July 2, 2025 • 54 mins
Piracy is costing the sports industry an estimated $28 billion annually — and the issue is only growing more complex. In this episode of StreamTime Sports, co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone are joined by Paul O’Donovan from MediaKind to explore the causes and affects of the rising threat of piracy. From legal loopholes to changing sports distributions strategies, the trio dissects the industry's most pressing issue.Key Topics:
- How has piracy evolved? And what does its growing sophistication mean for the future of sports media?
- Why must rights holders prioritise security from one, not as a reactive fix?
- Can the industry strike the balance between accessibility, pricing, and perceived value?
- What role do big tech platforms and streaming devices play in enabling or preventing piracy?
- Is it time for a fundamental shift in how live sports are distributed and monetized in the new digital age?
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, the
community lead, joined as alwaysby our CEO Nick Meacham Nunick.
I'm very excited today. One of my favourite hot topics
is what we're going to be deep diving into today and that's
talking about piracy. You know, it's super relevant
topic. I think it's possibly for me one
of the most fascinating topics because there's so many
different angles that you can dive into it on.
(00:31):
And, you know, it's something that more and more people are
seemingly, at least in my opinion, starting to talk about
Nick. I remember this is really scary.
Nick in about a couple weeks. All been at Sports Pro for six
years. Blimey.
I know I. Know Tom flies time.
Really does fly, but I remember those early Sports Pro Madrid
summits as it was, or sorry, OTTSummit as it was called back
(00:53):
then. You know, we would do maybe 2
piracy sessions per event sort of thing back then.
Really hard to get people into those rooms.
But it just feels like over time, like more and more people
are starting to talk about it. You know, I think recently, you
know, as of June 24th, which is 3 days ago, heavier Tabas, you
know, President La Liga going out talking about that it's
costing the league six to seven,100 million a year.
(01:14):
Barney Francis, who used to be at Sky Sports, now it IMG came
out and speaking to the BBC World Business Report talking
about it's, you know, impending thread on the sports industry.
And it just feels like more and more people are talking about it
now, Nick. So, you know, we also brought
along a guest today, a industry expert, Paul O'donovan from
(01:35):
Mediacon, who's a senior director, product manager is
going to come and give us a little bit of the the other side
of the conversation as well. But Nick, with the piracy side
of things, like, do you personally, before we dive into
it, find it as fascinating as I do?
Yeah. I think with your point or your
example around how we saw it coming to life as a topic and
how it was always a bit of, and I think it still is to some
(01:56):
extent a little bit of a not a taboo subject.
But it's this one of these ones that certain people with the
industry really jump on and focus on because it's a real
thing. And a lot of the data I think we
shared recently, we're not even in my recent trip into Sweden,
into Stockholm. Whereas if it came up a number
of times and the scale of IPTV use, illegal IPTV use and piracy
(02:18):
is, is going bigger and bigger and bigger.
It's now got to a point where now almost no one can ignore it
anymore. Whereas I think before there was
a little bit of life, it's a problem.
We're going to kind of like pushit to the side a little bit and
not give it much time. Just hopefully it'll maybe
magically go away. And that is definitely not being
the case. And I think an example we may
(02:39):
have shared before, but that example that someone used in one
of our events a while ago, that in the, in the states where it
was, pirates have just seen a bit of a wasted stock.
Take loss from a, from a supermarket where it's basically
loss of break breakage or shoplifting was, was the, the
comparison. And they just have to accept
there's a bit of a loss happening.
Well, the problem is that that is growing and growing and
(03:01):
growing and there's no light at the end of the tunnel on how to
solve it. The pirates are getting smarter.
It's getting easier to, to breakdown those barriers and the
consumer adoption and use of it is, is not, is met with any, any
real negative, the negativity that it should be.
It's people always talk about itin such a comfortable manner
(03:22):
now, like it's part and parcel of consuming live sports is not
easily accessible to traditionalchannels.
So it's, it's really interestingto see how it's developed over
the last few years and where, where it's going to get to
because it's clearly, whilst people are talking about a
little bit more in some areas, Ifeel like we've got a long way
to go before we come to any sortof solution or approach because
(03:45):
the technical challenges, but also the legal challenges that
go along with it. So lots to dig into here.
But Paul is probably hopefully going to help us guide us a
little bit through this topic because we only know so much on
this and definitely have views on it, but not to the depths and
technical scale that we really should.
Well, I think to that, you know,starting off for you, Paul, is
(04:06):
just you've got the opportunity to work with some really some of
the biggest sports players around the world.
Would you say, you know, Nick and I talking about we feel like
we're seeing more and more of this conversation be brought to
light in our eyes, you know, as a as AB to B media company who
runs global events. Are you seeing more of it in
terms of, you know, your your customers?
Are you speaking to, you know, has piracy evolved to the point
(04:29):
it it's viewed as more of a industrial sized threat?
Oh, definitely, yeah. So we've always taken security
and content security incredibly seriously about media kind,
because if we go back, historically, a lot of our
customers were pay TV operators,broadcasters.
So content security was always an intrinsic part of our
(04:51):
solution because it had to be because we've been securing
sports content for 20-30 years now.
Just more on the pay TV and broadcaster side.
What we've seen more and more over the last four or five years
as sports streaming has become more prevalent is the increase
in requirements. I'm coming certainly from the
bigger tier ones around content security because they recognise
(05:15):
that that a the potential loss of revenue.
And secondly, they recognise they also need to keep up with
the the pay TV operators and thebroadcasters on the security
side of things if they're going to justify enforcing the the
rules and regulations they put on them for their content
security. You know, they can't be
perceived as being being hypocritical in that area.
(05:35):
I think it's also just worth taking a quick step back to look
at, you know, how content is pirated today.
If I would go back when I was young, 80s, you know, it was you
record stuff on a videotape and you might share the videotape
with your friends. You know, evolved in the the 90s
and naughties to buying a dodgy DVD down the pub.
(05:58):
Obviously I would never have done that.
But you know, I spent time in pubs.
I've seen that happen. But that was very much a non
live experience. It was a effectively a video on
demand experience. We've ended up in the world
today where you know, sports is intrinsically a live experience.
People want to watch live, they want to be able to, it's no
(06:20):
longer sort of the Watercola moment the following day.
It's the social media moment right there, right there.
I when, you know, when there's agoal, I want to be able to
WhatsApp or Signal or iMessage my friends and talk about it,
talk about what's going on if we're not sat there together.
So as a result, content piraciesevolved and there's just a huge
(06:42):
number of different ways of doing it.
You know, it can be taking up insecure stream and sharing the
playback address. It can be hacking the keys on a
fundamentally insecure device, which can be done by a 10 year
old kid with a script they can download off off the Internet.
To add insult to injury, it can be CDN leaching.
So not only are people stealing your content, you're paying for
(07:06):
them to then view that content. So it's it's insult to injury.
It can be token theft where account details are either
shared around, maybe you share it with, you know, your friends
or your family, or they're stolen, they're shared on the
dark web. And, you know, you can buy
someone's account details for a euro off the dark web and get
access to the, to the platform that way.
It can be HDI capture either, you know, maybe from a laptop or
(07:32):
from a, from a set-top box or, you know, a, a mobile device
with a dongle attached. I mean, if you want to get, you
know, really basic, you know, you can point a camera TV and
record it that way. And yes, well, lastly, again,
maybe one that's not talked about so much is also accessing
content from outside of the region that you're entitled.
(07:53):
So, you know, it could be that, you know, rather than paying for
the content in Europe, you pay for the content in in India or
somewhere, somewhere else in theworld.
And as a result, you get access to the content, yeah, without
paying the market rate that you should be.
So to then secure this, you, what do you need?
(08:13):
Well, you need DRM. You need to encrypt licence
keys. You need to check the user is
entitled to the content. You need to check the apps
entitled to the content. You need to potentially block
HDMI output on various devices. You might want to say that on a
more insecure device, maybe something which only has Level 3
rather than level 1 protection. You want to stream lower quality
(08:36):
to those devices. So you need to manipulate.
You need to recognise that device manipulate your manifest
and stream lower quality as a result.
You need to check the same account tokens aren't being used
thousands of times that you needto block VPNs and you know,
access from outside of the country or the region.
And there's probably a couple ofother things that I've forgotten
in there as well. That's just what I can think of
(08:58):
off the top of my head. And for many content owners or
services, security is just a tick in the box during an RFP.
And very often that tick in the box is just can you do DRM?
Yes, tick. OK, great.
Move on to the next thing. So the end result is that
(09:21):
because it's not thought about holistically, because it's not
thought about from an end to endperspective, you end up having
to cobble together various bits of security from many different
vendors. And that's where you get the
gaps or that's where you don't cover a specific use case.
And we are, we believe that end to end security looked at a
holistic manner is intrinsic to a successful service, which is
(09:44):
what we do. You know, that's, that's our way
of thinking on this. So you know, when we then start
talking, especially to the larger tier ones.
I was at a vendor kick off meeting six months ago with one
of our my larger customers and the first topic of the day.
(10:04):
So we did all the introductions,We all said hello, we had a
coffee and had a chat. First topic of the day after
that was our service cannot become a source of piracy for
our own content because they took this incredibly seriously.
It was at the forefront of theirmind right from the outset.
And this was great because it means we can then start
(10:26):
architecting from the outset to ensure that happens.
What we're seeing very often, maybe with the smaller tier
ones, the tier twos, is they don't have that level of focus
because they don't have that internal expertise.
They don't have someone in theirorganisation who's responsible
for the security side of things.So the end result is because
(10:47):
they're not. So because they don't have that
experience, it's not something they think about so much.
I was at a prospect recently, you know, very well known brand
and they don't even have DRM turned on today.
And it's because the incumbent vendor told them it was
difficult and expensive. And I'm kind of sadly going, no,
(11:08):
it's not. You tick a box and it turns on,
you know, that's how it should be in a well architected and
well designed system. It should be there from the
outset. But because there's these
perceptions that it can be difficult, it can be expensive
and maybe it's not no certain, you know, so necessary.
Let's focus on things that we dounderstand and they understand
very well the consumer experience, the the attractive
(11:31):
applications. That's something which is a
product only you can get your head around very, very easily.
And I think that's actually where, you know, organisations
such as the media kind of can come in and help is we
intrinsically understand the security.
We take that headache away from our customers.
They can then go off and focus on actually what is the frankly
(11:51):
exciting stuff, which is how do you make something really
engaging for your fans? How do you make it attractive
and how do you, you know, really, really engage with them
and delight them with, you know,a service which they want to
then go away and watch? There's multiple things I want
to dive into that, but I think sort of maybe where we'll start
(12:12):
is, you know, the big question, maybe we can drill down to more
specifics is sort of where does the blame come?
Because I think you mentioned there, you know, live sports is
really the the crux of it. And I remember, Nick, you got to
speak to Reche McKnight at UFC talking about from a legal
perspective, you know, UFC fightmight only last two rounds.
(12:32):
You know, that's 5 minutes. So legally, can you even shut it
down in 5 minutes? So is it the legal side of
things? And, you know, we'll, we'll,
we'll dive into where we think maybe blame could be split
around this pie. Not to put words in Peter
Scott's mouth. I think it's one of the most
intelligent people I've ever spoken to.
Back when he was at TNT Sports, he said it'd be the rights
holders because if the rights holders would sell to multiple
(12:53):
different broadcast partners, you were just creating more
potential chances for your your content to get pirated.
