Dan Rayburn has some hard truths about the state of sports streaming

Dan Rayburn is one of the foremost authorities on streaming media technology and digital video business models. He joins StreamTime hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone to discuss how sports media companies are transitioning to the digital age.

Talking points:

• The main business and technical challenges that face the major platforms today
• Is ultra-low latency really that important?
• The impact of big tech on the market
• What to look out for in 2024 from the big media giants
• What does it mean for the fans?
• Can streaming only work as a strategy?
• The stats about sports streaming

Both StreamTime Sports and the SportsPro Podcast have been nominated for Best Sports Business Podcast at the 2024 Sports Podcast Awards. Vote for us here

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the next episode of
Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community lead, joined as always, by our CEO, Nick
Beecham. Now, Nick, we're in the we're in
the middle of December. So, you know, depending on when
this comes out, people might notbe able to tune in this year,
but December is one of my tent pole moments for sports.
And it's not because the NF LS coming into the playoffs.
It's not because the NBA and college basketball is back.

(00:33):
It's not college football playoffs.
It's not the Premier League and all their Boxing Day football.
It's actually because it's the return of the World Darts
Championship. Now Nick, I don't know if you're
a fan of the world's Darts championship, don't know if
you've ever been up to the alleyPally, but I have to say it is
one of the best. Can't miss sporting events of
the calendar year. It's something else, isn't it?
I I've never been up to the event in in the UK.

(00:56):
I mean that it's, it's world renowned, definitely.
It's the big, it's the hottest secret going around.
For one year I did. When I first moved over to the
UK, I had, I think his names, Simon Whitlock.
I had him as my profile picture on Facebook when I moved over to
the UK because he was setting Ali Pali on fire that year,
which is about 2010 I think at the time.

(01:17):
So I did get into it, definitelywatched it a lot on TVI know a
lot of people in the the Sports Pro company are very, very big
on the darts that side of thingsand it's very big in random
markets like I think Holland is.It's really big, right?
Because of a couple of big starsthere.
Yeah. It's amazing how something so
simple can be so engaging from acontent perspective.

(01:37):
But it's hard not to watch and get get pumped when people throw
those one 80s and the big scoresand 9 datas and all those
things. I think some I've seen some
clips from last year that still run around do the loops around
social media even today. Well, I can remember 11 years
ago, and oddly enough, I was in Holland at the time.
A friend that I grew up with in Ohio, whose family was

(01:58):
originally from Newcastle, movedto Hong Kong, then moved to Ohio
and then to Holland. We were going, he's like, we
need to make it home in 10 minutes, the darts.
So I was like, hell, are you talking about?
He's like, we're going to watch the darts.
And I was like, I don't think so.
I watched her for like 5 minutesand I was hooked.
Like the next day I was like, isthe darts back on?
Yep, it's on every single day inDecember.
Like honestly, in terms of just like the crowd, the atmosphere,

(02:19):
like it seems so odd, but at thesame time it's just it's great.
TVI absolutely love it. So if this comes out after the
finals are out, I'll try to do areminder in 11 months time when
it comes up. But everybody should watch the
World Darts Championship at least one time.
They definitely should. And it's one of those sports
where you feel like it should beso easy to be able to do it
yourself. And then you go to a pub or get

(02:40):
a dartboard and I barely hit theboard, let alone ever score a
double or a triple or anything like that.
So yeah, it's very humbling, butI have a great experience.
I I definitely have to make it one time.
It's on my bucket list. One of my friends went in a
Sonic the Hedgehog outfit a couple of years ago which was
quite a look. Sort of sets, the sets, the
scene for what we what's in store if you go to go to it.

(03:02):
But no definitely on the bucket list.
So I went last year, but I was in hospitality, so it was a
little bougie. So they had a dress code.
So you weren't allowed to get infancy dress, but I did have
table service. Got to sit next to Lewis
Capaldi, famous Scottish singer.So it was a it was a great
experience. So yeah, everyone does need to
go watch it. Nick, do you have a favorite
niche sport akin to darts that you know you you have to tune

(03:25):
into? Well, I think this is where it
gets in tricky right? What's the what's the definition
of niche right. So you know, in the Uki was
playing volleyball at a decent level.
That's pretty niche in in the UK, but it globally it's not a
niche, niche sport. Currently I am playing obsessed
with playing chess online on my phone, so that's not niche

(03:47):
because it's pretty mainstream in many instances, but it's a
bit niche. So yeah, if anyone wants to
challenge me to a chess match and wants to play someone who's
really average, I'm, I'm up for it.
But I only play quick games so Ican't be bothered staring at my
phone for too long. And I've got two kids to deal
with, but that's probably about as niche as it gets for me.
Fair play. Well, on today's episode we're
joined by a special guest and we're joined by Dan Rayburn.

(04:08):
Now, Dan, I kind of went to yourLinkedIn to try to figure out
what would be the appropriate job title or to describe your
background and who you were. But I do think, you know, we
talked a little bit about many people like to claim that they
know you, but maybe perhaps for those that don't, you know, know
you or don't come across you on LinkedIn, would you mind just
giving our, our audience a little bit of a background on
yourself? Yeah, sure.

(04:29):
Appreciate you guys having me. I mean, I'm already learning so
much world dart champions. Like I had no idea you're
dressing up. This sounds like a combination
of Halloween drinking at the puband throwing sharp metal objects
at people. I mean, you got it.
How could you not like that, right?
This is, this is a good time. Yeah.
I wear a lot of hats in the industry and I have over the
last 25 plus years a lot of people just really call me an an

(04:52):
analyst in the space and and I do a lot of the traditional
analyst work. I do a lot of work on CNBC and
live TV talking about everythingin the streaming ecosystem.
I'm the conference chairman for the Streaming Summit at DNEB
show every April in Vegas. I do a lot of writing because of
my blog. I have my own podcast.
The vast majority of what I do though I is free.

(05:13):
Any company can call me anytime.I I put my cell phone number up
on my blog and on LinkedIn for. I've done that 20 years.
So the way I condense what I do from a high level is it's my job
as I see it to inform, educate and empower others and might be
other members of the media. I do hundreds of media
interviews a year. Vendors, content owners,

(05:34):
broadcasters, sports leagues, Congress and Senate have asked
me to testify during the net neutrality debate.
So my job is really just to giveout information.
That's that's the vast majority of what I do, and almost
everything I give out is, is free to the industry.
The industry's taken really goodcare of me over the last 25 plus
years, and I don't do this for apaycheck.

