July 9, 2025 • 52 mins
In this packed episode of StreamTime Sports, co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone discuss the latest stories shaking up global sports media. From Netflix landing the Canelo vs. Crawford fight and introducing programmatic ads via Yahoo, to RTL snapping up Sky Deutschland for €150M, the landscape is shifting fast. The duo also break down why Ligue 1's DTC experiment may be stalling, how Dyn's €80M valuation could reshape underserved sports, and the eye-watering IPL viewership that leaves Western leagues in the dust.
Key Topics:
- Can Netflix end boxing’s PPV model?
- What could France’s TF1 deal with Netflix mean for other national broadcasters?
- How will Ligue 1 resolve its broadcast issues before next month’s season kickoff?
- Why should everyone be paying attention to the IPL’s viewing figures?
- What does Comcast’s sale of Sky Deutschland tell us about sports media values?
- Could Dyn Media be the future of sports broadcasting?
- What’s really behind the new Premier League x Microsoft partnership?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Hello everyone, welcome back to the next episode of Stream Time
Sports. My name is Chris Stone.
I'm the community lead, joined as always by our CEO Nick
Meacham. Now today Nick is we're
recording, it's the 4th of July and I tried to find the most
American thing in my wardrobe. It is actually a Ron's Pizza and
Pub sponsored softball jersey from my dad was travelling the
country playing competitive softball.
(00:31):
I reckon I must have been like maybe four or five years old
when he had this shirt. Sad to say that's now 30 years
ago. So the fact that it's still here
is pretty impressive. But we're also in a little mini
heat wave in London, so it's gotlots of holes and proliferations
in it, so it's quite breezy to stay cool.
So yeah, Nick, I'm doing my bestto to despite the fact I'm
(00:51):
working on the 4th of July to try to embrace the culture a
little bit. Happy 4th of July.
Next time we record one that's around the Australia Day, maybe
I'll put on some Australian clothes which could range from
an Aussie rules football jersey.I think they call it a jersey.
It's been too long since I've been out of the country, which
is busting out the guns and wearing stupidly short shorts or
(01:15):
a rugby shirt or a cricket shirtI can pull out of my of my
closet somewhere along the way. Just quite a desktop.
Yeah, sorry. That's the, the AFL shot is the
the show of the guns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do What do you call a vest top in America?
Tank top. Tank top, we call them singlet
in Australia. I don't yeah, it's a different
name. They they have more offensive
(01:37):
slang terms which I won't use tokick off that kick off the pod.
So. We've we've got, I think we've
got something similar, yeah. Yeah, What was I going to say on
that point? I was going to ask you.
You said it's quite breathable because obviously baseball is
mainly actually a summer sport, right?
It's through the months of the summer months.
Is that normal? Because I didn't realise that
they had that. Or is that depending on the the
temperature that they had different types of material they
(01:59):
use for the for the season? So I remember back when I played
and even back in the old baseball days, like they have
like they used to have the old school jerseys where like they
they were tank tops and you justwore a light shirt underneath.
So like there are different jersey variations.
Even when I was in high school, we had stuff we'd wear in the
kind of like March, April and the early spring when it's so
(02:19):
cold. And then we had different
jerseys which were like this kind of mesh material that kind
of like got the holes in proliferations in them for the
summer months. So yeah, like if you look at
teams, they've got different sets of jerseys.
So. Yeah, well, I think now Nike's
probably got them all uniform looking exactly the same, but
back in the day, the Cincinnati Reds used to have all different
kinds of combinations of short sleeve tank top, jerseys and
(02:42):
others. Yeah.
Any plans for what? What's a typical day of
celebrating 4th of July? You're going to go to the pool,
you're going to have a very large barbecue, and then there's
going to be fireworks and, you know, depend on your age, a
certain level of alcoholic beverages.
Oh nice, a pretty pretty standard I think New Year's Day
off celebration in the summer upat no high is the is the other
(03:05):
days long? Yeah, like it'll be, you know
what I wouldn't say there as long as what you're experiencing
right now in, you know, Scandinavia, I would say London
or the UK, I've experienced today's to be a little bit
longer than they are in the US, but it's still fireworks
probably aren't going off till like 93010 o'clock once it
starts getting, you know, dark enough to really enjoy the The
Big Bang. I'm pretty sure in Australia
(03:28):
fireworks are basically completely illegal all year
round, which is not the case of Europe.
Blew me away when I was celebrating New Year's in
somewhere in Central Europe and I was seeing people fire them
off at left, right and centre. I didn't, could not get my head
around that. But on the on the, the length of
the day here, the days are so long now that we've just had
Midsummer last week or the week before when, when we're
(03:49):
recording this and you can basically play golf till
midnight at night here. So I took my goal to try and get
out from having played around this year is to try and squeeze
around the golfing just so I could play after the kids are in
sleep and get in a game before by by midnight, basically be
home. So that's my that's my objective
to make maximum value of the days.
(04:11):
Yeah. Well, Speaking of fireworks,
last thing before we get into the real business talk.
My brother used to live in Chicago for a couple of years
and he used to play the game gunshot or fireworks and it was
basically a 5050 guess. Wow, that is, that is a whole.
That's a proper 4th of July. That's a proper way to
celebrate. Gosh, wasn't anything like that.
(04:31):
It wasn't even 4th of July. More often up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so American.
But actually Speaking of 4th of July and speaking into a segue,
you know, one of the other things that takes place on the
4th of July, you have to do it. You have to watch it.
You got to tune into ESPN. I think we talked about this
maybe last 4th of July and you got to watch Joey Chestnut and
the hot dog eating competition. I believe he was banned last
year because some of the work hewas doing with Netflix.
(04:53):
But we are going to talk about Netflix.
So that's the Segway because there is there is a documentary
of Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut and their hot dog eating
competition. But that's going to be our
Segway, Nick talking about 4th of July hot dog eating, and then
we're going to just slide into Netflix.
What a Segway I do. Actually, we did quite a big
take on that because I remember watching that live broadcast
(05:14):
from Kobayashi and and the jaw jaws as they call them, and that
was I was had mixed emotions of the lack of Watson, I have to
say, but they've come a long waysince.
Yeah, I mean it, it's a it's a full day promotion now.
But you know, like I said, we are going to use that to segue
and kind of move into the the actual podcast itself.
It's been a little bit of time since we've actually talked
about some of the news. So this is going to be a a jam
(05:35):
packed episode full of a bunch of different things.
But one of the places we do wantto start is with Netflix.
You know, we we've talked about Netflix expanding their
coverage, getting live sports rights with the NFL.
I'm also looking forward to nextweek the re releasing the second
season of quarterback, which will have my man Joe Burrow in
it. But one of the yeah, yeah, yeah.
See free shout outs to Netflix. I believe it's on July 12th, so
(05:56):
not far at all now. But one of the things you
actually had a post about the other day was around Netflix and
particularly its approach to boxing.
Obviously it's had some of the Jake Paul fights on there.
But now it's been announced thatthey're going to have the next
Canelo, Terence Crawford fight on Netflix, which is, you know,
it's just a new approach. Nick, for so long boxing has
(06:16):
always seemed to be centred around the pay-per-view model.
And we've seen Jake Paul do it. But this is different.
This is a whole new level of boxing being on Netflix.
And just there's different ways to look at this from the, the
tech perspective to the monetization side.
And you had a LinkedIn post, go search it.
If you type in boxing Netflix, Nick, Nick Meacham on Google,
it'll pop up. You can see the post.
(06:38):
But what do you take from this in terms of just the the
challenge to the established system?
Well, I just think anything thatNetflix does now because of the
scale they have is instantly in a place where it could disrupt
the entire ecosystem. I think this is one of those
examples, right? The fact that they're not adding
that pay-per-view layer here. You're going from fights that
are being watched by such a niche group of audiences because
(07:01):
it's either people who are willing to pay $100 a hundred
U.S. dollars for, for a Fight Night.
You have to be committed to that.
And now we're just saying, actually for anyone who's a
subscriber, you can watch this for free.
And we know that what we've seenis a trend over the last couple
of couple of years really in terms of sports consumption.
It is all about personalities and, and the athletes and the,
(07:21):
and the, those brands and audiences they already have.
And, and boxing's is synonymous with that as as anyone else
because of the one-on-one, I guess the, the, the raw nature
of boxing basically being quite primal in a sense.
It's, it's man against man or woman against woman and best
those who one who walks out of the ring wins kind of thing.
And that, that, that type of content is basic in its format.
(07:45):
It's actually quite low to produce and broadcast.
But we saw what happens when it's marketed well, it can get
insane audiences through the, the Paul and Tyson fight that
happened last year at some stage.
So this is huge. This is really one of those
things that I think does have the ability to completely
disrupt the ecosystem because ofthe fact you are moving away
from basically the only core monetization approach, which was
(08:08):
pay-per-view and just making it available for author masses.
And I think it'll just keep growing, growing and going up
and up in terms of audience oncemore and more people become
aware of this type of content. The question mark I have is when
you have that balance between the athletes, the, the real
fight is that maybe don't have the stardom, the marketability
(08:28):
like a Paul and and Tyson fight and I just good athletes and
maybe a bit behind the scenes that aren't just as familiar.
For those that aren't passionateboxing fans, will they generate
the audiences they deserve? Because if they don't, the risk
for me is that the the money will still going to those people
that are built around entertainment, the entertainment
(08:49):
factor and not the best stars inthe sport.
And that is the risky outcome here.
But overall it's got a huge opportunity to disrupt because
of this, the sheer mass of audiences this can bring to the
boxing stage, which has been reducing in size for some time.
Now, I've not seen the numbers from the the Paul Tyson fight on
this specific angle that I'm going to go down.
But in our last episode, go check it out, we talked about
(09:10):
piracy and we, we sort of not toput words in your mouth or our
guest's mouth, but like the ideathat the pirates are always
going to be a step ahead technologically.
You're not going to be able to beat them in that game.
The way to try to combat this isto make sports distributed in a
manner with which it is viewed as a accessible but also
valuable. The amount of people that have a
Netflix subscription is just enormous.
(09:32):
So do you think could this validate potentially depending
on what the numbers come back and say did actually the best
way to combat piracy is to go this way?
So like I said, I kind of wish I'd gone back and looked up some
Paul Tyson numbers to see if they had any estimates about how
many streams have been pirated. But this sort of approach.
Well, I think 100%, I think that's where this takes us to.
And I think anything Netflix does and Netflix is because of
(09:55):
the sheer scale of audience has the equivalent impact of being
free to wear in its broadcast interms of the impact of audience.
So 100% has the impact of takingthat edge off of piracy that
makes it not as financially lucrative for the pirates to go
after these sort of premium instances where no doubt they
have. I, I remember hearing some
numbers off the record from a few major broadcasters.
(10:18):
And the numbers basically are that the majority of people that
are watching the sport are watching it through pirated
means. They are not watching it through
the conventional and official and legal channels.
And so this is the only way, youknow, we were talking about this
about about this last week. It's the only way you can really
find us or see light at the end of the tunnel of breaking that
(10:39):
that cycle of more and more people going to piracy to
consume content because of that value exchange we've been
talking about. So I think it does have the
opportunity to bring down those barriers to the point where
piracy has is not going to be able to monetize that in the
same way. And that means that their
resources will be shifted perhaps elsewhere.
So it would be a good win for the for the sport.
(11:02):
The question really comes back to can boxing generate enough
income from this model? Like Netflix can definitely play
the trigger or the play the cardhere.
We're going to give you insane reach.
We don't want to pay you those premium rights fees that you've
been getting from people who arewilling to pay you for that
privilege of having pay-per-viewbecause it's drives so much
(11:22):
income and revenue. That's why ESP NS been doing it
with UFC and Sky and match room and Design have been doing this.
They have been driving great income from it.
