September 25, 2025 • 47 mins
Terence Crawford and Canelo Álvarez’s title fight helped Netflix draw a record-breaking 41 million viewers — a milestone that could reshape the future of live sports. In this episode of StreamTime Sports, co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone explore how Netflix is disrupting traditional pay-per-view models and challenging the status quo of sports broadcasting. The conversation also spans Ligue 1’s subscription experiment, Amazon’s surprising partnership with The Masters, and the WNBA’s impressive growth this season.
Key Points:
- Is Netflix about to make pay-per-view obsolete?
- Will platforms like YouTube and Netflix become the new gatekeepers of live sports?
- Can Ligue 1’s new €15-per-month platform survive?
- Why did Amazon choose The Masters, and why did Augusta choose Amazon?
- How significant is the WNBA’s viewership growth, even with Caitlin Clark sidelined?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the next episode of Stream
Time Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community league joined as always by our CEO, Nick Meacham.
Now Nick, I had a little check. I believe it will be Monday,
will be the autumn solstice. And for those that don't know, I
studied history as an undergraduate.
My particular area that I've found most interesting or where
(00:24):
I did my dissertation things wasaround mediaeval European
history. I'm in the Vikings or my
favourite group of historical figures.
Yeah, yeah, I love Vikings and when I think of Sweden, I think
of Vikings. When I think of Vikings, I think
of Pagan traditions. And when I think of things like
the solstice, I think of, you know, pagans and Vikings.
I'm just curious, like do they do anything in Sweden around
(00:45):
the, you know, the autumn solstice or any of the solstice?
I just, maybe that's a, maybe that's a stereotype, but I just,
I'd be curious to know if there's anything going on that,
you know, maybe your kids are going to do in school.
I've not heard anything yet, actually.
Now you've got me wondering. There is one thing that.
I'm just checking if. It's if it's when they do do
(01:07):
something, I think that's later,earlier in the year, which I
think we completely missed. It's like the crayfish party.
I just, I feel like there's got to be some sort of traditions.
I'd be, I'd be really disappointed if they if they'd
lost their ways. Maybe no one talks about it and
it just had something just happens.
When is that? That's a great question.
(01:29):
I from what I understand, no. All I can tell you though, it is
getting bleak here fast. We're losing 5 minutes a day, 5
minutes a day of sunlight and now the morning to pitch black,
whereas just a month ago I thinkwe lose something like 2 1/2
hours. Did I say that last pod?
I, I I. We, we, we had a podcast where I
think it was during the summer solstice perhaps where you're
(01:51):
talking about like basic, like every day you were gaining like,
yeah, well. What goes up must come down.
Yeah, what goes up must come down.
And now we're, we're definitely on the downward, downward trade.
No, I don't know if there's anything specific though.
There is the crayfish party, theCrest Weaver, it's called.
And that is something that happens to mark the end of
summer. But I've just had a quick look
(02:14):
and that is typically held at the end of August.
So just missed it. I have to say my experience of
it was a bit mixed that just basically with shellfish, small,
smelly. It's not my bag, I have to be
honest. But no, they definitely
basically what happens in now we've got told, oh, I've got
(02:34):
told and I've been here loads oftimes, is people just going to
basically start going into hibernation over the coming
months. So literally you just start
seeing people less and less and they live what they call more of
a music life, which basically means cosy.
You'll never hear the word cosy more than you will in Sweden.
And so music and neuter, which means basically you have to
(02:57):
enjoy things Neuter is to enjoy stuff.
So have a have a have a music castle basically means candles
everywhere dark. There's candles, lights in every
window. It is quite pretty, but it is
pretty bleak for a few months. So this will be my first full
winter. I've done a couple of months
here before and that was quite acool experience actually because
(03:18):
I was staying at my in laws place.
And what I basically did, I got into running.
And so I would run every other day and sometimes the weather
would be around 0 the next day it'd be -10 and sometimes I was
running in snow, snow packed compact snow and other times it
was super wet. And this is an interesting
(03:40):
dynamic to go from. And I never got hot till I
finished the run. Basically after the run I
started the warm up but otherwise I was freezing the
whole way around. But it was I enjoy kind of enjoy
running in the the icy cold conditions.