(05:56):
I want to help the industry grow.
If I help the industry grow, it helps all of us in the long run.
I would just add Chris, you knowfor those if they're not across
Dan's work, you have to follow him on LinkedIn or I think
Linkedin's your core social media platform.
Dan, if I'm not mistaken, but just go to his, his blogs and
stuff which we can we can mention later on in here
perhaps. But Dan is an absolute master of

(06:20):
this space and if you want to understand the streaming world
better than, better than, betterthan definitely we do definitely
follow every, every word Dan covers across his channels
because it's it's it's best in class in this space.
Obviously we spend more time focusing on sports specifically
and Dan is across the wider areas of tech and that's really
why we're excited to have him onto, to talk about what's going

(06:41):
on in a lot of different cornersperhaps we don't either dig
enough into or don't know enoughto dig into.
So yeah, I think I hope that just sets the scene a little
bit. Absolutely.
Well, one of the things we do want to talk about is
particularly around the streaming space and a little bit
more around the tech side. You know, Nick and I spend quite
a bit of time speaking around the latest deals trends we think

(07:02):
we're happening from monetization models, but one of
the things we want to talk about, giving your expertise,
there's a little bit more about the actual streaming itself.
I think one of the things that gets brought up is everyone gets
caught up in the numbers becausethey're flashy, they're sexy.
But actually streaming is a lot more difficult than than people
make it out to be. You know, we've seen examples in
Europe. You know, The Zone had some
struggles with what they were doing with Syria.

(07:23):
We looked a little bit of what Amazon Prime was doing last year
with the official launch of their deal with the NFL.
And even though there's some really big companies you know,
involved with this, you know, streaming is still really
difficulty. You know, it's not quite there
yet. So you know, I guess from the
first space kind of jump into, you know, you sent over some
great notes and statistics beforehand.
You know, we're looking at these, you know, multi billion

(07:43):
trillion dollar companies that are still struggling to stream.
You know, so for you what, what do you see as perhaps maybe you
know some of the the challenges that you would identify when
within the streaming space that are quite common?
Sure. It's a good question.
You know, we should definitely talk statistics at some time
because we're working off of wrong data basically.
But the biggest problem we have here from the technical side is

(08:06):
as an industry we go around and and many people have been saying
for the last 20 years that this is going to replace broadcast
TV. And what many in the industry
don't realize or don't want to acknowledge is it's two
completely different types of distribution platforms.
When you turn on your TV, let's say here in the US, and you want
to watch an NFL game and you're watching it via your cable TV

(08:28):
operator, whether you're you have Verizon or you have Charter
or you have Comcast, the qualityyou're getting of that NFL game
is exactly the same. That is not the case when you're
doing streaming. It's a completely different
technology. It has a different ecosystem, a
different video stack. It has latency built into it for
a reason. You're delivering it to many

(08:49):
different devices. So there are so many end user
differences in terms of what your setup is, what your device
is, what version of the app you have, how video is being handled
inside the last mile. Streaming will never replace
broadcast TV from a reliability and a quality standpoint, and
people love to argue that debate.

(09:11):
But when was the last time you watched any sports game, whether
it's over there, you're watchingsomething on Sky, when was the
last time you had a problem withit freezing, buffering, not
working on your TV through a cable operator?
You haven't. And that's just the nature of
what this technology is. So has it gotten better?
Absolutely. You use the word struggling.

(09:33):
I I don't know that it'd say companies are struggling,
depends how you define that word.
But companies are always lookingto provide the best Qoe quality
of experience for all of us, theviewer expectations are
extremely high. But as an industry, we are also
neglecting facts and we are talking many times, a lot of of
individual opinions as opposed to actually focusing on what's

(09:55):
taking place. And part of that problem is
there's so little data in the market, very few companies will
actually do any sort of methodology.
Nielsen puts out figures for NFL, Thursday Night Football and
Amazon, but they won't define what quote viewer means.
What is that? I don't know.
They don't say. They won't answer it.
So we're also working with data here on this side of the

(10:16):
industry where there's no standard.
And yet when we go to broadcast TV, we have a standard pretty
much everything, not just from atechnology platform, but from a
measurement platform. So many don't know.
The 2023 marks the third decade of streaming media technology,
first being on the Internet dialup only.
So it is 30 years old. The industry is probably 25

(10:38):
years old. It's not new.
I also hear people say all the time it's new streaming
technology. It's not new.
It's not cutting edge. It's not revolutionary.
It's fun, it's exciting, but it's just a completely different
distribution platform. Dan, the I've heard you talk
about the Nielsen numbers and I think everyone talks about the
Nielsen numbers in different ways and what they are sharing

(11:00):
in the market. They are still considered the
the whole, the Holy Grail is a bit of dramatic the the, the key
provider of insight around consumption on on broadcasting
and and content. Why is it that we have this
challenge around all the around getting a uniformity on how we
look at data and performance through streaming and indeed

(11:22):
broadcast media? Why is it that that the big guys
are still leaning on a Nielsen to continue to be the core
destination or core provider of those insights given what most
of us see is there's lots of gaping holes in that information
we're getting through from them.What?
Why is it that they are still the the key source?
Because advertisers aren't complaining.

(11:43):
Because advertisers are going with the numbers and because
these companies are doing what'sbest for their bottom line and
what works best for them for selling advertising the way they
want to sell it, giving back to metrics they need to do so.
One of the things we get wrong in our industry as an industry
is everyone talks about, well, there should be 1 streaming
service that provides every piece of content you ever want,

(12:03):
right? Aggregation, as we call it, and
bundling and all these other things.
And the reason companies aren't doing that is that's not what's
best for the bottom line. These are not nonprofits, right?
They are trying to maximize shareholder value.
So people don't want to share information.
Companies don't want to come up with a standard bit rate
protocol, aspect ratio, player, what is HD, what isn't On

(12:24):
broadcast TV, we know what HD is.
It's a definition. In streaming, we have no idea
because everyone defines it differently.
So we have a few things coming on the streaming side with with
protocols where some have standardized.
But when it comes to the data, this is all about advertisers.
And if advertisers feel that they're getting enough

(12:46):
information and they continue tobuy advertising, why are these
companies going to drill down into it?
They're really not going to and that's why we get such little
information. And I talk to a lot of
advertisers, ones that are advertising across a lot of
these platforms for sports and it's incredible how little
insight they have and yet they keep spending money.

(13:07):
That's just the reality of it. Something I want to ask a little
bit from the the data side, but going back to the quality of
experience you were talking about.
One of the things that's interesting I think I've seen
you do for a few years now is you do this test around the
Super Bowl where you will watch the Super Bowl on multiple
different platforms, multiple different devices.
And you kind of go and you give you a breakdown of sort of what

(13:27):
the differences are in experience.
And you know, maybe for, you know, people listening, just
give a bit of an idea of what that experiment is.
Because I think it's easy for usto kind of talk about quality of
experience where it's at. Whereas when you can break down,
you know, this experiment that you've been running, this
observation you've been running sort of how that all sort of
breaks down once you look at allthe different platforms, all the
different services. Sure.

