The cable box is a thing of the past.

Linear TV provided viewers with thousands of channels for what appeared to be a reasonable price, but today's customers demand more current alternatives and a better value. While 86 million US homes continue to pay for linear TV, its days appear to be limited.

The cable box is a thing of the past. Linear TV provided viewers with thousands of channels for what appeared to be a reasonable price, but today's customers demand more current alternatives and a better value. While 86 million US homes continue to pay for linear TV, its days appear to be limited. Disruptive innovation often follows a pattern: it emerges gradually and then simultaneously. The number of US cable TV households has declined since spiking in 2011 at an annual pace of 2.1 per cent. Nonetheless, the number of US linear TV homes will be practically reduced by half by 2025, a figure not seen in more than 30 years.

Despite eight years of dropping viewing, advertising on linear TV has been relatively consistent, the calm before the storm. The cord-cutting escalates over the next five years, the linear TV ad will fall by more than half, from $70 billion to around $34 billion, a dramatic change compared to print media's death during the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis. After years of hovering in the face of readership decreases, print advertising faced years of double-digit declines.

Like with print media, we predict that ad money will transfer from linear TV to more efficient platforms such as streaming, a trend that conventional media businesses have recognized.For instance, Comcast, Fox, and Viacom have bought three companies in the ad-supported streaming industry in the last year: Xumo, Tubi, and Pluto TV, respectively. However, linked TV platforms are increasingly challenging established media organizations. Many, if not most, television purchases are motivated by TV operating systems such as Roku, Fire TV, and Android TV. If the ad market for streaming expands, it will go over the next five to ten years.

TV operating systems like Roku will profit from the revenue share shift, capturing 30 per cent of the ad load on each channel.While it is still well-positioned in one of the most valuable programming areas —live sports –linear TV appears to be nearing the end of its life. According to our findings, if there were no live sports, cord-cutting rates would skyrocket. According to The Trade Desk (TTD), 60 per cent of consumers still subscribe to cable primarily for live sports, which is why linear TV players are willing to spend billions of dollars to show them, a household watches sports, 20% of their monthly payments –around $21 per month–pay for sports content in the case of cable.

Worse, three of the four main sports leagues will renegotiate their contracts during the next two years. The NFL, MLB, and NHL may all sever relations with major networks next year.In recent years, sports leagues have dabbled with streaming, but none have negotiated a nationwide streaming-first broadcasting arrangement.

As a result, linear players continue to have a more significant reach. Nonetheless, sports organizations have extracted more value in each round of talks, the most recent of which is worth $10.8 billion per yearamong the big four leagues.Now that players with more significant revenue and reach —Amazon, Apple, and Google –utilize streaming as customer acquisition channels for their main businesses, their digital bidding budgets appear poised to rise to levels that linear TV will struggle to match.

Amazon recently renewed its streaming rights to Fox's Thursday Night Football and obtained exclusive rights to one game every year, indicating that sports leagues may be willing to enter into more comprehensive streaming partnerships in the future.

Considering the growing rivalry for live sports broadcasting rights, the shrinking linearTV user base, and the emergence of alternative streaming choices, the end of linear TV is a matter of "when" rather than "if."