So that's something I'm looking forward to nostalgically.
I've stopped running now intentionally too.
I make sure I get more excited when it's time well.
One thing I want to do, and I don't know if it's anywhere near
(04:01):
you in Sweden, but I'm sure the Instagram reels.
I have seen the places where youcan go out in like a cabin in
the woods and like have a pack of keys and go out there and
just mush, mush and just be fun to be on a dog drawn.
God, why can't why can't I thinkof the word if we're going to go
do that Husky sledding. Yeah, yeah.
They're just, yeah, I've done that.
(04:23):
I've done that before. I did it in the Arctic Circle in
Finland. Really cool experience, but
you've got to be quite a way up north now.
For context, I think it's like 10 more 10 at least 1011 hours N
from here before you get to the Arctic Circle, I think from
memory. So it's a it's a long way up
north though I did rain, reindeer and Husky sledding, ice
(04:47):
fishing, a couple of other things I can't remember now was
a long time ago. It was a really cool experience.
I would highly recommend doing something like that as a, as a
thing. Problem is where I live
actually, the snow comes and goes quite a lot because it's
quite South. So it's not quite as beautifully
snowy. And we live near the near the
(05:08):
sea and the sea basically just the air takes everything away.
So it's not quite as idealistic as you would think.
Yeah, well, not just, you know, flipping in on the the complete
opposite, Nick, not just talkingabout the winter and the Arctic.
We had a hot event last week on the beach.
That beach being in Amsterdam and IBC.
Oh, I know I'm just, I'm, I'm getting better with age and, you
(05:30):
know, time and just, but yes, wehad a, we had a stream time
event at the beach at IBC. You and I were not able to
attend, but I saw all the videos, saw all the photos look
like a very busy place. Lots of our members there, which
is always very exciting and, youknow, intersection of the
industry. But Nick, you know, maybe just
your sort of highlights as well,just like from an IBC
(05:53):
perspective and sort of where that sits in and just being able
to host that event within there.Yeah, we've always been
interested in doing something out at the RBC event.
We normally send a couple of people out to the event.
It's an event now for context, for those listening who aren't
familiar with it, there's like nearly 40,000 people to go to
it. It's a very tech heavy broadcast
show. It's not really a place where a
(06:14):
lot of sports go, but there is some there because at 40,000
you'll get some people that are interested in crossover into
that space. And we were keen to do something
Aaron and see what the appetite was like.
And also when talking to our members that we have as part of
the stream time community, it's an important date in their
Diaries in a lot of for for a lot of them.
(06:36):
So we're excited to do our firstexperience out there.
I think they have well over 100,a 120 people attend.
All members are invited as part of their membership.
And then we invited some select people within our community.
A big shout out to the our partners for that event led by
media kind and FX digital and alike to and to coders.
I can't remember the last one, so sorry about that.
(06:58):
But you got exposure on the day.But no, it was a good experience
to to get to seek, see that sortof come to fruition.
And I'm pretty bullish about doing something a little bit
bigger out there next year. So for those that are listening
who are interested, get in touchif you want to share your
thoughts on what we should do out there.
But I've already got some ideas percolating, so I have to wait
and see. Oh, and I know there's some
(07:20):
whisperers, you know, in the background, potentially extreme
time golf day. We'll see if that happens.
But you know, we're always open to all ideas.
We're always open to all ideas. The golf thing, my problem is
that since I moved over here, I've been itching to play golf
and all I've done is play at thepath recourse with my son where
I just take basically a pitchingwedge and a putter and that's
(07:42):
all I need for the whole round. So I haven't done enough
training if we're going to take that.
So I'm going to have to dust offthose clubs and get out there a
little bit more. But he's already got a better
swing than me, so maybe I'll just send him Alamo for half
instead. Yeah, it's just that flexibility
they have when they're that young.
You know, I just, I can't, you know, rotate my back that way.
It's ridiculous. I'm looking at like I can't, I
(08:02):
can't move my hips hot like quarter of the way around than
I'm supposed to and he's hyperextending them.
It's ridiculous. But anyway, oh, to be young
again. Oh, to be young.
So Nick, moving into the news stories, the first one we're
going to start with or I'm goingto take us is on the Netflix
Canelo Crawford fight that took place over the weekend.
