June 11, 2025 • 47 mins
FloSports CEO Mark Floreani joins StreamTime Sports to break down how the platform is redefining sports streaming for the underserved majority. From partnering with the NCAA and AHL to landing backing from India’s Dream Sports, co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone explore how FloSports is building a tech-first, fan-driven ecosystem.
Key Points
- How did a $10K van-based startup grow into a $100M platform reshaping sports streaming?
- What made Dream Sports invest in a niche American sports company?
- Can subscription-based models really work for cheerleading, wrestling, and D3 college sports?
- How do you build an NFL-quality viewing experience—without the NFL?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
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, Nick, we have a guest
today, so I won't spend too muchtime with my banter, but this
particular guest will have some inside feeling, some personal
love for the things that mean somuch to me.
I'm as American football guide Friday Night Lights.
(00:30):
This is always sort of somethingspecial.
I went on to be AD 3 football player.
I'm wearing my Wittenberg football top today.
This individual knows a thing ortwo when it comes to high school
sports, doing things with Division 3 football, but also
doing things on a larger scale now with professional sports,
Division One NCAA. And I think it's a really
interesting story given where they started, where they're at
(00:50):
today. And then also just kind of
thinking about the the fragmentation that exists within
sports media and being all over the place, different
monetization models. So I'm not giving it away yet,
Nick, but I don't know if if there's anything else you want
to add before I bring our guest in today.
Well, I guess the just because we're playing a bit of a cryptic
game, I'd say the other thing that is interesting about this
person is also their location atthe moment, because it's
(01:11):
somewhere I've never been. I've always had it on my To Do
List of I've travelled to, despite all the times I've
visited the US. So everything gives a little bit
of insight along the way about what's good about their their
locations because it's on my, it's my hit list the next few
years, that's for sure. All right.
Well, without further ado, I'll bring on our guest who is the
CEO and Co Founder of Flow Sports, Mark Floriani.
(01:31):
So Mark, if I remember correctly, are you based in
Austin? Yeah, based in Austin, TX.
All right, well not only do I have a affinity for high school
football and D3 football, I alsohave an affinity for smoked BBQ
meats. I live in a flat in London, so I
have an electric smoker. It is not the same thing, but I
have I have managed to smoke a few different things out of my
balcony. Man, the, the, the BBQ game in
(01:54):
Austin, TX has has really gottentop notch.
There's about 10 or 15 places now to go.
So hopefully I'll take you guys out when you guys come to
Austin, TX. There's some great stuff,
there's some great places. I've even got some friends,
Chris that so they're Australianliving in the UK and then
randomly there it's like, oh, we're on a trip to Austin this
weekend and why? They're just basically going to
(02:15):
do the round round the grounds of trying different BBQ meats.
I'm like, wow, and I thought oneof them was a vegetarian
beforehand. So there you go.
It even turns people. The airport vegetarians coming
in, carnivores going out, so. Absolutely.
Well, because, you know, I thinkthere's a really interesting
story to tell here, Mark. You know, I think maybe the 1st
(02:36):
place to jump this off with is, you know, we do have a large
audience space in the US, but wealso have a large audience space
in Europe. So maybe for those that aren't
familiar with flow sports, give them a little bit of a
background, I think as well, just to kind of explain the, the
beginning origins of it because it's something you and your
brother started off. And if I understand correctly,
you're just in a van driving around.
So I think a little bit of the back story into sort of what
(02:57):
Flow sports has become, but kindof where you guys took off from.
Yeah, awesome. So like today, FO Sports is a
sports media and technology company.
We stream over 40,000 live events, produce hours of
shoulder programming and we actually build technology for
what we call Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports.
(03:18):
Why do we start here? Well, I ran track at the
University of Texas, my brother wrestled at Cal Poly and we were
super passionate about our sports.
We really cared about the growthof our sports and we were very
frustrated about the media exposure around our sports.
And we thought that hey, if there was a company that that
cared about these sports, they would grow.
(03:40):
We also realized that it wasn't just track and field and
wrestling. And we thought that, hey, if we
could do this in track and fieldand wrestling and expand to
other sports and leagues that didn't get the that we thought
they deserved, we'd have a pretty cool business.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, at the time in
2006, no one believed in US or the idea ESPN was at 110 million
(04:04):
households. And you know, the thought that
track and field wrestling, thesetypes of sports could be big, it
just wasn't in the cars for mostpeople.
Except I convinced one of my friends on the track team to
give us 10,000 bucks and that was a lot of money back then.
And we bought a van, a conversion van.
(04:24):
And me and my brother and a couple other Co founders, you
know, started flow sports. The beginning was me and Ryan
Ponsonby, which was a Co founderof ours.
We drove across the country living out of the van, filming
athletes, filming coaches and just posting that online.
And then we did that with wrestling and, and track and
(04:46):
field and yeah. And the the rest, I guess, is
history from those early, early,early days living out of a man.
Even back then were you You talkabout creating content.
Now we live in this creator economy world that has this
whole new yeah, economical worldand industry that exists today.
(05:08):
Were you even I could? Have been an influencer.
You, you still are you still youstill, you still can be March.
But were you guys looking at, was it primarily just on your
own platform and then having to like publishing on their kind of
trying to create an audience from scratch or were you also
posting in different places at the time?
Yeah, so most of the almost all the stuff was on our own
(05:29):
platform, but we post a little bit on social media.
Back then it was 2006, but yeah,a we, we filmed our travels.
We filmed a lot of things. What people are doing now we
were doing in 2006, following around athletes just going one
summer I went to Europe on the European track circuit that no
(05:51):
Americans ever seen. And I'd go get Belgium waffles
with athletes, go on train rideswith athletes and agents and
tell the behind the scenes. And that really kind of, yeah,
really resonated with the community and the authenticity
and the behind the scenes look. And we're still doing that
today. Well, have you still sitting,
sitting on all that archive footage and access to all that?
(06:12):
Because there's definitely some good documentary style stuff
that can come out of that these days looking back.
Oh, yeah, we have a lot there is, I mean, yeah, throughout
Europe, throughout Asia, throughout, you know, just even
the United States. One trip we went, tried to get,
we went to the Olympic trials and our car broke down in in New
Mexico and we didn't have any money for hotels.
(06:34):
So we we stayed at the the, in the van at The Body Shop in Las
Cruces, NM Yeah, that was, that was a shady night.
So we got through it. We got through it.
So you mentioned you and your brother, track and wrestling
were kind of the two things thatkind of pulled you into this.
But obviously the the set of sports partners you have now is
(06:58):
very expansive. So maybe just give a little bit
of background sort of what you covered these days, what some of
your deals are just again to kind of paint that picture of
sort of the scale of what the business is today compared to
where you guys started off, you know, as a van driving around.
Yeah, so we're in 25 sports today.
We sign, you know, we have over 500 partners going from sports
(07:22):
like Motorsports where we work with NASCAR in, you know
obviously wrestling, USA wrestling world championship,
NCAA, we have D1D2 and D3 partners.
We do some of the early season NCAA basketball and baseball
tournament softball tournaments,some of the best tournaments in
(07:43):
in NCAA, you know, we're doing the top track league in the in
the world in the Diamond League.Yeah.
So we hockey basically everyone underneath the NHLAHL is our
streaming partner. And you know, what we find is,
yes, the Tier 1 leagues they're going to get, they're going to
(08:04):
get obviously they're streaming and broadcasting, but they also
get all this content and marketing and innovation from
their broadcast partners. And it's really hard for Tier 2
and Tier 3 sports to get that kind of love.
And they need that love to grow their audience to, you know, to
(08:24):
the behind the scenes footage and marketing to get the
community to know why they should care.
And that's what we can provide to these leagues and sports
outside the the major ones. Mark, so for all these different
partners that you're working with or sports, depending on how
you want to look at it, what exactly are you delivering for
(08:45):
them? Because some of them, some of
the deals and relationships thathappen with platforms like yours
can be just being a distributionchannel.
Some of it can be the production.
And given your, your, your roots, I'm wondering if that's
part of part of that mix as well.
Are you already going in to Wendon the delivery side of things
or are they giving you a fee that you just ingest and do your
own thing with? What's the mix there typically?
(09:07):
Yeah. I mean in terms of in terms of
the partnership, right, We get the content in a variety of
different ways. We produce content, we take
feeds from content. We work kind of a mix where
we'll make sure that we're helping with the technology.
But in terms of the, you know, just the partnership, if we're
just taking the feed, that's nothow we like to work, right?
(09:28):
We want to make sure that we aregrowing the property.
I mean, our mission at Flow fromthe beginning is to grow our
sports every day. And so in terms of a great
partnership, we're working with them on content, we're working
with them on marketing, We're pushing them.
We're either doing the production and trying to push
it, to elevate it or we're pushing them and saying, hey,
(09:48):
how do we get this to a higher quality?
How do we get, you know, you know better play by play or
graphics in there? We really want to be pushing the
envelope because you know, we got we got it.
We got to make a great product for our customers.
And our sports are not the top sports or the top leagues and
(10:09):
they're not going to be grow if we're just doing it the same way
they got us here, right. And so we really want to push
the partners and ourselves to create content marketing, make
it really exciting when our customers watch the content.
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(10:31):
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(10:52):
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You've sort of nicely segwayed us into something that I think
we're going to spend a little bit of time talking on.
We're talking about these Tier 2, Tier 3 partners and you've
referenced they're not getting the traditional broadcast deals
at an ESPNABC or Fox Sports, anyof those.
And it does seem like more and more money is getting, you know,
(11:15):
if there's a pie, more of that pie is going to this top tier
sports. So what is the opportunity for
Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports? You really are championing that.
So for them, they're, they're trying to make money off of
their content the same way anyone else is.
What is how large is the opportunity for?
