Sony Pictures Television flipped the switch on Live TV on PS5, a free, ad-supported streaming hub that hands PlayStation 5 owners more than 100 live channels without a subscription or a cable box in sight.
“When you look at sort of the habits and behaviors of this community, they are gaming and engaging with video, and they’re probably not showing up in other connected TV environments often,” said Peter Wood, Executive Vice President of Consumer Platforms and Services at Sony Pictures Entertainment, in an interview with Variety.
That’s the pitch Sony is making to advertisers. PlayStation owners skip traditional TV more than most, but they still gather around a screen for hours at a time — and Sony wants Madison Avenue to follow them there.
The free tier launched in the US first, riding on the back of a massive install base. Sony has sold more than 95 million PS5 consoles worldwide as of June 30, and the company is already eyeing an expansion to Canada, though no firm date has been set. A move onto Sony Bravia televisions is expected later this year.
Content partners give the new platform its bulk. ABC News, A+E Global Media, AMC Global Media, Amazon MGM Studios, ESPN, Fox, Lionsgate, NASCAR, NBCUniversal, the NFL Channel, UFC, Crunchyroll and Spotify’s The Ringer all supply channels, alongside shows like THE WALKING DEAD and HOT ONES and movies including THE HUNGER GAMES and HANCOCK.
On the ad side, Sony brought in Publica and PubMatic to run the advertising, and the targeting runs deeper than a typical FAST channel. The service pulls behavioral signals — gaming history, content browsing, and purchase patterns — from the PlayStation Network accounts users must log into to watch, feeding that data into the ad-delivery system.
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Grace Chen, Sony’s Vice President of Network Advertising, said the company plans to “continue to explore additional regions” beyond North America as the platform grows.
Viewers who’d rather not hand over that data have an option, at least partially. Users can turn off “Personalized Advertising” under Settings, then Users and Accounts, then Privacy — though the channels stay ad-supported either way, just with less targeted commercials.
It’s worth a beat of family awareness here. A PS5 is often a shared household device, and Live TV bundles in genre blocks like “Sony One Action Hits” and “Sony One Horror Hits” alongside kid-friendly anime and sports — an always-on lineup that parents may not think to preview the way they would a single movie rental.
For now, the wager is straightforward. Sony already owns the living room hardware. Live TV on PS5 is its attempt to own a slice of the advertising dollars that come with it, one gamer-turned-viewer at a time.
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