The numbers that came out looking at 41 million global
(08:22):
viewers across the day, the average minute audience, which
I'm sure you can explain to people what that that means.
I'm sure probably fairly logical, but you know, they're
coming up with new stats all thetime.
Nick had that at 36.6 million. the US audience is 20.3 million.
For those that, you know, if you're not following Nick on
LinkedIn, go do it. You did a big long post.
But I do think one of the interesting things you came up
(08:44):
with that is the week prior we talked about the YouTube game
that NFL hosted there and the sort of disparity between the US
and the rest of the world. You know, I just said there's 41
million viewers here. They're talking about the US
audience is 20 million so far more global audience.
It didn't match the numbers thatthe Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight
(09:04):
had. But still we're not talking
about insignificant numbers. And I think another point did
the pay-per-view bottle. But it may be in for a struggle
long term. But Nick, just looking at that
Canelo fight being on Netflix again, they keep adding more and
more events, the boxing events, the NFL games, They're just
adding more events and looking like any doubts that may have
(09:27):
been. How can an on demand video
platform survive with the the large streaming challenges when
you're doing live sports? They just, they keep knocking
them off, Nick. Yeah, look, I have this weird
feeling that in years from now, what we're going to see is not
only people like Netflix and YouTube hosting more live
sports, but I think they will basically be able to hold some
(09:51):
of these sports to ransom. Not they're not a few years, but
in down the line and say, hey, we can guarantee you 40 million
viewers to your event if you give us your rights for free.
And that's what I think is goingto happen.
Some says YouTube are kind of already doing that a little bit,
but that's why the NFL case willactually put some money on the
table was interesting. But I think that was done to
(10:14):
prove the business case themselves that they could do
it. But I just think that these the
the power that like Netflix has to generate an audience for in
some instances, you know, boxingis boxing is so primal and so
easy to follow in the same way Iwould say like football is in
terms of from a sporting perspective that anyone can
(10:34):
watch it and engage with that. That and it was a really big
match up, like 2 of the the bestin the for this generation
basically fighting against each other.
But if you were because of the legacy of pay-per-view and what
it's done to, I guess driving down awareness of the sport and
focusing on those super fans to pay the pay-per-view price that
(10:56):
has been asked of them to see them now ramp up these numbers
to the scale that they did. I still find really impressive.
Now that the Tyson Paul fight, Imean, that's that shows what
happens when you've got big brands and names.
We start, we start them behind them.
You can move in, you can get anyone to anything basically,
(11:18):
because obviously it wasn't a legitimate fight and and that
record may may never be broken, but I saw that Netflix were very
quick to outline this was the number one most viewed boxing
championship. Yeah, ever.
So they they're trying to createtheir own narrative now.
They're now trying to softly shift away from the Tyson thing
a little bit when when they can.But yeah, the 41 million is
(11:41):
massive. That over half the audience was
outside the USI think it's superinteresting also because of the
time zone thing. It was a late night fight in the
US. I'd love to know.
And I think the numbers were top10 on Netflix in 91 different
countries and top and #1 on Netflix in 30 countries.
That just shows the pulling power and the variability Dr
(12:03):
audiences to the sport. I'm not just going to say it's
boxing. Boxing's done well here.
But Netflix's ability to drive people to those I think also has
to be really commended. So yeah, some, some big numbers
on the AMA side. The average minute audience is
what it sounds like. It's the average audience on a
permanent basis. And that is now the, the, what
you call up the, the, the, the go to streaming measure that
(12:26):
most are using the benchmark, the benchmark.
Yeah, the benchmark stat that they're using.
I was a little bit compute confused and I wrote this in my
post about how some of these numbers work.
So if anyone can explain it to me, I either think I don't want
to do this like I'm I feel like I'm getting on a bit of a high
horse now about ratings and dataThe last couple of weeks with my
shots at FIFA and and YouTube and the like in the NFL.