There's Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports, And then we can go into
kind of, you know, what some of those challenges are to to
maximize that value. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
(11:37):
really large. I don't have a dollar amount on
it, but there are, I mean, there's, there are so many
different distribution platforms, There's so many
different ways to get your name out there, to get your content
out there. It is about having a plan and
working with a partner to make sure that you're not just siloed
in one area or the other. Because what works today, as you
(11:58):
know, we move fast might not work tomorrow, right.
And you know, not to jump to thenext question, but like with,
you know, the degradation of thecable bundle has really does
hurt these Tier 2 and tier 3 because ESPN, the Amazon,
etcetera. They, they, they really
(12:20):
understand what is driving the sign ups.
And, and then if they're spending billions of dollars on
the NFL or the NBA in a direct to consumer world, right?
Like they need to make sure thatthat's successful.
And if they have the NBA, if they have the, the NHL, if they
have the UFC, they really have ahousehold, the majority of
(12:40):
households. And it becomes harder for Tier 2
and Tier 3 to, to mix to, to fitinto that mix, right?
And so from our perspective, we have a, we have a, we, we want
to meet our fans where they are.And so obviously we have a
direct to consumer aspect where you pay behind the pay wall, but
100% of our content is not behind the pay wall, right?
(13:02):
We are putting stuff in, we're putting live streams in front of
the pay wall. Well, we're we're working with
people like CBS and Fox, local linear, regional sports networks
and getting that content out there.
Obviously doing that on social and creating a bunch of content
in front of the paywall to make sure that we're we're reaching
the fans where they are and hopefully get them excited.
(13:24):
And then at some point, you know, if they want to watch the
full season or the big game at the end of the year, they are
subscribing. And you got to have that
strategy as Tier 2 and tier 3. You can't just go to one
platform and and just kind of bebehind the paywall.
You got to have all of it if youwant to grow.
At least that's our theory. Want to grow your property?
(13:45):
So Mark, can you just take us a bit into the type of
relationship or arrangement you are having with those companies,
taking it a little bit step deeper, you've given a few sort
of parameters you work within oryou try to facilitate and bring
it to life with the sounds like there's a bit of a distribution
relationship there. There sounds like there's a
production component just in turn.
(14:07):
And then often as an industry, we often talk about the
meteorites deals that you see intier one, very, very transact.
There's a different type. There's a very, there's a fairly
fairly formulaic way they approach things still, even
though there's lots of differenttypes of rights to go there.
But I know at the Tier 2, Tier 3level, it is much more nuanced.
Just talk us through what's a typical relationship like look
like for you and what what doesn't it include perhaps as
(14:28):
well as what it does. So we are way more flexible,
right? We, we work with the partner to
be like, OK, what is what is a success for them?
And then how does it fit with being a success for us?
So I'll give the example of the CAA and that's AD one conference
in, in NCAA. And you know, our partnership
(14:51):
with them is we have, you know, the vast majority of all the
content that's streaming on flowsports.
So if you're a super fan, you want to watch every game you're
gonna you're gonna subscribe to to Flow.
But we also worked with CBS Sports Network, right?
And so they have some of their top basketball games.
It's important for them to be onthat national platform.
So we're working with CAA and the CB and CBS to be like, OK,
(15:14):
what are the best games? Where do you want to get out
there? And we work with with them on
that local linear or local regional is important for a
bunch of the presidents and the 80s because they, you know, they
might have an older, older alumni base that's like, hey, I
want to watch this stuff on TV. And when the football games on,
I want to turn on the TV. And so we work with CAA to
(15:38):
facilitate that. And obviously there's pluses and
minuses for all of that. And so we just work with our
partners to figure out, hey, what's the best, what's the best
solution for them and hopefully it aligns with us and we figure
out that partnership. And so I think that's a great
example. We just did one with the Penn
Relays where Penn Relays and theDrake Relays in track and field
(16:02):
are on the same weekend. CBS wanted to had the Drake
Relays and we suggested the CBS is, hey, it's a great day of
track and field. Why don't you take the
professional section, about 90 minutes of the professional
section and go from the Drake Relays to the pen relays.
And so we worked with the pen relays in CBS and made it easy.
(16:23):
We already had our production down there, made it easy to kind
of expand that viewership for one of the best track and field
meets in the in the world. So Mark, it does sound quite
flexible. Just how do you approach that
from the beginning? Are you signing basically a,
committing an agreement, a deal,a partnership in place that said
that from the outset? So we're agreeing something
(16:43):
we're, we're working together onthis, this sort of journey as
your broadcast media partner, whatever you want to call it.
And then we're going to ebb and flow with just where the best
opportunity is at any given time.
And then there'll be a bit of give and take along the way.
Is that how it plays out or you?Because most times you see a
traditional media rights deal atall, it's all 200 page
meteorites agreement where it's all every line of what's being
(17:06):
agreed is locked away at the beginning and there's there's
not much flex after that. But it sounds like it's
completely not that approach. Yeah.
We try to be great partners, right.
And so we, like I said, we're trying to grow these sports and
and have a great experience for our customers.
Obviously there's a contract, it's not 200 pages, right.
Hopefully we're not looking at the contract after.
(17:27):
That's the goal is that we are working together with that
partner and if they want something and we can facilitate
and there's give and take there.And so, yeah, there's work to
get to the contract and we have that baseline, but we're always
trying to find ways to have win wins and grow, flow and grow and
(17:48):
grow and grow the our partners. Sure.
But just just to how when you say win, win, I'm just trying to
get my head around this for other people out there who are
looking at what you're doing. When you say win, win, are you
basically coming out, So let's say the CBS example you gave a
CAA, right? Will how the CBS pay anyone a
fee there or are you giving themaccess and that that visibility
(18:09):
helps them get more sponsors on board and you more visibility
because sports is visible. How, how does that?
Yeah. Play it all depends, right?
And and so with the CAA, we knewthat CBS was an important part
of what they were trying to do. And so we had talk talk about
that before the contract, right.And so that's in the contract,
(18:31):
right. And, you know, but they wanted a
couple extra games. And so it's like, OK, what does
it actually do to us? If there's more windows for CAA,
you know, we're going to be flexible there.
And we have been flexible. And if, I think if you talked
with Joey over at the CAA, we'vewe've tried our best to make
sure that he gets some wins and it, it still works economically
(18:52):
for us. Obviously if someone's trying to
take it all, it doesn't work economically for us.
We're going to have to, to figure that out.
But we try to be flexible. We in a world where everyone is
taking 100 percent of the pie, we don't think 100% of the
rights. We don't think that's the best
strategy for, again, for lack ofa better term, Tier 2 and Tier 3
(19:13):
sports and leagues. It is.
If you're trying to grow it, it's not trying.
You know, it's not to be under one platform, to be the 50th
most important partner they have, right?
That that that I don't think grows, you know, the property.
In terms of business model, you,you mentioned you know your
(19:33):
direct to consumer subscription,but you've also just mentioned
you don't put everything behind a paywall either.
So you know, myself and Nick, we've had many guests, many
conversations talking about what's the best way to monetize.
Is it subscription? Is it advertisement?
This is a freemium model. Is it some sort of hybrid, you
know, for you guys, it does sound like despite, you know,
you do put things in front of the paywall, there is most of
(19:55):
the contents unlocked behind thepaywall.
Just sort of how you view monetization models,
particularly for those Tier 2, tier 3 sports.
I think sometimes Nick and I have talked about the smaller
the sport you are, the more you might actually be able to charge
because you know, there'd be such an affinity for your sport
if there's nowhere else to do it, you could potentially charge
a premium for it. So just a big curious sort of
how you guys have gone about your, your monetization model
(20:17):
and diversifying a little bit, so it's not all exclusively
behind. On the paywall.
Yeah. So a business model and making
sure that that you have a profitaround these properties is
really important, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3, right.
And so, you know, at first starting flow, everything was
free, it was advertising. And what happened to our
(20:38):
business is every dollar we spent on marketing, every dollar
we spent on production kind of hurt the bottom line.
And and then we started going toplaces that only our advertisers
wanted us to go, which then hurts the overall value for the
customer, right. And so we found that
(21:02):
subscription is really importantin D2 and D3.
I keep saying Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports and because it is that
baseline, it does make the business work.
And but having that mix of advertising and having that mix,
you know, a lot of times the free stuff in front of the
paywall, that is just marketing and content for the property,
(21:26):
right? And so because we have that base
that if we drive more viewership, we're making more
money, it incentivizes us to putmore things in front of the
paywall to a certain point to market more, to create more
content, which then in turn builds a bigger community, which
then in turn allows you to, you know, make more money off
advertising. So we do think having a
(21:47):
diversified revenue is importantfor these properties and aligns
the best with the growth of thatproperty as well, right?
So our incentives are aligned, distribution's important,
viewership's important, but alsomaking money is important
because that allows us to investback into higher production
quality innovation in terms of you know graphics innovation in
(22:12):
terms of AI cameras, you know, bringing in better play by play
people, etcetera, etcetera. You need that diversification to
do that. So Mark the the advertising side
of things in streaming is seems to be maturing more and more
these days. You said you sort of started
with that as like the problem ofthe primary revenue drivers for
(22:34):
you. Firstly, what are you seeing
there? Are you seeing it maturing?
You know, are you seeing more advertising dollars really
coming into the marketplace now or is it and or is it still
really challenging to unlock those, those advertising dollars
given that sort of a lag I guessyou have between streaming
consumption and traditional media?
I mean, if you're Amazon and you're going to have 15,000,000
(22:55):
people watch Thursday Night Football, it's going to be easy,
right? Where some of the, you know,
most properties are not getting 15,000,000.