Even if the model is not optimised, will they still get
track those revenues and other means?
And I think they can, but it will be trickier if you're at
the lower mid tier to justify getting A to Netflix a, hey
(11:45):
Netflix, pay us a media rights check before a mid tier boxing
team. So you'll have to monetize
through sponsorships and partnerships for that
visibility. Akin to what we talked about a
little bit with the Club World Cup a few weeks ago and how
Auckland City pop up with Michelob Ultra or whatever on
their shirt. There's no way that's targeting
their audience. They were opportunistic at
leveraging the scale and breadthof audience they're going to be
(12:07):
reaching, and that's the type ofapproach I think that most of
these sports will have to play if this is the direction they're
going to. Go well, that's the sponsorship
side and we we've talked about that I think in another previous
podcast, we've multiple times talking about the role of
sponsorship, particularly with these live events and how they
can thrive off of creating events and sponsorship.
But the other side of this will be around advertising.
(12:29):
And another story that came up it was in a newsletter that you
forwarded on to me is that Netflix and Yahoo are now
partnering essentially Netflix allowing Yahoo to go in and have
advertisers pay for programmaticads directly on Netflix.
So this is, I think, substantialin terms of the partnership and
the, I guess, accessibility for advertisers to get on Netflix.
(12:50):
It's also interesting because atthe same time there seems to be
a similar partnership that's taking place between Disney and
Amazon. So it seems like this ad tech
space is being taken a lot more serious when we start talking
about Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon and then Yahoo just being
a, you know, the company that they are.
So they just on that side of things with the programmatic ad
buying and the partnership with Yahoo, how that helps enable
(13:11):
those payments beyond just pay-per-view?
Well, there's another interesting example of this and
that is Sky partnering with I think it's Channel 4 and Channel
5, I believe it, or maybe ITV inthe UK, another example where
they're coming together to try and basically build out their
own programmatic network. And the, the net result of that
is hopefully for their benefit is to increase the CPMS on AD
(13:34):
on, on those ad deals and AD buying.
So drive more of a premium because remember we've talked
about before that massive gap between programmatic and selling
direct on the sponsorship side and they're selling around live,
live sporting events. They are trying to bridge that
gap a little bit, take a bit more control back because most
of the ad buying is done throughmost of the major big tech
companies who've been controlling that flow of income
(13:56):
for some time. So they're trying to take a bit
more control back. And if they do that and it
works, the main way you can achieve that is you need scale.
You need scale of ad buying to make it worthwhile for a major
ad buyer. And you've been from that
background, Chris. So you know what it's like you,
if you want to be someone who's on that spreadsheet, that
budget, you need to be able to provide enough inventory to be
(14:19):
worthwhile being part of the conversation with a, a major
brand, right? And that's why these these
companies have to come together to partner so they can build out
the scope of their reach and build out more value so they can
be added to the big media budgets that clearly exist and
are still going, growing from strength to strength from what
we see on a global scale. And that's not even the last of
(14:40):
Netflix doing things that are new, unique and all that we've
also seen in France. And we're going to talk a little
bit about France today because of what's going on in League One
and their continued things. But more specifically, talking
about France and Netflix is there's now going to be a, you
know, it's described as a first of its kind carriage deal with
TF1 the the linear channels to now have content featured
directly on Netflix for users inFrance.
(15:02):
So, you know, anytime you hear first of its kind, it's always
exciting and flashy. And Nick, do you think, hey,
what is the significance of this?
And then not only beyond that, what does that potentially mean
in other marketplaces beyond France?
Right. So this is, I think this is
pretty significant. I think it's about a significant
a partnership between a platformand a particularly a public
(15:23):
broadcaster as I can think of. And the main reason for that is
again, Netflix is basically a distribution platform with as
big a reach as you could possibly imagine.
It immediately enhances TF NS reach across the French market
with loads of live sports and loads of other content
available. But it also pushes them down
that linear and live aspect fromall the linear programming
(15:47):
they're going to bring to the table.
What we don't know yet is how they're going to present that.
Will they basically add another channel with more and more live
content progressively being added to the mix?
Or will it, I don't know, be just pop up in the the on demand
user user interface that you're going to be have access to?
That bid is unclear, as I've always had with any live sports
(16:07):
products coming to Netflix is how are they?
What sort of visibility are theygoing to give it for a user
coming onto the platform? But the fact is this gives them
loads of content, gives them a live proposition to add to the
mix of all the on demand stuff that they've got available that
why would you log in anywhere else?
It just makes you it gives you another reason just to go to
(16:28):
Netflix when you go on to turn your TV's on your smart TV's on.
So I think every every major public broadcaster, when I say
public also mean just free to wear broadcaster, but even paid
TV providers and and a lot will be looking to this deal and
going. Is this seriously something we
can do? Because we've seen a whole
inertia in the industry about distribution now is everything
(16:51):
we need to be in more places. We need to be visible.
And this instantly unlocks a whole expanded set of audiences
to anyone who can partner with the likes of Netflix,
particularly in mature markets, but indeed globally.
So I, I just think you'll have everyone, everyone now I can
think of like think about in theUK and BBC and you think in the
US that all those major free to air broadcasters have, can we
(17:13):
add, can we be added to the Netflix interface and, and be
part of that user experience? It's a huge win for Netflix and
it's a huge win for those broadcasters to instantly
increase the number of eyeballs and visibility they have.
And because they're being built on selling and building their
business models on reach and mass audience and advertising
that can only help them drive more revenue depending on the
(17:37):
relationship and agreement in place with Netflix.
So I think it is a huge momentumshift, which might sound a bit
hyperbolic to some, but I reallydo believe that.
I think if they're doing it in France, I mean, France has been
serving up some amazing stories in the last couple of years in
in sports and streaming media, Ihave to say.
But they wouldn't just do this one move and just sit on this
(17:57):
like this is, yeah, it has to besomething that expands not only
in France to be approaching talking to all those other major
distributors out there and otherplatforms, but completely around
the globe. And would it make sure Netflix
the only place to go to watch your watch your content, not
just one of a few? Do you find this akin
strategically from a Netflix perspective?
(18:18):
We, we had some of these similarconversations about Sky in the
UK where they have partnerships with TNT and they were doing
some other stuff with YouTube where the idea was they don't
really care if you end up going outside of their network so long
as the journey begins in skies, you know, home landscape
ecosystem, however you want to call it.
Is that a similar strategy whereit's OK if it's not our content
(18:40):
so long as your journey goes viaNetflix?
I think, I think that's what it definitely feels like.
I think they want to own the entire relationship with the
audience, with the customer. And by doing so we'll continue
to do that, continue to monopolise that relationship.
Whereas free to wear is going tostruggle to basically have
(19:00):
visibility through traditional linear as it's it's consumption
is being reduced market by market.
So yeah, only more of that relationship, as long as they're
finding the right economic modelthat everyone's kind of happy
with to move forward with and they instantly have the scale
there that no one else does, it's a huge win for them to
continue to own own that relationship and will mean
people are knocking on their door to be on the platform, not
(19:23):
the other way around. Well, we're going to stay in
France, although this is a storythat could potentially be
something that is a model that'sfollowed elsewhere, because I
have seen some people on LinkedIn speak really positively
and optimistic about what it could mean.
We've we've been following the story about what's happening
with Lagoon and France and the the end of their deal after one
(19:43):
year with the zone. And now they're looking to take
ownership of production and now they're looking for broadcast
partners, but they're still going to, you know, own that
Channel. As far as I'm concerned they
went back to their old partners in Canal Plus and now appears
the Canal Plus is is going to step away from the the right the
ability however you want to phrase it to stream that new
broadcasted. Produced channel from Legion.
(20:06):
So now that leaves them essentially in a very similar
spot to last year where we're atthe beginning of July, next
season's going to start in August, and there doesn't appear
to be a home for where this new channel is going to be.
I know there's a lot of people excited about it because there's
the idea that with the Premier League stepping away from IMG,
are they going to start producing their own stuff kind
of the way NFL Media is done? And there's this idea of how
(20:26):
exciting this approach could be,but they still need someone to
to actually help with the the distribution side.
So this story keeps evolving. Nick, We've been following it
seems like forever now, but now with the next chapter, Nick,
what what do you take from sort of where they're at, where it
leaves them with, you know, kindof given the time constraints?
I'm not sure I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to see it happen
(20:49):
because I think it's a great litmus test and a great example
of what can and can't happen in this space.
But I think it's a disaster for LFP and it's not looking any
better. But the fact that Kannapolis has
already actively said we're not going to play ball.
I kind of felt like this and I don't know much.
There's some great commentators on particularly on LinkedIn
around this, Thierry Fortier, Sebastian Ordeaux, people I
(21:10):
follow also on this who are haveFrench connections and the
French and are closer to it thanI am.
But I do have been following it and also have read a few French
articles. And the the crux of it is that
the economics are getting worse and worse on various metrics.
The cost is going down for users, and yet they're still not
(21:31):
able to attract the audiences tomake this a viable approach for
them and make it sustainable forthe future.
And with Canal please stepping away largely the most reputable
from what I understand, the mostreputable sports service, I
suppose you would call it in, inFrance, this is a huge challenge
because they aren't really looking for broadcasters.
(21:53):
I think you said broadcasters. I would say it's just a
distribution channel, right? They want to have a place to be
visible and available and there'll be some sort of some
sort of agreement, whether it's a minimum guarantee, whether
it's a revenue share component is part of that and try and
reach as many people and drive as many subscriptions as
possible. Now the price point that they
wanted to sell this at I believewas around €15.
(22:17):
Now if you remember correctly, Ithink the zone, if I remember
appropriately was about double that, 30 or €40.
Now the CEO of the LFP Media who's taken over I believe from
Ben Morrell is aiming for at least 1,000,000 subscribers in
their first year. So if you can, you can do some
math on that, but that is not nowhere near the revenue
(22:39):
generation that has been forthcoming in previous cycles
or even indeed making a viable for any broadcaster that
consider paying the premiums that they historically generated
before now Tier 4 tier was someone who posted something
about this. And for context, he that the the
actual cost to watch all the LFPthe league in matches peaked at
(23:01):
around €89 EUR a month around 2000 and eight 2012, which is
extortionally high, right? But that's, that's what it was
at and now you're looking at basically €15.00 a month, you
should be able to get access to all the games.
Like what a what a dramatic turnof events for them.
So I don't know how they overcome this.
(23:21):
I don't, you know, the million number sounds like a nice number
to aim for. Is it achievable?
I think we have all seen the sports industry constantly
neglect the fact that marketing is really difficult to do and it
can't just be around price alone.
I think the price point is trying to address piracy because
piracy is so prevalent in that market, but they still need all
(23:42):
the distribution partners available to them because
otherwise I just don't know how this is a long term viable
commitment. Now, it could be for one year
and it could be that this is the, the, the, what would you
call the lip? But the, the case study for us
to be able to go to market next year and then sell it.
But it does not sound like the Ican't see a road to success
unless they're willing to play the long game.
(24:03):
And I can't believe that all theinvestors that exist around
Legan are willing to take three to five years to hopefully turn
the tide on all that that massive meteorites gap that is
clearly there now. So you're saying it's not going
to be like one of my favourite podcasts we've ever done?
Go search it up. I, it was something about David
versus Goliath, I think might have been the title where we
(24:25):
were talking to Palk FC and Greece where they talked about
they didn't get the broadcast deal that they wanted.
So they said, fine, screw it, we'll build our own D2C.
And actually I think it ended upgetting what, double what they
were offered the year before because they were so successful.
So you're not, you don't think it's going to be that situation?
I would love it. I would love it to be the case.
(24:45):
I would absolutely love it because it would make the idea
of a, a sports property, a premium sports property, doing
it alone, a viable, truly viableoption, which would give so
much. The net result of that would
give so many more rights owners the ability to do, you play that
trump card and we're going to doit ourselves.