(12:48):
But that in fact they've said they had 4141 million global
viewers total. So live plus the next 24 hours
afterwards, then a 24,000,000 peak concurrent and then 36.6
million average minute audience.Now what I struggle with is how
can you have 36.6 million average a 24,000,000 peak
(13:12):
concurrent. So if anyone is listening can
answer that question for me because they do not sound
logical and I asked that GBT or I hope we can before I posted
about it. Like maybe I'm just thinking
really stupid, yeah stupidly here and missing a trick, but if
anyone can explain that number to me I would really appreciate
(13:33):
it. I agree, I have a similar
thought, one I hear, but I just assumed someone smarter than me
has figured it out and I'm just going to trust them.
Nick. But one of the things I hope for
Nick because one of the things we might talk about piracy later
in the streamy story, but like one of the things that they talk
about is accessibility. Like that's what drives a piracy
because I think, you know, there's statistics.
It's like, you know, 3/4 of people will be willing to pay
(13:55):
for something if it was just legally there to be watched.
And we talk about what causes piracy, the challenge with it
and it's accessibility. I boxing's different because
it's such you only get these fights once maybe twice a year,
whereas the NFL, the Premier League like very set schedule.
I would just love to see, I knowNetflix is not free to air, but
(14:16):
it's the lack of the pay-per-view.
And it feels like at this point,like Netflix is almost like
Wi-Fi where it's sort of like, yeah, it's not free, but like it
just feels like such a common commodity that like it almost
feels free to air. YouTube quite literally being
free to air. I hope other people see this and
you know, maybe maybe Sky startsdoing stuff on YouTube where
(14:39):
like they might do a Sky game ofthe week on YouTube or so.
I don't know. I'm just pulling things out of
the hat, Nick, but I just, I want more stuff that's not
behind a Bay wall. Yeah.
And, and look, I think the scaleof Netflix and other platforms
like Prime, which I was going tomention a bit later as well, but
the scale of these platforms andtheir audiences.
Now, it isn't like the days of pay TV versus linear where
(14:59):
you're limiting your audience scale.
In fact, it's the opposite. Netflix can increase the scale
because they're a global approach and their ability to
make sure that you're in and notowning every home in the US for
AUS based event. But you're also being watched
right across the globe and can and basically can change or
shift your audience metrics to the number I shared in in my
(15:20):
post is that they the previous Canelo flights, Canelo flights
that I checked out, they had around 900,000 pay per views and
1.2 million. So roughly 40 times the amount
of people watched that fight to the pay per views.
Now that is obviously legal pay per views.
So let's let's suspect it's double or triple or quadruple
(15:42):
that. But still that is more than 10
times consumption on Netflix. So anyway, back my point is that
that sort of level of visibilityis enormous for the sport.
And I think that the sport, we'll be thrilled that it can
drive that value to Netflix and Netflix can drive that value to
them because they're getting that sort of eyeballs for for
(16:05):
people like Canelo and Crawford is incredible value for them and
their brand longer term as well.So the question ultimately will
be, is is 40 million enough? Is 40 million enough for Netflix
to get value for what they've committed to on the rights,
whether it be from both an acquisition and a retention
play? And because they have the
ability to really focus on double, because they're not just
(16:26):
focused on acquisition, because it's such a mature organisation
and but you have a mature audience, they can get, I think
enough value out of that 40 million number pretty pretty
comfortably. But I'm I'm not an expert and
look at doing all the math on that.
Yeah. I mean, we're going to look at
some numbers later on the ratings roundup that we'll talk
about, but you know, that 40 million is significantly higher
(16:46):
than the NFL games are going to reference.
It's higher than the NASCAR races that we're going to
reference. Like granted, I mentioned boxing
is not as frequent. So it's sort of like Wimbledon
is great, but Wimbledon's only on for four weeks.
You're not going to pay as much for a four deferred event that's
over at that spam. But you know, if you're talking
about advertiser sponsors, that is not an insignificant number.
(17:07):
So yeah, I think, like I said, Ihope it works just purely for
the way that I consume sport. I think it'd be great to see
more stuff like this. And I imagine you're right,
Nick. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think I agree with you. I my other code sort of key
takeaways from this is I wonder if we can use this measure of
(17:28):
say this roughly 40 times the viewership as a measure to what
to expect from when UFC goes live and and sort of part of the
paramount offering. I'd be interested to see if that
is roughly the numbers that we're able to get visibility on,
if we are able to get visibilityon those numbers.