(13:48):
So one of the things I think that's lacking and missing in
this industry is we have a lot of people writing about the
space who don't get hands on with these products and
services. They don't have a background in
technology. They have never worked at a
content delivery network. Many of them can't tell you what
RTSP stands for and that's OK that you haven't had hands on
experience. But if you don't understand the
definition, the methodology and how all this works together in

(14:09):
the video stack, that's a problem.
So I think staying hands on withtechnology is very important.
I got started in the space from starting one of the first live
streaming production companies back in the days.
And even though I got out of that business, you know, a long
time ago, I still think it's important to be hands on.
So I think it was about 10 yearsago, the Super Bowl in our

(14:31):
industry back then was considered like the big event.
It was the one that everybody was watching media wanted to see
what would happen. At the time it was it was
probably the largest event viewership wise streaming that
we had in the industry collectively.
So at home I have a a pretty good set up when I need to

(14:51):
anywhere between call it 20 to 30 devices, 10 different TV's,
different manufacturers, every streaming box you can think of.
Naturally, I'm. I'm in the US, I'm testing
things here. And about 10 years ago, I just
started live blogging during theSuper Bowl.
OK, here's what I'm testing and what device with what version.
Here's my Internet connection, 2ISPs in my home.

(15:12):
Here's what I'm actually seeing as far as what is the bit rate
or the encoding ladders and whatis the latency and how's this
being delivered and who's actually delivering it.
So then I was also looking at who are the CDNS?
How were they set up? And the industry really kind of
picked up on that. So I've been doing that every
year. But what a lot of listeners
don't know is on the back end, alot of these companies during
these live events, I'm working directly with them for free.

(15:36):
And what they're doing is they are watching my streams, I'm
dumping them, Charles logs and what's taking place during the
event. So they can actually see,
because the last thing they wantme to do is blog that I'm having
an issue. They don't want to see that.
So some of the companies are really good a couple weeks
before I reach out and say, hey,during this event, what's the
best way for us to communicate with you?
Is it just via chat? Is it e-mail?

(15:58):
If you see an issue, we want to know what it is.
We want to be able to correct it.
So I appreciate that you know, they they want to improve upon
the experience. At the same time they they don't
want to get some bad coverage, which I think is a is a good
reason for them to do it as well.
But what I'm always looking at is what is the average user
experience, not just for me, forothers.

(16:20):
So around the country I'm also sourcing information from
friends and others who are also sending me information.
They're sending me screenshots. They're doing video videos on
their phones or what they're seeing.
I'm getting Charles logs from others also during the events.
I'm talking to a lot of ISPs in the US and they're telling me
what they're seeing on the last mile right inside their network
a couple years ago with one of the events.

(16:42):
You know, there's a big problem in the Northeast where I was the
company doing the Super Bowl reached out real quickly and
said, hey, by the way, we know you're in Verizon.
There's appearing problem with Verizon right now that's
affecting some streams. We're routing around that,
right? They wanted to make sure I knew.
Now when I'm talking to Verizon,you know, they didn't really
want to come out and say that. But once they knew I knew what
was going on, I was like OK, here's the problem we're having.

(17:03):
So I get a lot of background information from these
companies, 99% of it I can nevertalk to or blog about.
I also get a lot of information from CDNS.
What are they actually seeing onthe network?
What's the average bit rate? How are you doing multi CDN
deployments round Robin And thenalso I have been hired as a
consultant on some live events including the Super Bowl

(17:25):
previously or the broadcast network will bring me in and say
six months before Dan look at our video stack where do we have
single points of failure. So there's been Super Bowls
where I'm logged into dashboard seeing real time traffic across
CD NS viewership. Now I can't report on any of
that, I can't talk about any of that publicly, but it gives me
background information of what'sreally taking place.

(17:45):
So I've continued to do that forthe Super Bowl.
I'll be honest, I I wasn't goingto do this previous year because
the Super Bowl's just not that big a deal anymore.
It was 7 million AMA average minute audience.
This year. That's not, it's not even in the
top 15 largest events. And yet the amount of people who
reached out beforehand was like,are you doing the Super Bowl

(18:05):
tomorrow? And I was like, oh man, I guess
I now have to work on Sunday andset it all up.
You know it's it's a lot set up 20 devices and make sure
everything's updated and then documented.
And but I'll continue to do it as long as the industry finds it
beneficial. You know Chris, to your point
the experience was different depending on the device,

(18:26):
depending on what you were viewing, whether it was Ethernet
or Wi-Fi, whether it was 4G or 5G because I'm testing wireless
and mobile as well and difference between wireless and
and connected to the network, the Ethernet.
So there's a lot of variations. It's gotten a lot better though.
The the Super Bowl and a lot of these large scale live events
just quality wise have gotten much, much better.

(18:47):
And when we do see a lot of problems, many times it's not
the last mile or the CDNS, the application itself.
It's the app crashes, doesn't open, can't find something
that's a problem before you evenget to the video.
Dan, you've talked a lot about CDNS in that last mile.
I'd love you to talk to explain that a little bit, just what

(19:07):
that would mean to those who don't understand what ACDN is
and how it works in the deliveryof streaming, just to give
people a sense of for those thataren't aware of it, what you're
what you're referring to there. Sure.
So CDN is a content delivery network.
The vast majority of all video delivered over the Internet
today in most regions of the world is delivered by a third

(19:29):
party company. So companies like Akamai,
Fastly, Edgio, Amazon with theirproduct called Cloudfront.
They're basically renting their infrastructure, which is
deployed all over the world, different regions depending on
on the content delivery networksapproach to the market and live
events like the Super Bowl, 100%of that traffic is going through

(19:52):
that infrastructure. This is the way the industry has
been delivering video since since day one.
Now there are a handful of companies, Netflix included, who
deliver their own video through their own infrastructure.
Netflix has been doing this through a platform they call
Open Connect. Apple delivers the vast majority
of their content through their own platform as well.
So there are some companies thatare a certain size and scale who

(20:17):
have taken control of that and do that themselves.
But every single Super Bowl you've ever seen, including the
one upcoming 100% of that is going through infrastructure of
content delivery networks. And those content delivery
networks then connect their network, their servers with IS
PS Internet service providers who are delivering that traffic

(20:38):
to the last mile. And there's different ways to
connect them. You can actually place your
servers inside the IS PS network, you can connect via
peering. So a third party company that
connects the two, you can do different types of deals where
it connects the networks directly and what's called an
interconnect deal, That's a dealthat Netflix and Comcast 10

(20:59):
years ago publicly announced. And and the whole reason of
doing this is if you get contentcloser to the end user inside
the last mile, theoretically youshould deliver a better quality
experience. You should see left less
buffering, you should see betterstart up times, you should see
higher Max bit rates. That's the whole goal of a CDN.

(21:21):
Now that doesn't always work because the live workflow is so
complex that there's a lot of additional things you have to do
in terms of setting up that workflow to make sure that that
works well. But the other thing that's
completely out of control here of an NBCCBSA, Fox, whoever is,
for instance, the Super Bowl is they don't own the last mile.

(21:44):
So they can get that video to your ISP, Comcast, Sky, whoever
it may be. But then it's it's up to that
Internet service provider to getit into your home.
And they optimize traffic differently.
They route traffic differently. So these companies content
delivery networks are always working with ISPs to try and

(22:05):
figure out the best way to deliver traffic economically but
still with good quality inside their networks to you and I as
consumers. Sort of another follow up to
that to that question Dan and that was a great sort of way to
articulate it is one of the other questions I hear a lot
about people understanding how streaming platforms work.
Is the differences in that pressure on the CDM between an

(22:27):
on demand offering and a live streaming offering.
Can you just sort of talk through what, what is the main
differences there and why it it is so difficult for live versus
the on demand platforms? Sure.
So the first thing with live is you've got one chance, one
chance only to get it right. It's it's truly live.
Now. There's going to be a delay by
the time it comes on the Internet.