And it's you. If you want these rights, sports
(25:07):
broadcaster pay the cheque. But they've just been, they've
been hit, they've been punched, you know, left hook, right hook,
uppercut the whole way through this journey of the last 10
years or 7-8 years, whatever thetimeline is.
I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet
taking this approach. But what I could see is solving
(25:29):
this is they take this approach and then someone else does come
to the table and helps them get the expanded reach they need.
I'm just not sure who it is. Netflix could be one of them.
Well, like I said, I'll just shamelessly plug that podcast I
mentioned if you're if you're interested in a good story, if
you're interested in a good story of an underdog having to
be really resourceful and innovative of how to launch AD
(25:51):
to C platform, basically to get back at the broadcasters and
double the money they made. It's a really great story.
I do believe it's called like David verse Goliath.
It's Pauch, which is PA. OK, I'm sure if you Google it,
it'll come up. Great podcast, if I do say so
myself, Nick. Yeah, no, it's a great, it's a
one of the great stories, one ofthe great success stories and
actually flew very much under the radar because it's a
(26:12):
smaller, smaller tier organisation.
But you know the whole journey there and the numbers really
paint a picture of what can be done if you do challenge the
status quo sometimes. Yeah, Now, Speaking of numbers,
Nick, we're going to go on the complete other side.
We're going to talk about some of the biggest numbers you've
ever seen. You know, in honour of July 4th
and not getting too political. Donald Trump.
The numbers are huge. Huge with a with AY, not with an
(26:33):
H. You had a post on LinkedIn about
the IPL final and then there were some numbers about the
England and India Test match setting records.
I mean, Nick, some of the numbers are honestly just
staggering when you just start looking at the numbers.
And I get it may be limited to certain regions that actually
follow cricket, but again, I would suggest go to Google, type
(26:55):
in IPL, type in Nick Meacham andit'll come up with a post right
away. And you put down a bunch of
facts and figures about it. But some of the numbers about
the IPL final that just came up a a couple weeks back genuinely
are the type of thing. If you're not paying attention
to cricket, you really should beat least understanding the scale
of what they're being able to doright now.
Oh, but completely, like I thinkit's lost some people sometimes
(27:16):
that we have to keep reminding people that hey, go check out
the Indian market. They're delivering high quality
product at scale that belittles every other challenge of every
other broadcaster who can't deliver scale.
They're like, well, we're smashing this in a market that
actually has, it's a developing country has not got the scale of
infrastructure that some of the other countries haven't yet.
(27:38):
They just continue to deliver event after event.
And the scale is something you know, to behold.
And cricket obviously is the number one passion and spoiler I
think is India's population #1 now in terms of, of, of scale.
So it is just built to deliver massive numbers when you have
the right type of sporting event.
I haven't got the numbers in front of me.
I but I think there was something like 670 odd million
(28:04):
views of the final, which I think is just an incredible like
let's put 678 total streams wereof the IPL final and a 578
million in the first innings. Like what, what sort of numbers
are they? They're just ridiculous numbers.
And then you couple that with 169,000,000 unique viewers
(28:25):
through linear. Now, granted, there's obviously
some crossover there of audience, They just blow
everyone away in terms of the scale that you are talking
about, in terms of audience consumption.
And you think about the, we're talking about advertising a lot
like that is still in its infancy.
It's still in a growing marketplace within the Indian
economy because of the, you've got this mass scale, but can you
(28:47):
drive the, the CPMS that you canin Western markets?
Clearly you cannot, but they aredriving a premium.
The valuations in India for teams and the, the IPL itself
are insane. And that market just keeps going
from shrink to shrink. I just don't know how they do
it. Yeah, I mean it, it's truly
incredible. And I think just when we talk
about like just the scale to be able to deliver those sorts of
(29:09):
things, like it probably isn't talked enough just in terms of
the feet that's required to do. You know, we talk about like,
oh, can Netflix, you know, live stream some games on Christmas
and like, or they Nick maybe like 25,000,000 I think was
roughly the number of people to watch the NFL games.
Like you're talking about just, you know, quadruple, quintuple.
I don't, I don't know how those words continue to multiply, but
(29:31):
like you're talking in a completely different
stratosphere. You know, we're concerned about
Netflix and you've got people like Geo that are just doing it
all the time, like it's no problem.
Yeah, it's completely, completely mad.
Now the tricky bit when you lookat data is you do need to go
away from, you've got to try anddissect it a little bit further,
right, Because it can be misleading.
I think every now major social platform uses one second as a
(29:54):
view time for content, which therefore makes it tricky to to
digest. But based on some of the
estimates of some of those numbers I just shared, you're
still talking about the actual true reach of that game to be
around 400 million people, 400 million people tuning in to
watch an event, 5060 million concurrent viewers of peak
concurrency on streaming alone. Those numbers are, are pretty
(30:17):
baffling. And we, we have covered that
from the business side a few times also on on this podcast.
There's some examples of that. But I think I need to do some
nerding out and understand how they're actually able to do that
from the tech side, because it is truly an incredible feat.
So fair play to them. I think the main thing that
people need to understand about that Indian market that I think
is just interesting to consider is most of that is revenue
(30:39):
generation to fund. This is done through advertising
partnerships. That again is not hidden behind
paywalls and that model has beenthe approach has been one that
has existed in India for some time and it continues to deliver
results in terms of value creation for the IPL.
So they found a way to make it work and bypassed a lot of, say,
(31:01):
steps and challenges that, say, the Western market has had.
All right, Nick, sounds like I need to do some recruitment, get
someone from Geo to come in and talk to us about everything that
they're doing on the some of those crazy streaming numbers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, that'll mean our
good friend William Tubbs will get a message from me.
Good stuff. For those who don't know,
William Tubbs is our head of programming.
So he does all the agenda content or agenda content.
(31:23):
So you've been to one of our events, which is probably likely
if you're a listener, Will's theone that leads all that content
that he puts together. So yeah, he'll get a little
message from me. There's a shout out with Tubsy.
So moving back over to Europe and we're going to focus the
next two stories around Germany.Again, a story that we've
followed a little bit. We haven't mentioned in a while,
but we have known that Comcast has been looking to potentially
sell certain parts of the business, particularly from the
(31:44):
Sky side within Europe. And it looks like RTL, who's the
domestic, one of the domestic broadcasters in Germany, is now
going to acquire Sky Deutschland, which includes Sky
Sports Germany. That's reported to be around
€150 million. So we have seen the writing on
the wall for a little bit of time, Nick, that Comcast was
trying to offload some of this. But you know what?
(32:05):
What do you make of it? You know, beyond the being
perhaps a little bit inevitable,what it maybe means for just the
marketplace because we've seen afew of these mergers,
acquisitions taking place seemingly a quite a bit over the
last 12 months. Yeah, we have seen, I, I do
expect to see more of them. What took me by surprise was a
couple of things, But one, it really is that just the price,
(32:28):
the value you think about the value of the rights, they're
actually sitting on that Sky, Sky Deutschen just from the
sporting perspective and they'reworth hundreds of millions
through the cycle and they only sold for €150 million total.
Now granted there is upside, butthat's all dependent on RTLS
share price. So if the share price like that
is completely protecting RTLS basically future, they're not
(32:53):
committed to this massive check down the line if things don't go
to plan and then the market doesn't see what they've done as
as value additive. So I would have thought going
into this Sky Deutschen's position was pretty solid.
The business was pretty solid, this could sell for something
close to a billion plus was kindof what I was expecting the
number to be wouldn't have surprised me.
(33:13):
Now there's no doubt experts whoare closer to the action who
will tell me all the reasons whyit's not.
One of the things I did here wasthat the subscriber acquisition
costs for Sky Deutschland were actually insanely high.
So they were taking something like 2 years worth of
subscription value to secure a subscriber.
I can't remember where I read that.
(33:34):
I read it on LinkedIn from one of the experts in the space.
So apologies for that. I'll try and give them a shout
out if I can when I post something about this.
But the point is, OK, subscriptions are really hard to
sell. That's one of the drivers of
this, this challenge. And they're basically the low
price point that Scott Deutschland has sold.
Like can you think about the possibility of Sky in the UK
(33:55):
given its dominance, its market share?
Now it's a different business and different scale, but to even
be in that stratosphere of priceis is beyond shocking to me.
So that's one thing. The other bit is just now that
RTL becomes a home for a huge amount of content.
They already had things like thePremier League, I think Europa
League and a few other things from a football perspective.
(34:17):
Now they get F1, they get Bundesliga, they get the NFL.
They basically get just more market share and dominance that
this depending on how they package all this up makes them
the the destination you must subscribe to.
I'm sure wouldn't make some of the other competitor platforms
(34:38):
like the Zone in that market particularly happy about seeing
them come together because it means that there's even more
competition for which if you're going to subscribe to one or
multiple subscriptions, you're going to go to these guys,
you're not going to go to someone smaller perhaps.
So a bit of a challenging marketfor those also playing in that
space, but a huge, huge move by RTL and at that price, who can
(34:58):
blame them? Yeah, I remember speaking to
someone and I think Germany was like the last European market to
legalise the ability to have payTV.
So I think for the longest time everything was free to air.
So I think to your point, when you think about the UK having
subscription to Sky Sports, likeI could never imagine Sky Sports
just so. And there's giving, you know,
(35:19):
making a deal with the BBCITV Channel 4, whoever it may be.
But I do remember someone sayinglike Germany was one of the last
countries to domestically legalise it.
So they've just they've always been on the lower end of, I
guess, affinity to pay for content.
You know, it's always been a struggle in the mortgage.
So that probably does explain the lower costs.
And then I'm trying to remember which story was we were talking
(35:39):
about, Nick, who was it that paid someone to give away their
rights? And the idea behind it was, is
that they're going to now have to take on the payments for
those rights. So they're paying someone to
take it from them, but that person is also going to have to
use that money to pay the the rights order.
Who was that story? Yeah, that was AIMG Arena paid
Sport Radar for the betting rights side.
(36:02):
Yeah. So I think that's definitely a
factor here. And obviously I, there's some
pretty impressive finance experts and obviously we have a,
an investment event that's happening as with this podcast
will be coming out to market, I believe happening where I'm
hopefully getting a bit more insight on how these things are
valued. But you know, those economics
clearly play a pretty major rolein how things are managed.
(36:25):
I mean, the other massive X Factor here is naturally I think
they started to share some numbers online about where the
cost savings, the optimizations will have basically so drive up
the profitability of these two bodies coming together.
That typically means there'll bea lot of cost savings made
likely with people and personnelas well.
So I would expect to see quite abit of shift, bit of a shift
(36:48):
with people and some massive changes on the the workforce
front for these two organisations.
And obviously it naturally will be interesting for the industry
to see how they come together. Will they all just wrap under
the RTL brand? Will they just run them as
different products? You know, Sky staying is the pay
TV proposition, RTL is the free to air access product or will
they just merge under one big super brand?
(37:08):
The time will tell, but it is a a huge disruptive move for the
the German market, it has to be said.
Well, staying in the German market, insane, particularly
around the investment side. Again, another short of them
following a good friend of ours and I think most people in the
industry will know our friend Andres Hayden apparently when
you saw him in Sweden mentioned there might be some stuff
they're cooking up. And it does appear as though
(37:28):
that news has now been put out publicly and that's dying.
His, you know, expanded its shareholder based.
It's now valued at €80 million. And some of the people that are
coming on board are very interesting, given who they've
said they are targeting and whatthey're not targeting makes a
little interest in who's now an investor in that space.
But it does seem as though what Andres and team have been able
(37:53):
to do with Christian Seifert, who, you know, used to be the
CEO of the Bundesliga as well. It's interesting, Nick.
It seems like 2 really smart guys are seeming to continue to
do really smart things. Yeah, you've got to love how
this has come almost full circleback to DFL in this instance.