You know, views on, you know, onagain, it's the tier, it's the
tier one, it's the NFL, the NBA,those Olympics are going to have
fine, are going to be fine because they have this scale
(23:17):
again, with direct to consumer like you really have to, you
really have to understand your customers to get people to, to
pay behind the paywall. And so for us advertising and
for, you know, what I would say for most streamers, it's not
about this, you know, the 15,000,000 because people can't
drive that. It's going to be more about the
(23:38):
sponsorships. It's going to be, hey, where are
you reaching on social? You know, if you're just
streaming the ads in the live broadcast, it's not going to,
it's not mature, right? But you got to have that kind of
360 sponsorship social strategy and the live stream on, on on
the ground as well. All four of those things, if
(23:58):
you're going to, you know, buildup the advertising, at least in,
in our opinion. And then you're talking about
expansion and maintaining profitability.
Obviously, you've grown more andmore sports, I guess as the
company continues to grow. How do you determine how do you
select prioritize whichever way you want to frame the question
where you want to go in terms ofnew growth areas or new sports?
(24:21):
Well, first and first, places where we're needed, right?
And so people always ask, are you going to go up the food
chain and go to the NF, you know, try to do NFL and NBA?
He's like, no, we're not needed there, right?
And Amazon doesn't. ESPN does an amazing job.
NBC does an amazing job. Like we're not going to be able
to compete or want to compete against Amazon, right?
And we're not needed there, right?
(24:42):
And so we go places where we're needed and where we think that
our model can grow the property,can bring innovation on the
production, raise the quality and, and, and places where, you
know, the, the community is going to be excited that we're
that we're coming in. On top of that, we have a ton of
data. We've been doing this for a long
(25:02):
time. We everything, we track
everything. And so we definitely have an
algorithm to understand the value of partnerships, to
understand the value of sports. And then we look at it and say,
OK, can we get into this space? How hard is it going to be to
get in this space? And then we determine which
sports to go into and then really what partnerships to to
(25:25):
sign up. So Mark, the you've got a whole
host of different partners that you've referred to and within
your platform you have basicallydifferent channels within it,
which is quite not an uncommon approach in terms of different
channels available in a Main Street, a main platform.
Did you ever think about trying to go to create more white
(25:45):
labeled kind of options? So basically that flow sports, I
don't know athletics as a stand alone itself rather than pulling
them all together? Or was it always trying to just
build the biggest audience possible using all those
different partnerships together?Yeah, again, kind of going back
to Tier 2 and Tier 3 is like we need every, we need as much
scale as possible. And if we can, if we can
(26:09):
convince the Motorsports fan that they should like their
local AHL team, that's somethingthat we should be trying to do,
right. And so not only do you have like
the specific sports we want to be able to market, we want to be
able to market it across channel.
But then you go to some, you know, maybe even some
competitors that are white labeljust for that league.
(26:30):
Like we are totally against thatbecause that really I think
limits the exposure that you get, right.
And so you want to be able to have the community and, and more
people have access to the property than just your specific
super fans. So we're always trying to figure
out how, how do we grow this audience?
(26:50):
How do we grow this property? Because if we, you know, if we
get really good at it, then we're very valuable to partners.
So you have no doubt you've doneplenty of analysis on, you know,
this platform and all these different channels and your
example, there's a great one of trying to move fans from one
sports channel to another and soforth.
(27:10):
You've got hundreds of thousandssubscribers or more.
I don't know the number I've, I can speculate until the cows
come home. But how do you shift them from,
well, actually, do you have any insight?
I'm sure you do as to how many of those do buy subscriptions
across multiple or normally do you see that maybe consuming a
bit of the front of the paywall stuff across the multitude of
(27:31):
sports, but maybe you're subscribing to 1 sports property
or sports channel alone. What's the mix like to the
typical trend? Yeah.
And so, yeah, they definitely come in for their one property,
right? That's what they're passionate
about. That's the easiest way to get
them in. And then we just start dripping
and marketing other properties. So if we have, you know, a big
(27:52):
Motorsports event where we'll have more than, you know, a
couple 100,000 people watching, we'll be marketing other, other
content from that and a lot and making sure they know that part
of their subscription is they get access to all this other
stuff. And then same thing in terms of
marketing, right? If we know that we're marketing
on these different channels, we got to be careful about it
because we don't want to be inauthentic.
(28:15):
But if we do think that there's some crossover, we will promote
other other sports and other events to the to the to the
different sports audiences. But do you find that is
effective though? Is it, are you able to get a lot
of subscribers moving across sports as well?
Because that would be just something, you know, I think
(28:35):
would be a challenge. For sure it's growing.
We've only really started pushing this over the last 12 to
18 months as our audience has grown and we're getting these
big events right. So, but yeah, it's definitely
more and more people that are watching Motorsports are
watching AHL and and and wrestling.
And so, yeah, it is, it is growing.
(28:58):
It's not 50% yet, but you know, it's starting to get there.
One thing that I wouldn't kind of shift us over to because we
talked about it quite a bit and there's a few interesting angles
on this. Nick and I covered flow sports
cheese. It must have been maybe 3 weeks
ago, 4 weeks ago when you're just coming off your most recent
funding round, which, you know, you talked about getting $10,000
(29:19):
when this all started, you got asignificantly larger number.
I believe the, it says the funding's up to around or just
over 100 million now. And there's a couple different
things will, will, will entanglewith that.
But I think the one bit that's really interesting is about that
Nick and I spoke about was the involvement of Dream Sports over
in India. You know, we've been following
their business on, you know, thethings that they're doing on
(29:39):
that their side. And that was just really
interesting. It'd be curious just to get a
little bit of insight from you sort of how that developed
because as far as I'm aware, themajority of what you're doing is
North American based. So for someone like Dream Sports
come in from India, it's sort oflike what?
Where's that string been attached?
Yeah. So Dream Sports, Yeah, came in
about a month ago. We've been talking to them for
(30:02):
over a year. They're great people.
I don't know if you've ever talked to them.
Harsh over there runs an amazingorganization, super impressive
what they've done for for that country.
They have a flow sports product called Fan Code over there and
they're seeing success and they liked what we're doing here.
(30:25):
Obviously, you know, we're doingsome things a little different
than they are, but they liked what we're doing there.
And I think they can see that there might be there will be
synergies between our our two platforms on that front.
And then what they're doing in terms of daily fantasy is
definitely something. And their know how it's
(30:46):
unbelievable if you go, we were there a month before the IPL.
But what they're doing in cricket and how many people they
have coming 30 minutes before every, every cricket match
because that's when the lineup is sent is, is, is pretty
unbelievable. And we would love to bring some
of that to some of our sports here in the United States.
(31:10):
So I think there's a lot of synergies and a lot of things
that we can do together. So Mark, what obviously you've
you've congratulations on raising the investment that you
to really keep driving the business forward.
Just what is that investment going to go to?
Where are the main areas of focus now moving forward?
Yeah. So it's it is really just
focused on the customer. You know we are just launched
(31:32):
our next Gen. wrestling product.So it's in beta to about 25% of
our audience and we we know I'm not happy with the level of
product that we've had over the last couple of years for our
customers. And so you know, we are working
to integrate better streaming technology to be on more apps
(31:55):
and TV's, integrate the the datathat we have exclusively on our
platform, making sure that our experience for these sports and
leagues is as good as any NFL experience, right?
And so accelerating that push ontop of making sure that the the
(32:17):
broadcast just continues to elevate, same thing, right?
Like, how do we make sure that when our customers log on and
they watch a cheerleading event or a Motorsports event, they're
like, man, this is the highest quality I've ever seen for our
sport. And so to do that cost money and
we want to be efficient on it. And so we're investing in, you
(32:39):
know, AI cameras, building our own models to make sure that we
continue to drive higher quality, but keep the cost down,
right. The business model has to work.
We can't be, you know, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
on content in our sports right now for X amount of hours.
(33:00):
We have to, we have to drive that down to how do we get to,
you know, low thousands and still have a, a great broadcast.
And so pushing that, pushing those forward, but it's really
focused on the customer and having the best product and
video experience that they have had in sports.
So making those investments intothe production in the the
(33:21):
product, the end product that your customers are consuming,
where's the the revenue growth coming from?
Is it just you're hoping to reduce churn rates, increase
subscription acquisition and just build the business through
basically just delivering betterproduct to the market?
Or are there other layers you'readding into that that you think
can drive up extra return on theyour investment into the the
(33:44):
product? No, we're pretty confident that
the business will sustain in terms of yes, high, you know,
get with better, with better production.
You get people to stay longer, you get more people to sign up,
you get more partners want to bewith you, right.
With a better product, they're going to be stickier.
Again, same thing. They're going to be wanting to
(34:05):
sign up. We're going to have, you know,
we have a list of new products we can add to the subscription.
But in general, like we, we, if we treat our customers well, we
give them a great product, more people will sign up and they'll
stay longer. And so that's our maniacal focus
on making a better product for our customers.
(34:25):
Just that one of the things you hear Mark happen that people
talk about in the market is subscription fatigue from some
of these major platforms becauseit's so competitive.
Do you find because your serviceserving a different audience
set, they're producing a different product?
That's not really the same sort of issue that you hear talked
about at the main streamer levelthat you know, the big, the big
(34:47):
tech streamer level where they they're all fighting at A at a
low price point for market sharethe whole time.
Yeah, I just I tried, I tried tend not to believe that we need
that that stuff can will happen to us or accept that we the our
audiences are obviously super passionate because are fans of
these sports, right. Everyone can be a fan of the
(35:08):
NFL. But if you're a fan of
cheerleading or if you're a fan of dirt track Motorsports, like
you're a fan and we believe thatwe are actually the best value
in the sport and this is the last thing that you would want
to cut, right. And so that's our mentality.
We haven't seen, we haven't seensubscription fatigue impact us.
(35:30):
And I think that if we continue to focus on our customers needs,
we will do fine. I'm going to come back to the,
the investment from Dream Sportswith that being, you know, an
Indian based company, does that potentially mean flow sports?
Is it all looking to expand internationally?
You know, Tier 2 and tier 3 sports aren't limited just to
the US And I really appreciated your answer earlier being about
(35:54):
we're looking to expand where we're needed is do you feel
there's a need to expand internationally?