So it should start the rights where everyone complaints and
moans. But it does feel like
specifically Amazon has been called out the the CEO of Sky
explicitly called out Amazon. Barney Francis in the interview
I just mentioned, I believe talks about the the Amazon Fire
(13:14):
Stick. It does feel like in the last, I
don't know, 12 months, Amazon specifically has been called
out. I'm just curious, you know,
maybe Nick, we'll start with you.
Do you feel the shift to what seems to be more big tech is to
blame? Is that justified?
It's a justified, I mean everyone's pointing fingers in
all sorts of different directions.
(13:35):
I think if you went back, we've covered it before, but that the,
what came out of the conversation between Syria RnB
in sport was a great example. That being said, if you want us
to pay exclusive rights, exclusive rights deal to you,
then you have to make sure that the content is exclusive.
And they would stop looking at content being exclusive because
of the, the prevalence of piracyand because Syria wasn't taking
(13:58):
enough steps at the rights ownerlevel to mitigate some of those
risks that needed to be taken toprotect their asset that they
were paying a premium for. I mean, Amazon's an easy one to
point out because of the, the conversation around, I don't
remember what they call that Fire Sticks and so forth, which
have become quite prevalent around IPTV use and so forth.
But that is only one aspect of it.
(14:20):
I don't think even if you turn that you can point fingers as
much as you like at Amazon. But they're, they're not the
only part of the piece of the puzzle that's causing all of
this. From what I can see.
There's a lot of other aspects and if even if Amazon found a
way to stop that, but I'm not sure how easy that would be,
people would just turn to other more cloud and online based
solutions instead of that would be my would be my guess.
(14:42):
In theory, I'm sure Paul might have a bit of a a view on that.
Yeah, I mean, the Fire TV one, Ifind it quite interesting
conversation. I mean, let's be quite clear,
the the fault lies with the pirates that the one who would,
they're the ones who are enabling this.
And yeah, the, the the rest of it is sort of a wider
conversation. I mean, the Fire TV to me is
(15:04):
very much like the dodgy DVD sold down the pub.
It's not the fault of the DVD manufacturers or the DVD
recorder manufacturers. It was the people who were
selling down the pub. You know, the Fire TVI think
gets blamed because it's a very convenient low cost dongle that
you can buy for 2030 lbs dollarseuros to your currency unit.
(15:27):
And it's very easy to sideload applications that the pirates
have developed on there and thenmake that available to to people
who you know who choose to buy them.
But if it wasn't a fire TV, it would just be another low cost
device. You know, Android open source is
in, you know, intrinsically allows you to load whatever
(15:48):
applications you want on there. It just so happens that a Fire
TV is a cheap, readily availabledevice for people to buy.
So if short of locking down the device completely to prevent
side loading of applications, which, you know, I think many
people who were, you know, just you would object to because they
justifiably want to side load applications onto their devices.
(16:10):
You know, there's the whole talknow about opening up app stores
on, Yeah, on the Apple ecosystembecause people want the right to
put the applications, they want the devices they've purchased.
So, you know, short of completely locking that down,
I'm not really too sure what, you know, what Amazon can do
with the Fire TV. I'll hold my hands up.
I'm not the best educator on this one.
(16:31):
Maybe there's people out there who have some thoughts on this.
Yeah, maybe that's a topic for afuture podcast.
I don't know. I'd love to hear them myself.
But certainly from my view, it'sa convenient thing to blame.
But it doesn't fix the underlying problem of piracy.
And as Paul, you sort of set thescene, there is a countless
different ways of pirates to be able to get access to to the
(16:55):
content. And therefore, yeah, you just
turn off 1, you put, you plug 1 leaky hole in the bucket, then
another one, another hole will explode somewhere else along the
way. Paul, you mentioned a whole host
of different ways that and measures that need to be taken
to protect content, to protect live, live content in
particular. Can you give us a sense of which
(17:16):
ways are the most prevalent or the most the ones that are
dominating the way that this content is being pirated?
Is there one that really stands out or they is a pretty broad
across the whole spectrum that you you ran through earlier?
I mean, the main one is DRM because that's the one which is
generally the easiest 1 to implement with a with a couple
(17:37):
of exceptions for maybe some, some vendors who are not so
experienced in that space who find it a bit more challenging
because they, they don't come from the video background.
CDN tokenization is very, very popular as well.
You know, the, the big CDN, the the Aquabyze, the faceties,
etcetera have some good add on services there that you can
implement. And that seems to be the next
(17:58):
one, which is is generally used by the the customers and
prospects that we're talking with bringing on top of that.
So this is where we really come in, looking at this from a
holistic perspective is the entitlements check, either
checking that the application is, yeah, a valid application
and also checking that the the user themselves are actually
(18:21):
entitled to the content. I think very often the challenge
you have there is that when people are going out and doing
RFPs, they'll go to a platform vendor, they'll go to a
streaming vendor, they'll go to a security vendor, and they'll
have to then bring these variouscomponents together.
And as a result, starting to runthose entitlement cheques in
(18:45):
conjunction with the with the streaming vendor gets quite
tricky because it's, it's not aneasy thing to integrate.
You know, we've gone down the route of offering this as a
list, as a holistic solution because we want to make sure
that we can layer these additional security cheques on
a, you know, for our customers to really secure the content.
(19:07):
You know, the more cheques you can have, the more, you know,
the more you can protect the content.
But you know, generally it is DRM to start with, CDN
tokenization, and then, you know, we start to layer
additional cheques on top of that.
Many other services out there will just stop with DRM licence
(19:27):
cheques and they may then start to look at things like key
rotation for live content. That's again an interesting
topic to go into. You know, some people view it as
as an absolute necessity. Other people view it as, you
know, if it's live sports content, you know it's only
really going to be up and running for two hours by the
(19:48):
time you've rotated the keys, you know, is it really something
that's worth doing in an event based streaming ecosystem?
They're they're two seem throughtwo very polar opposite schools.
Thoughts there? I think depending on what people
want to sell on any particular day of the week.
Well, I've, I've got a bit of a side question here, Nick, that I
(20:10):
asked Steve when Steve and I dida piracy podcast and it got some
people a bit fired up on LinkedIn.
And the question I asked was, I used the metaphor, you know, if
a tree falls in the woods and noone is there, does the tree make
a sound? And the question I asked Nick
was, if no one is broadcasting it, is it still piracy?
(20:30):
The point I was making is like college football in the UUK
until very recently where TNTS picked up something, it wasn't
broadcast at all. So the idea is.
You know, in the market, in the market you're in.
Correct, Yeah. So if no one's broadcasting in
your market, is it still piracy?But I, I think the answer is
yes. But there's some people that
part of the there's. Definitely a yes.
(20:51):
There's definitely a yes, but whether it's it's more more
understandable why people would look getting who are desperate
top tier fans look for a way of finding it.
I could appreciate that perhaps more.
And it is kind of mad in this day and age that there's still
rights out there that haven't been segmented away from major
rights deals that don't just make that stuff available.
(21:12):
Now. It is my, I know I've spoken to
some rights owners and they're just like, oh, it's just such a
minor audience that we just don't basically just don't
bother doing it. And I was like this day and age,
I think you could probably be smarter with with that, that
approach or a little bit more strategic than it's just not
worth the hassle because of all the markets that you might be
(21:34):
still able to reach. And you put all those collection
of audiences together, then you should be able to get something,
something meaningful out of thataudience reach that you wouldn't
otherwise have. So I do find it surprising this
day and age there is still lots of dark markets for pretty well
known sports with pretty high revenues that they aren't
willing to. Yeah, just make sure it's it's
(21:55):
it's democratised somewhat maybemaybe because of the fears of
what we've been talking about, maybe that is part of it as
well. They don't want to have it
available in certain markets because they know that that
might open up the door that I'm not too sure.
I think, Nick, on that front, there's also the team sizes that
are available. A lot of the, the rights
holders. I think this is very often the
perception that there's lots of people working there.
(22:17):
So there must be, there must be someone who sat around twiddling
their thumbs who can just go away and do this.
And the reality is there's probably not, you know, a lot of
the companies that we're talkingto, you know, a four person team
looking at their entire DTC streaming ecosystem and service
(22:39):
for people is, you know, a good sized team.
For many, it's one person and they're doing it as a side thing
for their day job as well. You know, so I think a lot of
this is often down to the team sizes that are available in
there. And also, you know, there is the
risk of, you know, if you put this content out there, you
(23:01):
know, can it actually be a profitable service?
Is this something we can make money on?
Because if not, you then have topull it or you're going to have
people even more upset in that situation.
So I think the increasing simplicity of launching D to C
services is fantastic. The ability to get the content
(23:22):
out there is great, but you do also need to consider when
having that conversation is OK, exactly how can this content be
monetized? And obviously Eric Ramberg, when
he was on the podcast with you, talked a lot about advertising
and you know what can be done there.
There's also additional conversations maybe about what
can be done to help with with sponsorship.
(23:45):
Can you add additional value to sponsors?
But fundamentally these these services have to be profitable
in order to make them viable. And I think that's where a lot
of the concerns coming in is once, you know, once the
contents out there, we have to ensure that it remains out there
and it's a profitable service for them.
So Paul, in that, in that example, let's say you've got a
(24:08):
client who's let's say maybe Tier 2 level kind of not, not
right at the pointy end, but hasgot different types of
relationships and different types of access available in
different markets. They are looking at the prospect
of like, OK, actually we need tobe, we want to be available
globally in all 200 plus markets.
Depending on what you define as a market.
(24:28):
The, the perception would be that for certain sports, if they
were already producing a feed ofcontent and so forth, that it
would be relatively straightforward, not too
expensive to just open up the doors of access, so to speak, to
be available, let's say through an OTT, your own OTT product as
as an example, be available in every market.
(24:49):
Then they're onward. That would be the perception.
Just what are some of those challenges?
Then how is, is the, is cost like linear in that instance of
that market by market that you're adding to it is or is
there more of a, the more all the markets you open up?
Does it become more cost effective in some for some
reason? I'm just curious on that.
That makes that makes sense as aquestion.
I think the more markets the you're in, the more cost
(25:10):
effective it becomes because themore subscribers you will have
and there's always some kind of intrinsic base cost or base of
of launching these services and having them in market.
And the the more subscribers youhave, the more you can amortise
that cost across more subscribers.
I think what we're generally seeing is the challenge of
(25:31):
removing the friction to access.So they need to ensure they are
working with a a vendor or a platform that has the
flexibility to create a large number of different packages to
address different consumers in different countries.
So for example, in one of our customers, they are a tier one,
but there's no reason a Tier 2 couldn't do this has over 2000
(25:55):
SKUs or packages available globally to allow them to
address a global audience. You want to have different
pricing options in different countries.
You might want to have differenttiers of packages in different
countries to, you know, entice people to come on board.
You then start to need to look at how you can incentivize
people to sign up. So you know, is it a free month
(26:19):
when you sign up? Is it maybe a free weekend of
content? Is it things like live looking
that we recently launched with one of our customers where you
can watch the 1st 10 minutes of the game for free and if you
want to keep watching, you pay. There's a variety of different
things out there that can be done.
But in order to do that, you need to have a very flexible and
(26:41):
nuanced set of entitlements. And that's something which
again, technically very similar to doing streaming at massive
scale, very similar to securing your content.
That's something which is quite a difficult thing to do if the
underlying architecture in your platform and ecosystem isn't
done well. So again, this is another set of
(27:04):
requirements in your RFP processyou need to consider is it's not
just how can you help me launch in one market at 1 price.