And it raised loads of question about what the future looks
(38:13):
like, right? Like Dine is now the precipice.
They really went focused on their proposition.
I think they picked 5 sports from the beginning.
We were double down, super served these people that are
underserved, and we're going to build everything around this,
this group of people and build sustainable business out of
this. Now the devil is in the detail
and I think what Andreas has done with his technical
(38:35):
technological background has really focused on keeping costs
down, using the cloud, using AI,using efficiency in their
broadcast production to make thevalue of the broadcast so much
more valuable to them. Really make sure they work with
partners that understand the therelationship.
Make sure making sure that moneyis feeding through grassroots to
(38:56):
grow the sport, making sure those rights owners are pushing
away this invisibility of this subscription offering and
positioning it as a as a positive for them.
It's not we're asking money fromyou now, we're giving you a
better service. And that is obviously resulted
in in various measures of success leading to this huge
instead of investment they've received.
(39:18):
So the questions now for us is what is the future for this?
They've received more funding. We had obviously flow sports on
recently valued at 100 million. This is basically SIM evaluation
for the dime business based on what we depending on what
reports you, you follow is what is next for them.
They've proven the case that they can build a subscription
LED model, not subscription only.
(39:38):
I think advertising still makes up, I'm not sure what's been
reported, but a portion of theira meaningful portion.
Not it's not the majority, it's majority is definitely
subscription. Where do they go from here?
Now DFL coming on board US raises all sorts of flags are
like all right, is does that mean now with what's happening
with RTL and Sky Deutschland, does that mean that now die it's
(39:59):
potentially going to be a viableplayer for them in Germany?
Firstly, given they're in the market now, that would be a
surprise because of the premium relationships they have with
broadcasters. But it does raise the question.
The next question it raises is where do they go from here from
a market perspective? Do they keep doubling down and
(40:21):
focusing on the German market alone or do or the DAC region I
think they are across or do theykeep growing further and further
afield into different markets? Do they use the same brand?
Do they basically try and build a DE zone like global streaming
service now they would need a lot more money under their sort
of in their right war chest to take that approach.
(40:44):
But if they are doing deals thatare super serving underserved
sports properties and underserved sports fans, then it
won't cost as much as you would think to start going after a
couple of other markets that maybe are set up for that sort
of opportunity. So I think if they found the
model, they believe this thesis is solid, that they can run
(41:04):
these events cheaper than most and still deliver really high
quality product, they can targetthose fans effectively, more
effectively than most. We've spoken to Andreas a number
of times he's been in our eventsand so forth.
He's clearly assured operator. He balances beautifully that
business understanding and the technical side as well as
anyone. He's the ideal person for this
(41:26):
type of opportunity. The, it's just a matter of what
they want to prioritise first and some pretty interesting
investors behind them with DFL and then the owner's illegal
behind them to, to enable this, right.
So I'm really excited to follow what their next steps are and
how bold they'll be from here. Yeah, to your point, I remember
Andreas when he was first talking about this, they were
very explicit. I forget what the number was.
(41:48):
I feel like it was somewhere between like 30 and 40% where
they're like 30 to 40% of sportsfans in Germany are not fans of
football. And we explicitly want to go and
target that community of people.And I feel like the the
statement was is we're not football, we're not going to do
football. But when you think about
Christian, you think about Andreas, you can't help but make
that connection. So to your point, like the fact
(42:09):
that the DFL is now an investor,given what those two are doing,
I don't know, Football is the next step because as you say,
some of those rights are going to be already so wrapped up.
They're also going to be so expensive.
But like, yeah, it does the whole expression where there's
smoke, there's fire. Like it just feels like there's
something. But, you know, maybe maybe we're
completely wrong. Who knows?
But I, I think their secret sauce here is like, they're not
(42:31):
the first company or organisation to come in like,
oh, we're going to, we're going to target lower tier sports and
try and do this. But they have just taken a
subtly different approach and they focus heavily, heavily on
execution. So efficiency, a classic German,
I guess what trademark of like being hyper focused on
excellence in efficiency of delivery.
(42:52):
And that has stood them out fromperhaps where you might see, I
don't know, I don't want to generalise too much, but maybe a
big U.S. company goes, oh, we'lldisrupt them, we'll disrupt
Europe and go big, but not thinkabout the minor details.
They've been focused on the remote production side of
things. I did, they did a great
presentation. Andres did a great presentation
(43:12):
at the Stream Tech Sweden event that went into the detail of
that. I, I'm, I'm, I don't want to
hold him, I don't want to promise anything, but I'm sure
we'll get him down to Madrid in,in some capacity out of our
media summit this year. And I think they've just proven
out that if you're smart about your approach from tech as well
as strategy, then you can reallyfind a model that works.
(43:36):
The last story of the day is around the Premier League and
its new deal with Microsoft. I think in the article that was
written by our technology industry, McCaskill, I think he
writes that the Premier League is so big it's afforded the
opportunity to be a late mover at times.
It doesn't always have to be taking risks that it doesn't
have to, but this deal with Microsoft is a significant deal
(43:59):
just given the the scale of the business.
Also the fact that we know the last couple of years Alexandra
Willis has come in with the ideaof building out their digital,
you know, network digital ecosystem.
And this is going to be coming with a brand new app that's just
been rolled out, brand new website.
I think they've described it as all these new digital
ecosystems. What do you think, Nick, when
you include the fact that they're they're moving on from
(44:21):
IMG, they've got this new deal with Microsoft, Not saying those
two things are connected, but they're probably not entirely
exclusive. But just these continued steps
by the Premier League in terms of seeming to take a more
sophisticated approach to the digital strategy that we maybe
have felt that they've been behind maybe someone like the
NFL or the NBA on in, you know, recent years.
Well, it's interesting, interesting you put it as
(44:42):
they've been afforded or Steve put it as I have read.
I haven't read the full article.I've got it on my tabs to read
because it's quite a quite a piece of work by Steve there to
explain all the the detail. But whenever you see an
announcement like this and you see, I'd say here's my sceptic
side is that you see Richard Masters doing the big sell on
working with Microsoft and you know, this is a a heavily laden
(45:04):
commercial. There's a heavily the leading
commercial aspect of this deal. Microsoft obviously did the app
efforts with the NBA and so I'm guessing they probably followed
a similar playbook and approach.I don't haven't spent much time
on the platform, but I have seentwo people on my social feeds
(45:24):
basically saying that the platform wasn't working for them
at the time. So some scepticism, some
negativity begin with, but they are delivering something at a
huge scale. So inevitably you can give them
the benefit of the doubt that they'll sort it, sort it out and
be in a better place after the fact.
But it's clearly commercial relationship with Microsoft.
They're with the NBA, they're with the NFL, They're not just
(45:45):
signing up with with Microsoft purely because they want to
integrate Co pilot into their app platform.
So and they can afford the last move or they are last movies for
a couple of reasons. One, my view is that they could,
they can't ever get it wrong. But yeah, that's the thing.
It's not that Man United, Man City verdicts example I've
(46:05):
shared before is they're on sucha pedestal that they make one
mistake and rips them apart a bit like the example I've said
of people on my feed jumping into it to say that they've had
issues on the platform versus more disruptors.
They can they can basically get up and running earlier and make
some errors along the way and ultimately sort it out as they
(46:27):
go along. So what I don't know what to
expect. I don't know if this is the
finished product, whether this is just the starting point for
them, but it's another great opportunity for Microsoft to get
in front of huge audiences and keep their connectivity and give
them another channel to market one of their other assets.
Previously I remember with the NFL, it was originally around
(46:48):
their Microsoft Surface was a big part of the activation you
saw come to life. With the NBA, it was just, I
can't remember exactly what theywere as a marketing platform for
them. Now with this, I love to see
where it where it goes and if they can really innovate, have a
truly innovative platform. So I'm positive they'll work it
out. If they have some challenges at
the moment, I think that's inevitable with these
(47:09):
organisations. They work it out quickly, but I
always AM sceptical when I see abig tech company partnered in
this, in this environment. I don't think you need to, if
you're the Premier League, need to work with a big tech company
to create the best experience possible for a fan.
Instead, you're doing it becausethere's a commercial reason and
there's nothing wrong with that.I just think it needs to be.
(47:30):
Everyone needs to understand that's why we're here.
Well, I think one of the interesting things, I've heard
this from a couple different people, one of the challenges
this was actually no big secrets.
I'm not naming names or we held a CTO form it our sports AI
event, which again is going to be running September 23rd, 24th
in London. Again, one of the things that
came up in the CTO form, talkingabout the struggles that sit
(47:52):
between the CTO and say the Chief Commercial Officer is the
Chief Commercial Officer trying to get the biggest partnership
available. The CTO is trying to build the
best platform available. And often times the CTO is
basically got his hands tied behind his back because that's
the best commercial deal that comes in.
And they say inevitably, you know, if you build this new
platform with said partner, whathappens in five years when they
(48:13):
don't want to renew? Well, either a, you have to
completely rebuild the platform again with a new tech partner or
you hire a new tech partner and you still have to pay the old
tech partner for the platform they built for you.
So you're kind of, you're kind of screwed either way.
So I, I do find some of these things a little bit interesting
where we talk about sort of synergies within business where
(48:34):
the CTO and the Chief Chief partner Officer, Chief
commercial, where they don't always see eye to eye and where
those two things line up is actually probably trickier than
most people realise. That's a great, it's a really
great point. I think it is one of the biggest
growth areas in the sports industry is this ability to
partner with technology and thenactivate that by making their
(48:55):
technology part of their product.
And what you will normally hear on the negative side is
companies that are start-ups a little bit more developed, but
also even the big one saying this and these are B to B
organisations, right? They're not selling globally.
And a big tech, like the scale of a Microsoft is like we're
getting told we have to pay hugecheques to some of these rights
(49:15):
owners to, for us to provide their services.
How are we supposed to run a business if we have to pay them
when we think they should be paying us for what we're giving
to them? And it becomes that tricky
conundrum. And that's why you do see these
types of announcements, these types of platforms are partnered
with these big tech organisations.
And in fact, the F1 through different particular team side
is by far the the leader in these tech, tech style
(49:40):
partnerships because they are able to bring those things to
life. They're able to create these
stories where the tech company can then go, hey, we did this
for this tech company and they work in thousands of a second,
we can do it for you. And that storytelling is
actually a really powerful salestool for any of these types of
organisations going to market either at a consumer level or
(50:01):
even on AB to B level in some instances.
So, so I'm definitely not knocking these types of
partnerships that the industriesneeded them and it's been a huge
growth area and one of the reasons sponsor revenue has been
growing is because of this relationship.
It just makes it tricky to your point, how the organisation
itself sets itself up so it doesn't get basically screwed at
(50:22):
the other end having to deal with the the aftermath if the
relationship or agreement, sponsorship deal, whatever you
want to call it, goes awry. And that's tricky.
It absolutely is. Well, Nick, that has been an
absolutely jam packed episode with all kinds of different news
stories. You know, we've kind of thrown
out there. If you're a French expert,
please let us know on LinkedIn what we got wrong.
If you're German expert, let us know what we got wrong.
(50:42):
If you know stuff about India, we're trying to learn more about
it. But really great episode, Nick.
Lots of good stuff in there for everybody.
And you know, for those that areAmerican, I hope looking back at
this, you had a lovely 4th of July.
And yeah, the great another, another good time to be with
you, Nick. And absolutely and obviously as
this recording comes out, we're going to be in London together.
(51:02):
We'll be hosting our also our first extreme time connect event
for exclusive for our membershipbase, which I think is worth
giving a shout out. So really excited we're going to
have a full house for that eventand which will be happening in
London at Snaps headquarters, which is a great space for us to
host that. So looking forward to getting
back together in person, Chris, for that one.