Is that not something that's necessarily on the cards?
Because you know that this, I guess these tier of sports, you
know, they, they don't, don't just struggle in the US to get
coverage on broadcasters. It's something at the moment you
guys are still focused on the the American marketplace.
Yeah. I mean just the problem, The
(36:16):
problem exists everywhere and we've seen, I'll call them mini
flow sports pop up in all these different regions.
We don't need to go international, but again, we
will go where we think it'll be valuable.
For example, Jiu Jitsu is reallybig in Brazil, right?
And so we've acquired and partnered with BJJ Stars, which
(36:37):
is a big Brazilian show and we're working with people on the
ground there. And we have Portuguese play by
play. We have Portuguese sign up
funnel. So we're definitely in Brazil
for Jiu Jitsu. In Canada we have a great, we
have the best cycling package there is the Tour de France, the
Jira, the Velta de Espana. We have French, we had French
(37:00):
play by play to the Tour de France etcetera, etcetera.
We we we own a a racing series with Kyle Larson, NASCAR
champion Kyle Larson and his brother-in-law Brad Suite called
high limits. We took that to Australia.
So dirt track racing in Australia is, is erasing in
Australia is, is really big downthere.
(37:22):
And so we will be doing more in Australia.
So on top of what, you know, we'll decide what we'll be doing
with dream. But yes, I mean, we're not like,
oh, we're going to go to Germanyand do XYZ.
It's about hey, the sport and hey, is this sport have a
following in the US and some other place.
Is this a place that we should be focusing on?
(37:45):
We just had cheerleading worlds and in cheerleading in the UK is
growing. So we're we did some things in
there. So that's kind of the approach
we'll take. So marketing, the marketing
these channels and propositions,you've got really strong fan
bases connected with the sports and partners you've got.
(38:05):
How much is it you pushing the marketing effort to get them
onto platform and how much is, Idon't know if you can give us
something saying that like the split of that effort versus the
actual partners themselves doingthe marketing because they have
that already a direct relationship with the fan in
some instances that you know, through various social channels
and other means, if they're members, players, athletes,
(38:27):
etcetera, what's the strategy there to bring that to life?
Because it can be a tricky balance to get everyone pulling
in the right direction, I'm sure.
Yeah, that can be tricky, but that's why the community
aspect's so important, right? And so, and that's why you can't
like separate these things. It's like we're all in this
(38:47):
together, right? And like if you know, I, when I
was running track and field, I was trying to make sure anyone
that knew or cared about it knewwhen it was on NBC, right?
Like we're in this together to grow this sport and we're not
trying to get 100% of the pie, right?
We want to, you know, our nice little portion of the pie, but
we want the pie to grow. And so it is the partners and
(39:10):
we're going to give them tools. We're going to tell them, hey,
how what we need and I'm sure they're going to give us advice
on what we needed to do. It's us, it's the fans, it's
the, you know, the athletes, right?
And when we do it right and we're authentic and people
realize we're in it for the right reason.
We're, we're in it to grow the sport, then it, that's when it
(39:31):
works really well. I think Motorsports a perfect
example, right? Like Dale Earnhardt junior,
right? He's a great partner, right?
We work with him on the cars tour.
And I mean, he is just talking about the sport in general and
then he's talking about flow, right?
And it's like it's because he loves the sport and we're, we
love it too. We're trying to grow it too.
(39:52):
He understands that. And so there's nothing fake
about it. He's just knows that we're
working our butt off to to to grow.
His properties and, and all the properties in Motorsports.
So then people like him or Kyle Larson or Kyle Busch, they're
talking about flow and helping grow this thing.
And so it's, we know it's reallyall of us together.
(40:13):
This is not the NFL. And like, hi, how do we, we
can't, we can't be picky and we need everyone to to promote
these sports and leagues. Question for me.
You know, we've talked and you guys are very narrowly focused
and I appreciate the fact that you guys, you know what you are
like you said we're going to go where we think we're needed, but
what do you potentially learn from other people?
(40:36):
What trends do you follow? Like you said, you're not going
to try to be the partner of the NFL or the NBA, but what what do
you pay attention to what sort of trends maybe impact, when you
think about it, flow sports? I mean, surely there are things
you're looking at at a larger scale.
Just be curious, you know, because it's so dynamic.
RSNS are failing in the US wherethey're apparently struggling.
You're seeing people like Netflix come in, like I know
(40:58):
some of those stuff are quite high level that might not
directly impact you, but just curious, you know, what sort of
trends that you do follow on a larger scale?
Yeah, we, I mean, we follow it, all right.
Like, I mean, Pat McAfee, right?Like what he does is amazing,
right? It's not stuffy.
It's just like so authentic. And then you see the people that
used to be in ties, you know, ontheir iPhone during a broadcast.
(41:21):
It's like, OK, like we can't be stuffy here.
Like, you know, you know, we're,we're, we're launching the
athlete lounge or the Diamond League.
And then we're like, dude, it isthe athlete's lounge.
We're not stuffy. If it's stuffy, it's a total
failure. If things break because we have
someone calling in from Doha, that's cool, right?
Like we need to make this fun and authentic, right?
(41:44):
How you know, all of them are using influencers?
How you know the broadcast? I was watching a recent
broadcast in the graphics and it's like, hey, man, how do we
bring, you know, on I think TNTTNT or TBS is doing a good
job during the playoffs where they're putting the name over
the over the the hockey, the player, right?
(42:05):
It's like, Hey, how are we bringing that to Motorsports?
How are we bringing that to hockey?
How are we doing those things? And can we bring it at scale?
So and, and spread the cost across all of our leagues so
they get the TNT feeling for hockey when it's on flow or
we're streaming, you know, on a fast channel, for example.
So like we are always looking atit, trying to bring what the
(42:26):
best people are doing to to our properties.
Mark, early on you when you weresitting the scene of who is Flow
Sports, you mentioned the fact that you're a sort of tech
business and I'm just curious totalk a bit more about that part
of it. It sounded like you were doing
some work on actually creating platforms for others as well.
(42:47):
No, I mean, not platforms for others, but you know, the
technology that kind of runs these sports.
So if you think about how the broadcasts and the media is
behind the times and a lot of these sports and we're trying to
bring it forward, so is the tech.
So wrestling, for example, you know, we own a meet
registration, a event managementand a results data company,
(43:12):
right? We do that so we can add
graphics to all types of broadcasts.
We do that so we can add stats to all types of broadcasts to
get that data to make the user experience better so you can
follow your athlete. So we do that in track and
field. We have one in Motorsports, we
have one in hockey, and we're launching one in in
cheerleading. And so, you know, if you're on,
(43:35):
if you're watching the hockey broadcast and you want to know
the the data from any one of these leagues, you can look on
and see who scored, You can look, you can, you can see, you
know, how much times on ice, etcetera, just like if it was an
NHL game. And so we need to invest in that
technology along with the media if we're really going to grow
(43:55):
these sports. So that's what we're doing on
the tech side. So Mark, really the, I guess the
final question sort of to wrap things up is you, you've had a
lot of growth and you've raised investment.
You're looking to take the next step, lots of opportunity by the
sounds of it still to keep growing the pie from your
existing partners. Are there any particular
challenges that you and indeed the industry are still really
(44:16):
facing to maximize the value of the industry you're working in
today and trying to serve? Well, I mean, it's, it just goes
back to our original business problem.
It's like this is a very fragmented space.
And from the beginning, it's like if people aren't working
together in these spaces, you know, you everyone has their
(44:38):
little fiefdoms and people aren't working together, you're
not going to grow. And so, you know, that is always
been the challenge for the sports and leagues and it will
continue to be. And we try to do our best.
We try to work with partners. That's why we're trying to, you
know, we, we work with, you know, all types of partners
(44:58):
because we know that, hey, if wecan grow the pie, we're going to
grow. But that is always the biggest
challenge. And it's not just the not just
the leagues and the sports properties.
Sometimes it's the athletes or the coaches.
And I mean, you would, you wouldn't believe, right?
And I'll even say like Penn Relays and Drake Relays are big
track and field events. They decide to do it on the same
day. You're like, what are you doing?
(45:20):
Can you guys just like one year you go first and one year you go
there and then maybe work together.
And so you like, hey, if you winPenn and then win Drake, right?
Like maybe work together that no, they're not working
together. It's not easy.
We're trying. We tried really hard.
So now we have the same broadcast, but like just, you
know, there are some entrenched kind of activities that you'd be
(45:42):
like, hey, can we just work together even though you're a
competitor? Can we work together?
So we can, we can, we can grow this.
We're trying, man. Yeah, Mark, I appreciate you
taking the time to come on today.
Like I said, you know, we, we spend quite a bit of time
talking about how Tier 2 tier threes can survive because
there's only so many tier ones and we know that they're
(46:05):
actually the majority when it comes to how many properties are
out there. So knowing the story you guys
have had, you know, you're talking back what, as far as
2006, you guys are continuing togrow the investment that's
coming in. Clearly you guys have built a
product here, you understand? Yeah.
Yes, I'm getting old. I'm looking on this screen.
I'm like, I don't like what I look like.
Geez. Well, we appreciate you coming
(46:26):
on and and sharing your story with us.
Like I said, it's good to to hear from some folks.
You know, we, we speak to the NFLS, the NBA's, but you know,
it's good to speak to some people that are working on that,
that smaller scale and proving that there is a there is a way
to make it work. Yeah.
There's definitely a way to makeit work.
And if you think about the long tail, the long tail, yes, very
fragmented, but it's as big as the the head of the tail.
So we're working on that. Good stuff Mark, thanks so much.
(46:50):
Looking forward to following your journey.
All right. Thanks so much.