(22:49):
Most content for live events is anywhere between 5 seconds to 60
seconds in terms of a latency. We do have in the industry low
latency and what's called ultra low latency, which is not what
most companies are doing for live events.
There's no business reason in doing that.
But the complexity here is that unlike a video on demand file
that's just sitting on a server,a live stream has to be ingested

(23:12):
into the network. You have to pull that video from
somewhere. Traditionally it's coming off of
a bird satellite in the sky. You're down linking it.
You also might be on site at a sports event where you're doing
the encoding right there. You're sending it either through
the Internet or through Vivex, Adedicated fiber connection back
to potentially broadcast operation center, what we call
Bach. But the complexity in the

(23:34):
workflow, you have to do everything in almost real time.
You have to do content protection, you have to do
packaging, you have to wrap the file, you have to distribute it,
you might have to include metadata information and you
also have to encode it in a lot more bit rates because you're
also talking about delivering this to devices that you know
maybe can't handle certain bit rates, you know.

(23:56):
Good example is there's a lot ofolder Roku devices out there.
So you have to think about also just when it comes to live, in
particular, what is the population of devices you want
to support and where is the cut off.
Also with live, when there is a problem, the media takes note
and it's it's bad publicity for companies you know they want to

(24:18):
get it right, so they spend a lot of time and effort on the
live side. But make no mistake, live is
still complex today. It is.
It is much easier to do than we were doing 25 years ago when it
truly was an art. You know, today you can
broadcast live from your phone anybody for free too, which is

(24:40):
pretty incredible. But a live event, you have to
create the content and then fromthere you have to ingest it,
trans code it, you have to manage it, protect it, monetize
it in particular is complicated.Inserting ads into a live stream
very difficult. Sometimes we burn the ads in as
an industry just so you don't have problems with triggering.
You also with live have to in real time be looking at quality

(25:03):
of experience, because when there is a problem somewhere in
the Internet you need to route around that.
You have to work with multiple CDNS and for live events too.
The majority of companies use what's called the multi CDN
strategy, so they're using anywhere between 2:00 to 6:00
different CDNS in real time. Well, now you have to manage
traffic going to six different companies, which has to select

(25:24):
how the traffic goes to which company.
Sometimes it's based on device, sometimes it's based on region.
The workflow for live is still extremely complex and again,
because we have no standards in this industry, it's not gonna
get any easier. We have, we have a lot of
devices, different versions of TV's.
You also have rights issues. You have to put in content

(25:44):
protection so that this content cannot be seen in certain
regions of the world. You know, for World Darts,
Champions Championship, I don't think they probably care where
it goes, maybe they do, I don't know.
But things like the NFL and and Premier League and whatnot, you
know, it's very specific in terms of rights regionally.
So you have to factor that in aswell.

(26:06):
So it's just a very complex video workflow.
Before I switch up topics a little bit, just because you
were mentioning low latency, ultra low latency, it's
something that we've, you know, had some mock debates on how
important is latency. In your opinion it's something
that you know some of the peoplewe work with, you know is
vendors would say you know it's the be all end all and that

(26:26):
latency has to be as low as possible.
But we've potentially argued that the fan would prefer more
latency for higher quality. You know, just sort of where
that debate is, how important latency is before I switch
topics, You know what? What's your opinion on that?
It's a great question. Here's the thing.
Let's separate facts from opinions, which so few people in
this industry want to do. When you have the CTO of a Fox

(26:50):
ACBS in NBC Sports, the NBA publicly saying the reason we're
not doing ultra latency or say astream under 10 seconds is
there's no business value. Do I get better engagement?
No. Do I deliver more ads?
No. Do people stay on for longer
periods of time? No.
Does somebody go to watch the Super Bowl and go, you know

(27:10):
what, this stream is 10 seconds behind.
The hell with you. I'm not starting the stream.
No. So what is the business value?
There isn't one. So why would I do it?
Just because vendor say they can.
Also what many don't realize is doing ultra latency in
particular at scale it's not easy.
And you know what the CD NS havepublicly come out who deliver
this traffic and say this is hard to do in the scale that you

(27:33):
want. So it's hard to do at scale.
It's much more expensive For oneof the Super Bowls, I won't say
which one they were looking at doing.
It was an additional $1,000,000 cost and there's no benefit to
their business. So why would I do it?
I wouldn't. Now the argument everyone's
wants to use in the industry is yeah, but you need it for

(27:54):
betting. There is no in stream betting
taking place today. None.
Zero. Stop saying it's for betting.
You cannot bet inside Peacock right?
Or inside YouTube TV. You can't.
So vendors love to pitch it. But what vendors are missing out
on is the best technology is notwhat's adopted.

(28:15):
What's adopted is what provides business value, what is easy to
deploy, easy to use. And the moment you're talking
about integrating technologies that cultural low latency,
there's also a higher chance of failure, which is the last thing
that these companies want to see.
Also some devices depending on what they are right, that may
not be the best way to deliver the content.
Chris, you also pointed out, well there's a trade off

(28:36):
sometimes in terms of start up time or buffering time.
These are all factors that thesecompanies are taking into
account. And there's always a trade off
between cost and quality every single time.
So this is about business value.It has to provide a value to the
business. And yet to your point, after
every Super Bowl, a bunch of people in our industry come out
and they're like, well, this whoever, whoever did the Super

(28:59):
Bowl failed because it wasn't ultra latency and they're
missing out. They're missing out on what?
The other thing I always hear aswell the the other argument
besides betting is, you know, it's always a shame because you
know, you hear the person who lives next to you, the goal
scored 10 seconds before you hear it.
Where are these people living that they hear their neighbors?
That's the other thing I'm always want.

(29:19):
Everyone uses that excuse everywhere, right?
Oh, my neighbor always hears it.Like, where are you living that
you hear your neighbors TVI meanmaybe in an apartment or what
not, but that's not the vast majority of people.
It's just not real world. So I always try and strip my
opinion from the answer and factually we've had every single

(29:39):
broadcast network, sports leagues come out and say it
doesn't contribute to our business in a profitable,
positive way. That's why they don't do it.
Well, I mean Chris that's pretty, pretty definitive angle
there. But I would just, I would just
add I think one thing though, Dan, you covered on the betting
side, which I think is an important bit, right.
We've seen others come and go onon that.
We've seen Dezone talk about thefact that it's a marginal

(30:00):
engagement value at the moment, nothing more than that in terms
of adding streaming a betting into the streaming experience.
But I I think that the the notion around the the betting
side is more to do with just in play betting becoming such a a
big area of betting itself. So there's the I have seen the
percentages a while ago which I can't remember off the top of my
head but in play betting just generally so someone having you

(30:21):
know DraftKings on their phone or watching a live stream and
that yeah dual screening and andthe ability just to bet on their
phone whilst they're watching that and that's mainly their
thing they're referring to. But I I still believe that you
know the relative to percentagesyou can ask people about who is
actually betting in live is in is is normally in single figures
or anyway it's up up to 20% is best case.

