Will Live Sports Be the Next Revenue Driver for TTD's CTV Business?

The Trade Desk TTD is focused on boosting its Connected TV (“CTV”) business by capitalizing on the shift from linear to programmatic CTV. TTD had earlier referred to CTV as the “kingpin of the open internet.” On the recent earnings call, management highlighted that programmatic CTV continues to deliver the “most effective and highest return on ad spend,” strengthening TTD’s position in the market.

Live sports streaming is emerging as a pivotal part of the company’s CTV strategy. Once considered the last bastion of linear TV, live sports, including NBA and football matches, are now widely available on streaming platforms.

The Trade Desk sees this shift as a major growth opportunity and is focused on gaining share in the lucrative live sports streaming area. TTD is looking to offer advertisers the full value of live sports by allowing them to bid on key moments in live games, such as NBA overtime or soccer penalty shootouts, when engagement peaks. This type of precision targeting highlights the advantages of programmatic CTV, expanding opportunities for advertisers to connect with audiences in real time. The partnerships with Disney, Sky TV and Omnicom, and new tools in Kokai will aid TTD in providing such bids to advertisers.  

Live sports strengthen TTD’s competitive moat in the CTV space, which is already its “fastest-growing” channel, contributing to 19% revenue growth year over year in the second quarter of 2025.

Nonetheless, intense competition from walled gardens like Google and Amazon AMZN will remain a challenge. AMZN’s expanding DSP business is giving tough competition to TTD, especially in the CTV space. Beyond big tech, independent ad-tech companies, such as Magnite MGNI, are expanding their presence in CTV and retail media and competing for ad dollars.

Taking a Look at CTV Efforts for AMZN & MGNI

With annual ad services revenues of $56.2 billion in 2024, Amazon is quickly gaining market share in the digital ad space. Currently, it is one of the leading DSP players. AMZN is ramping up investment in the DSP and CTV businesses, putting it in direct competition with TTD. Amazon DSP platform allows advertisers to plan, activate and measure full funnel campaigns. The DSP platform leverages trillions of proprietary browsing, shopping and streaming signals. When paired with AMZN’s wide-ranging supply-side relationships and secure clean rooms, these help advertisers achieve optimization and higher ROI.

Collaborations with Roku (access to 80 million authenticated U.S. CTV households) and Disney (access to Disney+, ESPN and Hulu) significantly expand Amazon DSP’s reach. In the United States, advertisers can now reach an average ad-supported audience of more than 300 million across its retail marketplace, Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV, Live sports (NFL, NASCAR, NBA), as well as third-party websites and apps.

Amazon Ads recently teamed up with SiriusXM Media to integrate programmatic audio advertising, giving brands access to SiriusXM Media’s 160 million monthly digital listeners (including Pandora and SoundCloud) through Amazon DSP. This enables advertisers to extend their omnichannel campaigns to SiriusXM Media's premium audio inventory powered by Amazon’s vast first-party data.

Magnite is a supply-side platform that helps publishers manage and sell their ad inventory across various formats like streaming, online video, display and audio. The company is strengthening its CTV business through partnerships with Roku, Paramount, Netflix, LG and Warner Bros. It recently acquired streamr.ai, which offers AI tools to make CTV advertising easily accessible to small and medium-sized businesses ("SMB").

On the last earnings call, management noted that its CTV business was gaining from positive SMB adoption trends and agency marketplaces, along with programmatic growth in live sports. While MGNI stressed that the opportunity in live sports is still in the early stages, programmatic is rising as an “effective go-to-market tool to sell” inventory with every passing sports season. The company remains confident that “most of the leading players” will choose its platform due to the tech and investment focus. It highlighted the deal with FanDuel Sports Network as an instance of a partner who has selected Magnite and already has a huge operating scale. FanDuel Sports Network produces more than 3,000 live sporting events annually in local markets.

TTD Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of TTD have lost 13.6% in the past month against the Internet – Services industry’s rise of 21.6%.

In terms of forward price/earnings, TTD’s shares are trading at 22.29X, lower than the Internet Services industry’s ratio of 24.53X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for TTD’s earnings for 2025 has been revised downward over the past 60 days.

TTD currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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