And if you're interested in the stream time membership, then get
(51:23):
in touch with us and we can put you give you some more
information. But otherwise, I'll see you in
person next week. And thanks for listening
everyone. Thank you.
All right. Now before you go, if you liked
what you heard today, be sure torate and review and just let me
know what you think on social. You can find me on most social
platforms. A sports pro, Nick.
And please do spread the word ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
whether that be in person or on social media.
(51:46):
If you don't like what you've heard, what you think we should
be doing, more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the next episode of Stream Time
Sports. My name is Chris Stone.
I'm the community lead, joined as always by our CEO Nick
Meacham. Now today Nick is we're
recording, it's the 4th of July and I tried to find the most
American thing in my wardrobe. It is actually a Ron's Pizza and
Pub sponsored softball jersey from my dad was travelling the
country playing competitive softball.
(00:31):
I reckon I must have been like maybe four or five years old
when he had this shirt. Sad to say that's now 30 years
ago. So the fact that it's still here
is pretty impressive. But we're also in a little mini
heat wave in London, so it's gotlots of holes and proliferations
in it, so it's quite breezy to stay cool.
So yeah, Nick, I'm doing my bestto to despite the fact I'm
(00:51):
working on the 4th of July to try to embrace the culture a
little bit. Happy 4th of July.
Next time we record one that's around the Australia Day, maybe
I'll put on some Australian clothes which could range from
an Aussie rules football jersey.I think they call it a jersey.
It's been too long since I've been out of the country, which
is busting out the guns and wearing stupidly short shorts or
(01:15):
a rugby shirt or a cricket shirtI can pull out of my of my
closet somewhere along the way. Just quite a desktop.
Yeah, sorry. That's the, the AFL shot is the
the show of the guns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do What do you call a vest top in America?
Tank top. Tank top, we call them singlet
in Australia. I don't yeah, it's a different
name. They they have more offensive
(01:37):
slang terms which I won't use tokick off that kick off the pod.
So. We've we've got, I think we've
got something similar, yeah. Yeah, What was I going to say on
that point? I was going to ask you.
You said it's quite breathable because obviously baseball is
mainly actually a summer sport, right?
It's through the months of the summer months.
Is that normal? Because I didn't realise that
they had that. Or is that depending on the the
temperature that they had different types of material they
(01:59):
use for the for the season? So I remember back when I played
and even back in the old baseball days, like they have
like they used to have the old school jerseys where like they
they were tank tops and you justwore a light shirt underneath.
So like there are different jersey variations.
Even when I was in high school, we had stuff we'd wear in the
kind of like March, April and the early spring when it's so
(02:19):
cold. And then we had different
jerseys which were like this kind of mesh material that kind
of like got the holes in proliferations in them for the
summer months. So yeah, like if you look at
teams, they've got different sets of jerseys.
So. Yeah, well, I think now Nike's
probably got them all uniform looking exactly the same, but
back in the day, the Cincinnati Reds used to have all different
kinds of combinations of short sleeve tank top, jerseys and
(02:42):
others. Yeah.
Any plans for what? What's a typical day of
celebrating 4th of July? You're going to go to the pool,
you're going to have a very large barbecue, and then there's
going to be fireworks and, you know, depend on your age, a
certain level of alcoholic beverages.
Oh nice, a pretty pretty standard I think New Year's Day
off celebration in the summer upat no high is the is the other
(03:05):
days long? Yeah, like it'll be, you know
what I wouldn't say there as long as what you're experiencing
right now in, you know, Scandinavia, I would say London
or the UK, I've experienced today's to be a little bit
longer than they are in the US, but it's still fireworks
probably aren't going off till like 93010 o'clock once it
starts getting, you know, dark enough to really enjoy the The
Big Bang. I'm pretty sure in Australia
(03:28):
fireworks are basically completely illegal all year
round, which is not the case of Europe.
Blew me away when I was celebrating New Year's in
somewhere in Central Europe and I was seeing people fire them
off at left, right and centre. I didn't, could not get my head
around that. But on the on the, the length of
the day here, the days are so long now that we've just had
Midsummer last week or the week before when, when we're
(03:49):
recording this and you can basically play golf till
midnight at night here. So I took my goal to try and get
out from having played around this year is to try and squeeze
around the golfing just so I could play after the kids are in
sleep and get in a game before by by midnight, basically be
home. So that's my that's my objective
to make maximum value of the days.
(04:11):
Yeah. Well, Speaking of fireworks,
last thing before we get into the real business talk.
My brother used to live in Chicago for a couple of years
and he used to play the game gunshot or fireworks and it was
basically a 5050 guess. Wow, that is, that is a whole.
That's a proper 4th of July. That's a proper way to
celebrate. Gosh, wasn't anything like that.
(04:31):
It wasn't even 4th of July. More often up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so American.
But actually Speaking of 4th of July and speaking into a segue,
you know, one of the other things that takes place on the
4th of July, you have to do it. You have to watch it.
You got to tune into ESPN. I think we talked about this
maybe last 4th of July and you got to watch Joey Chestnut and
the hot dog eating competition. I believe he was banned last
year because some of the work hewas doing with Netflix.
(04:53):
But we are going to talk about Netflix.
So that's the Segway because there is there is a documentary
of Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut and their hot dog eating
competition. But that's going to be our
Segway, Nick talking about 4th of July hot dog eating, and then
we're going to just slide into Netflix.
What a Segway I do. Actually, we did quite a big
take on that because I remember watching that live broadcast
(05:14):
from Kobayashi and and the jaw jaws as they call them, and that
was I was had mixed emotions of the lack of Watson, I have to
say, but they've come a long waysince.
Yeah, I mean it, it's a it's a full day promotion now.
But you know, like I said, we are going to use that to segue
and kind of move into the the actual podcast itself.
It's been a little bit of time since we've actually talked
about some of the news. So this is going to be a a jam
(05:35):
packed episode full of a bunch of different things.
But one of the places we do wantto start is with Netflix.
You know, we we've talked about Netflix expanding their
coverage, getting live sports rights with the NFL.
I'm also looking forward to nextweek the re releasing the second
season of quarterback, which will have my man Joe Burrow in
it. But one of the yeah, yeah, yeah.
See free shout outs to Netflix. I believe it's on July 12th, so
(05:56):
not far at all now. But one of the things you
actually had a post about the other day was around Netflix and
particularly its approach to boxing.
Obviously it's had some of the Jake Paul fights on there.
But now it's been announced thatthey're going to have the next
Canelo, Terence Crawford fight on Netflix, which is, you know,
it's just a new approach. Nick, for so long boxing has
(06:16):
always seemed to be centred around the pay-per-view model.
And we've seen Jake Paul do it. But this is different.
This is a whole new level of boxing being on Netflix.
And just there's different ways to look at this from the, the
tech perspective to the monetization side.
And you had a LinkedIn post, go search it.
If you type in boxing Netflix, Nick, Nick Meacham on Google,
it'll pop up. You can see the post.
(06:38):
But what do you take from this in terms of just the the
challenge to the established system?
Well, I just think anything thatNetflix does now because of the
scale they have is instantly in a place where it could disrupt
the entire ecosystem. I think this is one of those
examples, right? The fact that they're not adding
that pay-per-view layer here. You're going from fights that
are being watched by such a niche group of audiences because
(07:01):
it's either people who are willing to pay $100 a hundred
U.S. dollars for, for a Fight Night.
You have to be committed to that.
And now we're just saying, actually for anyone who's a
subscriber, you can watch this for free.
And we know that what we've seenis a trend over the last couple
of couple of years really in terms of sports consumption.
It is all about personalities and, and the athletes and the,
(07:21):
and the, those brands and audiences they already have.
And, and boxing's is synonymous with that as as anyone else
because of the one-on-one, I guess the, the, the raw nature
of boxing basically being quite primal in a sense.
It's, it's man against man or woman against woman and best
those who one who walks out of the ring wins kind of thing.
And that, that, that type of content is basic in its format.
(07:45):
It's actually quite low to produce and broadcast.
But we saw what happens when it's marketed well, it can get
insane audiences through the, the Paul and Tyson fight that
happened last year at some stage.
So this is huge. This is really one of those
things that I think does have the ability to completely
disrupt the ecosystem because ofthe fact you are moving away
from basically the only core monetization approach, which was
(08:08):
pay-per-view and just making it available for author masses.
And I think it'll just keep growing, growing and going up
and up in terms of audience oncemore and more people become
aware of this type of content. The question mark I have is when
you have that balance between the athletes, the, the real
fight is that maybe don't have the stardom, the marketability
(08:28):
like a Paul and and Tyson fight and I just good athletes and
maybe a bit behind the scenes that aren't just as familiar.
For those that aren't passionateboxing fans, will they generate
the audiences they deserve? Because if they don't, the risk
for me is that the the money will still going to those people
that are built around entertainment, the entertainment
(08:49):
factor and not the best stars inthe sport.
And that is the risky outcome here.
But overall it's got a huge opportunity to disrupt because
of this, the sheer mass of audiences this can bring to the
boxing stage, which has been reducing in size for some time.
Now, I've not seen the numbers from the the Paul Tyson fight on
this specific angle that I'm going to go down.
But in our last episode, go check it out, we talked about
(09:10):
piracy and we, we sort of not toput words in your mouth or our
guest's mouth, but like the ideathat the pirates are always
going to be a step ahead technologically.
You're not going to be able to beat them in that game.
The way to try to combat this isto make sports distributed in a
manner with which it is viewed as a accessible but also
valuable. The amount of people that have a
Netflix subscription is just enormous.
(09:32):
So do you think could this validate potentially depending
on what the numbers come back and say did actually the best
way to combat piracy is to go this way?
So like I said, I kind of wish I'd gone back and looked up some
Paul Tyson numbers to see if they had any estimates about how
many streams have been pirated. But this sort of approach.
Well, I think 100%, I think that's where this takes us to.
And I think anything Netflix does and Netflix is because of
(09:55):
the sheer scale of audience has the equivalent impact of being
free to wear in its broadcast interms of the impact of audience.
So 100% has the impact of takingthat edge off of piracy that
makes it not as financially lucrative for the pirates to go
after these sort of premium instances where no doubt they
have. I, I remember hearing some
numbers off the record from a few major broadcasters.
(10:18):
And the numbers basically are that the majority of people that
are watching the sport are watching it through pirated
means. They are not watching it through
the conventional and official and legal channels.
And so this is the only way, youknow, we were talking about this
about about this last week. It's the only way you can really
find us or see light at the end of the tunnel of breaking that
(10:39):
that cycle of more and more people going to piracy to
consume content because of that value exchange we've been
talking about. So I think it does have the
opportunity to bring down those barriers to the point where
piracy has is not going to be able to monetize that in the
same way. And that means that their
resources will be shifted perhaps elsewhere.
So it would be a good win for the for the sport.
(11:02):
The question really comes back to can boxing generate enough
income from this model? Like Netflix can definitely play
the trigger or the play the cardhere.
We're going to give you insane reach.
We don't want to pay you those premium rights fees that you've
been getting from people who arewilling to pay you for that
privilege of having pay-per-viewbecause it's drives so much
(11:22):
income and revenue. That's why ESP NS been doing it
with UFC and Sky and match room and Design have been doing this.
They have been driving great income from it.
Even if the model is not optimised, will they still get
track those revenues and other means?
And I think they can, but it will be trickier if you're at
the lower mid tier to justify getting A to Netflix a, hey
(11:45):
Netflix, pay us a media rights check before a mid tier boxing
team. So you'll have to monetize
through sponsorships and partnerships for that
visibility. Akin to what we talked about a
little bit with the Club World Cup a few weeks ago and how
Auckland City pop up with Michelob Ultra or whatever on
their shirt. There's no way that's targeting
their audience. They were opportunistic at
leveraging the scale and breadthof audience they're going to be
(12:07):
reaching, and that's the type ofapproach I think that most of
these sports will have to play if this is the direction they're
going to. Go well, that's the sponsorship
side and we we've talked about that I think in another previous
podcast, we've multiple times talking about the role of
sponsorship, particularly with these live events and how they
can thrive off of creating events and sponsorship.