Appreciate it. 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 at Sports Pro Nick. And please do spread the word of
the podcast. There's no better way of
marketing than word of mouth, whether that be in person or on
social media. And if you don't like what
(47:10):
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, Nick, we have a guest
today, so I won't spend too muchtime with my banter, but this
particular guest will have some inside feeling, some personal
love for the things that mean somuch to me.
I'm as American football guide Friday Night Lights.
(00:30):
This is always sort of somethingspecial.
I went on to be AD 3 football player.
I'm wearing my Wittenberg football top today.
This individual knows a thing ortwo when it comes to high school
sports, doing things with Division 3 football, but also
doing things on a larger scale now with professional sports,
Division One NCAA. And I think it's a really
interesting story given where they started, where they're at
(00:50):
today. And then also just kind of
thinking about the the fragmentation that exists within
sports media and being all over the place, different
monetization models. So I'm not giving it away yet,
Nick, but I don't know if if there's anything else you want
to add before I bring our guest in today.
Well, I guess the just because we're playing a bit of a cryptic
game, I'd say the other thing that is interesting about this
person is also their location atthe moment, because it's
(01:11):
somewhere I've never been. I've always had it on my To Do
List of I've travelled to, despite all the times I've
visited the US. So everything gives a little bit
of insight along the way about what's good about their their
locations because it's on my, it's my hit list the next few
years, that's for sure. All right.
Well, without further ado, I'll bring on our guest who is the
CEO and Co Founder of Flow Sports, Mark Floriani.
(01:31):
So Mark, if I remember correctly, are you based in
Austin? Yeah, based in Austin, TX.
All right, well not only do I have a affinity for high school
football and D3 football, I alsohave an affinity for smoked BBQ
meats. I live in a flat in London, so I
have an electric smoker. It is not the same thing, but I
have I have managed to smoke a few different things out of my
balcony. Man, the, the, the BBQ game in
(01:54):
Austin, TX has has really gottentop notch.
There's about 10 or 15 places now to go.
So hopefully I'll take you guys out when you guys come to
Austin, TX. There's some great stuff,
there's some great places. I've even got some friends,
Chris that so they're Australianliving in the UK and then
randomly there it's like, oh, we're on a trip to Austin this
weekend and why? They're just basically going to
(02:15):
do the round round the grounds of trying different BBQ meats.
I'm like, wow, and I thought oneof them was a vegetarian
beforehand. So there you go.
It even turns people. The airport vegetarians coming
in, carnivores going out, so. Absolutely.
Well, because, you know, I thinkthere's a really interesting
story to tell here, Mark. You know, I think maybe the 1st
(02:36):
place to jump this off with is, you know, we do have a large
audience space in the US, but wealso have a large audience space
in Europe. So maybe for those that aren't
familiar with flow sports, give them a little bit of a
background, I think as well, just to kind of explain the, the
beginning origins of it because it's something you and your
brother started off. And if I understand correctly,
you're just in a van driving around.
So I think a little bit of the back story into sort of what
(02:57):
Flow sports has become, but kindof where you guys took off from.
Yeah, awesome. So like today, FO Sports is a
sports media and technology company.
We stream over 40,000 live events, produce hours of
shoulder programming and we actually build technology for
what we call Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports.
(03:18):
Why do we start here? Well, I ran track at the
University of Texas, my brother wrestled at Cal Poly and we were
super passionate about our sports.
We really cared about the growthof our sports and we were very
frustrated about the media exposure around our sports.
And we thought that hey, if there was a company that that
cared about these sports, they would grow.
(03:40):
We also realized that it wasn't just track and field and
wrestling. And we thought that, hey, if we
could do this in track and fieldand wrestling and expand to
other sports and leagues that didn't get the that we thought
they deserved, we'd have a pretty cool business.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, at the time in
2006, no one believed in US or the idea ESPN was at 110 million
(04:04):
households. And you know, the thought that
track and field wrestling, thesetypes of sports could be big, it
just wasn't in the cars for mostpeople.
Except I convinced one of my friends on the track team to
give us 10,000 bucks and that was a lot of money back then.
And we bought a van, a conversion van.
(04:24):
And me and my brother and a couple other Co founders, you
know, started flow sports. The beginning was me and Ryan
Ponsonby, which was a Co founderof ours.
We drove across the country living out of the van, filming
athletes, filming coaches and just posting that online.
And then we did that with wrestling and, and track and
(04:46):
field and yeah. And the the rest, I guess, is
history from those early, early,early days living out of a man.
Even back then were you You talkabout creating content.
Now we live in this creator economy world that has this
whole new yeah, economical worldand industry that exists today.
(05:08):
Were you even I could? Have been an influencer.
You, you still are you still youstill, you still can be March.
But were you guys looking at, was it primarily just on your
own platform and then having to like publishing on their kind of
trying to create an audience from scratch or were you also
posting in different places at the time?
Yeah, so most of the almost all the stuff was on our own
(05:29):
platform, but we post a little bit on social media.
Back then it was 2006, but yeah,a we, we filmed our travels.
We filmed a lot of things. What people are doing now we
were doing in 2006, following around athletes just going one
summer I went to Europe on the European track circuit that no
(05:51):
Americans ever seen. And I'd go get Belgium waffles
with athletes, go on train rideswith athletes and agents and
tell the behind the scenes. And that really kind of, yeah,
really resonated with the community and the authenticity
and the behind the scenes look. And we're still doing that
today. Well, have you still sitting,
sitting on all that archive footage and access to all that?
(06:12):
Because there's definitely some good documentary style stuff
that can come out of that these days looking back.
Oh, yeah, we have a lot there is, I mean, yeah, throughout
Europe, throughout Asia, throughout, you know, just even
the United States. One trip we went, tried to get,
we went to the Olympic trials and our car broke down in in New
Mexico and we didn't have any money for hotels.
(06:34):
So we we stayed at the the, in the van at The Body Shop in Las
Cruces, NM Yeah, that was, that was a shady night.
So we got through it. We got through it.
So you mentioned you and your brother, track and wrestling
were kind of the two things thatkind of pulled you into this.
But obviously the the set of sports partners you have now is
(06:58):
very expansive. So maybe just give a little bit
of background sort of what you covered these days, what some of
your deals are just again to kind of paint that picture of
sort of the scale of what the business is today compared to
where you guys started off, you know, as a van driving around.
Yeah, so we're in 25 sports today.
We sign, you know, we have over 500 partners going from sports
(07:22):
like Motorsports where we work with NASCAR in, you know
obviously wrestling, USA wrestling world championship,
NCAA, we have D1D2 and D3 partners.
We do some of the early season NCAA basketball and baseball
tournament softball tournaments,some of the best tournaments in
(07:43):
in NCAA, you know, we're doing the top track league in the in
the world in the Diamond League.Yeah.
So we hockey basically everyone underneath the NHLAHL is our
streaming partner. And you know, what we find is,
yes, the Tier 1 leagues they're going to get, they're going to
(08:04):
get obviously they're streaming and broadcasting, but they also
get all this content and marketing and innovation from
their broadcast partners. And it's really hard for Tier 2
and Tier 3 sports to get that kind of love.
And they need that love to grow their audience to, you know, to
(08:24):
the behind the scenes footage and marketing to get the
community to know why they should care.
And that's what we can provide to these leagues and sports
outside the the major ones. Mark, so for all these different
partners that you're working with or sports, depending on how
you want to look at it, what exactly are you delivering for
(08:45):
them? Because some of them, some of
the deals and relationships thathappen with platforms like yours
can be just being a distributionchannel.
Some of it can be the production.
And given your, your, your roots, I'm wondering if that's
part of part of that mix as well.
Are you already going in to Wendon the delivery side of things
or are they giving you a fee that you just ingest and do your
own thing with? What's the mix there typically?
(09:07):
Yeah. I mean in terms of in terms of
the partnership, right, We get the content in a variety of
different ways. We produce content, we take
feeds from content. We work kind of a mix where
we'll make sure that we're helping with the technology.
But in terms of the, you know, just the partnership, if we're
just taking the feed, that's nothow we like to work, right?
(09:28):
We want to make sure that we aregrowing the property.
I mean, our mission at Flow fromthe beginning is to grow our
sports every day. And so in terms of a great
partnership, we're working with them on content, we're working
with them on marketing, We're pushing them.
We're either doing the production and trying to push
it, to elevate it or we're pushing them and saying, hey,
(09:48):
how do we get this to a higher quality?
How do we get, you know, you know better play by play or
graphics in there? We really want to be pushing the
envelope because you know, we got we got it.
We got to make a great product for our customers.
And our sports are not the top sports or the top leagues and
(10:09):
they're not going to be grow if we're just doing it the same way
they got us here, right. And so we really want to push
the partners and ourselves to create content marketing, make
it really exciting when our customers watch the content.
I hope you're enjoying this episode of Stream Time Sports,
but we just wanted to draw your attention to what's next in the
world of sports marketing. There's no doubt it's evolved,
(10:31):
but now it's time to understand how.
That's why we're introducing Impact, XA, bold new initiative
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Launching on the 17th of June, we'll be showcasing ground
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(10:52):
creativity meets performance coming soon.
Just remember to search sports Pro Impact X to find out more.
You've sort of nicely segwayed us into something that I think
we're going to spend a little bit of time talking on.
We're talking about these Tier 2, Tier 3 partners and you've
referenced they're not getting the traditional broadcast deals
at an ESPNABC or Fox Sports, anyof those.
And it does seem like more and more money is getting, you know,
(11:15):
if there's a pie, more of that pie is going to this top tier
sports. So what is the opportunity for
Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports? You really are championing that.
So for them, they're, they're trying to make money off of
their content the same way anyone else is.
What is how large is the opportunity for?
There's Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports, And then we can go into
kind of, you know, what some of those challenges are to to
maximize that value. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
(11:37):
really large. I don't have a dollar amount on
it, but there are, I mean, there's, there are so many
different distribution platforms, There's so many
different ways to get your name out there, to get your content
out there. It is about having a plan and
working with a partner to make sure that you're not just siloed
in one area or the other. Because what works today, as you
(11:58):
know, we move fast might not work tomorrow, right.