(30:44):
It's normally 10 or low below that.
So. So I get that for DraftKings,
right? That makes sense.
But here's the thing, if you're Peacock and you're doing the
Super Bowl, do you care that people are able to bet on
DraftKings? You're not making any money from
that. So why am I enabling my platform
so another company can take betsand make money off of it?
Like, how's again, where's the business benefit to that company

(31:05):
doing the Super Bowl? There isn't one.
Now Do I think at some point we get to a place where betting
where some companies are gonna do ultra latency because
something is built into the app?I I think we do get there.
But you know you you mentioned his own, let's mention fubo.
Fubo was working on a whole betting thing and then they
closed it down. They said this just isn't there

(31:27):
isn't enough value here anytime soon to where we think this is a
business benefit for us. And they were actually working
on their own ultra latency technology.
They actually talked about it, announced they were going to
have to create. They actually came out and said
we're going to have to create new technology.
It doesn't exist today just to do this and provide the user
experience we need for betting and then they they shut the
whole thing down. So I I do think on the dual

(31:49):
screen side I I see the value there, but again there has to be
a value to the business that's doing it.
Well, the only one I could thinkit could probably possibly
really try and and take that on would be ESPN, since they're now
all in with that pen, that pen deal on ESPN, correct.
That's probably the only examplewhich makes does make sense if
it's on a single device or on dual screen, but.

(32:11):
It would. The only problem there is we
don't know what's going on with ESPN or ESPN.
Plus, yeah. And we will talk about that
later on. But just trying to slightly move
a different transition. We've talked a little bit about
streaming. We're referring to the likes of
Amazon, Apple, Google, with YouTube.
You know, we've talked about some of the tech issues, the
reasons why it's difficult for them to perform at the same way

(32:32):
traditional broadcaster does. But just from a business lens,
some of the things you are seeing with some of the deals
that are taking place, you know we mentioned Amazon with
Thursday Night Football. They also had this year's first
Black Friday game, which be curious to get your thoughts
about how well you think that actually performed or what sort
of impact that that had beyond just you know sort of your
traditional broadcast. But also just kind of what
you're seeing from, you know, things like the the YouTube

(32:55):
Sunday take a deal or potentially some of the rumors
you're hearing about the MLS expanding beyond what they've
done with the MLS. You know, maybe perhaps we just
start with the Amazon approach, what you're seeing perhaps from
the Black Friday football game in particular.
Sure. So I I monitored that game quite
a bit across a lot of different devices.
What we don't really have is anyinformation to know or judge

(33:18):
success or failure. And we also don't know how
Amazon is using that game for determining what's going to
happen in the future. So the way I look at that game,
the traffic was not large. I don't know why anyone would
expect it to be. It's the day after Thanksgiving.
It's during the day. It was not major market teams.

(33:39):
The rumour is they paid $100 million for that single game.
That was not confirmed. Everyone in the media uses that
number, but we don't know that'strue.
What Amazon really used that forwas a test to see what are
consumers willing to adopt from an advertising standpoint during
a live stream. Because during the stream you
had QR codes on the screen that you could scan.

(34:02):
It was like, OK, we're now dropping a Nintendo special on
Amazon on the Fire TV Stick. You could press the centre
button and it would actually send an e-mail to you.
Here's the product you were moreinterested in or it would send
it to the the Amazon app on yourphone.
Amazon gave out no information in terms of how many ads were
delivered. They did obviously talk about
some of the partners they were working with.

(34:23):
We don't know how many people bought products and services
from it. I had some very interesting
conversations with Amazon off the record just in terms of all
of this and and what I the one thing I can say is they're
collecting a lot of information during that game in terms of
what does it look like of how consumers want to interact with
ads during a live stream. And I love the fact that they

(34:46):
did it real world. This wasn't theory.
This wasn't put it in a lab. It was OK, let's take a game and
and let's actually collect all this data and they had a lot of
third party companies they were working with to collect the way
fans interacted. Well it's, I'll leave it at
that. But it was very interesting how
they set this up and and I thinkthey did it the right way and
also they did come out and say that we want this to be the new

(35:10):
norm going forward and we know it's going to take time.
You know they they want to thinkof fans to think of Black Friday
NFL shopping at the same time and they started tying a little
bit of merchandising, right. They made that announcement
about a month before with with the teams that were in here's
what you could do. So I think it's very smart of
them. Now how do they judge success

(35:31):
with that? That's what we don't know.
Let's say they sold $50 million worth of advertising because
they were also selling ads during that game and the ads
were more expensive than previous games and maybe they
sold some merchandise. I'm sure they did.
So did they make their money back?
We don't know. But that that wasn't really the
point of it. The point of it was just really
as a a real world test to see what consumers were willing to

(35:54):
do. I I wish we had some data on it,
but Amazon's one of those companies like Apple and others,
it's just they don't give out a lot of information.
That's just that's just the reality of it.
So I I liked, I like the experience.
I didn't see any major issues with the stream myself, which
was good. Amazon I think does need to do a

(36:15):
lot better job with Thursday Night Football.
I did quite a lot of reviews with season one, and even this
year there were, there were definitely some games I reviewed
where I'm watching Twitter and you've got 30 to 40 negative
comment comments coming in on Twitter every minute throughout
the entire game, right? You're talking thousands of

(36:36):
people who are complaining now. Is it all Amazon's fault?
No. Some of it's probably the user
on the terms of their setup. But the the big problem we have
in our industry is when these stats come out of here's how
many viewers or average minute audience or simultaneous
streams, No one ever says what percentage of those streams were
different, delivered successfully.

(36:56):
So I always say, would you rather have 5 million viewers
where half of them had a poor quality experience or would you
rather have 4 million viewers where everyone got the stream
perfectly. So in our industry, it's always
quantity over quality and I think that's backwards.
But again, you have to remember their business, it's around in
many cases ads. So ads is all about what

(37:18):
economics of scale that's the currency.
So we have to do better on that side as far as Apple goes Major
League Soccer and then you'll also you have the Friday Night
Baseball. Interesting that we finally got
a number on Major League Soccer.We didn't get it really.
I don't think we were supposed to get it right because it was
given out by Apple MLS when theywere at the the conference and

(37:43):
they were speaking on stage. But you know we we did hear that
was over a million. What we didn't get was, was it a
million paying Subs? Because some of those Subs get
it for free with season tickets.So again, like, right away the
media ran with, oh, they have a million paying Subs.
And that's not what Apple said. You got to read very carefully,
right, what they were quoted as saying.
But it did give us an indication, which it was good

(38:04):
because I'd seen previous members of the media estimating
that they had between 5:00 and 7:00 million.
OK, well, you're off by a big number.
The MLS games and the and the Friday night baseball games, I I
think quality wise are very good.
I think the production value is very good.
I think the announcers forget about it.
It's a whole different discussion.
They're horrible. They don't know anything about