And I just thought one other thing that stood out for me is
(17:50):
that if these numbers are close to right, these Netflix numbers,
I'm still holding my breath thatif I'm, if I'm wrong, I, I mean,
my problem, right? I'm going to, I'm going to say
where he is. But my problem is that normally
when I'm sceptical about something, I'm normally right.
And that really annoys me. I actually would rather be wrong
about these things. Like there's too many smart
people in the world working these two organisations.
(18:12):
So I, I feel like I must be wrong about this.
And someone can explain to me onthe assumption that it is right,
that these are the sort of numbers they can produce.
I, I think this, the, the closeness of the total numbers
to the average minute audience is an incredible result and
shows the stickiness of someone on a Netflix platform.
(18:33):
So if someone logs in on Netflix, they're going to be
there to stay and to watch what they're watching.
I think that's the challenge that YouTube might have is that
ability to keep an audience oncethey bring them onto the
platform, because that's normally not how you use
YouTube. You're bouncing between shorter
related content. So that's just a little anecdote
or a little side part of the conversation is how sticky is
(18:57):
that audience once it does land on the platform if it is on
other ones like like a YouTube? Well, I'll bring it back up
later when we we talk about thatradiant roundup because I have
some thoughts that maybe lead into that.
But just to move us on to the next story, we're going to get
another update on Lee Gunn. We talked about.
It's been a crazy couple of years for them up and down zone,
no to zone, waiting till the last minute to get things sorted
(19:18):
out. Some sort of partnership
distribution with Amazon. They did launch their own League
One streaming platform and it came at a very reduced rate in
terms of pricing. They also had a discounted price
for under 26. Doing a lot of things to try to
make this work and something we've really not probably seen
from a league of their size and their own domestic market.
And they'd said their goal was to reach 1,000,000 Subs by the
(19:39):
end of the season and looking around 2.5 to really 3 million
in the long term. By the opening weekend, they
reached 600,000, which we thought was a good place to
start. According to the reports.
Now they are now at over 1,000,000 Subs.
So for them, you know, their goal is to reach that number by
the end of the season. They seem to have done that
within basically the 4th week ofthe season.
(20:00):
So Nick, positive signs, you know, surely you know, if you
set a target, you want to hit it, you know, maybe sometimes
you set the bar low, just a smash through it.
So you know, you can, you can tell the narrative, but you
know. Surely this has got to be a
positive sign. It's certainly positive.
I think there's no way to to think no other way to think
(20:22):
about it in terms of being positive of the audience
engagement and the adoption. Look what what are the things we
can take away from this. So firstly, I did, I did a
little quick calculation and roughly the zone ended up with
around half a million subscribers, I think was the
number that was reported at about €30 a month.
(20:42):
Why those calculations Extrapolating at a half million,
let's just say at a, a static rate, the, the number works out
to about 180 million of revenue,right, for the year.
Again, assuming static, which isnot accurate because it's
growing, but just just for argument's sake, well, the
number that they've developed, the number, the number that
they've created now with a million followers at around
(21:05):
€15.00 a month with a promo and stuff in place adds up to the
exact same number for for revenue that the zone would have
on the, on that static as a static measure.
So I think it's just quite funny.
And that's interesting just to see that despite the number
being over double. Well, actually, let's go back to
basic economics here, OK, Economics shows that if you sell
(21:28):
something for cheaper, you should get more subscribers.
Not a huge shock there. The question is, can they keep
that momentum to a place that issignificant enough?
Like you said, that million was the report of the goal they went
for. I am sure that they went for a
conservative number in public because they've got so much
(21:49):
grief over the last couple of years.
There's no way they would have set a goal publicly that was
high. And they've already controlled
the narrative on that a little bit.
So my guess is that they wanted to, they maybe had expectations
that it would, They have requirements that it needs to go
higher. That's for sure.
Because the gap between what they were expected to be earning
(22:10):
a few years ago to now and that even though the zone deal is
still quite significant, right, so.
It's it's good. Momentum 72% people signing up
for the full season package is also positive.
So people just making the long term commitment to the platform.