And you know, not to jump to thenext question, but like with,
you know, the degradation of thecable bundle has really does
hurt these Tier 2 and tier 3 because ESPN, the Amazon,
etcetera. They, they, they really
(12:20):
understand what is driving the sign ups.
And, and then if they're spending billions of dollars on
the NFL or the NBA in a direct to consumer world, right?
Like they need to make sure thatthat's successful.
And if they have the NBA, if they have the, the NHL, if they
have the UFC, they really have ahousehold, the majority of
(12:40):
households. And it becomes harder for Tier 2
and Tier 3 to, to mix to, to fitinto that mix, right?
And so from our perspective, we have a, we have a, we, we want
to meet our fans where they are.And so obviously we have a
direct to consumer aspect where you pay behind the pay wall, but
100% of our content is not behind the pay wall, right?
(13:02):
We are putting stuff in, we're putting live streams in front of
the pay wall. Well, we're we're working with
people like CBS and Fox, local linear, regional sports networks
and getting that content out there.
Obviously doing that on social and creating a bunch of content
in front of the paywall to make sure that we're we're reaching
the fans where they are and hopefully get them excited.
(13:24):
And then at some point, you know, if they want to watch the
full season or the big game at the end of the year, they are
subscribing. And you got to have that
strategy as Tier 2 and tier 3. You can't just go to one
platform and and just kind of bebehind the paywall.
You got to have all of it if youwant to grow.
At least that's our theory. Want to grow your property?
(13:45):
So Mark, can you just take us a bit into the type of
relationship or arrangement you are having with those companies,
taking it a little bit step deeper, you've given a few sort
of parameters you work within oryou try to facilitate and bring
it to life with the sounds like there's a bit of a distribution
relationship there. There sounds like there's a
production component just in turn.
(14:07):
And then often as an industry, we often talk about the
meteorites deals that you see intier one, very, very transact.
There's a different type. There's a very, there's a fairly
fairly formulaic way they approach things still, even
though there's lots of differenttypes of rights to go there.
But I know at the Tier 2, Tier 3level, it is much more nuanced.
Just talk us through what's a typical relationship like look
like for you and what what doesn't it include perhaps as
(14:28):
well as what it does. So we are way more flexible,
right? We, we work with the partner to
be like, OK, what is what is a success for them?
And then how does it fit with being a success for us?
So I'll give the example of the CAA and that's AD one conference
in, in NCAA. And you know, our partnership
(14:51):
with them is we have, you know, the vast majority of all the
content that's streaming on flowsports.
So if you're a super fan, you want to watch every game you're
gonna you're gonna subscribe to to Flow.
But we also worked with CBS Sports Network, right?
And so they have some of their top basketball games.
It's important for them to be onthat national platform.
So we're working with CAA and the CB and CBS to be like, OK,
(15:14):
what are the best games? Where do you want to get out
there? And we work with with them on
that local linear or local regional is important for a
bunch of the presidents and the 80s because they, you know, they
might have an older, older alumni base that's like, hey, I
want to watch this stuff on TV. And when the football games on,
I want to turn on the TV. And so we work with CAA to
(15:38):
facilitate that. And obviously there's pluses and
minuses for all of that. And so we just work with our
partners to figure out, hey, what's the best, what's the best
solution for them and hopefully it aligns with us and we figure
out that partnership. And so I think that's a great
example. We just did one with the Penn
Relays where Penn Relays and theDrake Relays in track and field
(16:02):
are on the same weekend. CBS wanted to had the Drake
Relays and we suggested the CBS is, hey, it's a great day of
track and field. Why don't you take the
professional section, about 90 minutes of the professional
section and go from the Drake Relays to the pen relays.
And so we worked with the pen relays in CBS and made it easy.
(16:23):
We already had our production down there, made it easy to kind
of expand that viewership for one of the best track and field
meets in the in the world. So Mark, it does sound quite
flexible. Just how do you approach that
from the beginning? Are you signing basically a,
committing an agreement, a deal,a partnership in place that said
that from the outset? So we're agreeing something
(16:43):
we're, we're working together onthis, this sort of journey as
your broadcast media partner, whatever you want to call it.
And then we're going to ebb and flow with just where the best
opportunity is at any given time.
And then there'll be a bit of give and take along the way.
Is that how it plays out or you?Because most times you see a
traditional media rights deal atall, it's all 200 page
meteorites agreement where it's all every line of what's being
(17:06):
agreed is locked away at the beginning and there's there's
not much flex after that. But it sounds like it's
completely not that approach. Yeah.
We try to be great partners, right.
And so we, like I said, we're trying to grow these sports and
and have a great experience for our customers.
Obviously there's a contract, it's not 200 pages, right.
Hopefully we're not looking at the contract after.
(17:27):
That's the goal is that we are working together with that
partner and if they want something and we can facilitate
and there's give and take there.And so, yeah, there's work to
get to the contract and we have that baseline, but we're always
trying to find ways to have win wins and grow, flow and grow and
(17:48):
grow and grow the our partners. Sure.
But just just to how when you say win, win, I'm just trying to
get my head around this for other people out there who are
looking at what you're doing. When you say win, win, are you
basically coming out, So let's say the CBS example you gave a
CAA, right? Will how the CBS pay anyone a
fee there or are you giving themaccess and that that visibility
(18:09):
helps them get more sponsors on board and you more visibility
because sports is visible. How, how does that?
Yeah. Play it all depends, right?
And and so with the CAA, we knewthat CBS was an important part
of what they were trying to do. And so we had talk talk about
that before the contract, right.And so that's in the contract,
(18:31):
right. And, you know, but they wanted a
couple extra games. And so it's like, OK, what does
it actually do to us? If there's more windows for CAA,
you know, we're going to be flexible there.
And we have been flexible. And if, I think if you talked
with Joey over at the CAA, we'vewe've tried our best to make
sure that he gets some wins and it, it still works economically
(18:52):
for us. Obviously if someone's trying to
take it all, it doesn't work economically for us.
We're going to have to, to figure that out.
But we try to be flexible. We in a world where everyone is
taking 100 percent of the pie, we don't think 100% of the
rights. We don't think that's the best
strategy for, again, for lack ofa better term, Tier 2 and Tier 3
(19:13):
sports and leagues. It is.
If you're trying to grow it, it's not trying.
You know, it's not to be under one platform, to be the 50th
most important partner they have, right?
That that that I don't think grows, you know, the property.
In terms of business model, you,you mentioned you know your
(19:33):
direct to consumer subscription,but you've also just mentioned
you don't put everything behind a paywall either.
So you know, myself and Nick, we've had many guests, many
conversations talking about what's the best way to monetize.
Is it subscription? Is it advertisement?
This is a freemium model. Is it some sort of hybrid, you
know, for you guys, it does sound like despite, you know,
you do put things in front of the paywall, there is most of
(19:55):
the contents unlocked behind thepaywall.
Just sort of how you view monetization models,
particularly for those Tier 2, tier 3 sports.
I think sometimes Nick and I have talked about the smaller
the sport you are, the more you might actually be able to charge
because you know, there'd be such an affinity for your sport
if there's nowhere else to do it, you could potentially charge
a premium for it. So just a big curious sort of
how you guys have gone about your, your monetization model
(20:17):
and diversifying a little bit, so it's not all exclusively
behind. On the paywall.
Yeah. So a business model and making
sure that that you have a profitaround these properties is
really important, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3, right.
And so, you know, at first starting flow, everything was
free, it was advertising. And what happened to our
(20:38):
business is every dollar we spent on marketing, every dollar
we spent on production kind of hurt the bottom line.
And and then we started going toplaces that only our advertisers
wanted us to go, which then hurts the overall value for the
customer, right. And so we found that
(21:02):
subscription is really importantin D2 and D3.
I keep saying Tier 2 and Tier 3 sports and because it is that
baseline, it does make the business work.
And but having that mix of advertising and having that mix,
you know, a lot of times the free stuff in front of the
paywall, that is just marketing and content for the property,
(21:26):
right? And so because we have that base
that if we drive more viewership, we're making more
money, it incentivizes us to putmore things in front of the
paywall to a certain point to market more, to create more
content, which then in turn builds a bigger community, which
then in turn allows you to, you know, make more money off
advertising. So we do think having a
(21:47):
diversified revenue is importantfor these properties and aligns
the best with the growth of thatproperty as well, right?
So our incentives are aligned, distribution's important,
viewership's important, but alsomaking money is important
because that allows us to investback into higher production
quality innovation in terms of you know graphics innovation in
(22:12):
terms of AI cameras, you know, bringing in better play by play
people, etcetera, etcetera. You need that diversification to
do that. So Mark the the advertising side
of things in streaming is seems to be maturing more and more
these days. You said you sort of started
with that as like the problem ofthe primary revenue drivers for
(22:34):
you. Firstly, what are you seeing
there? Are you seeing it maturing?
You know, are you seeing more advertising dollars really
coming into the marketplace now or is it and or is it still
really challenging to unlock those, those advertising dollars
given that sort of a lag I guessyou have between streaming
consumption and traditional media?
I mean, if you're Amazon and you're going to have 15,000,000
(22:55):
people watch Thursday Night Football, it's going to be easy,
right? Where some of the, you know,
most properties are not getting 15,000,000.