(38:25):
baseball and that's the number one complaint that you see on
social media. But I think the production value
is, is very good. What what I'm interested to see
is, do they really go after the Formula One deal?
That would be really interestingto me because I think the Apple
brand and the Formula One brand aligned really well in many
different ways. Let's move on to YouTube TV with

(38:48):
NFL Sunday Ticket. Look, I got to give credit where
it's due, right? I'm, I'm very clear to say
company AB, you had some problems.
Here it is. But you got to give credit to
YouTube, you really do, because the amount of work they had to
do leading up to the first year of NFL Sunday Ticket and the
amount of changes that they weremaking to the technology stack,

(39:10):
some of which they talked to using the YouTube infrastructure
to deliver this. So they delivered 100% of the
video themselves. They did not use third party
content delivery networks and they rolled out technology that
wasn't yet proven at scale like Multi View.
They'd only tested it here and there.
That was the largest test I've ever done of a new streaming

(39:32):
service in the market in probably 10 years.
From the amount of time I was prepping for that was was a lot
across every devices. I was collecting a ton of
information from IS PS in the USand friends all over all over
the US. And I was shocked at just how
well they did as far as providing a good user experience

(39:53):
with a high bit rate without anymajor technical problems
whatsoever. So you have to give them credit
for that. Now the number one complaint
they're taking if you look at Reddit and all these other
places is the multi view is great, but I can't select my
games. Fans are just going nuts over
that. Well understood.
But YouTube also told you from day one you were not going to be
able to select the games, you could only pick from pre

(40:15):
selected. And the reason is they're
running that on the server, they're not running that on the
device of the client, they're running that multi view
technology in the cloud. So over time, what YouTube has
said is they do expect. Fans to be able to pick certain
games. They haven't said when but I I I
got to give YouTube just TV teamjust so much credit because

(40:36):
pulling that off is not easy you're also it.
It's one thing when the Super Bowl maybe has some technical
issues. You didn't pay for the Super
Bowl it's free. Maybe some years you have to
authenticate, some years maybe it's on like Peacock where you
have to pay. But YouTube TV is the most NFL
Sunday tickets, the most expensive package in the US for

(40:57):
any streaming service ever. So you're taking fans money.
It really needs to work even more so.
And I think the experience has been really good.
They did have a hiccup. I think it was week six or seven
in. I forget exactly, but that's to
be expected first year and I expect that experience to just

(41:20):
really get a lot better going forward.
But you got to give them a lot of credit.
They did an amazing job. What we don't know viewership,
we don't know how many Subs theyhave.
We don't know average viewing times, we don't know average bit
rate. We don't know the device most
are watching it on. I would assume TV.
We don't have any of those statsand we don't even know how many

(41:42):
subscribers paying subscribers there are to YouTube TV and
Google doesn't put that out. Last number we got, I forget
when it was, but it was there was over 5 million users, but
they didn't say paying users. Some of that includes free Subs.
And at any given time, I know that there can be up to 25% of
the total number of Subs they have in a trial mode.
So what was the actual number? We don't know.

(42:04):
How many new signups did NFL Sunday Ticket create for YouTube
TV? We don't know that either.
I do think over time they're going to have to give out some
numbers to Wall Street, but you know, Google's another one that
doesn't. YouTube in particular, they
don't really give out much in the way of of data.
So Dan, I'm I'm curious with with all your coverage and work

(42:26):
across the the media landscape, most of it centres around the US
market in particular. To a degree.
Yeah. How how much does the US market
pay attention to what is happening generally outside of
the US? Or is it really its own
ecosystem and therefore it is really focused on what's going
on domestically? Yeah, that's a great question.

(42:48):
I wouldn't say they're not paying attention to what's going
on outside the US but you do have to think about regionally.
It is a different experience. So you're the NFL, you're
delivering, you know, an averagebit rate of somewhere around six
to seven megs per second, megabits per second.
When you look at the cricket stuff that Gio is doing with

(43:09):
Viacom 18, your average bit ratethere is a Meg or less.
So it's great to need 59,000,000simultaneous viewers, but is
that a fair comparison to someone who's doing 10 million
out of seven megs bit rate? No, it's different.
Also, a lot of the cricket stuffwas on mobile, so you do have to
look at what's going on outside the US because regionally fans

(43:31):
want a different type of experience depending on the
content and depending on the culture.
Culture is big. You know, I I think people in
the US just are many times just self-centered on what's going on
here. They don't necessarily know
what's going on outside the US. They don't know a lot of
cultures, a lot of people don't travel.
It's incredible how many don't travel to other regions of the
world. And, you know, cultures are

(43:52):
different. You go over to Europe and you go
to just any one of those games. When it comes to football, my
God, I mean, that is part of theculture.
They grew up with this. It's ingrained in them.
The economy comes to a halt during, you know, during the
World Cup, just about. You don't see that here in the

(44:13):
US so you you do have to pay attention.
I think of course the many of the global sports leagues think
NFL, right? They're now doing more Games in
London. They're trying to get more of an
international audience. Baseball has an audience, of
course, in Japan because of someof those players coming here to
the US But it's also different types of content.
You know, the ones that I would love to know and we never get,

(44:37):
maybe once in five years somebody puts it out is what's
the average viewing time of these sports.
That would be amazing to compare.
Now Gio did put out for one of the cricket games.
It was I think the semi finals. I'd have to look it up that the
average viewing time was just about two hours.

(44:58):
It was interesting. We hadn't seen average viewing
time before. Almost no broadcaster, sports
league or OTT platform ever tells us.
So you ask a good question, Nick.
I I think it depends on who the sports league is, who the
broadcaster is. I would say the OTT platforms,
absolutely, because think of howmany of them are going

(45:19):
international. You know, Max is going into
Latin in 2024. Well, Latin America is a
different culture. You need different types of
content, local content, different languages.
How do they pay for it? A lot of people in Latin America
don't have credit cards. So the companies that are going
global, yes, they they are and have been looking at it.