But it's still really early daysto say like, oh, Lagoon is out
(22:30):
of the out of hot water because it's going to be clubs
undergoing huge financial pressure over the next coming
the coming years because they haven't got the media revenues
coming in that they expected. We hope you're enjoying the
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(23:35):
Well, let me try to keep spinning this, Nick in the
positive. Like, you know, we spoke with
Paula Donovan of Media Kind and I'm going to talk about piracy
game Nick, because, you know, I love it.
And one of the things you talkedabout when it comes to piracy is
that you have to convince the user of the value with which
they're paying. So I might even spin it to say,
Nick, hey, maybe they aren't making any more money than what
they made last year, but the fact that they have more users
(23:57):
is actually a positive simply because, you know, more first
party data or less people accessing your content via
piracy. You know, have they found more
of a middle point or we could goway back in The Time Machine to
one of our favourite podcast. I think it was David versus
Goliath was the name of the podcast where we talked about
Palk FC. The the too long didn't read
(24:20):
story on that is Greek football club fails to get broadcast.
He also launches their own OTT platform. 12 months later,
broadcaster come back in and offers them more money than they
made the year before. You know, maybe legal and if
they can drive the numbers up, maybe they don't make more
money. But they say here's a subscriber
base and maybe Canal Plus does come back to the table.
You know, that's just me and Nick trying to just to give it
(24:41):
that positive spin. Yeah, well that, I mean that's
definitely a viable play here. I think that's and that would be
a great outcome for them. Like let's be clear on the
design situation is they were making way more money out of the
design relationship, but design wasn't making enough money to
justify their investment in the media rights.
And that was the predicament whydesign made the unprecedented
(25:03):
move of pulling out of their deal so early.
Now, what I think is really important about this moment in
time is that having the price solow allows them to try to break
consumer behaviour of taking thepirated approach and going for
something that look, it's so cheap at 15 a month.
(25:24):
I can, I can, I can actually payyou that.
I'm OK with it. But when it's at the higher
price point of 30 or or or 30 plus at one stage if you put all
the offers together, it was over80 or odd EUR a month that
people would have had to pay to watch all the matches.
But just for the zones alone, that's enough of a tipping point
that consumers say no, screw you, I'm going to find it by
(25:45):
other means. So hopefully for their benefit,
having this low price point willstart to shift what is a very
piracy centric market into beingmore comfortable with paying for
access to these rights and for this content.
And then down the line, they'll probably start to push up like
we saw with all streamers if they keep continuing with
(26:07):
streaming it themselves and distributing it through carriers
is pushing up that price gradually over time.
But one step at a time and let'ssee how far they can get by the
end of the season. Hopefully they can keep some
momentum up. Like I said, we'll we'll
continue to follow it. It's a story that won't go away,
Nick. It stays near and dear to our
hearts. I'm sure we'll continue to cover
it. But next one flipping back
(26:28):
across the pond. Starting from 2026 within the
US, Amazon Prime will now streamthe Masters.
This is going to complement someof the coverage from ESPN and
CBS as well. Paramount Plus is also being
involved. Paramount Plus seeming to be
everywhere would Nick just this seems like to me another example
(26:50):
of Amazon doing largely what Amazon does, which is being very
selective about picking certain events, never maybe necessarily
taking the lion's share of something, but just picking and
choosing the right moments that they want to try different
things. Is is there any reason that
shouldn't be the interpretation of this move?
(27:12):
Well, I think it's really interesting because the masters
are actually quite well known inthe industry for taking a very
unique approach and how they approach their meteor rights.
For example, they actually leavea lot of money on the table for
the meteor rights deals. They instead of getting the best
deal possible, they've been veryfocused on keeping the control
(27:32):
over what is done with those rights rather than a broadcaster
paying a premium and then letting them do what they want
to do with it. So they're very have been very
good at dictating to CBS how they want the broadcast
production delivered, all the little subtle nuances that come
with, you know, how advertising serves during the broadcast.
(27:53):
They keep huge amount of controlon that.