It's how can you help me launch in 50 markets with 10 different
prices with a different set of features and functionality in
each of those markets so that I can then tune my pricing or
(27:24):
tweak things to, to really reachthe price point that works in
those market. And that then goes back to the
security and piracy side of things of, well, once you've got
all these different packages outthere, how do you stop someone
in the UK accessing the package that's available in Indonesia or
India or Nigeria, which is lowercost with maybe some, you know,
(27:48):
with, with less functionality. Again, that then comes down to
entitlement cheques. That comes down to Geo blocking.
That comes down to VPN blocking.So you're adding a whole other
amount of work on top of that. And if you're Bob or Barry from,
you know, whose main job is as abroadcast engineer and you're
doing this is your side job, you, you don't have the
(28:09):
capabilities of doing that. So they need to ensure they're
working with vendors who have that intrinsic capability and
can manage it for them to ensurethat all these packages are out
there and available and working with their marketing team to to,
you know, get you get the content out there in a way that
it can be accessed, but also that it's done in a way then
(28:32):
makes sure the content is fundamentally secure and only
accessed by the people who have the rights to it.
So are you saying that Simon Jordan's claim that the Premier
League could just easily set up AD to C platform and make
billions and billions of dollarswouldn't actually be that easy?
I don't think it would be that easy.
I mean, I think anyone who's listening to this podcast, who's
(28:54):
been around in the industry for a while knows that nothing is
ever that easy. But yet, you know, I think it
could be done if they wanted to it.
It would need to be done in a way that, you know, had a given
Premier League content is incredibly valuable.
It would need to be done in a way that is, I think security
(29:14):
first ensures they protect theircontent and also ensures that
they're holding themselves to the same standards that they
hold the their broadcast partners to.
Yeah, and there's no question that there's a market for of all
my travels there, everyone, you know, Premier League is being
consumed one way or other right across the globe.
And there's inevitably a pretty massive opportunity there if
(29:38):
that's unlocked. I'm curious, Paul, to take it a
step further from the tier ones,because often piracy is
typically most mainly associatedwith the tier ones, and I think
rightfully so, because they're the the needle movers when it
comes to consumption. How far down do you think and
see that the the need to manage piracy through end to end is is
(30:01):
essential? Is is a smaller tier 3 sports
sports media instead of riots oran outlet or platform?
Do they have to treat it with the same needs and the same
parameters as say a tier one or is there because the demands not
that scale? You wouldn't put that that
amount of effort into it or thatamount of breadth into it.
(30:24):
I think a lot of it comes down to the the intrinsic value of
the content as well. You know, to secure content,
there is always some kind of intrinsic cost.
I, I think what we generally seeis that if a league or a club
doesn't take it seriously from the outset and then they then
start to get more and more successful and they start to get
(30:47):
more and more subscribers and more and more viewers.
At some point in the future, they're probably going to have a
problem and they've then got a choice two or three years down
the line. Do we just hold our hands up and
say, oh, this is going to be a problem for us and they take the
financial hit? Do they re platform, which is,
(31:09):
you know, a definitely an option, but that requires a
significant amount of of time and effort?
Or do they think about it from the start and work with vendors
who intrinsically understand this and they can then turn on
the features they want as they need them?
You know, they, they may choose just to start off with nothing.
(31:32):
So maybe they're not particularly bothered if that
content is getting stoned to start with.
I was talking to a a potential customer recently.
They're like, yeah, we don't really particularly mind because
it gets us, gets more people interested in sport.
So they're actually really, bizarrely enough, reasonably
happy with a little bit of piracy because he gets, he gets
the sports out there. But at some point, yeah, they're
(31:53):
going to want to start to turn DRM on as things get more
popular because they're going towant to start securing the
content. Then further down the line,
they're going to want to start layering on more and more
security options as they start taking it more and more
seriously. So the choice is really there
is, you know, do you not care about it from day one and focus
on other things and potentially give yourself a bit big headache
(32:15):
in two, 3-4 years time? Or do you, you know, start
working with vendors from the outset who actually understand
this and can turn on the features and functionality you
want when you need them? I would tend towards the second.
Obviously I'm highly biassed because that's what we do.
So obviously I'm bound to say that.
But even when we're talking to, you know, to the, the smaller
(32:37):
tier twos and the tier threes normally come to us and say, oh,
you know, we're doing this because we've got 20,000 Subs.
We want to keep them happy. They're all, they're always
coming to us and saying we've got 20,000 Subs and in five
years time you want to have 100,000 or half a million or a
million. Everyone comes to us with grand
aspirations. That's why they're doing this.
They're not doing this to sit still.
(32:58):
They're doing this to grow. So if you're doing this to grow
that you need to stink long term.
You need to make sure that you're planning for five years
time when you've got 20 times asmany fans on your platform.
And so just Paul, so that basically comes down to I, I
think you've explained it prettywell, but I just want to
summarise or surmise it is effectively if you are have
(33:22):
aspirations to grow, but you don't set up your own platform
effectively, you will basically risk you have to re platform and
be able to get rebuild it again effectively or close to if you
don't have just the, the, the construct set up from day one to
at least be able to turn on those levers as and when you you
want. Yeah.
And look, you know, we quite like customers out there who
(33:45):
want to do that because there's quite a few that we're talking
to right now who've been in the market for a number of years
with competitive solutions. And they've been very happy with
them up to a point. And they're now coming out into
the market and running RFPs to re platform because they
recognise they've got to the point where they, they want to
grow further, they need to secure their content more.
(34:05):
And as a result, they're talkingto us.
So, you know, I'm never unhappy when someone wants to re
platform. You know, it's good for our
business. But equally, if you you know, if
you choose a vendor from the outset who helps you secure that
long term vision, you know that makes your life simpler in the
long run as well. So I'm going to, you know,
(34:26):
changes direction a little bit and you know, we keep hearing
people talking about piracies costing hundreds of millions of
pounds, $100 million, whatever currency you want to do more.
Yeah, 28 billion is that, is that what the the number I think
gets? Lost numbers but it was in the
10s of billions I think. Yeah, I think, I think 28
billion is the number that that gets flown around from time to
time. But one of the things behind
(34:47):
that is, is they're talking about, you know, it's costing
the broadcasters and that's costing the rights holders and
just overall negative. And, you know, my opinion, Nick
and I, I mentioned this when we're talking about this, I
think sometimes we, we look at piracy as an illness, whereas I
view piracy is more of a, a symptom.
It, it's just one part of a larger thing.
(35:07):
You know, that there's so much, you know, so many games that
aren't on TV that are available.The stuff that is on TV is
incredibly expensive. And then you look at it beyond
there, you know, try to go to a Premier League match or an NFL
match in particular in person. The cost of tickets are just
extortion. And you know, we've talked about
the FIFA Club World Cup, how expensive it was to go to a game
there. You know, I don't know what the
travel sports situations like inthe UK, but I can tell you in
(35:29):
the US, parents are paying thousands of dollars for little
Johnny to go play baseball, soccer, things like that.
Sports feels like it's never been more inaccessible.
And I think sometimes we talk about what's the solution to
this. I think, Nick, you and I are
probably a bit on board with, I don't know if technology can
solve this. It's not that there aren't
vendors out there that are coming up with really clever and
(35:49):
creative ways to disrupt piracy,but I don't know if that's
really looking to the the root of the problem.
I think, Nick, we've talked about it and Paul, you alluded
to it a little bit talking aboutadvertising.
Is that really, Nick, in your opinion?
Not saying it's going to be easy, not saying it can be done
overnight, but does it have to stop being trying to stop
pirates and more focusing on howthe monetization of distribution
(36:13):
is. And I know it's a very big
question, big ask Nick, but likeis, do you feel like we're
getting more and more that? I think it's that it's, it does
come down to the root cause of that approach.
And obviously we look towards the music industry and, and
video entertainment world, whichhas gone through its own
journeys. And inevitably that was how it
got to a point where it had to be, the model had to change for
(36:35):
it to be viable and for basically piracy to not be as
prevalent as valuable anymore inthe eyes of the consumer.
So inevitably that seems like the most logical route to reduce
the need and the the impact the piracy does have.
But we've still got a long way to go to get to a place where
that is achievable in, in both in the instance of music.
(36:56):
It was only because Spotify found a way to bridge that.
But I, I watch the I think it's a documentary.
It's like one of those shows which is based on a true story,
but it is dramatised. I'm not sure the the name of
that is it's actually a Swedish series and it's basically on on
Spotify's journey. And and that was the first time
(37:16):
I really came to a grasp of the understanding how the difficult
bit was the negotiation of rights deals and relationships
with the the distributors and the producers, the the companies
that own own basically all the music.
It wasn't just creating a platform and even doing rights
deals with the the the musiciansthemselves.
And I think sports has got that similar predicament where these
rights the right, the the way the writer approached now and
(37:39):
today, how do you retrofit all that to get everyone on board?
And Spotify had to go through a lot to find a way to get
everyone to get on the boat, so to speak.
So I think that's going to be really, really tricky.
But I think it's the only real way that piracy would ever have
a, have a true sort of what would you call it, like a, an
(38:01):
end point, I suppose, to what it's doing now in sports.
So, and for now, it's just goingthe other direction.
There is no light really at the end of the tunnel there.
I think what Paul and needy Con and lots of other companies are
doing is to try and mitigate andreduce those that, that those
losses in impact and, and reallyslow down that impact or
(38:21):
minimise as much as possible. And that's all we can really be
thinking about now rather than trying to say, Hey, we're going
to solve it. No one is going to solve it
magically. I think there's also a perceived
value for fans as well. So if the cost is being
(38:43):
perceived as expensive, that often just means that people are
actually seeing they're getting value from the service that
they're accessing. Again, this is something we saw
in RFP recently where I think itwas third on the list of their
requirements or their challengeswas there's a service in market
(39:03):
today, but it's being perceived by the fans as being expensive.
So yeah, how do you handle that?Well, if you can give them more
value for money, if you can givethem additional features and
functionality, they're more likely to actually think, oh,
yeah, I don't mind paying for this because I'm getting value
for money. You know, I don't mind paying
(39:23):
1099 a month for Netflix becauseI perceive it as good value for
money. So it's also what can you do in
that area to, you know, give fans the perception of value for
money. Obviously, you know, great
content is a is a starting point.
Having the event available is, is one thing, but it's then
start it's sort of things like, you know, OK, highlights of the
(39:46):
highlights available on there. Are they available immediately
after the match? You know, as a fan, you know,
can I go in and re watch the game if I've missed it
immediately as soon as it finishes or am I having to wait
3 or 4 hours? If I could have wait 3 or 4
hours. Oh that, that that's not good.
Yeah. We've recently introduced multi
(40:06):
view with one of our customers, which is available on all their
consumer devices, including smart TV's, which is something
that traditionally wasn't available because the the
devices didn't have the processing power.
And you know the result is. That they've seen a huge
reduction in their amount of churn because all of a sudden
consumers are getting what was previously a premium high end
(40:30):
feature on all their devices. So it's a nice way for them to
interact with the sports they'rewatching and they they really,
really like it. I think the other one, and
again, this comes down to perceived value.
I think also a degree of anti piracy is video latency.
