “It’s one of the last places where audiences are fully present, engaged, and watching in real time. What we’re building with Scripps Sports Network is a premium platform where brands can authentically own a piece of the sports momentum and engage with the leagues and athletes that are defining the next era of sports culture. These are passionate, loyal fanbases that are underserved and undermonetized, and we’re changing that. 

“We’ve built market-leading distribution across our portfolio,” he added.  “We’ve secured rights that deepen connection for leagues and their fans, and now we’re creating the infrastructure to make it easy for advertisers to move fast and be part of these moments as they happen.” 

The Magnite Edge in Live Sports

The bigger point is that live sports are no longer just a rights story. It’s an infrastructure story. As the market expands across more platforms, the winners will need better tools to handle both planning and execution.

That is where Magnite’s broader live stack comes into play. Live Scheduler helps media owners package upcoming opportunities with greater structure, while Live Stream Acceleration (LSA) helps manage the performance and optimization challenges associated with high-concurrency ad breaks. 

As Adam Soroca, chief product officer at Magnite, said, “While we introduced LSA to address delivery and optimization challenges, Live Scheduler advances this effort by removing operational barriers. The result is a purpose-built system that empowers media owners and advertisers to make the most of the live programmatic opportunity.”

Together, they address a core market need as live sports become more central to ad-supported video. Meanwhile, case studies show what better execution can look like in practice: when Sling TV used LSA for live sports, it saw a 47% lift in ad conversions over five weeks.

The Next Inning for Live Sports

The streaming sports market is moving beyond the rights-grab era and into something more durable: an infrastructure era.

Sports audiences are moving quickly across digital environments: streaming’s share of total viewing continues to rise, with digital live sports viewers projected to grow by almost 20%, from 114.5 million in 2025 to 137.1 million in 2029. 

That kind of footprint creates real upside for advertisers, but it also underscores why better infrastructure matters. 

The winners in this next phase will not just be the marketers who want live inventory. They will be the ones with better tools to access it more precisely, enabling stronger planning, smarter pacing, tighter audience alignment, and clearer post-campaign insight.

For brands, that means better access to the moments that move audiences. For media owners, it means a clearer path to capturing the full value of live.