They've got a long standing relationship with CBS and and
indeed Paramount that's been very successful and lauded for
the high quality experience thatthe Masters does deliver from a
broadcasting perspective. And so they haven't gone and and
sought out numerous meteorites partners in the US anyway for
(28:14):
for quite a long time. And so the fact that they are
taking this big step with Amazonis, I think, pretty significant
as I get another example or another another moment where you
start to say probably streamers become more legitimised, even in
the most traditional forms of broadcasting relationships like
(28:35):
the Masters used to have. And this will give the Masters
again, more visibility. So the what was historically a
fairly under covered set of dayson the on the Thursday and
Friday of the tournament will now be visible to to fans.
So I'm very intrigued that why you at the Masters decided to go
with Prime Video, because quite frankly, I think everyone would
(28:58):
have been pretty keen to get a piece of those rights if they
were up for it. And whether there was a
significant meteor rights check attached to it, given they
haven't really sought that out from the relationship they have
had with CBS. So it's just a very interesting
unique situation that is pretty much an anomaly for the industry
to see someone so protective. It is a little bit Wim Wimbledon
(29:21):
esque, I suppose, but even even more, even more so.
Well, you know the one thing. You have to respect about
Augusta and the Masters and it'sjust me as someone like Steve
Food, you know, they're there's all they're notorious for the
fact that they've never raised like their food prices, you
know, very from what I've been told.
And once you get there and then it's a not as expensive
experience. You mean like you go to most
(29:42):
ballparks in America, you're paying like $18.00 for a beer or
something like that or whatever concessions.
So apparently it's not just the meteorites, it's the
concessions. And to your point as well about
the CBS stuff, like I can just cheer the the Masters on CBS,
Like I can just cheer the littleJingle play in my head because
I've heard it for 35 years now. It's very, I can't think of the
(30:02):
masters without the, you know, that CBS little song Jingle that
they play every time that, you know, we're getting to that time
of year. Yeah, look, they've done a great
job with it. The Masters are happy with it.
And Augusta National, which is the Golf Club basically they
play it at, owns that competition.
As far as I understand they have.
They have no need to really try and squeeze every dollar out of
(30:24):
the rights. They rather keep control, make
sure they're there. Their tournament continues to be
the most prestigious in the golfand because of that, they are,
they are sitting in the box seatin terms of that position that
there's no, it's unquestionable that tournament is the most,
what would you call it most influential in the marketplace?
And they're in a great position as a result of that.
(30:46):
One thing I would say is though,that does get a lot of coverage
the the pricing of the of the food, but do you know how much
it costs to get a ticket to the Masters itself?
So it's basically it's almost money can't buy, but you can by
your way in. So yeah, maybe it doesn't cost
you an arm a leg when you're on the ground, but you probably
spent an arm a leg to get. There to get there.
(31:06):
Yeah. Well, just some quick facts for
this out there. You talk about the expanded
coverage. Historically, it's been because
of the new streaming deal used to be 18 hours of coverage, now
27 hours. That's an increase of 50%.
So that's not an insignificant number.
You know, we talked about, you know, Sky adding more and more
coverage with, you know, football and things like that.
So it's not a small number that they're adding.
(31:28):
And then just for reference, last year's Masters that they
set a record. Now, obviously, that is always
going to depend on who's in the finals, how close is it, things
like that. But it is certainly a growing
commodity. We've talked several times about
sort of the PGA's resurgence andhow much of that can potentially
be on personalities jumping intothe YouTube space, growing it.
But it is a property overall that seems to be growing and
(31:51):
they're going to be offering more coverage.
So just like I said, add add some statistical context to some
of this as well. Well, it feels mad, right, that
there's the prospect if they hadn't done this deal is that
there would be a huge chunk of the Masters not really available
to watch, like the most prestigious tournament would not
easily be accessible to fans in the US.
(32:13):
So it does kind of feel like a deal had to be done.
I know they have a really interesting mix of partners.
I don't, haven't, haven't got those rights fragmented in
different places. What I mean by that is like
there's not three different broadcasters having it on at the
same time. It's all exclusive to the
broadcasters in question that they're working with.
I, I thought I, I have to love their, their approach, but it's
(32:36):
also very idealistic that you don't need to chase the biggest
check, which is not how this industry works, fortunately or
unfortunately. No, it is not.
So Nick, we're going to we're going to pivot over Josh in on
our editorial team does a a frequent reoccurring article,
the ratings roundup where he goes through find some
interesting numbers, facts and figures worth knowing.