So if we think historically, youknow, video latency on streaming
(40:51):
was 20 was so let's say 20-30, forty seconds, probably 30-40
fifty seconds. So all of a sudden you're way
behind the live action, especially comparing that to a
broadcast platform. So you know, you're delays there
if you've got say a friend who'swatching on the broadcast
platform, you know, they've textyou or WhatsApp you or signalled
(41:15):
or telegrammed or I messaged youabout the, or you've seen it on
X or whatever before you've evenseen the goal on your platform.
So again, it's like, oh, I'm paying all this money for this,
but I'm learning about the goal from social media or the, you
know, the overtake or whatever event it is.
So actually by bringing down video latency.
(41:35):
So it's, you know, broadcast equivalent or better all of a
sudden that you're ahead of social media, you're viewing the
action the same time as your friends, the the buddy you've
got who's actually lucky enough to have got the ticket to the
game that you know, you're seeing it so quickly after
they've seen it that all of a sudden you can have the
interaction. So there's only perceived value
(41:57):
that you're getting a high valueservice as well.
So there's additional things that can be done to add value to
the service so that people are then, you know, not so concerned
about paying the money they are.I think that's a really great
example and it got me thinking, you know, the one big
subscription service I pay for from a sports perspective is the
NFL Game Pass. You know, for me, Sky's
(42:19):
obviously got it on there. I've got access to Sky, but like
I want to specifically watch theCincinnati Bengals.
So part of it is like I can watch the team I want.
It's also got NFL red zone, which I argue is maybe the best
sports product in the world. But the the feature that's
really important for me that I want to pay for as I've gotten
older, the less likely I am to watch the Bengals play Monday
night game where going to break my heart.
So there's no point of me staying up till 5:00 AM.
(42:40):
But I think delta trade initially put into the platform
and zones carried on, which is where I get value.
Is your point being able to watch the game afterwards and
not only do they have the full game replay, they also do a 40
minute recap. Words literally from one play
ends next plans. There's no commercials, right
else, and for me, my travel timeinto work is about 45 minutes.
So the fact that I can wake up, download the game on my phone so
(43:02):
that I don't worry about being on the tube, no service, and I
can watch the Bengals game the night before.
It's what you're talking about right there.
It's just it's an additional layer of service or features
that then all the sudden I don'tmind the cost that I'm paying
because it's not a cheap subscription, but it has enough
features within it and particularly that that download
the game from the night before. Like it's just, it's an
(43:23):
incredible feature for me that justifies the cost that I spend
on it. Yeah, I think also, I mean we,
we touched an advertising earlier.
I think that's probably quite animportant topic to talk about.
Yeah, I think Eric on when he did the podcast with you, he
talked around the other challenges of doing advertising
at huge scale. You know, how you deal with the
the thundering herd of, you know, 100,000 or 1,000,000
(43:44):
people or devices all leading tosee a targeted advert at the
same time and how you handle that.
So yeah, once you've got over the intrinsic technological
challenges, you then start to get onto the value based
challenges of, you know, how do you ensure that you're all your
ad spots are filled? Yeah.
How do you make sure that you'remaximise that ad inventory so
(44:05):
that you can maximise your revenue and offer it to as many
consumers as possible. And again, you know, that's a
conversation, which is I think anyone who's thinking about ad
funded services should be havingwith the vendors they're talking
to because yeah, there's multiple solutions there around
working with multiple Adss, the support of pre sold and
programmatic ads, you utilising house adverts, working across
(44:28):
device specific Adss, all sorts of lovely stuff there.
But what's often then not talkedabout is what what you can do
with the same technology to add additional value to sponsors.
Because very often you know, sponsors are looking either for
more value or you have the opportunity to, you know, add
sponsorship inventory. So you can you use the same text
(44:51):
so that when someone tunes into a live game, rather than going
straight into the live game, yousplash up the sponsor logo or a
sport, a three or five second sponsor message.
You know you want something unintrusive.
You don't want you know it to bethe situation where someone hits
play and they want to go to the live game.
They're sat there watching a 32nd pre roll advert, getting
(45:12):
angrier and angrier and losing their perceived value because
they're missing the action. But you know, something 12345
seconds, yeah, most people wouldaccept that.
So there's additional value thatcan be brought there from a
sponsorship perspective, which Ithink is also something very,
very important. And the great thing is, the same
underlying tech can deliver thisso long as you have things
(45:34):
architected in the in the right way.
Paul, you mentioned AD SS, so for those that don't know that's
I guess that's an addressable advertising system I think is
the. Ad decision server, yes.
Ad Decision server one of the but basically helps helps serve
more personalised advertising into connected connected TV's
(45:55):
and streaming experiences. Is that is that basically?
That's it. So yeah, rather than showing the
same advert to everyone, you cantarget it.
I mean, maybe a per region level, per country level, per
city level, right? The way down to you know, Paul,
Chris and Nick would all see a atotally different adverb based
on likes, dislikes or or what they know about us from a data
perspective. And that that targeted nature,
(46:17):
how far along do you think we are with that being adopted and
used effectively, particularly around sports?
Is it? Is it?
Is it prevalent? It's, it's pretty prevalent
today with the larger sports leagues.
I think what's good for a consumer is when it's done well,
they shouldn't, even though they're being targeted very
(46:37):
often, unfortunately it's done badly.
So it goes to an outbreak and the video stuffer stutters and
you get a little buffering thingwhilst everything works itself
out. But when done well and when done
properly, which is an area of huge focus for us, it's
transparent to the user. So they don't even necessarily
know or recognise they're being targeted with an advert.
(46:59):
So the other good thing there is, you know, generally the more
targeted the advert, the more revenue you'll get.
You know, showing a, a general broadcast advert, it has value,
but it means lots of people who are going to have no interest in
it are going to end up seeing it.
So you get paid less. If you can really target that
advert to people who are going to be wanting to, to, you know,
be interested in the product means you can get more money,
(47:22):
but it means effectively you can, you know, segment your
audience and you can then start to target them.
I think the great thing with sports is, you know, if you're
streaming, if you've got people who are watching motor racing,
they've probably got an interestin motorbikes or, or motor cars.
So yeah, that's a, that's a fairly safe bet to sort of have
(47:44):
that kind of advertising on there.
So I, I think sports especially,you know, lends itself very well
to, to target advertising specifically because you've got
people who are very interested in a, a specific topic.
And then I think one of the the last things that that I was
going to talk about a little bit, Nick here just talking
about the impact of meteorites deals.
(48:05):
I think, you know, we look at some of that stuff has maybe
been flatlining a little bit in Europe.
And I think we've even seen, youknow, the example with the Zone
and Legion, they, you know, reference, you know, rampant
piracy being part of the reason that the Zone no longer wanted
to engage, whether that's the real reason or not.
It was, you know, I think it was, you know, listed out there
as as one of them. I think back to when I joined
(48:28):
the company, BLQ was a big thing.
And I think that had some impactover some different negotiations
and things like that. But if piracy continues to be as
rampant as it is, Nick, do you think that how big of an impact
do you think that actually does have?
Or do you think, you know exclusive rights are are going
to be impacted by the the the legacy or the perceived impact
(48:49):
of piracy? Well, there's no question.
I think it's already having a big impact and it's it can only
get bigger and bigger. And I think when you couple that
with the changing consumer have habits that exist.
The role that Netflix and streaming platforms have, the
role that YouTube has in being entertainment for people to
consume and having it at a clickof a button with ease of access
(49:12):
and no costs associated. No, not as a direct cost
associated. There's a some sort of value
being shared depending on if it's advertising LED or not.
I think it's only going to make it harder and harder for rights
owners without really investing effort into piracy to to
blocking piracy and and mitigating piracy, that it's
going to become more and more ofa challenge for them to get
(49:33):
those rights deals if they're not really tackling this head on
and finding other finding ways to do everything they can to
mitigate the impact. Working with, you know, Paul and
his team as an example or, and also working more
collaboratively across the the wider industry to try and find
other ways to, I don't know, find find a bit of tactics to
(49:53):
try and continue to get a littlebit further, closer to I guess
the, the pace of movement you see in the piracy world.
They can, yeah. It's a bit like when we saw this
other team doping in sports, right where they were also that
the scientists were always aheadof the testing.
I feel it's a bit of that we need to find a way to try and
bridge that gap and narrow this gap of trying to like chase the
(50:15):
pirates and the new ways that they can do things and try and
get ahead of the curve somehow. Oh, that sounds right, Paul, to
you. Yeah.
I mean, I, I guess I've actuallygot a question I think for for
you Nick and Chris is, you know,given the state of the market
with piracy at the moment, do you think the exclusive
meteorites broadcast deals are still viable?
(50:38):
I would say that they are. So I mean, it's a really weird,
it's a really weird industry right now where you've got the,
some of these tier ones are generating insane growth levers.
But like in the US especially because it's actually, I believe
it's actually driven heavily to do with the advertising,
landscaping and the growth of that.
We talked to a lot of streaming and major tech companies in New
(51:00):
York at our event there, and they're also focused on using
live sports as that advertising sales tool to drive huge
revenues that on top of the subscription value it provides.
But advertising's really the next outlet.
We've seen other sports across the world outside the US that
that growth is flat lined significantly.
A lot of sports properties are having to give more to keep
(51:22):
their the meteorites values at alevel.
You know, Premier League was oneof those examples last cycle
where they had to give a lot more games in the package to try
and ensure that Sky and others weren't willing to step away
from the big cheques they've been paying them for some time.
At some stage, if they keep pulling away the, the layers to
it, they're going to run out of layers to be pulling away to try
(51:43):
and keep those revenues up. And it's going to make it really
difficult. So I, I think that's why they
have to be looking at more distribution channels, more ways
to get to market their own OTT channels being more, much more a
key part of it and other, other distribution partnerships they
can do to just make sure they'remaximising the reach of their
content. But that means along with that
(52:06):
is a shift away from just pure rights deals to other ways of
monetizing. Like you pointed out, Paul,
around advertising in sponsorship as a way which is,
is growing. The sponsorship industry is
growing digitally, but it's it needs to grow even faster if
it's to to shift the industry along with it.
Yeah, and I agree with Nick, I think it's going to be too
difficult to just exclusively work with one or two partners,
(52:27):
which I feel so you see in the majority in the UK.
I'm a I'm a massive fan of free to air.
I appreciate we've talked about this.
The NFL is king because it's largely free to air and it's
advertising model. I understand you can't do the
same thing for the Premier League because the games aren't
structured with the amount of stops and starts where you can
just insert an ad. But I'd be pretty willing to bet
if you went out to most people in the UK and you said, hey,
(52:49):
you'll be able to watch the Premier League for free, But,
you know, every 15 minutes we'regoing to have a 32nd in game ad
where we're going to cut the commentary for the game to run
some sort of small ad. I think most people would be
willing to do that in comparisonto, you know, having to pay what
they're currently paying for Skyand everyone else.
And I think I've done it where Ithink only like 52% of games are
(53:10):
currently live. Now that'll change next year
when they increase the amount ofgames.
But I do think, you know, to Nick's point, I would love to
see YouTube. I know Rob Pilgrim said that the
UK and European markets are different than the US.
I'd love to see the roll out of like a YouTube TV type of thing
over here. But yeah, I agree with Nick.
I just, I don't think long term it's, it's, it's viable to stay
(53:31):
with the system it is particularly if they're going to
keep blaming piracy as much as they are.
So with that, Paul, I do appreciate you coming on today.
It is nice to hear from the other side because Nick and I
can typically talk about what wethink, but it's nice to hear
someone that actually has to work in an actually combat, you
know, piracy hand to hand and you've got insights from your
clients. And it is good to hear that they
are prioritising piracy now in those conversations that you're
(53:53):
having. So we really appreciate you
coming on and having this conversation with us.