But the other side of this will be around advertising.
(12:29):
And another story that came up it was in a newsletter that you
forwarded on to me is that Netflix and Yahoo are now
partnering essentially Netflix allowing Yahoo to go in and have
advertisers pay for programmaticads directly on Netflix.
So this is, I think, substantialin terms of the partnership and
the, I guess, accessibility for advertisers to get on Netflix.
(12:50):
It's also interesting because atthe same time there seems to be
a similar partnership that's taking place between Disney and
Amazon. So it seems like this ad tech
space is being taken a lot more serious when we start talking
about Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon and then Yahoo just being
a, you know, the company that they are.
So they just on that side of things with the programmatic ad
buying and the partnership with Yahoo, how that helps enable
(13:11):
those payments beyond just pay-per-view?
Well, there's another interesting example of this and
that is Sky partnering with I think it's Channel 4 and Channel
5, I believe it, or maybe ITV inthe UK, another example where
they're coming together to try and basically build out their
own programmatic network. And the, the net result of that
is hopefully for their benefit is to increase the CPMS on AD
(13:34):
on, on those ad deals and AD buying.
So drive more of a premium because remember we've talked
about before that massive gap between programmatic and selling
direct on the sponsorship side and they're selling around live,
live sporting events. They are trying to bridge that
gap a little bit, take a bit more control back because most
of the ad buying is done throughmost of the major big tech
companies who've been controlling that flow of income
(13:56):
for some time. So they're trying to take a bit
more control back. And if they do that and it
works, the main way you can achieve that is you need scale.
You need scale of ad buying to make it worthwhile for a major
ad buyer. And you've been from that
background, Chris. So you know what it's like you,
if you want to be someone who's on that spreadsheet, that
budget, you need to be able to provide enough inventory to be
(14:19):
worthwhile being part of the conversation with a, a major
brand, right? And that's why these these
companies have to come together to partner so they can build out
the scope of their reach and build out more value so they can
be added to the big media budgets that clearly exist and
are still going, growing from strength to strength from what
we see on a global scale. And that's not even the last of
(14:40):
Netflix doing things that are new, unique and all that we've
also seen in France. And we're going to talk a little
bit about France today because of what's going on in League One
and their continued things. But more specifically, talking
about France and Netflix is there's now going to be a, you
know, it's described as a first of its kind carriage deal with
TF1 the the linear channels to now have content featured
directly on Netflix for users inFrance.
(15:02):
So, you know, anytime you hear first of its kind, it's always
exciting and flashy. And Nick, do you think, hey,
what is the significance of this?
And then not only beyond that, what does that potentially mean
in other marketplaces beyond France?
Right. So this is, I think this is
pretty significant. I think it's about a significant
a partnership between a platformand a particularly a public
(15:23):
broadcaster as I can think of. And the main reason for that is
again, Netflix is basically a distribution platform with as
big a reach as you could possibly imagine.
It immediately enhances TF NS reach across the French market
with loads of live sports and loads of other content
available. But it also pushes them down
that linear and live aspect fromall the linear programming
(15:47):
they're going to bring to the table.
What we don't know yet is how they're going to present that.
Will they basically add another channel with more and more live
content progressively being added to the mix?
Or will it, I don't know, be just pop up in the the on demand
user user interface that you're going to be have access to?
That bid is unclear, as I've always had with any live sports
(16:07):
products coming to Netflix is how are they?
What sort of visibility are theygoing to give it for a user
coming onto the platform? But the fact is this gives them
loads of content, gives them a live proposition to add to the
mix of all the on demand stuff that they've got available that
why would you log in anywhere else?
It just makes you it gives you another reason just to go to
(16:28):
Netflix when you go on to turn your TV's on your smart TV's on.
So I think every every major public broadcaster, when I say
public also mean just free to wear broadcaster, but even paid
TV providers and and a lot will be looking to this deal and
going. Is this seriously something we
can do? Because we've seen a whole
inertia in the industry about distribution now is everything
(16:51):
we need to be in more places. We need to be visible.
And this instantly unlocks a whole expanded set of audiences
to anyone who can partner with the likes of Netflix,
particularly in mature markets, but indeed globally.
So I, I just think you'll have everyone, everyone now I can
think of like think about in theUK and BBC and you think in the
US that all those major free to air broadcasters have, can we
(17:13):
add, can we be added to the Netflix interface and, and be
part of that user experience? It's a huge win for Netflix and
it's a huge win for those broadcasters to instantly
increase the number of eyeballs and visibility they have.
And because they're being built on selling and building their
business models on reach and mass audience and advertising
that can only help them drive more revenue depending on the
(17:37):
relationship and agreement in place with Netflix.
So I think it is a huge momentumshift, which might sound a bit
hyperbolic to some, but I reallydo believe that.
I think if they're doing it in France, I mean, France has been
serving up some amazing stories in the last couple of years in
in sports and streaming media, Ihave to say.
But they wouldn't just do this one move and just sit on this
(17:57):
like this is, yeah, it has to besomething that expands not only
in France to be approaching talking to all those other major
distributors out there and otherplatforms, but completely around
the globe. And would it make sure Netflix
the only place to go to watch your watch your content, not
just one of a few? Do you find this akin
strategically from a Netflix perspective?
(18:18):
We, we had some of these similarconversations about Sky in the
UK where they have partnerships with TNT and they were doing
some other stuff with YouTube where the idea was they don't
really care if you end up going outside of their network so long
as the journey begins in skies, you know, home landscape
ecosystem, however you want to call it.
Is that a similar strategy whereit's OK if it's not our content
(18:40):
so long as your journey goes viaNetflix?
I think, I think that's what it definitely feels like.
I think they want to own the entire relationship with the
audience, with the customer. And by doing so we'll continue
to do that, continue to monopolise that relationship.
Whereas free to wear is going tostruggle to basically have
(19:00):
visibility through traditional linear as it's it's consumption
is being reduced market by market.
So yeah, only more of that relationship, as long as they're
finding the right economic modelthat everyone's kind of happy
with to move forward with and they instantly have the scale
there that no one else does, it's a huge win for them to
continue to own own that relationship and will mean
people are knocking on their door to be on the platform, not
(19:23):
the other way around. Well, we're going to stay in
France, although this is a storythat could potentially be
something that is a model that'sfollowed elsewhere, because I
have seen some people on LinkedIn speak really positively
and optimistic about what it could mean.
We've we've been following the story about what's happening
with Lagoon and France and the the end of their deal after one
(19:43):
year with the zone. And now they're looking to take
ownership of production and now they're looking for broadcast
partners, but they're still going to, you know, own that
Channel. As far as I'm concerned they
went back to their old partners in Canal Plus and now appears
the Canal Plus is is going to step away from the the right the
ability however you want to phrase it to stream that new
broadcasted. Produced channel from Legion.
(20:06):
So now that leaves them essentially in a very similar
spot to last year where we're atthe beginning of July, next
season's going to start in August, and there doesn't appear
to be a home for where this new channel is going to be.
I know there's a lot of people excited about it because there's
the idea that with the Premier League stepping away from IMG,
are they going to start producing their own stuff kind
of the way NFL Media is done? And there's this idea of how
(20:26):
exciting this approach could be,but they still need someone to
to actually help with the the distribution side.
So this story keeps evolving. Nick, We've been following it
seems like forever now, but now with the next chapter, Nick,
what what do you take from sort of where they're at, where it
leaves them with, you know, kindof given the time constraints?
I'm not sure I'm, I'm, I'm really excited to see it happen
(20:49):
because I think it's a great litmus test and a great example
of what can and can't happen in this space.
But I think it's a disaster for LFP and it's not looking any
better. But the fact that Kannapolis has
already actively said we're not going to play ball.
I kind of felt like this and I don't know much.
There's some great commentators on particularly on LinkedIn
around this, Thierry Fortier, Sebastian Ordeaux, people I
(21:10):
follow also on this who are haveFrench connections and the
French and are closer to it thanI am.
But I do have been following it and also have read a few French
articles. And the the crux of it is that
the economics are getting worse and worse on various metrics.
The cost is going down for users, and yet they're still not
(21:31):
able to attract the audiences tomake this a viable approach for
them and make it sustainable forthe future.
And with Canal please stepping away largely the most reputable
from what I understand, the mostreputable sports service, I
suppose you would call it in, inFrance, this is a huge challenge
because they aren't really looking for broadcasters.
(21:53):
I think you said broadcasters. I would say it's just a
distribution channel, right? They want to have a place to be
visible and available and there'll be some sort of some
sort of agreement, whether it's a minimum guarantee, whether
it's a revenue share component is part of that and try and
reach as many people and drive as many subscriptions as
possible. Now the price point that they
wanted to sell this at I believewas around €15.
(22:17):
Now if you remember correctly, Ithink the zone, if I remember
appropriately was about double that, 30 or €40.
Now the CEO of the LFP Media who's taken over I believe from
Ben Morrell is aiming for at least 1,000,000 subscribers in
their first year. So if you can, you can do some
math on that, but that is not nowhere near the revenue
(22:39):
generation that has been forthcoming in previous cycles
or even indeed making a viable for any broadcaster that
consider paying the premiums that they historically generated
before now Tier 4 tier was someone who posted something
about this. And for context, he that the the
actual cost to watch all the LFPthe league in matches peaked at
(23:01):
around €89 EUR a month around 2000 and eight 2012, which is
extortionally high, right? But that's, that's what it was
at and now you're looking at basically €15.00 a month, you
should be able to get access to all the games.
Like what a what a dramatic turnof events for them.
So I don't know how they overcome this.
(23:21):
I don't, you know, the million number sounds like a nice number
to aim for. Is it achievable?
I think we have all seen the sports industry constantly
neglect the fact that marketing is really difficult to do and it
can't just be around price alone.
I think the price point is trying to address piracy because
piracy is so prevalent in that market, but they still need all
(23:42):
the distribution partners available to them because
otherwise I just don't know how this is a long term viable
commitment. Now, it could be for one year
and it could be that this is the, the, the, what would you
call the lip? But the, the case study for us
to be able to go to market next year and then sell it.
But it does not sound like the Ican't see a road to success
unless they're willing to play the long game.
(24:03):
And I can't believe that all theinvestors that exist around
Legan are willing to take three to five years to hopefully turn
the tide on all that that massive meteorites gap that is
clearly there now. So you're saying it's not going
to be like one of my favourite podcasts we've ever done?
Go search it up. I, it was something about David
versus Goliath, I think might have been the title where we
(24:25):
were talking to Palk FC and Greece where they talked about
they didn't get the broadcast deal that they wanted.
So they said, fine, screw it, we'll build our own D2C.
And actually I think it ended upgetting what, double what they
were offered the year before because they were so successful.
So you're not, you don't think it's going to be that situation?
I would love it. I would love it to be the case.
(24:45):
I would absolutely love it because it would make the idea
of a, a sports property, a premium sports property, doing
it alone, a viable, truly viableoption, which would give so
much. The net result of that would
give so many more rights owners the ability to do, you play that
trump card and we're going to doit ourselves.
And it's you. If you want these rights, sports
(25:07):
broadcaster pay the cheque. But they've just been, they've
been hit, they've been punched, you know, left hook, right hook,
uppercut the whole way through this journey of the last 10
years or 7-8 years, whatever thetimeline is.
I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet
taking this approach. But what I could see is solving
(25:29):
this is they take this approach and then someone else does come
to the table and helps them get the expanded reach they need.
I'm just not sure who it is. Netflix could be one of them.