You know, views on, you know, onagain, it's the tier, it's the
tier one, it's the NFL, the NBA,those Olympics are going to have
fine, are going to be fine because they have this scale
(23:17):
again, with direct to consumer like you really have to, you
really have to understand your customers to get people to, to
pay behind the paywall. And so for us advertising and
for, you know, what I would say for most streamers, it's not
about this, you know, the 15,000,000 because people can't
drive that. It's going to be more about the
(23:38):
sponsorships. It's going to be, hey, where are
you reaching on social? You know, if you're just
streaming the ads in the live broadcast, it's not going to,
it's not mature, right? But you got to have that kind of
360 sponsorship social strategy and the live stream on, on on
the ground as well. All four of those things, if
(23:58):
you're going to, you know, buildup the advertising, at least in,
in our opinion. And then you're talking about
expansion and maintaining profitability.
Obviously, you've grown more andmore sports, I guess as the
company continues to grow. How do you determine how do you
select prioritize whichever way you want to frame the question
where you want to go in terms ofnew growth areas or new sports?
(24:21):
Well, first and first, places where we're needed, right?
And so people always ask, are you going to go up the food
chain and go to the NF, you know, try to do NFL and NBA?
He's like, no, we're not needed there, right?
And Amazon doesn't. ESPN does an amazing job.
NBC does an amazing job. Like we're not going to be able
to compete or want to compete against Amazon, right?
And we're not needed there, right?
(24:42):
And so we go places where we're needed and where we think that
our model can grow the property,can bring innovation on the
production, raise the quality and, and, and places where, you
know, the, the community is going to be excited that we're
that we're coming in. On top of that, we have a ton of
data. We've been doing this for a long
(25:02):
time. We everything, we track
everything. And so we definitely have an
algorithm to understand the value of partnerships, to
understand the value of sports. And then we look at it and say,
OK, can we get into this space? How hard is it going to be to
get in this space? And then we determine which
sports to go into and then really what partnerships to to
(25:25):
sign up. So Mark, the you've got a whole
host of different partners that you've referred to and within
your platform you have basicallydifferent channels within it,
which is quite not an uncommon approach in terms of different
channels available in a Main Street, a main platform.
Did you ever think about trying to go to create more white
(25:45):
labeled kind of options? So basically that flow sports, I
don't know athletics as a stand alone itself rather than pulling
them all together? Or was it always trying to just
build the biggest audience possible using all those
different partnerships together?Yeah, again, kind of going back
to Tier 2 and Tier 3 is like we need every, we need as much
scale as possible. And if we can, if we can
(26:09):
convince the Motorsports fan that they should like their
local AHL team, that's somethingthat we should be trying to do,
right. And so not only do you have like
the specific sports we want to be able to market, we want to be
able to market it across channel.
But then you go to some, you know, maybe even some
competitors that are white labeljust for that league.
(26:30):
Like we are totally against thatbecause that really I think
limits the exposure that you get, right.
And so you want to be able to have the community and, and more
people have access to the property than just your specific
super fans. So we're always trying to figure
out how, how do we grow this audience?
(26:50):
How do we grow this property? Because if we, you know, if we
get really good at it, then we're very valuable to partners.
So you have no doubt you've doneplenty of analysis on, you know,
this platform and all these different channels and your
example, there's a great one of trying to move fans from one
sports channel to another and soforth.
(27:10):
You've got hundreds of thousandssubscribers or more.
I don't know the number I've, I can speculate until the cows
come home. But how do you shift them from,
well, actually, do you have any insight?
I'm sure you do as to how many of those do buy subscriptions
across multiple or normally do you see that maybe consuming a
bit of the front of the paywall stuff across the multitude of
(27:31):
sports, but maybe you're subscribing to 1 sports property
or sports channel alone. What's the mix like to the
typical trend? Yeah.
And so, yeah, they definitely come in for their one property,
right? That's what they're passionate
about. That's the easiest way to get
them in. And then we just start dripping
and marketing other properties. So if we have, you know, a big
(27:52):
Motorsports event where we'll have more than, you know, a
couple 100,000 people watching, we'll be marketing other, other
content from that and a lot and making sure they know that part
of their subscription is they get access to all this other
stuff. And then same thing in terms of
marketing, right? If we know that we're marketing
on these different channels, we got to be careful about it
because we don't want to be inauthentic.
(28:15):
But if we do think that there's some crossover, we will promote
other other sports and other events to the to the to the
different sports audiences. But do you find that is
effective though? Is it, are you able to get a lot
of subscribers moving across sports as well?
Because that would be just something, you know, I think
(28:35):
would be a challenge. For sure it's growing.
We've only really started pushing this over the last 12 to
18 months as our audience has grown and we're getting these
big events right. So, but yeah, it's definitely
more and more people that are watching Motorsports are
watching AHL and and and wrestling.
And so, yeah, it is, it is growing.
(28:58):
It's not 50% yet, but you know, it's starting to get there.
One thing that I wouldn't kind of shift us over to because we
talked about it quite a bit and there's a few interesting angles
on this. Nick and I covered flow sports
cheese. It must have been maybe 3 weeks
ago, 4 weeks ago when you're just coming off your most recent
funding round, which, you know, you talked about getting $10,000
(29:19):
when this all started, you got asignificantly larger number.
I believe the, it says the funding's up to around or just
over 100 million now. And there's a couple different
things will, will, will entanglewith that.
But I think the one bit that's really interesting is about that
Nick and I spoke about was the involvement of Dream Sports over
in India. You know, we've been following
their business on, you know, thethings that they're doing on
(29:39):
that their side. And that was just really
interesting. It'd be curious just to get a
little bit of insight from you sort of how that developed
because as far as I'm aware, themajority of what you're doing is
North American based. So for someone like Dream Sports
come in from India, it's sort oflike what?
Where's that string been attached?
Yeah. So Dream Sports, Yeah, came in
about a month ago. We've been talking to them for
(30:02):
over a year. They're great people.
I don't know if you've ever talked to them.
Harsh over there runs an amazingorganization, super impressive
what they've done for for that country.
They have a flow sports product called Fan Code over there and
they're seeing success and they liked what we're doing here.
(30:25):
Obviously, you know, we're doingsome things a little different
than they are, but they liked what we're doing there.
And I think they can see that there might be there will be
synergies between our our two platforms on that front.
And then what they're doing in terms of daily fantasy is
definitely something. And their know how it's
(30:46):
unbelievable if you go, we were there a month before the IPL.
But what they're doing in cricket and how many people they
have coming 30 minutes before every, every cricket match
because that's when the lineup is sent is, is, is pretty
unbelievable. And we would love to bring some
of that to some of our sports here in the United States.
(31:10):
So I think there's a lot of synergies and a lot of things
that we can do together. So Mark, what obviously you've
you've congratulations on raising the investment that you
to really keep driving the business forward.
Just what is that investment going to go to?
Where are the main areas of focus now moving forward?
Yeah. So it's it is really just
focused on the customer. You know we are just launched
(31:32):
our next Gen. wrestling product.So it's in beta to about 25% of
our audience and we we know I'm not happy with the level of
product that we've had over the last couple of years for our
customers. And so you know, we are working
to integrate better streaming technology to be on more apps
(31:55):
and TV's, integrate the the datathat we have exclusively on our
platform, making sure that our experience for these sports and
leagues is as good as any NFL experience, right?
And so accelerating that push ontop of making sure that the the
(32:17):
broadcast just continues to elevate, same thing, right?
Like, how do we make sure that when our customers log on and
they watch a cheerleading event or a Motorsports event, they're
like, man, this is the highest quality I've ever seen for our
sport. And so to do that cost money and
we want to be efficient on it. And so we're investing in, you
(32:39):
know, AI cameras, building our own models to make sure that we
continue to drive higher quality, but keep the cost down,
right. The business model has to work.
We can't be, you know, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
on content in our sports right now for X amount of hours.
(33:00):
We have to, we have to drive that down to how do we get to,
you know, low thousands and still have a, a great broadcast.
And so pushing that, pushing those forward, but it's really
focused on the customer and having the best product and
video experience that they have had in sports.
So making those investments intothe production in the the
(33:21):
product, the end product that your customers are consuming,
where's the the revenue growth coming from?
Is it just you're hoping to reduce churn rates, increase
subscription acquisition and just build the business through
basically just delivering betterproduct to the market?
Or are there other layers you'readding into that that you think
can drive up extra return on theyour investment into the the
(33:44):
product? No, we're pretty confident that
the business will sustain in terms of yes, high, you know,
get with better, with better production.
You get people to stay longer, you get more people to sign up,
you get more partners want to bewith you, right.
With a better product, they're going to be stickier.
Again, same thing. They're going to be wanting to
(34:05):
sign up. We're going to have, you know,
we have a list of new products we can add to the subscription.
But in general, like we, we, if we treat our customers well, we
give them a great product, more people will sign up and they'll
stay longer. And so that's our maniacal focus
on making a better product for our customers.
(34:25):
Just that one of the things you hear Mark happen that people
talk about in the market is subscription fatigue from some
of these major platforms becauseit's so competitive.
Do you find because your serviceserving a different audience
set, they're producing a different product?
That's not really the same sort of issue that you hear talked
about at the main streamer levelthat you know, the big, the big
(34:47):
tech streamer level where they they're all fighting at A at a
low price point for market sharethe whole time.
Yeah, I just I tried, I tried tend not to believe that we need
that that stuff can will happen to us or accept that we the our
audiences are obviously super passionate because are fans of
these sports, right. Everyone can be a fan of the
(35:08):
NFL. But if you're a fan of
cheerleading or if you're a fan of dirt track Motorsports, like
you're a fan and we believe thatwe are actually the best value
in the sport and this is the last thing that you would want
to cut, right. And so that's our mentality.
We haven't seen, we haven't seensubscription fatigue impact us.
(35:30):
And I think that if we continue to focus on our customers needs,
we will do fine. I'm going to come back to the,
the investment from Dream Sportswith that being, you know, an
Indian based company, does that potentially mean flow sports?
Is it all looking to expand internationally?
You know, Tier 2 and tier 3 sports aren't limited just to
the US And I really appreciated your answer earlier being about
(35:54):
we're looking to expand where we're needed is do you feel
there's a need to expand internationally?