Thank you very much for having me, it's been a lovely
conversation. Thanks, Paul.
Now before you go, if you like what you heard today, be sure to
rate 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 ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
(54:13):
whether that be in person or on social media.
And if you don't like what you've heard, what you think we
should be doing more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the next episode of Stream Time
Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community lead, joined as alwaysby our CEO Nick Meacham Nunick.
I'm very excited today. One of my favourite hot topics
is what we're going to be deep diving into today and that's
talking about piracy. You know, it's super relevant
topic. I think it's possibly for me one
of the most fascinating topics because there's so many
different angles that you can dive into it on.
(00:31):
And, you know, it's something that more and more people are
seemingly, at least in my opinion, starting to talk about
Nick. I remember this is really scary.
Nick in about a couple weeks. All been at Sports Pro for six
years. Blimey.
I know I. Know Tom flies time.
Really does fly, but I remember those early Sports Pro Madrid
summits as it was, or sorry, OTTSummit as it was called back
(00:53):
then. You know, we would do maybe 2
piracy sessions per event sort of thing back then.
Really hard to get people into those rooms.
But it just feels like over time, like more and more people
are starting to talk about it. You know, I think recently, you
know, as of June 24th, which is 3 days ago, heavier Tabas, you
know, President La Liga going out talking about that it's
costing the league six to seven,100 million a year.
(01:14):
Barney Francis, who used to be at Sky Sports, now it IMG came
out and speaking to the BBC World Business Report talking
about it's, you know, impending thread on the sports industry.
And it just feels like more and more people are talking about it
now, Nick. So, you know, we also brought
along a guest today, a industry expert, Paul O'donovan from
(01:35):
Mediacon, who's a senior director, product manager is
going to come and give us a little bit of the the other side
of the conversation as well. But Nick, with the piracy side
of things, like, do you personally, before we dive into
it, find it as fascinating as I do?
Yeah. I think with your point or your
example around how we saw it coming to life as a topic and
how it was always a bit of, and I think it still is to some
(01:56):
extent a little bit of a not a taboo subject.
But it's this one of these ones that certain people with the
industry really jump on and focus on because it's a real
thing. And a lot of the data I think we
shared recently, we're not even in my recent trip into Sweden,
into Stockholm. Whereas if it came up a number
of times and the scale of IPTV use, illegal IPTV use and piracy
(02:18):
is, is going bigger and bigger and bigger.
It's now got to a point where now almost no one can ignore it
anymore. Whereas I think before there was
a little bit of life, it's a problem.
We're going to kind of like pushit to the side a little bit and
not give it much time. Just hopefully it'll maybe
magically go away. And that is definitely not being
the case. And I think an example we may
(02:39):
have shared before, but that example that someone used in one
of our events a while ago, that in the, in the states where it
was, pirates have just seen a bit of a wasted stock.
Take loss from a, from a supermarket where it's basically
loss of break breakage or shoplifting was, was the, the
comparison. And they just have to accept
there's a bit of a loss happening.
Well, the problem is that that is growing and growing and
(03:01):
growing and there's no light at the end of the tunnel on how to
solve it. The pirates are getting smarter.
It's getting easier to, to breakdown those barriers and the
consumer adoption and use of it is, is not, is met with any, any
real negative, the negativity that it should be.
It's people always talk about itin such a comfortable manner
(03:22):
now, like it's part and parcel of consuming live sports is not
easily accessible to traditionalchannels.
So it's, it's really interestingto see how it's developed over
the last few years and where, where it's going to get to
because it's clearly, whilst people are talking about a
little bit more in some areas, Ifeel like we've got a long way
to go before we come to any sortof solution or approach because
(03:45):
the technical challenges, but also the legal challenges that
go along with it. So lots to dig into here.
But Paul is probably hopefully going to help us guide us a
little bit through this topic because we only know so much on
this and definitely have views on it, but not to the depths and
technical scale that we really should.
Well, I think to that, you know,starting off for you, Paul, is
(04:06):
just you've got the opportunity to work with some really some of
the biggest sports players around the world.
Would you say, you know, Nick and I talking about we feel like
we're seeing more and more of this conversation be brought to
light in our eyes, you know, as a as AB to B media company who
runs global events. Are you seeing more of it in
terms of, you know, your your customers?
Are you speaking to, you know, has piracy evolved to the point
(04:29):
it it's viewed as more of a industrial sized threat?
Oh, definitely, yeah. So we've always taken security
and content security incredibly seriously about media kind,
because if we go back, historically, a lot of our
customers were pay TV operators,broadcasters.
So content security was always an intrinsic part of our
(04:51):
solution because it had to be because we've been securing
sports content for 20-30 years now.
Just more on the pay TV and broadcaster side.
What we've seen more and more over the last four or five years
as sports streaming has become more prevalent is the increase
in requirements. I'm coming certainly from the
bigger tier ones around content security because they recognise
(05:15):
that that a the potential loss of revenue.
And secondly, they recognise they also need to keep up with
the the pay TV operators and thebroadcasters on the security
side of things if they're going to justify enforcing the the
rules and regulations they put on them for their content
security. You know, they can't be
perceived as being being hypocritical in that area.
(05:35):
I think it's also just worth taking a quick step back to look
at, you know, how content is pirated today.
If I would go back when I was young, 80s, you know, it was you
record stuff on a videotape and you might share the videotape
with your friends. You know, evolved in the the 90s
and naughties to buying a dodgy DVD down the pub.
(05:58):
Obviously I would never have done that.
But you know, I spent time in pubs.
I've seen that happen. But that was very much a non
live experience. It was a effectively a video on
demand experience. We've ended up in the world
today where you know, sports is intrinsically a live experience.
People want to watch live, they want to be able to, it's no
(06:20):
longer sort of the Watercola moment the following day.
It's the social media moment right there, right there.
I when, you know, when there's agoal, I want to be able to
WhatsApp or Signal or iMessage my friends and talk about it,
talk about what's going on if we're not sat there together.
So as a result, content piraciesevolved and there's just a huge
(06:42):
number of different ways of doing it.
You know, it can be taking up insecure stream and sharing the
playback address. It can be hacking the keys on a
fundamentally insecure device, which can be done by a 10 year
old kid with a script they can download off off the Internet.
To add insult to injury, it can be CDN leaching.
So not only are people stealing your content, you're paying for
(07:06):
them to then view that content. So it's it's insult to injury.
It can be token theft where account details are either
shared around, maybe you share it with, you know, your friends
or your family, or they're stolen, they're shared on the
dark web. And, you know, you can buy
someone's account details for a euro off the dark web and get
access to the, to the platform that way.
It can be HDI capture either, you know, maybe from a laptop or
(07:32):
from a, from a set-top box or, you know, a, a mobile device
with a dongle attached. I mean, if you want to get, you
know, really basic, you know, you can point a camera TV and
record it that way. And yes, well, lastly, again,
maybe one that's not talked about so much is also accessing
content from outside of the region that you're entitled.
(07:53):
So, you know, it could be that, you know, rather than paying for
the content in Europe, you pay for the content in in India or
somewhere, somewhere else in theworld.
And as a result, you get access to the content, yeah, without
paying the market rate that you should be.
So to then secure this, you, what do you need?
(08:13):
Well, you need DRM. You need to encrypt licence
keys. You need to check the user is
entitled to the content. You need to check the apps
entitled to the content. You need to potentially block
HDMI output on various devices. You might want to say that on a
more insecure device, maybe something which only has Level 3
rather than level 1 protection. You want to stream lower quality
(08:36):
to those devices. So you need to manipulate.
You need to recognise that device manipulate your manifest
and stream lower quality as a result.
You need to check the same account tokens aren't being used
thousands of times that you needto block VPNs and you know,
access from outside of the country or the region.
And there's probably a couple ofother things that I've forgotten
in there as well. That's just what I can think of
(08:58):
off the top of my head. And for many content owners or
services, security is just a tick in the box during an RFP.
And very often that tick in the box is just can you do DRM?
Yes, tick. OK, great.
Move on to the next thing. So the end result is that
(09:21):
because it's not thought about holistically, because it's not
thought about from an end to endperspective, you end up having
to cobble together various bits of security from many different
vendors. And that's where you get the
gaps or that's where you don't cover a specific use case.
And we are, we believe that end to end security looked at a
holistic manner is intrinsic to a successful service, which is
(09:44):
what we do. You know, that's, that's our way
of thinking on this. So you know, when we then start
talking, especially to the larger tier ones.
I was at a vendor kick off meeting six months ago with one
of our my larger customers and the first topic of the day.
(10:04):
So we did all the introductions,We all said hello, we had a
coffee and had a chat. First topic of the day after
that was our service cannot become a source of piracy for
our own content because they took this incredibly seriously.
It was at the forefront of theirmind right from the outset.
And this was great because it means we can then start
(10:26):
architecting from the outset to ensure that happens.
What we're seeing very often, maybe with the smaller tier
ones, the tier twos, is they don't have that level of focus
because they don't have that internal expertise.
They don't have someone in theirorganisation who's responsible
for the security side of things.So the end result is because
(10:47):
they're not. So because they don't have that
experience, it's not something they think about so much.
I was at a prospect recently, you know, very well known brand
and they don't even have DRM turned on today.
And it's because the incumbent vendor told them it was
difficult and expensive. And I'm kind of sadly going, no,
(11:08):
it's not. You tick a box and it turns on,
you know, that's how it should be in a well architected and
well designed system. It should be there from the
outset. But because there's these
perceptions that it can be difficult, it can be expensive
and maybe it's not no certain, you know, so necessary.
Let's focus on things that we dounderstand and they understand
very well the consumer experience, the the attractive
(11:31):
applications. That's something which is a
product only you can get your head around very, very easily.
And I think that's actually where, you know, organisations
such as the media kind of can come in and help is we
intrinsically understand the security.
We take that headache away from our customers.
They can then go off and focus on actually what is the frankly
(11:51):
exciting stuff, which is how do you make something really
engaging for your fans? How do you make it attractive
and how do you, you know, really, really engage with them
and delight them with, you know,a service which they want to
then go away and watch? There's multiple things I want
to dive into that, but I think sort of maybe where we'll start
(12:12):
is, you know, the big question, maybe we can drill down to more
specifics is sort of where does the blame come?
Because I think you mentioned there, you know, live sports is
really the the crux of it. And I remember, Nick, you got to
speak to Reche McKnight at UFC talking about from a legal
perspective, you know, UFC fightmight only last two rounds.
(12:32):
You know, that's 5 minutes. So legally, can you even shut it
down in 5 minutes? So is it the legal side of
things? And, you know, we'll, we'll,
we'll dive into where we think maybe blame could be split
around this pie. Not to put words in Peter
Scott's mouth. I think it's one of the most
intelligent people I've ever spoken to.
Back when he was at TNT Sports, he said it'd be the rights
holders because if the rights holders would sell to multiple
(12:53):
different broadcast partners, you were just creating more
potential chances for your your content to get pirated.
So it should start the rights where everyone complaints and
moans. But it does feel like
specifically Amazon has been called out the the CEO of Sky
explicitly called out Amazon. Barney Francis in the interview
I just mentioned, I believe talks about the the Amazon Fire
(13:14):
Stick. It does feel like in the last, I
don't know, 12 months, Amazon specifically has been called
out. I'm just curious, you know,
maybe Nick, we'll start with you.