Well, like I said, I'll just shamelessly plug that podcast I
mentioned if you're if you're interested in a good story, if
you're interested in a good story of an underdog having to
be really resourceful and innovative of how to launch AD
(25:51):
to C platform, basically to get back at the broadcasters and
double the money they made. It's a really great story.
I do believe it's called like David verse Goliath.
It's Pauch, which is PA. OK, I'm sure if you Google it,
it'll come up. Great podcast, if I do say so
myself, Nick. Yeah, no, it's a great, it's a
one of the great stories, one ofthe great success stories and
actually flew very much under the radar because it's a
(26:12):
smaller, smaller tier organisation.
But you know the whole journey there and the numbers really
paint a picture of what can be done if you do challenge the
status quo sometimes. Yeah, Now, Speaking of numbers,
Nick, we're going to go on the complete other side.
We're going to talk about some of the biggest numbers you've
ever seen. You know, in honour of July 4th
and not getting too political. Donald Trump.
The numbers are huge. Huge with a with AY, not with an
(26:33):
H. You had a post on LinkedIn about
the IPL final and then there were some numbers about the
England and India Test match setting records.
I mean, Nick, some of the numbers are honestly just
staggering when you just start looking at the numbers.
And I get it may be limited to certain regions that actually
follow cricket, but again, I would suggest go to Google, type
(26:55):
in IPL, type in Nick Meacham andit'll come up with a post right
away. And you put down a bunch of
facts and figures about it. But some of the numbers about
the IPL final that just came up a a couple weeks back genuinely
are the type of thing. If you're not paying attention
to cricket, you really should beat least understanding the scale
of what they're being able to doright now.
Oh, but completely, like I thinkit's lost some people sometimes
(27:16):
that we have to keep reminding people that hey, go check out
the Indian market. They're delivering high quality
product at scale that belittles every other challenge of every
other broadcaster who can't deliver scale.
They're like, well, we're smashing this in a market that
actually has, it's a developing country has not got the scale of
infrastructure that some of the other countries haven't yet.
(27:38):
They just continue to deliver event after event.
And the scale is something you know, to behold.
And cricket obviously is the number one passion and spoiler I
think is India's population #1 now in terms of, of, of scale.
So it is just built to deliver massive numbers when you have
the right type of sporting event.
I haven't got the numbers in front of me.
I but I think there was something like 670 odd million
(28:04):
views of the final, which I think is just an incredible like
let's put 678 total streams wereof the IPL final and a 578
million in the first innings. Like what, what sort of numbers
are they? They're just ridiculous numbers.
And then you couple that with 169,000,000 unique viewers
(28:25):
through linear. Now, granted, there's obviously
some crossover there of audience, They just blow
everyone away in terms of the scale that you are talking
about, in terms of audience consumption.
And you think about the, we're talking about advertising a lot
like that is still in its infancy.
It's still in a growing marketplace within the Indian
economy because of the, you've got this mass scale, but can you
(28:47):
drive the, the CPMS that you canin Western markets?
Clearly you cannot, but they aredriving a premium.
The valuations in India for teams and the, the IPL itself
are insane. And that market just keeps going
from shrink to shrink. I just don't know how they do
it. Yeah, I mean it, it's truly
incredible. And I think just when we talk
about like just the scale to be able to deliver those sorts of
(29:09):
things, like it probably isn't talked enough just in terms of
the feet that's required to do. You know, we talk about like,
oh, can Netflix, you know, live stream some games on Christmas
and like, or they Nick maybe like 25,000,000 I think was
roughly the number of people to watch the NFL games.
Like you're talking about just, you know, quadruple, quintuple.
I don't, I don't know how those words continue to multiply, but
(29:31):
like you're talking in a completely different
stratosphere. You know, we're concerned about
Netflix and you've got people like Geo that are just doing it
all the time, like it's no problem.
Yeah, it's completely, completely mad.
Now the tricky bit when you lookat data is you do need to go
away from, you've got to try anddissect it a little bit further,
right, Because it can be misleading.
I think every now major social platform uses one second as a
(29:54):
view time for content, which therefore makes it tricky to to
digest. But based on some of the
estimates of some of those numbers I just shared, you're
still talking about the actual true reach of that game to be
around 400 million people, 400 million people tuning in to
watch an event, 5060 million concurrent viewers of peak
concurrency on streaming alone. Those numbers are, are pretty
(30:17):
baffling. And we, we have covered that
from the business side a few times also on on this podcast.
There's some examples of that. But I think I need to do some
nerding out and understand how they're actually able to do that
from the tech side, because it is truly an incredible feat.
So fair play to them. I think the main thing that
people need to understand about that Indian market that I think
is just interesting to consider is most of that is revenue
(30:39):
generation to fund. This is done through advertising
partnerships. That again is not hidden behind
paywalls and that model has beenthe approach has been one that
has existed in India for some time and it continues to deliver
results in terms of value creation for the IPL.
So they found a way to make it work and bypassed a lot of, say,
(31:01):
steps and challenges that, say, the Western market has had.
All right, Nick, sounds like I need to do some recruitment, get
someone from Geo to come in and talk to us about everything that
they're doing on the some of those crazy streaming numbers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, that'll mean our
good friend William Tubbs will get a message from me.
Good stuff. For those who don't know,
William Tubbs is our head of programming.
So he does all the agenda content or agenda content.
(31:23):
So you've been to one of our events, which is probably likely
if you're a listener, Will's theone that leads all that content
that he puts together. So yeah, he'll get a little
message from me. There's a shout out with Tubsy.
So moving back over to Europe and we're going to focus the
next two stories around Germany.Again, a story that we've
followed a little bit. We haven't mentioned in a while,
but we have known that Comcast has been looking to potentially
sell certain parts of the business, particularly from the
(31:44):
Sky side within Europe. And it looks like RTL, who's the
domestic, one of the domestic broadcasters in Germany, is now
going to acquire Sky Deutschland, which includes Sky
Sports Germany. That's reported to be around
€150 million. So we have seen the writing on
the wall for a little bit of time, Nick, that Comcast was
trying to offload some of this. But you know what?
(32:05):
What do you make of it? You know, beyond the being
perhaps a little bit inevitable,what it maybe means for just the
marketplace because we've seen afew of these mergers,
acquisitions taking place seemingly a quite a bit over the
last 12 months. Yeah, we have seen, I, I do
expect to see more of them. What took me by surprise was a
couple of things, But one, it really is that just the price,
(32:28):
the value you think about the value of the rights, they're
actually sitting on that Sky, Sky Deutschen just from the
sporting perspective and they'reworth hundreds of millions
through the cycle and they only sold for €150 million total.
Now granted there is upside, butthat's all dependent on RTLS
share price. So if the share price like that
is completely protecting RTLS basically future, they're not
(32:53):
committed to this massive check down the line if things don't go
to plan and then the market doesn't see what they've done as
as value additive. So I would have thought going
into this Sky Deutschen's position was pretty solid.
The business was pretty solid, this could sell for something
close to a billion plus was kindof what I was expecting the
number to be wouldn't have surprised me.
(33:13):
Now there's no doubt experts whoare closer to the action who
will tell me all the reasons whyit's not.
One of the things I did here wasthat the subscriber acquisition
costs for Sky Deutschland were actually insanely high.
So they were taking something like 2 years worth of
subscription value to secure a subscriber.
I can't remember where I read that.
(33:34):
I read it on LinkedIn from one of the experts in the space.
So apologies for that. I'll try and give them a shout
out if I can when I post something about this.
But the point is, OK, subscriptions are really hard to
sell. That's one of the drivers of
this, this challenge. And they're basically the low
price point that Scott Deutschland has sold.
Like can you think about the possibility of Sky in the UK
(33:55):
given its dominance, its market share?
Now it's a different business and different scale, but to even
be in that stratosphere of priceis is beyond shocking to me.
So that's one thing. The other bit is just now that
RTL becomes a home for a huge amount of content.
They already had things like thePremier League, I think Europa
League and a few other things from a football perspective.
(34:17):
Now they get F1, they get Bundesliga, they get the NFL.
They basically get just more market share and dominance that
this depending on how they package all this up makes them
the the destination you must subscribe to.
I'm sure wouldn't make some of the other competitor platforms
(34:38):
like the Zone in that market particularly happy about seeing
them come together because it means that there's even more
competition for which if you're going to subscribe to one or
multiple subscriptions, you're going to go to these guys,
you're not going to go to someone smaller perhaps.
So a bit of a challenging marketfor those also playing in that
space, but a huge, huge move by RTL and at that price, who can
(34:58):
blame them? Yeah, I remember speaking to
someone and I think Germany was like the last European market to
legalise the ability to have payTV.
So I think for the longest time everything was free to air.
So I think to your point, when you think about the UK having
subscription to Sky Sports, likeI could never imagine Sky Sports
just so. And there's giving, you know,
(35:19):
making a deal with the BBCITV Channel 4, whoever it may be.
But I do remember someone sayinglike Germany was one of the last
countries to domestically legalise it.
So they've just they've always been on the lower end of, I
guess, affinity to pay for content.
You know, it's always been a struggle in the mortgage.
So that probably does explain the lower costs.
And then I'm trying to remember which story was we were talking
(35:39):
about, Nick, who was it that paid someone to give away their
rights? And the idea behind it was, is
that they're going to now have to take on the payments for
those rights. So they're paying someone to
take it from them, but that person is also going to have to
use that money to pay the the rights order.
Who was that story? Yeah, that was AIMG Arena paid
Sport Radar for the betting rights side.
(36:02):
Yeah. So I think that's definitely a
factor here. And obviously I, there's some
pretty impressive finance experts and obviously we have a,
an investment event that's happening as with this podcast
will be coming out to market, I believe happening where I'm
hopefully getting a bit more insight on how these things are
valued. But you know, those economics
clearly play a pretty major rolein how things are managed.
(36:25):
I mean, the other massive X Factor here is naturally I think
they started to share some numbers online about where the
cost savings, the optimizations will have basically so drive up
the profitability of these two bodies coming together.
That typically means there'll bea lot of cost savings made
likely with people and personnelas well.
So I would expect to see quite abit of shift, bit of a shift
(36:48):
with people and some massive changes on the the workforce
front for these two organisations.
And obviously it naturally will be interesting for the industry
to see how they come together. Will they all just wrap under
the RTL brand? Will they just run them as
different products? You know, Sky staying is the pay
TV proposition, RTL is the free to air access product or will
they just merge under one big super brand?
(37:08):
The time will tell, but it is a a huge disruptive move for the
the German market, it has to be said.
Well, staying in the German market, insane, particularly
around the investment side. Again, another short of them
following a good friend of ours and I think most people in the
industry will know our friend Andres Hayden apparently when
you saw him in Sweden mentioned there might be some stuff
they're cooking up. And it does appear as though
(37:28):
that news has now been put out publicly and that's dying.
His, you know, expanded its shareholder based.
It's now valued at €80 million. And some of the people that are
coming on board are very interesting, given who they've
said they are targeting and whatthey're not targeting makes a
little interest in who's now an investor in that space.
But it does seem as though what Andres and team have been able
(37:53):
to do with Christian Seifert, who, you know, used to be the
CEO of the Bundesliga as well. It's interesting, Nick.
It seems like 2 really smart guys are seeming to continue to
do really smart things. Yeah, you've got to love how
this has come almost full circleback to DFL in this instance.
And it raised loads of question about what the future looks
(38:13):
like, right? Like Dine is now the precipice.
They really went focused on their proposition.
I think they picked 5 sports from the beginning.
We were double down, super served these people that are
underserved, and we're going to build everything around this,
this group of people and build sustainable business out of
this. Now the devil is in the detail
and I think what Andreas has done with his technical
(38:35):
technological background has really focused on keeping costs
down, using the cloud, using AI,using efficiency in their
broadcast production to make thevalue of the broadcast so much
more valuable to them. Really make sure they work with
partners that understand the therelationship.