(45:39):
You know, the ones that are a bit more regional probably stay
regional. So we we've talked a little bit
about the streaming platforms, but maybe now talking about you
talked about the two, we startedoff the whole episode talking
about how they're two different business models entirely.
When you when you start thinkingabout the streaming side and
whether or not it's a viable strategy.
You know one of the interesting things and we mentioned our

(46:01):
notes beforehand is you know ESPN has come out and been
pretty clear about their intentions of you know, setting
up AD to C side of ESPN Plus by 2025.
And on the flip side, Fox Sports, you know probably one of
the top competitors ESPN has is not as bullish on going to a AD
to C approach. So you know when we're looking
at sort of what the future is from a business perspective, you

(46:24):
know, do you, do you think one of those businesses is more
right than the other or do you think it's a little bit
different because of some of therelationships ESPN has with with
Disney? Sort of how do you see the
business and the economic side of streaming versus the more
traditional you know, linear model?
Yeah, that's the question that'sreally debated by a lot of
people in the industry. And I think the debate is
starting off wrong 99% of the time because they're comparing

(46:47):
apples to bowling balls. Netflix's core business is what
they get 100% of their revenue from a content service and from
a streaming service. That's it.
Done. Where does Amazon get the vast
majority of their money from? It's a commerce company.
It's an infrastructure company. Where does ESPN, Disney get
their money from? Parks, movies, toys, broadcast

(47:11):
networks. Netflix doesn't have any of
that. So the business model and the
business economics are really quite different depending on who
the companies are. And what I love again going to
the facts is Netflix has come out and said the reason we're
not going after live sports streaming is we don't believe we
can make money from it. We don't believe it can be
profitable for us. Well what more evidence do you

(47:33):
need for Netflix specific business model that it doesn't
work now they're doing these oneoff live events here and there,
OK, makes sense. At the same time you mentioned
Fox. Fox is very clear that we're
making great money when we like the business, the licensing this
and working with broadcast outlets, we now don't want to
compete with them directly with our customers going D to C, OK,

(47:57):
They're not right or wrong. That is their best approach to
the market that's working for them financially.
Disney with ESPN, you know that's that's an interesting
one. Disney, for listeners that don't
know, recently broke out ESP NS financials separately, first
time they've ever done that. 8 billion of ESP NS revenue in Q3

(48:17):
came from affiliate fees, Advertising was 3.2 billion and
subscription was 1.1 billion. So subscription is the lowest
percentage of revenue for ESPN and yet subscription is the
highest percentage of revenue for Netflix.
Completely opposite ends of the spectrum, different business
models. ESPN is an odd one in the sense

(48:39):
that Disney, as we know, went through a lot of challenges over
the last 2 1/2 years. Really since the pandemic.
They've streamlined their business more that a lot of the
people originally running that business are out.
DSS got Disney streaming services got upended.
They laid off 7000 people this year.
They're now combining Hulu content into Disney Plus to make

(49:02):
it 1 app. But you still can't get Hulu
Plus, live TV and Disney Plus. You have ESPN Plus, which
actually turned a profit for thefirst time ever.
Stand alone last quarter, again,good number to see that's only
one quarter. Now Disney has over the last
couple of months said well, we do really like to have a partner

(49:23):
going to the market with a standalone ESPN direct to
consumer product. Then at the same time they also
said well you know, maybe we should sell off ABC and some of
these broadcast networks, maybe we should exit India.
Now the rumours are that they'renot going to exit India, but
they're going to take on a partner.
And then after they looked at the ABC business and the
broadcast business, they also then came out months later to

(49:44):
Wall Street and said, well, after looking at that business
more, we actually are not as negative on it as we thought.
So they are a little bit of backand forth in terms of their
messaging to Wall Street. They're going to have to get it
much clearer in the new year. Investors are are not liking
uncertainty, which that's the number one thing investors don't

(50:04):
want at least. Just tell me what your strategy
is going forward. I think the problem that we're
going to have with ESPN is whatever Disney does with
another ESPN direct to consumer service.
What exactly does this look likeand how is this now different
from ESPN Plus? And are you running two
different ESPN apps? You know how confused consumers

(50:24):
would be in the market, They would lose their minds or you
going to have one ESPN app that has two different tiers at two
different price points? Also, what is the price point?
Everyone in the market is saying, well, it's between 20 to
$25. Well, based on what Disney's
never said anything. What Disney has said is we don't
know what the price point would be.
We're still working out the details and all Disney has told

(50:45):
us is that this new service, whatever it is, will launch
definitely by the end of 2025. But then months later they came
back and they said, well, if things change in the market,
maybe we would bump that up whenyou roll it out much sooner.
So Disney is pretty much communicated to to everybody
that we're looking at a lot of different options in the market

(51:06):
as they should be, but their strategy's not yet yet clear.
So you know, I've said from fromday one in this industry that
ease of use is what sells and why did Roku sell so well in the
beginning and why do they have to share that they do today?
Because the Roku device was the easiest to use and your mom
could set it up. That was the reality of it.

(51:28):
They also happen to have a lot of great content on it on the
platform. So consumers like things that
are easy and when you're changing the brand, when you're
changing the messaging, right? Look at Warner Bros Discovery.
I love the Max product, but it used to be called HBOHBO Go.
HBO Now, Now it's Max, right? You never thought of Max for
sports. Now all of a sudden, Max have
sports. Now it's on Max's live news with

(51:50):
CNN. Now there's a separate tier of
Max come February where you're gonna have to pay $10.00 for
sports, you have to go back out to the market to consumers and
say, oh, you know, you know us for this, but now we're this,
now we're branded this, now we've got a new app, now we've
got live, now we've got sports, now we've got news.
When you're doing that every single year, that's challenging
in a market that's very crowded.Whereas Netflix has been what

(52:13):
since day one, Netflix, you knowexactly what content they have.
So to your question, sorry, it was kind of long, long answer.
There is a lot with ESPN is completely unknown and we have
to see what what Disney score focuses with ESPN going forward.
But we we should just say now that we have numbers.

(52:35):
You know the next time you hear an analyst or somebody right
like ESPN, you know is losing all this money and it's a
terrible business. You know, someone should just
tell them to be quiet because wehave the numbers now, right.
You can't argue with the financials.
I've never understood why there there's so much pressure from
the media coming at Disney to sell ESPN.
It doesn't make any. I don't never understood that

(52:56):
dandy. Well, sure, it makes sense
because TV is dead and dying andbroadcast is an outdated
technology and everything's moving to streaming, right?
That is the mantra. I mean, I think it's interesting
when I say the opposite in LinkedIn, how many people just
want to leave comments of you'rean old guy, doesn't know what
you're talking about. You know, streaming is the new
thing, right? Like, well, first of all, I'm
not that old. But also, you know, the reality

(53:19):
is look at the Super Bowl. It's locked up to broadcast TV
rights for the next nine years. And yet someone left a comment
on my blog. We'll just wait till next year.
When Amazon or Apple spend all this money in the Super Bowl,
what are you talking about? They can't for nine years.
So people love to talk based on emotions and unfortunately, you

(53:40):
know, that's where a lot of the conversation start is is
emotions. So you got to focus on the
numbers, you got to focus on thefacts.
So I do just conscious of timings.
I want to wrap up with kind of 1little last segment you shared
with us a bunch of really interesting statistics around
viewership numbers, revenue numbers, things like that.