Do you feel the shift to what seems to be more big tech is to
blame? Is that justified?
It's a justified, I mean everyone's pointing fingers in
all sorts of different directions.
(13:35):
I think if you went back, we've covered it before, but that the,
what came out of the conversation between Syria RnB
in sport was a great example. That being said, if you want us
to pay exclusive rights, exclusive rights deal to you,
then you have to make sure that the content is exclusive.
And they would stop looking at content being exclusive because
of the, the prevalence of piracyand because Syria wasn't taking
(13:58):
enough steps at the rights ownerlevel to mitigate some of those
risks that needed to be taken toprotect their asset that they
were paying a premium for. I mean, Amazon's an easy one to
point out because of the, the conversation around, I don't
remember what they call that Fire Sticks and so forth, which
have become quite prevalent around IPTV use and so forth.
But that is only one aspect of it.
(14:20):
I don't think even if you turn that you can point fingers as
much as you like at Amazon. But they're, they're not the
only part of the piece of the puzzle that's causing all of
this. From what I can see.
There's a lot of other aspects and if even if Amazon found a
way to stop that, but I'm not sure how easy that would be,
people would just turn to other more cloud and online based
solutions instead of that would be my would be my guess.
(14:42):
In theory, I'm sure Paul might have a bit of a a view on that.
Yeah, I mean, the Fire TV one, Ifind it quite interesting
conversation. I mean, let's be quite clear,
the the fault lies with the pirates that the one who would,
they're the ones who are enabling this.
And yeah, the, the the rest of it is sort of a wider
conversation. I mean, the Fire TV to me is
(15:04):
very much like the dodgy DVD sold down the pub.
It's not the fault of the DVD manufacturers or the DVD
recorder manufacturers. It was the people who were
selling down the pub. You know, the Fire TVI think
gets blamed because it's a very convenient low cost dongle that
you can buy for 2030 lbs dollarseuros to your currency unit.
(15:27):
And it's very easy to sideload applications that the pirates
have developed on there and thenmake that available to to people
who you know who choose to buy them.
But if it wasn't a fire TV, it would just be another low cost
device. You know, Android open source is
in, you know, intrinsically allows you to load whatever
(15:48):
applications you want on there. It just so happens that a Fire
TV is a cheap, readily availabledevice for people to buy.
So if short of locking down the device completely to prevent
side loading of applications, which, you know, I think many
people who were, you know, just you would object to because they
justifiably want to side load applications onto their devices.
(16:10):
You know, there's the whole talknow about opening up app stores
on, Yeah, on the Apple ecosystembecause people want the right to
put the applications, they want the devices they've purchased.
So, you know, short of completely locking that down,
I'm not really too sure what, you know, what Amazon can do
with the Fire TV. I'll hold my hands up.
I'm not the best educator on this one.
(16:31):
Maybe there's people out there who have some thoughts on this.
Yeah, maybe that's a topic for afuture podcast.
I don't know. I'd love to hear them myself.
But certainly from my view, it'sa convenient thing to blame.
But it doesn't fix the underlying problem of piracy.
And as Paul, you sort of set thescene, there is a countless
different ways of pirates to be able to get access to to the
(16:55):
content. And therefore, yeah, you just
turn off 1, you put, you plug 1 leaky hole in the bucket, then
another one, another hole will explode somewhere else along the
way. Paul, you mentioned a whole host
of different ways that and measures that need to be taken
to protect content, to protect live, live content in
particular. Can you give us a sense of which
(17:16):
ways are the most prevalent or the most the ones that are
dominating the way that this content is being pirated?
Is there one that really stands out or they is a pretty broad
across the whole spectrum that you you ran through earlier?
I mean, the main one is DRM because that's the one which is
generally the easiest 1 to implement with a with a couple
(17:37):
of exceptions for maybe some, some vendors who are not so
experienced in that space who find it a bit more challenging
because they, they don't come from the video background.
CDN tokenization is very, very popular as well.
You know, the, the big CDN, the the Aquabyze, the faceties,
etcetera have some good add on services there that you can
implement. And that seems to be the next
(17:58):
one, which is is generally used by the the customers and
prospects that we're talking with bringing on top of that.
So this is where we really come in, looking at this from a
holistic perspective is the entitlements check, either
checking that the application is, yeah, a valid application
and also checking that the the user themselves are actually
(18:21):
entitled to the content. I think very often the challenge
you have there is that when people are going out and doing
RFPs, they'll go to a platform vendor, they'll go to a
streaming vendor, they'll go to a security vendor, and they'll
have to then bring these variouscomponents together.
And as a result, starting to runthose entitlement cheques in
(18:45):
conjunction with the with the streaming vendor gets quite
tricky because it's, it's not aneasy thing to integrate.
You know, we've gone down the route of offering this as a
list, as a holistic solution because we want to make sure
that we can layer these additional security cheques on
a, you know, for our customers to really secure the content.
(19:07):
You know, the more cheques you can have, the more, you know,
the more you can protect the content.
But you know, generally it is DRM to start with, CDN
tokenization, and then, you know, we start to layer
additional cheques on top of that.
Many other services out there will just stop with DRM licence
(19:27):
cheques and they may then start to look at things like key
rotation for live content. That's again an interesting
topic to go into. You know, some people view it as
as an absolute necessity. Other people view it as, you
know, if it's live sports content, you know it's only
really going to be up and running for two hours by the
(19:48):
time you've rotated the keys, you know, is it really something
that's worth doing in an event based streaming ecosystem?
They're they're two seem throughtwo very polar opposite schools.
Thoughts there? I think depending on what people
want to sell on any particular day of the week.
Well, I've, I've got a bit of a side question here, Nick, that I
(20:10):
asked Steve when Steve and I dida piracy podcast and it got some
people a bit fired up on LinkedIn.
And the question I asked was, I used the metaphor, you know, if
a tree falls in the woods and noone is there, does the tree make
a sound? And the question I asked Nick
was, if no one is broadcasting it, is it still piracy?
(20:30):
The point I was making is like college football in the UUK
until very recently where TNTS picked up something, it wasn't
broadcast at all. So the idea is.
You know, in the market, in the market you're in.
Correct, Yeah. So if no one's broadcasting in
your market, is it still piracy?But I, I think the answer is
yes. But there's some people that
part of the there's. Definitely a yes.
(20:51):
There's definitely a yes, but whether it's it's more more
understandable why people would look getting who are desperate
top tier fans look for a way of finding it.
I could appreciate that perhaps more.
And it is kind of mad in this day and age that there's still
rights out there that haven't been segmented away from major
rights deals that don't just make that stuff available.
(21:12):
Now. It is my, I know I've spoken to
some rights owners and they're just like, oh, it's just such a
minor audience that we just don't basically just don't
bother doing it. And I was like this day and age,
I think you could probably be smarter with with that, that
approach or a little bit more strategic than it's just not
worth the hassle because of all the markets that you might be
(21:34):
still able to reach. And you put all those collection
of audiences together, then you should be able to get something,
something meaningful out of thataudience reach that you wouldn't
otherwise have. So I do find it surprising this
day and age there is still lots of dark markets for pretty well
known sports with pretty high revenues that they aren't
willing to. Yeah, just make sure it's it's
(21:55):
it's democratised somewhat maybemaybe because of the fears of
what we've been talking about, maybe that is part of it as
well. They don't want to have it
available in certain markets because they know that that
might open up the door that I'm not too sure.
I think, Nick, on that front, there's also the team sizes that
are available. A lot of the, the rights
holders. I think this is very often the
perception that there's lots of people working there.
(22:17):
So there must be, there must be someone who sat around twiddling
their thumbs who can just go away and do this.
And the reality is there's probably not, you know, a lot of
the companies that we're talkingto, you know, a four person team
looking at their entire DTC streaming ecosystem and service
(22:39):
for people is, you know, a good sized team.
For many, it's one person and they're doing it as a side thing
for their day job as well. You know, so I think a lot of
this is often down to the team sizes that are available in
there. And also, you know, there is the
risk of, you know, if you put this content out there, you
(23:01):
know, can it actually be a profitable service?
Is this something we can make money on?
Because if not, you then have topull it or you're going to have
people even more upset in that situation.
So I think the increasing simplicity of launching D to C
services is fantastic. The ability to get the content
(23:22):
out there is great, but you do also need to consider when
having that conversation is OK, exactly how can this content be
monetized? And obviously Eric Ramberg, when
he was on the podcast with you, talked a lot about advertising
and you know what can be done there.
There's also additional conversations maybe about what
can be done to help with with sponsorship.
(23:45):
Can you add additional value to sponsors?
But fundamentally these these services have to be profitable
in order to make them viable. And I think that's where a lot
of the concerns coming in is once, you know, once the
contents out there, we have to ensure that it remains out there
and it's a profitable service for them.
So Paul, in that, in that example, let's say you've got a
(24:08):
client who's let's say maybe Tier 2 level kind of not, not
right at the pointy end, but hasgot different types of
relationships and different types of access available in
different markets. They are looking at the prospect
of like, OK, actually we need tobe, we want to be available
globally in all 200 plus markets.
Depending on what you define as a market.
(24:28):
The, the perception would be that for certain sports, if they
were already producing a feed ofcontent and so forth, that it
would be relatively straightforward, not too
expensive to just open up the doors of access, so to speak, to
be available, let's say through an OTT, your own OTT product as
as an example, be available in every market.
(24:49):
Then they're onward. That would be the perception.
Just what are some of those challenges?
Then how is, is the, is cost like linear in that instance of
that market by market that you're adding to it is or is
there more of a, the more all the markets you open up?
Does it become more cost effective in some for some
reason? I'm just curious on that.
That makes that makes sense as aquestion.
I think the more markets the you're in, the more cost
(25:10):
effective it becomes because themore subscribers you will have
and there's always some kind of intrinsic base cost or base of
of launching these services and having them in market.
And the the more subscribers youhave, the more you can amortise
that cost across more subscribers.
I think what we're generally seeing is the challenge of
(25:31):
removing the friction to access.So they need to ensure they are
working with a a vendor or a platform that has the
flexibility to create a large number of different packages to
address different consumers in different countries.
So for example, in one of our customers, they are a tier one,
but there's no reason a Tier 2 couldn't do this has over 2000
(25:55):
SKUs or packages available globally to allow them to
address a global audience. You want to have different
pricing options in different countries.
You might want to have differenttiers of packages in different
countries to, you know, entice people to come on board.
You then start to need to look at how you can incentivize
people to sign up. So you know, is it a free month
(26:19):
when you sign up? Is it maybe a free weekend of
content? Is it things like live looking
that we recently launched with one of our customers where you
can watch the 1st 10 minutes of the game for free and if you
want to keep watching, you pay. There's a variety of different
things out there that can be done.
But in order to do that, you need to have a very flexible and
(26:41):
nuanced set of entitlements. And that's something which
again, technically very similar to doing streaming at massive
scale, very similar to securing your content.
That's something which is quite a difficult thing to do if the
underlying architecture in your platform and ecosystem isn't
done well. So again, this is another set of
(27:04):
requirements in your RFP processyou need to consider is it's not
just how can you help me launch in one market at 1 price.
It's how can you help me launch in 50 markets with 10 different
prices with a different set of features and functionality in
each of those markets so that I can then tune my pricing or
(27:24):
tweak things to, to really reachthe price point that works in
those market. And that then goes back to the
security and piracy side of things of, well, once you've got
all these different packages outthere, how do you stop someone
in the UK accessing the package that's available in Indonesia or
India or Nigeria, which is lowercost with maybe some, you know,
(27:48):
with, with less functionality. Again, that then comes down to
entitlement cheques. That comes down to Geo blocking.