Is that not something that's necessarily on the cards?
Because you know that this, I guess these tier of sports, you
know, they, they don't, don't just struggle in the US to get
coverage on broadcasters. It's something at the moment you
guys are still focused on the the American marketplace.
Yeah. I mean just the problem, The
(36:16):
problem exists everywhere and we've seen, I'll call them mini
flow sports pop up in all these different regions.
We don't need to go international, but again, we
will go where we think it'll be valuable.
For example, Jiu Jitsu is reallybig in Brazil, right?
And so we've acquired and partnered with BJJ Stars, which
(36:37):
is a big Brazilian show and we're working with people on the
ground there. And we have Portuguese play by
play. We have Portuguese sign up
funnel. So we're definitely in Brazil
for Jiu Jitsu. In Canada we have a great, we
have the best cycling package there is the Tour de France, the
Jira, the Velta de Espana. We have French, we had French
(37:00):
play by play to the Tour de France etcetera, etcetera.
We we we own a a racing series with Kyle Larson, NASCAR
champion Kyle Larson and his brother-in-law Brad Suite called
high limits. We took that to Australia.
So dirt track racing in Australia is, is erasing in
Australia is, is really big downthere.
(37:22):
And so we will be doing more in Australia.
So on top of what, you know, we'll decide what we'll be doing
with dream. But yes, I mean, we're not like,
oh, we're going to go to Germanyand do XYZ.
It's about hey, the sport and hey, is this sport have a
following in the US and some other place.
Is this a place that we should be focusing on?
(37:45):
We just had cheerleading worlds and in cheerleading in the UK is
growing. So we're we did some things in
there. So that's kind of the approach
we'll take. So marketing, the marketing
these channels and propositions,you've got really strong fan
bases connected with the sports and partners you've got.
(38:05):
How much is it you pushing the marketing effort to get them
onto platform and how much is, Idon't know if you can give us
something saying that like the split of that effort versus the
actual partners themselves doingthe marketing because they have
that already a direct relationship with the fan in
some instances that you know, through various social channels
and other means, if they're members, players, athletes,
(38:27):
etcetera, what's the strategy there to bring that to life?
Because it can be a tricky balance to get everyone pulling
in the right direction, I'm sure.
Yeah, that can be tricky, but that's why the community
aspect's so important, right? And so, and that's why you can't
like separate these things. It's like we're all in this
(38:47):
together, right? And like if you know, I, when I
was running track and field, I was trying to make sure anyone
that knew or cared about it knewwhen it was on NBC, right?
Like we're in this together to grow this sport and we're not
trying to get 100% of the pie, right?
We want to, you know, our nice little portion of the pie, but
we want the pie to grow. And so it is the partners and
(39:10):
we're going to give them tools. We're going to tell them, hey,
how what we need and I'm sure they're going to give us advice
on what we needed to do. It's us, it's the fans, it's
the, you know, the athletes, right?
And when we do it right and we're authentic and people
realize we're in it for the right reason.
We're, we're in it to grow the sport, then it, that's when it
(39:31):
works really well. I think Motorsports a perfect
example, right? Like Dale Earnhardt junior,
right? He's a great partner, right?
We work with him on the cars tour.
And I mean, he is just talking about the sport in general and
then he's talking about flow, right?
And it's like it's because he loves the sport and we're, we
love it too. We're trying to grow it too.
(39:52):
He understands that. And so there's nothing fake
about it. He's just knows that we're
working our butt off to to to grow.
His properties and, and all the properties in Motorsports.
So then people like him or Kyle Larson or Kyle Busch, they're
talking about flow and helping grow this thing.
And so it's, we know it's reallyall of us together.
(40:13):
This is not the NFL. And like, hi, how do we, we
can't, we can't be picky and we need everyone to to promote
these sports and leagues. Question for me.
You know, we've talked and you guys are very narrowly focused
and I appreciate the fact that you guys, you know what you are
like you said we're going to go where we think we're needed, but
what do you potentially learn from other people?
(40:36):
What trends do you follow? Like you said, you're not going
to try to be the partner of the NFL or the NBA, but what what do
you pay attention to what sort of trends maybe impact, when you
think about it, flow sports? I mean, surely there are things
you're looking at at a larger scale.
Just be curious, you know, because it's so dynamic.
RSNS are failing in the US wherethey're apparently struggling.
You're seeing people like Netflix come in, like I know
(40:58):
some of those stuff are quite high level that might not
directly impact you, but just curious, you know, what sort of
trends that you do follow on a larger scale?
Yeah, we, I mean, we follow it, all right.
Like, I mean, Pat McAfee, right?Like what he does is amazing,
right? It's not stuffy.
It's just like so authentic. And then you see the people that
used to be in ties, you know, ontheir iPhone during a broadcast.
(41:21):
It's like, OK, like we can't be stuffy here.
Like, you know, you know, we're,we're, we're launching the
athlete lounge or the Diamond League.
And then we're like, dude, it isthe athlete's lounge.
We're not stuffy. If it's stuffy, it's a total
failure. If things break because we have
someone calling in from Doha, that's cool, right?
Like we need to make this fun and authentic, right?
(41:44):
How you know, all of them are using influencers?
How you know the broadcast? I was watching a recent
broadcast in the graphics and it's like, hey, man, how do we
bring, you know, on I think TNTTNT or TBS is doing a good
job during the playoffs where they're putting the name over
the over the the hockey, the player, right?
(42:05):
It's like, Hey, how are we bringing that to Motorsports?
How are we bringing that to hockey?
How are we doing those things? And can we bring it at scale?
So and, and spread the cost across all of our leagues so
they get the TNT feeling for hockey when it's on flow or
we're streaming, you know, on a fast channel, for example.
So like we are always looking atit, trying to bring what the
(42:26):
best people are doing to to our properties.
Mark, early on you when you weresitting the scene of who is Flow
Sports, you mentioned the fact that you're a sort of tech
business and I'm just curious totalk a bit more about that part
of it. It sounded like you were doing
some work on actually creating platforms for others as well.
(42:47):
No, I mean, not platforms for others, but you know, the
technology that kind of runs these sports.
So if you think about how the broadcasts and the media is
behind the times and a lot of these sports and we're trying to
bring it forward, so is the tech.
So wrestling, for example, you know, we own a meet
registration, a event managementand a results data company,
(43:12):
right? We do that so we can add
graphics to all types of broadcasts.
We do that so we can add stats to all types of broadcasts to
get that data to make the user experience better so you can
follow your athlete. So we do that in track and
field. We have one in Motorsports, we
have one in hockey, and we're launching one in in
cheerleading. And so, you know, if you're on,
(43:35):
if you're watching the hockey broadcast and you want to know
the the data from any one of these leagues, you can look on
and see who scored, You can look, you can, you can see, you
know, how much times on ice, etcetera, just like if it was an
NHL game. And so we need to invest in that
technology along with the media if we're really going to grow
(43:55):
these sports. So that's what we're doing on
the tech side. So Mark, really the, I guess the
final question sort of to wrap things up is you, you've had a
lot of growth and you've raised investment.
You're looking to take the next step, lots of opportunity by the
sounds of it still to keep growing the pie from your
existing partners. Are there any particular
challenges that you and indeed the industry are still really
(44:16):
facing to maximize the value of the industry you're working in
today and trying to serve? Well, I mean, it's, it just goes
back to our original business problem.
It's like this is a very fragmented space.
And from the beginning, it's like if people aren't working
together in these spaces, you know, you everyone has their
(44:38):
little fiefdoms and people aren't working together, you're
not going to grow. And so, you know, that is always
been the challenge for the sports and leagues and it will
continue to be. And we try to do our best.
We try to work with partners. That's why we're trying to, you
know, we, we work with, you know, all types of partners
(44:58):
because we know that, hey, if wecan grow the pie, we're going to
grow. But that is always the biggest
challenge. And it's not just the not just
the leagues and the sports properties.
Sometimes it's the athletes or the coaches.
And I mean, you would, you wouldn't believe, right?
And I'll even say like Penn Relays and Drake Relays are big
track and field events. They decide to do it on the same
day. You're like, what are you doing?
(45:20):
Can you guys just like one year you go first and one year you go
there and then maybe work together.
And so you like, hey, if you winPenn and then win Drake, right?
Like maybe work together that no, they're not working
together. It's not easy.
We're trying. We tried really hard.
So now we have the same broadcast, but like just, you
know, there are some entrenched kind of activities that you'd be
(45:42):
like, hey, can we just work together even though you're a
competitor? Can we work together?
So we can, we can, we can grow this.
We're trying, man. Yeah, Mark, I appreciate you
taking the time to come on today.
Like I said, you know, we, we spend quite a bit of time
talking about how Tier 2 tier threes can survive because
there's only so many tier ones and we know that they're
(46:05):
actually the majority when it comes to how many properties are
out there. So knowing the story you guys
have had, you know, you're talking back what, as far as
2006, you guys are continuing togrow the investment that's
coming in. Clearly you guys have built a
product here, you understand? Yeah.
Yes, I'm getting old. I'm looking on this screen.
I'm like, I don't like what I look like.
Geez. Well, we appreciate you coming
(46:26):
on and and sharing your story with us.
Like I said, it's good to to hear from some folks.
You know, we, we speak to the NFLS, the NBA's, but you know,
it's good to speak to some people that are working on that,
that smaller scale and proving that there is a there is a way
to make it work. Yeah.
There's definitely a way to makeit work.
And if you think about the long tail, the long tail, yes, very
fragmented, but it's as big as the the head of the tail.
So we're working on that. Good stuff Mark, thanks so much.
(46:50):
Looking forward to following your journey.
All right. Thanks so much.
Appreciate it. 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 at Sports Pro Nick. And please do spread the word of
the podcast. There's no better way of
marketing than word of mouth, whether that be in person or on
social media. And if you don't like what
(47:10):
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.
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