Make sure making sure that moneyis feeding through grassroots to
(38:56):
grow the sport, making sure those rights owners are pushing
away this invisibility of this subscription offering and
positioning it as a as a positive for them.
It's not we're asking money fromyou now, we're giving you a
better service. And that is obviously resulted
in in various measures of success leading to this huge
instead of investment they've received.
(39:18):
So the questions now for us is what is the future for this?
They've received more funding. We had obviously flow sports on
recently valued at 100 million. This is basically SIM evaluation
for the dime business based on what we depending on what
reports you, you follow is what is next for them.
They've proven the case that they can build a subscription
LED model, not subscription only.
(39:38):
I think advertising still makes up, I'm not sure what's been
reported, but a portion of theira meaningful portion.
Not it's not the majority, it's majority is definitely
subscription. Where do they go from here?
Now DFL coming on board US raises all sorts of flags are
like all right, is does that mean now with what's happening
with RTL and Sky Deutschland, does that mean that now die it's
(39:59):
potentially going to be a viableplayer for them in Germany?
Firstly, given they're in the market now, that would be a
surprise because of the premium relationships they have with
broadcasters. But it does raise the question.
The next question it raises is where do they go from here from
a market perspective? Do they keep doubling down and
(40:21):
focusing on the German market alone or do or the DAC region I
think they are across or do theykeep growing further and further
afield into different markets? Do they use the same brand?
Do they basically try and build a DE zone like global streaming
service now they would need a lot more money under their sort
of in their right war chest to take that approach.
(40:44):
But if they are doing deals thatare super serving underserved
sports properties and underserved sports fans, then it
won't cost as much as you would think to start going after a
couple of other markets that maybe are set up for that sort
of opportunity. So I think if they found the
model, they believe this thesis is solid, that they can run
(41:04):
these events cheaper than most and still deliver really high
quality product, they can targetthose fans effectively, more
effectively than most. We've spoken to Andreas a number
of times he's been in our eventsand so forth.
He's clearly assured operator. He balances beautifully that
business understanding and the technical side as well as
anyone. He's the ideal person for this
(41:26):
type of opportunity. The, it's just a matter of what
they want to prioritise first and some pretty interesting
investors behind them with DFL and then the owner's illegal
behind them to, to enable this, right.
So I'm really excited to follow what their next steps are and
how bold they'll be from here. Yeah, to your point, I remember
Andreas when he was first talking about this, they were
very explicit. I forget what the number was.
(41:48):
I feel like it was somewhere between like 30 and 40% where
they're like 30 to 40% of sportsfans in Germany are not fans of
football. And we explicitly want to go and
target that community of people.And I feel like the the
statement was is we're not football, we're not going to do
football. But when you think about
Christian, you think about Andreas, you can't help but make
that connection. So to your point, like the fact
(42:09):
that the DFL is now an investor,given what those two are doing,
I don't know, Football is the next step because as you say,
some of those rights are going to be already so wrapped up.
They're also going to be so expensive.
But like, yeah, it does the whole expression where there's
smoke, there's fire. Like it just feels like there's
something. But, you know, maybe maybe we're
completely wrong. Who knows?
But I, I think their secret sauce here is like, they're not
(42:31):
the first company or organisation to come in like,
oh, we're going to, we're going to target lower tier sports and
try and do this. But they have just taken a
subtly different approach and they focus heavily, heavily on
execution. So efficiency, a classic German,
I guess what trademark of like being hyper focused on
excellence in efficiency of delivery.
(42:52):
And that has stood them out fromperhaps where you might see, I
don't know, I don't want to generalise too much, but maybe a
big U.S. company goes, oh, we'lldisrupt them, we'll disrupt
Europe and go big, but not thinkabout the minor details.
They've been focused on the remote production side of
things. I did, they did a great
presentation. Andres did a great presentation
(43:12):
at the Stream Tech Sweden event that went into the detail of
that. I, I'm, I'm, I don't want to
hold him, I don't want to promise anything, but I'm sure
we'll get him down to Madrid in,in some capacity out of our
media summit this year. And I think they've just proven
out that if you're smart about your approach from tech as well
as strategy, then you can reallyfind a model that works.
(43:36):
The last story of the day is around the Premier League and
its new deal with Microsoft. I think in the article that was
written by our technology industry, McCaskill, I think he
writes that the Premier League is so big it's afforded the
opportunity to be a late mover at times.
It doesn't always have to be taking risks that it doesn't
have to, but this deal with Microsoft is a significant deal
(43:59):
just given the the scale of the business.
Also the fact that we know the last couple of years Alexandra
Willis has come in with the ideaof building out their digital,
you know, network digital ecosystem.
And this is going to be coming with a brand new app that's just
been rolled out, brand new website.
I think they've described it as all these new digital
ecosystems. What do you think, Nick, when
you include the fact that they're they're moving on from
(44:21):
IMG, they've got this new deal with Microsoft, Not saying those
two things are connected, but they're probably not entirely
exclusive. But just these continued steps
by the Premier League in terms of seeming to take a more
sophisticated approach to the digital strategy that we maybe
have felt that they've been behind maybe someone like the
NFL or the NBA on in, you know, recent years.
Well, it's interesting, interesting you put it as
(44:42):
they've been afforded or Steve put it as I have read.
I haven't read the full article.I've got it on my tabs to read
because it's quite a quite a piece of work by Steve there to
explain all the the detail. But whenever you see an
announcement like this and you see, I'd say here's my sceptic
side is that you see Richard Masters doing the big sell on
working with Microsoft and you know, this is a a heavily laden
(45:04):
commercial. There's a heavily the leading
commercial aspect of this deal. Microsoft obviously did the app
efforts with the NBA and so I'm guessing they probably followed
a similar playbook and approach.I don't haven't spent much time
on the platform, but I have seentwo people on my social feeds
(45:24):
basically saying that the platform wasn't working for them
at the time. So some scepticism, some
negativity begin with, but they are delivering something at a
huge scale. So inevitably you can give them
the benefit of the doubt that they'll sort it, sort it out and
be in a better place after the fact.
But it's clearly commercial relationship with Microsoft.
They're with the NBA, they're with the NFL, They're not just
(45:45):
signing up with with Microsoft purely because they want to
integrate Co pilot into their app platform.
So and they can afford the last move or they are last movies for
a couple of reasons. One, my view is that they could,
they can't ever get it wrong. But yeah, that's the thing.
It's not that Man United, Man City verdicts example I've
(46:05):
shared before is they're on sucha pedestal that they make one
mistake and rips them apart a bit like the example I've said
of people on my feed jumping into it to say that they've had
issues on the platform versus more disruptors.
They can they can basically get up and running earlier and make
some errors along the way and ultimately sort it out as they
(46:27):
go along. So what I don't know what to
expect. I don't know if this is the
finished product, whether this is just the starting point for
them, but it's another great opportunity for Microsoft to get
in front of huge audiences and keep their connectivity and give
them another channel to market one of their other assets.
Previously I remember with the NFL, it was originally around
(46:48):
their Microsoft Surface was a big part of the activation you
saw come to life. With the NBA, it was just, I
can't remember exactly what theywere as a marketing platform for
them. Now with this, I love to see
where it where it goes and if they can really innovate, have a
truly innovative platform. So I'm positive they'll work it
out. If they have some challenges at
the moment, I think that's inevitable with these
(47:09):
organisations. They work it out quickly, but I
always AM sceptical when I see abig tech company partnered in
this, in this environment. I don't think you need to, if
you're the Premier League, need to work with a big tech company
to create the best experience possible for a fan.
Instead, you're doing it becausethere's a commercial reason and
there's nothing wrong with that.I just think it needs to be.
(47:30):
Everyone needs to understand that's why we're here.
Well, I think one of the interesting things, I've heard
this from a couple different people, one of the challenges
this was actually no big secrets.
I'm not naming names or we held a CTO form it our sports AI
event, which again is going to be running September 23rd, 24th
in London. Again, one of the things that
came up in the CTO form, talkingabout the struggles that sit
(47:52):
between the CTO and say the Chief Commercial Officer is the
Chief Commercial Officer trying to get the biggest partnership
available. The CTO is trying to build the
best platform available. And often times the CTO is
basically got his hands tied behind his back because that's
the best commercial deal that comes in.
And they say inevitably, you know, if you build this new
platform with said partner, whathappens in five years when they
(48:13):
don't want to renew? Well, either a, you have to
completely rebuild the platform again with a new tech partner or
you hire a new tech partner and you still have to pay the old
tech partner for the platform they built for you.
So you're kind of, you're kind of screwed either way.
So I, I do find some of these things a little bit interesting
where we talk about sort of synergies within business where
(48:34):
the CTO and the Chief Chief partner Officer, Chief
commercial, where they don't always see eye to eye and where
those two things line up is actually probably trickier than
most people realise. That's a great, it's a really
great point. I think it is one of the biggest
growth areas in the sports industry is this ability to
partner with technology and thenactivate that by making their
(48:55):
technology part of their product.
And what you will normally hear on the negative side is
companies that are start-ups a little bit more developed, but
also even the big one saying this and these are B to B
organisations, right? They're not selling globally.
And a big tech, like the scale of a Microsoft is like we're
getting told we have to pay hugecheques to some of these rights
(49:15):
owners to, for us to provide their services.
How are we supposed to run a business if we have to pay them
when we think they should be paying us for what we're giving
to them? And it becomes that tricky
conundrum. And that's why you do see these
types of announcements, these types of platforms are partnered
with these big tech organisations.
And in fact, the F1 through different particular team side
is by far the the leader in these tech, tech style
(49:40):
partnerships because they are able to bring those things to
life. They're able to create these
stories where the tech company can then go, hey, we did this
for this tech company and they work in thousands of a second,
we can do it for you. And that storytelling is
actually a really powerful salestool for any of these types of
organisations going to market either at a consumer level or
(50:01):
even on AB to B level in some instances.
So, so I'm definitely not knocking these types of
partnerships that the industriesneeded them and it's been a huge
growth area and one of the reasons sponsor revenue has been
growing is because of this relationship.
It just makes it tricky to your point, how the organisation
itself sets itself up so it doesn't get basically screwed at
(50:22):
the other end having to deal with the the aftermath if the
relationship or agreement, sponsorship deal, whatever you
want to call it, goes awry. And that's tricky.
It absolutely is. Well, Nick, that has been an
absolutely jam packed episode with all kinds of different news
stories. You know, we've kind of thrown
out there. If you're a French expert,
please let us know on LinkedIn what we got wrong.
If you're German expert, let us know what we got wrong.
(50:42):
If you know stuff about India, we're trying to learn more about
it. But really great episode, Nick.
Lots of good stuff in there for everybody.
And you know, for those that areAmerican, I hope looking back at
this, you had a lovely 4th of July.
And yeah, the great another, another good time to be with
you, Nick. And absolutely and obviously as
this recording comes out, we're going to be in London together.
(51:02):
We'll be hosting our also our first extreme time connect event
for exclusive for our membershipbase, which I think is worth
giving a shout out. So really excited we're going to
have a full house for that eventand which will be happening in
London at Snaps headquarters, which is a great space for us to
host that. So looking forward to getting
back together in person, Chris, for that one.
And if you're interested in the stream time membership, then get
(51:23):
in touch with us and we can put you give you some more
information. But otherwise, I'll see you in
person next week. And thanks for listening
everyone. Thank you.
All right. Now before you go, if you liked
what you heard today, be sure torate and review and just let me
know what you think on social. You can find me on most social
platforms. A sports pro, Nick.
And please do spread the word ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
whether that be in person or on social media.
(51:46):
If you don't like what you've heard, what you think we should
be doing, more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.