That comes down to VPN blocking.So you're adding a whole other
amount of work on top of that. And if you're Bob or Barry from,
you know, whose main job is as abroadcast engineer and you're
doing this is your side job, you, you don't have the
(28:09):
capabilities of doing that. So they need to ensure they're
working with vendors who have that intrinsic capability and
can manage it for them to ensurethat all these packages are out
there and available and working with their marketing team to to,
you know, get you get the content out there in a way that
it can be accessed, but also that it's done in a way then
(28:32):
makes sure the content is fundamentally secure and only
accessed by the people who have the rights to it.
So are you saying that Simon Jordan's claim that the Premier
League could just easily set up AD to C platform and make
billions and billions of dollarswouldn't actually be that easy?
I don't think it would be that easy.
I mean, I think anyone who's listening to this podcast, who's
(28:54):
been around in the industry for a while knows that nothing is
ever that easy. But yet, you know, I think it
could be done if they wanted to it.
It would need to be done in a way that, you know, had a given
Premier League content is incredibly valuable.
It would need to be done in a way that is, I think security
(29:14):
first ensures they protect theircontent and also ensures that
they're holding themselves to the same standards that they
hold the their broadcast partners to.
Yeah, and there's no question that there's a market for of all
my travels there, everyone, you know, Premier League is being
consumed one way or other right across the globe.
And there's inevitably a pretty massive opportunity there if
(29:38):
that's unlocked. I'm curious, Paul, to take it a
step further from the tier ones,because often piracy is
typically most mainly associatedwith the tier ones, and I think
rightfully so, because they're the the needle movers when it
comes to consumption. How far down do you think and
see that the the need to manage piracy through end to end is is
(30:01):
essential? Is is a smaller tier 3 sports
sports media instead of riots oran outlet or platform?
Do they have to treat it with the same needs and the same
parameters as say a tier one or is there because the demands not
that scale? You wouldn't put that that
amount of effort into it or thatamount of breadth into it.
(30:24):
I think a lot of it comes down to the the intrinsic value of
the content as well. You know, to secure content,
there is always some kind of intrinsic cost.
I, I think what we generally seeis that if a league or a club
doesn't take it seriously from the outset and then they then
start to get more and more successful and they start to get
(30:47):
more and more subscribers and more and more viewers.
At some point in the future, they're probably going to have a
problem and they've then got a choice two or three years down
the line. Do we just hold our hands up and
say, oh, this is going to be a problem for us and they take the
financial hit? Do they re platform, which is,
(31:09):
you know, a definitely an option, but that requires a
significant amount of of time and effort?
Or do they think about it from the start and work with vendors
who intrinsically understand this and they can then turn on
the features they want as they need them?
You know, they, they may choose just to start off with nothing.
(31:32):
So maybe they're not particularly bothered if that
content is getting stoned to start with.
I was talking to a a potential customer recently.
They're like, yeah, we don't really particularly mind because
it gets us, gets more people interested in sport.
So they're actually really, bizarrely enough, reasonably
happy with a little bit of piracy because he gets, he gets
the sports out there. But at some point, yeah, they're
(31:53):
going to want to start to turn DRM on as things get more
popular because they're going towant to start securing the
content. Then further down the line,
they're going to want to start layering on more and more
security options as they start taking it more and more
seriously. So the choice is really there
is, you know, do you not care about it from day one and focus
on other things and potentially give yourself a bit big headache
(32:15):
in two, 3-4 years time? Or do you, you know, start
working with vendors from the outset who actually understand
this and can turn on the features and functionality you
want when you need them? I would tend towards the second.
Obviously I'm highly biassed because that's what we do.
So obviously I'm bound to say that.
But even when we're talking to, you know, to the, the smaller
(32:37):
tier twos and the tier threes normally come to us and say, oh,
you know, we're doing this because we've got 20,000 Subs.
We want to keep them happy. They're all, they're always
coming to us and saying we've got 20,000 Subs and in five
years time you want to have 100,000 or half a million or a
million. Everyone comes to us with grand
aspirations. That's why they're doing this.
They're not doing this to sit still.
(32:58):
They're doing this to grow. So if you're doing this to grow
that you need to stink long term.
You need to make sure that you're planning for five years
time when you've got 20 times asmany fans on your platform.
And so just Paul, so that basically comes down to I, I
think you've explained it prettywell, but I just want to
summarise or surmise it is effectively if you are have
(33:22):
aspirations to grow, but you don't set up your own platform
effectively, you will basically risk you have to re platform and
be able to get rebuild it again effectively or close to if you
don't have just the, the, the construct set up from day one to
at least be able to turn on those levers as and when you you
want. Yeah.
And look, you know, we quite like customers out there who
(33:45):
want to do that because there's quite a few that we're talking
to right now who've been in the market for a number of years
with competitive solutions. And they've been very happy with
them up to a point. And they're now coming out into
the market and running RFPs to re platform because they
recognise they've got to the point where they, they want to
grow further, they need to secure their content more.
(34:05):
And as a result, they're talkingto us.
So, you know, I'm never unhappy when someone wants to re
platform. You know, it's good for our
business. But equally, if you you know, if
you choose a vendor from the outset who helps you secure that
long term vision, you know that makes your life simpler in the
long run as well. So I'm going to, you know,
(34:26):
changes direction a little bit and you know, we keep hearing
people talking about piracies costing hundreds of millions of
pounds, $100 million, whatever currency you want to do more.
Yeah, 28 billion is that, is that what the the number I think
gets? Lost numbers but it was in the
10s of billions I think. Yeah, I think, I think 28
billion is the number that that gets flown around from time to
time. But one of the things behind
(34:47):
that is, is they're talking about, you know, it's costing
the broadcasters and that's costing the rights holders and
just overall negative. And, you know, my opinion, Nick
and I, I mentioned this when we're talking about this, I
think sometimes we, we look at piracy as an illness, whereas I
view piracy is more of a, a symptom.
It, it's just one part of a larger thing.
(35:07):
You know, that there's so much, you know, so many games that
aren't on TV that are available.The stuff that is on TV is
incredibly expensive. And then you look at it beyond
there, you know, try to go to a Premier League match or an NFL
match in particular in person. The cost of tickets are just
extortion. And you know, we've talked about
the FIFA Club World Cup, how expensive it was to go to a game
there. You know, I don't know what the
travel sports situations like inthe UK, but I can tell you in
(35:29):
the US, parents are paying thousands of dollars for little
Johnny to go play baseball, soccer, things like that.
Sports feels like it's never been more inaccessible.
And I think sometimes we talk about what's the solution to
this. I think, Nick, you and I are
probably a bit on board with, I don't know if technology can
solve this. It's not that there aren't
vendors out there that are coming up with really clever and
(35:49):
creative ways to disrupt piracy,but I don't know if that's
really looking to the the root of the problem.
I think, Nick, we've talked about it and Paul, you alluded
to it a little bit talking aboutadvertising.
Is that really, Nick, in your opinion?
Not saying it's going to be easy, not saying it can be done
overnight, but does it have to stop being trying to stop
pirates and more focusing on howthe monetization of distribution
(36:13):
is. And I know it's a very big
question, big ask Nick, but likeis, do you feel like we're
getting more and more that? I think it's that it's, it does
come down to the root cause of that approach.
And obviously we look towards the music industry and, and
video entertainment world, whichhas gone through its own
journeys. And inevitably that was how it
got to a point where it had to be, the model had to change for
(36:35):
it to be viable and for basically piracy to not be as
prevalent as valuable anymore inthe eyes of the consumer.
So inevitably that seems like the most logical route to reduce
the need and the the impact the piracy does have.
But we've still got a long way to go to get to a place where
that is achievable in, in both in the instance of music.
(36:56):
It was only because Spotify found a way to bridge that.
But I, I watch the I think it's a documentary.
It's like one of those shows which is based on a true story,
but it is dramatised. I'm not sure the the name of
that is it's actually a Swedish series and it's basically on on
Spotify's journey. And and that was the first time
(37:16):
I really came to a grasp of the understanding how the difficult
bit was the negotiation of rights deals and relationships
with the the distributors and the producers, the the companies
that own own basically all the music.
It wasn't just creating a platform and even doing rights
deals with the the the musiciansthemselves.
And I think sports has got that similar predicament where these
rights the right, the the way the writer approached now and
(37:39):
today, how do you retrofit all that to get everyone on board?
And Spotify had to go through a lot to find a way to get
everyone to get on the boat, so to speak.
So I think that's going to be really, really tricky.
But I think it's the only real way that piracy would ever have
a, have a true sort of what would you call it, like a, an
(38:01):
end point, I suppose, to what it's doing now in sports.
So, and for now, it's just goingthe other direction.
There is no light really at the end of the tunnel there.
I think what Paul and needy Con and lots of other companies are
doing is to try and mitigate andreduce those that, that those
losses in impact and, and reallyslow down that impact or
(38:21):
minimise as much as possible. And that's all we can really be
thinking about now rather than trying to say, Hey, we're going
to solve it. No one is going to solve it
magically. I think there's also a perceived
value for fans as well. So if the cost is being
(38:43):
perceived as expensive, that often just means that people are
actually seeing they're getting value from the service that
they're accessing. Again, this is something we saw
in RFP recently where I think itwas third on the list of their
requirements or their challengeswas there's a service in market
(39:03):
today, but it's being perceived by the fans as being expensive.
So yeah, how do you handle that?Well, if you can give them more
value for money, if you can givethem additional features and
functionality, they're more likely to actually think, oh,
yeah, I don't mind paying for this because I'm getting value
for money. You know, I don't mind paying
(39:23):
1099 a month for Netflix becauseI perceive it as good value for
money. So it's also what can you do in
that area to, you know, give fans the perception of value for
money. Obviously, you know, great
content is a is a starting point.
Having the event available is, is one thing, but it's then
start it's sort of things like, you know, OK, highlights of the
(39:46):
highlights available on there. Are they available immediately
after the match? You know, as a fan, you know,
can I go in and re watch the game if I've missed it
immediately as soon as it finishes or am I having to wait
3 or 4 hours? If I could have wait 3 or 4
hours. Oh that, that that's not good.
Yeah. We've recently introduced multi
(40:06):
view with one of our customers, which is available on all their
consumer devices, including smart TV's, which is something
that traditionally wasn't available because the the
devices didn't have the processing power.
And you know the result is. That they've seen a huge
reduction in their amount of churn because all of a sudden
consumers are getting what was previously a premium high end
(40:30):
feature on all their devices. So it's a nice way for them to
interact with the sports they'rewatching and they they really,
really like it. I think the other one, and
again, this comes down to perceived value.
I think also a degree of anti piracy is video latency.
So if we think historically, youknow, video latency on streaming
(40:51):
was 20 was so let's say 20-30, forty seconds, probably 30-40
fifty seconds. So all of a sudden you're way
behind the live action, especially comparing that to a
broadcast platform. So you know, you're delays there
if you've got say a friend who'swatching on the broadcast
platform, you know, they've textyou or WhatsApp you or signalled
(41:15):
or telegrammed or I messaged youabout the, or you've seen it on
X or whatever before you've evenseen the goal on your platform.
So again, it's like, oh, I'm paying all this money for this,
but I'm learning about the goal from social media or the, you
know, the overtake or whatever event it is.