(54:00):
So I'm going to, you know, kind of put you to the test here
because like I think you almost sent over about 10 points here.
But if you had to boil it down to maybe two, maybe I'll let you
push it to three. Are there any particular stats
that you would just like to share to be like this is what I
found really interesting and This is why I found them
particularly interesting as to what I think it means for the

(54:22):
future of the industry? Absolutely.
So we have a lot of stats from NBC Sports when it comes to NFL.
When it comes to college football, they're very good
about putting out stats and theybreak out their stats based on
TV viewership, pay TV and digital.
Fox never does, ESPN never does.We don't know what percentage

(54:43):
comes from digital, but as an example, the average minute
audience, the largest football game across not just Peacock but
NFL digital platforms. That means NFL plus NBC Sports
Digital was 1.85 million viewers.
That's it 1.85 million. If you break that down in in

(55:06):
some of these numbers in terms of, then you look at total TV
viewership. TV viewership for the Seahawks
49ers game was 26.9 million viewers.
Pay TV. If you look at the audience of
1.6 million viewers of average minute audience, that means

(55:30):
streaming made-up 5% of the total viewership.
That's it. Now there's nothing wrong with
that. The broadcast networks are
making their money off of advertising and broadcast TV,
But what's important is that theindustry as a whole reads these
numbers and starts working off of those numbers before they

(55:50):
start doing calculations or before they start arguing about
actual viewership. You know, Super Bowl this year
at 7 million simultaneous streams, the amount of analysts
I see in the space are like, well, it's the Super Bowl, you
know, the largest ever 20 million stream.
Where do you come up with that number?
You just pull that out of thin air.

(56:11):
So it's really important that you look at the numbers that
they give out. Also you have to question
numbers, you know, the Nielsen numbers, the Thursday Night
Football, when you go to the homepage, Amazon.com, that live
stream loads in the upper right hand corner.
Is that a viewer? I don't know.
They won't tell me. Now if I load the homepage three

(56:31):
times because I'm buying products, but I don't actually
click on the video, am I now 3 viewers or was I-1 viewer won't
say. And you'll notice Nielsen is
very careful with the term they use.
They use the term viewer. They don't say unique viewer,
they don't say simultaneous viewer, they don't say average
minute audience viewer. Why is that?
It's on purpose. They don't want to give out

(56:53):
those details. But then we as an industry
really have to call out what we know from the numbers and what
we don't. So you have to understand the
numbers. You have to understand there's a
lack of methodology around thesenumbers.
There are for the companies, butthey're not sharing them.
You have to understand that viewer versus unique viewer is

(57:15):
not the same as average minute audience.
The industry used to use the term simultaneous streams.
That's what we used for 10 years, no longer than probably
15 years or more and then all ofa sudden some change to AMA.
But I now see people comparing simultaneous streams to AMA to
viewers, right, Three different types of methodology.

(57:37):
So you know Chris your your question is always a good one
and for me it it always starts with the numbers.
I think that is the most important thing that you have to
look at because we're talking about business economics here.
How does this make money? Who's going to make money?
How do they make a short term versus long term?
You guys are covering better than anybody what this stuff

(57:58):
actually cost to license When you have Disney coming out to
the market and saying we're not lice, we're not going after the
cricket stuff anymore for digital because it's not
beneficial to shareholders. What did they just tell you?
This is not good business for us.
So these companies are also making decisions based on what
it's going to do, their stock price, which you have to do now

(58:21):
because Wall Street wants everyone to be profitable,
profitability over growth, do more with less.
That's changed the market. But going back to your question
just on stats, there are a lot of stats out there, but you have
to question it. You know, I saw some stats this
morning, people were just regurgitating antenna stats and
churn. No one stops the question.

(58:45):
Samba TV Antenna? Go look at their methodology.
Nielsen's methodology is so confusing that they have to post
a video trying to explain it. If anybody can explain to me
what's in that 3 minute video explanation, I'll buy you
dinner. I can't figure it out.
Don't. Know what's that video it.
Shouldn't have to be a mathematician.
It's it's incredible. It's just so confusing.

(59:08):
Yet why don't people stop to ask, Well, wait a minute, What
does that number mean? What is the definition of
viewers? What do they do?
They regurgitate it. So the one I always like is
churn and people have this, number one tennis churn is this.
I talk to every single one of these major streaming companies
off the record all the time, many times at ACEO level.

(59:28):
I can tell you those churn numbers and antenna, they're
putting out flat out, wrong, flat out wrong.
Now these companies don't come out and say that because they
don't release churn and they don't even talk about it with
Wall Street. But you've got to question the
data. That is the number one thing I'm
trying to get people in our industry to do.
Well, I think a great place to start is with all the different

(59:51):
content that you published that Nick mentioned.
So for anyone that's listening to this podcast that isn't
already one of your followers, which would be a bit shocking,
that's at least a good place to start when it comes to getting
those numbers. Yeah, so LinkedIn, just so
listeners know, I'm pushing out content every day on LinkedIn.
And I'm just saying these are the numbers, These are the
facts. I'm not putting my opinion in
it. It's like people saying the

(01:00:11):
other day, oh, Paramount's goingto go bankrupt next year.
I put a post up that was at 30 or 40,000 impressions in 24
hours and the reason is for somereason no one had broken down.
Here's how much they have in their balance sheet.
Here's what they owe. They get 1.3 billion from the
Simon Schuster sale. Here's their payment to the NFL
next year. This is their debt.
Oh, and by the way, they have a $3.5 billion revolving line of

(01:00:33):
credit that they pushed out to 2027.
So are they going bankrupt next year?
No, that's a fact. They have the cash.
But people in our industry just don't go and look at those
numbers. So if you really want to know
the numbers, the finances behindit without sugar coating it in
any way, LinkedIn is by far the best place to follow me.

(01:00:55):
Well, Dan, I was just going to say that the headline they're
going to go bankrupt versus they're going to have more debt
than they did previous in the last year isn't quite as
exciting a headline. So probably why people like to
jump on those those moments. Writing for headlines?
Of course, yes. Absolutely.
Well, Dan, you know, we could have easily extended this
conversation. We have far more notes prepared

(01:01:16):
for this, but conscious of timing.
So we do appreciate you joining us and would love to, you know,
be able to to have more conversations in the future.
And like I said, if you're not following Dan already, please
make sure you go do that. Yeah, I I appreciate the time.
You know, you guys are giving meto talk today.
You know, I love the coverage you do on the business side.
I agree that the technology is important, but the business is
more important, right? That's really where this is.

(01:01:38):
And I love talking about sports and I'm going to have to go
check out World Dart Championships now because please
do it. I got to see what this is.
Good stuff. Thanks very much, Dan.
Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
Before you go, myself and Nick would just like to thank you for
tuning into this episode of Stream Time.
If you found the episode insightful, please make sure you
like and subscribe on whichever platform you listen to.

(01:01:58):
As a growing podcast, we'd greatly appreciate your support
and sharing or writing a review.Ultimately want this podcast to
not only entertain you, but alsohopefully help you navigate the
digital sports landscape. If you have any feedback on
previous episodes or any topics and speakers you'd like to hear
from in the future, please don'thesitate to reach out.
You can find myself and Nick Meacham on LinkedIn or on
Twitter. My Twitter handle is at Sports

(01:02:20):
Pro Chris. One Nick can be found at Sports
Pro. Nick, of course, if you want to
stay fully up to date on the sports business news cycle,
please make sure to visit the Sports Pro Media website or sign
up to one of our several newsletters to make sure you
don't miss anything. Once again, thank you and we
look forward to you joining us next week on the Streamtime
Podcast.