So actually by bringing down video latency.
(41:35):
So it's, you know, broadcast equivalent or better all of a
sudden that you're ahead of social media, you're viewing the
action the same time as your friends, the the buddy you've
got who's actually lucky enough to have got the ticket to the
game that you know, you're seeing it so quickly after
they've seen it that all of a sudden you can have the
interaction. So there's only perceived value
(41:57):
that you're getting a high valueservice as well.
So there's additional things that can be done to add value to
the service so that people are then, you know, not so concerned
about paying the money they are.I think that's a really great
example and it got me thinking, you know, the one big
subscription service I pay for from a sports perspective is the
NFL Game Pass. You know, for me, Sky's
(42:19):
obviously got it on there. I've got access to Sky, but like
I want to specifically watch theCincinnati Bengals.
So part of it is like I can watch the team I want.
It's also got NFL red zone, which I argue is maybe the best
sports product in the world. But the the feature that's
really important for me that I want to pay for as I've gotten
older, the less likely I am to watch the Bengals play Monday
night game where going to break my heart.
So there's no point of me staying up till 5:00 AM.
(42:40):
But I think delta trade initially put into the platform
and zones carried on, which is where I get value.
Is your point being able to watch the game afterwards and
not only do they have the full game replay, they also do a 40
minute recap. Words literally from one play
ends next plans. There's no commercials, right
else, and for me, my travel timeinto work is about 45 minutes.
So the fact that I can wake up, download the game on my phone so
(43:02):
that I don't worry about being on the tube, no service, and I
can watch the Bengals game the night before.
It's what you're talking about right there.
It's just it's an additional layer of service or features
that then all the sudden I don'tmind the cost that I'm paying
because it's not a cheap subscription, but it has enough
features within it and particularly that that download
the game from the night before. Like it's just, it's an
(43:23):
incredible feature for me that justifies the cost that I spend
on it. Yeah, I think also, I mean we,
we touched an advertising earlier.
I think that's probably quite animportant topic to talk about.
Yeah, I think Eric on when he did the podcast with you, he
talked around the other challenges of doing advertising
at huge scale. You know, how you deal with the
the thundering herd of, you know, 100,000 or 1,000,000
(43:44):
people or devices all leading tosee a targeted advert at the
same time and how you handle that.
So yeah, once you've got over the intrinsic technological
challenges, you then start to get onto the value based
challenges of, you know, how do you ensure that you're all your
ad spots are filled? Yeah.
How do you make sure that you'remaximise that ad inventory so
(44:05):
that you can maximise your revenue and offer it to as many
consumers as possible. And again, you know, that's a
conversation, which is I think anyone who's thinking about ad
funded services should be havingwith the vendors they're talking
to because yeah, there's multiple solutions there around
working with multiple Adss, the support of pre sold and
programmatic ads, you utilising house adverts, working across
(44:28):
device specific Adss, all sorts of lovely stuff there.
But what's often then not talkedabout is what what you can do
with the same technology to add additional value to sponsors.
Because very often you know, sponsors are looking either for
more value or you have the opportunity to, you know, add
sponsorship inventory. So you can you use the same text
(44:51):
so that when someone tunes into a live game, rather than going
straight into the live game, yousplash up the sponsor logo or a
sport, a three or five second sponsor message.
You know you want something unintrusive.
You don't want you know it to bethe situation where someone hits
play and they want to go to the live game.
They're sat there watching a 32nd pre roll advert, getting
(45:12):
angrier and angrier and losing their perceived value because
they're missing the action. But you know, something 12345
seconds, yeah, most people wouldaccept that.
So there's additional value thatcan be brought there from a
sponsorship perspective, which Ithink is also something very,
very important. And the great thing is, the same
underlying tech can deliver thisso long as you have things
(45:34):
architected in the in the right way.
Paul, you mentioned AD SS, so for those that don't know that's
I guess that's an addressable advertising system I think is
the. Ad decision server, yes.
Ad Decision server one of the but basically helps helps serve
more personalised advertising into connected connected TV's
(45:55):
and streaming experiences. Is that is that basically?
That's it. So yeah, rather than showing the
same advert to everyone, you cantarget it.
I mean, maybe a per region level, per country level, per
city level, right? The way down to you know, Paul,
Chris and Nick would all see a atotally different adverb based
on likes, dislikes or or what they know about us from a data
perspective. And that that targeted nature,
(46:17):
how far along do you think we are with that being adopted and
used effectively, particularly around sports?
Is it? Is it?
Is it prevalent? It's, it's pretty prevalent
today with the larger sports leagues.
I think what's good for a consumer is when it's done well,
they shouldn't, even though they're being targeted very
(46:37):
often, unfortunately it's done badly.
So it goes to an outbreak and the video stuffer stutters and
you get a little buffering thingwhilst everything works itself
out. But when done well and when done
properly, which is an area of huge focus for us, it's
transparent to the user. So they don't even necessarily
know or recognise they're being targeted with an advert.
(46:59):
So the other good thing there is, you know, generally the more
targeted the advert, the more revenue you'll get.
You know, showing a, a general broadcast advert, it has value,
but it means lots of people who are going to have no interest in
it are going to end up seeing it.
So you get paid less. If you can really target that
advert to people who are going to be wanting to, to, you know,
be interested in the product means you can get more money,
(47:22):
but it means effectively you can, you know, segment your
audience and you can then start to target them.
I think the great thing with sports is, you know, if you're
streaming, if you've got people who are watching motor racing,
they've probably got an interestin motorbikes or, or motor cars.
So yeah, that's a, that's a fairly safe bet to sort of have
(47:44):
that kind of advertising on there.
So I, I think sports especially,you know, lends itself very well
to, to target advertising specifically because you've got
people who are very interested in a, a specific topic.
And then I think one of the the last things that that I was
going to talk about a little bit, Nick here just talking
about the impact of meteorites deals.
(48:05):
I think, you know, we look at some of that stuff has maybe
been flatlining a little bit in Europe.
And I think we've even seen, youknow, the example with the Zone
and Legion, they, you know, reference, you know, rampant
piracy being part of the reason that the Zone no longer wanted
to engage, whether that's the real reason or not.
It was, you know, I think it was, you know, listed out there
as as one of them. I think back to when I joined
(48:28):
the company, BLQ was a big thing.
And I think that had some impactover some different negotiations
and things like that. But if piracy continues to be as
rampant as it is, Nick, do you think that how big of an impact
do you think that actually does have?
Or do you think, you know exclusive rights are are going
to be impacted by the the the legacy or the perceived impact
(48:49):
of piracy? Well, there's no question.
I think it's already having a big impact and it's it can only
get bigger and bigger. And I think when you couple that
with the changing consumer have habits that exist.
The role that Netflix and streaming platforms have, the
role that YouTube has in being entertainment for people to
consume and having it at a clickof a button with ease of access
(49:12):
and no costs associated. No, not as a direct cost
associated. There's a some sort of value
being shared depending on if it's advertising LED or not.
I think it's only going to make it harder and harder for rights
owners without really investing effort into piracy to to
blocking piracy and and mitigating piracy, that it's
going to become more and more ofa challenge for them to get
(49:33):
those rights deals if they're not really tackling this head on
and finding other finding ways to do everything they can to
mitigate the impact. Working with, you know, Paul and
his team as an example or, and also working more
collaboratively across the the wider industry to try and find
other ways to, I don't know, find find a bit of tactics to
(49:53):
try and continue to get a littlebit further, closer to I guess
the, the pace of movement you see in the piracy world.
They can, yeah. It's a bit like when we saw this
other team doping in sports, right where they were also that
the scientists were always aheadof the testing.
I feel it's a bit of that we need to find a way to try and
bridge that gap and narrow this gap of trying to like chase the
(50:15):
pirates and the new ways that they can do things and try and
get ahead of the curve somehow. Oh, that sounds right, Paul, to
you. Yeah.
I mean, I, I guess I've actuallygot a question I think for for
you Nick and Chris is, you know,given the state of the market
with piracy at the moment, do you think the exclusive
meteorites broadcast deals are still viable?
(50:38):
I would say that they are. So I mean, it's a really weird,
it's a really weird industry right now where you've got the,
some of these tier ones are generating insane growth levers.
But like in the US especially because it's actually, I believe
it's actually driven heavily to do with the advertising,
landscaping and the growth of that.
We talked to a lot of streaming and major tech companies in New
(51:00):
York at our event there, and they're also focused on using
live sports as that advertising sales tool to drive huge
revenues that on top of the subscription value it provides.
But advertising's really the next outlet.
We've seen other sports across the world outside the US that
that growth is flat lined significantly.
A lot of sports properties are having to give more to keep
(51:22):
their the meteorites values at alevel.
You know, Premier League was oneof those examples last cycle
where they had to give a lot more games in the package to try
and ensure that Sky and others weren't willing to step away
from the big cheques they've been paying them for some time.
At some stage, if they keep pulling away the, the layers to
it, they're going to run out of layers to be pulling away to try
(51:43):
and keep those revenues up. And it's going to make it really
difficult. So I, I think that's why they
have to be looking at more distribution channels, more ways
to get to market their own OTT channels being more, much more a
key part of it and other, other distribution partnerships they
can do to just make sure they'remaximising the reach of their
content. But that means along with that
(52:06):
is a shift away from just pure rights deals to other ways of
monetizing. Like you pointed out, Paul,
around advertising in sponsorship as a way which is,
is growing. The sponsorship industry is
growing digitally, but it's it needs to grow even faster if
it's to to shift the industry along with it.
Yeah, and I agree with Nick, I think it's going to be too
difficult to just exclusively work with one or two partners,
(52:27):
which I feel so you see in the majority in the UK.
I'm a I'm a massive fan of free to air.
I appreciate we've talked about this.
The NFL is king because it's largely free to air and it's
advertising model. I understand you can't do the
same thing for the Premier League because the games aren't
structured with the amount of stops and starts where you can
just insert an ad. But I'd be pretty willing to bet
if you went out to most people in the UK and you said, hey,
(52:49):
you'll be able to watch the Premier League for free, But,
you know, every 15 minutes we'regoing to have a 32nd in game ad
where we're going to cut the commentary for the game to run
some sort of small ad. I think most people would be
willing to do that in comparisonto, you know, having to pay what
they're currently paying for Skyand everyone else.
And I think I've done it where Ithink only like 52% of games are
(53:10):
currently live. Now that'll change next year
when they increase the amount ofgames.
But I do think, you know, to Nick's point, I would love to
see YouTube. I know Rob Pilgrim said that the
UK and European markets are different than the US.
I'd love to see the roll out of like a YouTube TV type of thing
over here. But yeah, I agree with Nick.
I just, I don't think long term it's, it's, it's viable to stay
(53:31):
with the system it is particularly if they're going to
keep blaming piracy as much as they are.
So with that, Paul, I do appreciate you coming on today.
It is nice to hear from the other side because Nick and I
can typically talk about what wethink, but it's nice to hear
someone that actually has to work in an actually combat, you
know, piracy hand to hand and you've got insights from your
clients. And it is good to hear that they
are prioritising piracy now in those conversations that you're
(53:53):
having. So we really appreciate you
coming on and having this conversation with us.
Thank you very much for having me, it's been a lovely
conversation. Thanks, Paul.
Now before you go, if you like what you heard today, be sure to
rate 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 ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
(54:13):
whether that be in person or on social media.
And if you don't like what you've heard, what you think we
should be doing more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
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