(32:59):
So we won't go through every single figure that's in there,
but definitely something to to keep an eye out for as you're as
you're adding things to your list of how do I stay on top of
the industry? Definitely come back and
reference that article. I'm pretty sure it's exclusive
to Sports Pro subscribers as well.
There you go, a reason to go sign up.
And if you need that, you can talk to Nick and I.
We'll, we'll, we'll introduce you to the right people to get
(33:19):
you sorted so you can be the best in the business and the
most informed. So yeah, maybe this is exclusive
coverage of your. Own it's at the same price as a
month of subscription for the league for league in.
There you go, there you go. Get on it.
No excuses. So what we'll start with Nick is
WNBA coverage and this year has and we talked about a little bit
(33:40):
earlier in the year, we saw thatinitial game between the Sky and
the Fever Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark, which actually to
be in the most watched game of the year, 2.7 million.
But across the season on ESPN, ABC, the games that were
publicly broadcast average 1.3 million viewers across those 25
games. That's a 6% increase year on
year and across all of their channels average 969,000 viewers
(34:04):
per game. So Nick, numbers are going up.
And I think one of the other things to mention as well, we we
talked, we asked the question atthe beginning of the year, how
much of this was the Caitlin Clark effect?
How much was it, you know, similar with Tiger and the PGA,
you know, Lewis Hamilton, Formula One for a long time.
But actually, you know, one of the things is like Caitlin
Clark, I think missed like 2/3 of the season.
(34:25):
She only played a small portion of the games.
Like she maybe only played thirteen games across the season
and they were still managing to drive these numbers.
So there's always been talk about, you know, the WNBA and
it's a very interesting time because they're currently going
through ACBA where they're asking for more money.
So this is probably really positive for them in that
conversation to show those are growing.
But they just overall just that the growth, what that means in
(34:47):
terms of the fact that they are getting more coverage.
Is this proof that, you know, wecould say the same thing for WSL
if the WSL gets more investment from Sky, like, you know,
causation versus correlation, how much is a positive that it
wasn't driven exclusively by Caitlin Clark, you know, just
sort of the growth of what you saw this year?
Well, I think the fact that Caitlin Clark wasn't involved is
(35:09):
a massive, massive moment for the WNBA because that was the
criticism up until this point islike, there's this incredible
story around Clark and that is that is basic what everyone is
following. And the ratings did lean that
way, that basically her team wasgetting more visibility than
anyone. And stadiums were selling out or
sorry arenas were selling out etcetera along the way as a
(35:29):
result of that. But for them to be able to then
follow that up and still drive an increase in ratings after
that first year success and the numbers aren't that far away
from the NBA. The optics for the WNBA look
pretty good right now. Now, when you correlate that
with the meteorites deal that they have versus what the NBA
(35:50):
has, they are only getting a fraction of their audience.
But here's where it gets really tricky for me to digest.
Now, firstly, you can compare the 969,000 average viewers per
game across ESPNABC and Cbsi think about that with ESPN and
ABC was 1.3 million for the, youknow, for for the, for their
(36:11):
channels like that. How much of that number is
because they're on the main networks and the net just live
sport, decent live sports in those channels would already
bring that audience to the the table because across the entire
industry, there is innately a general set of growth of
audiences in all live sports we're seeing, right.
(36:35):
So how much of that's driven just by being in the right place
where people are consuming and how much of it is the WNBA
pushing audiences to those platforms?
And that's the tricky bit we can't really answer, but
nevertheless, the disparity between what they're earning
versus what their ratings are, relatively speaking, is quite
significant. Now for those that will quickly
point to just the disparity between the NBA and WNBA, let's
(36:57):
remember how many extra games the NBA plays each year. 82
games plus playoffs for 32 teamsis a very big different prospect
to what is it like. I don't even know how that it's
a very short season for the WBA comparison.
So it is night and day to compare those two properties
together because of the relativescale that you can't just
(37:18):
measure every game in isolation as it stands.
Nevertheless, they have to be buoyed by that extra increase in
interest and visibility. Well, this was the thing that I
said I was going to come back towhen we got to the Radians
roundup, talking about kind of the Netflix by then, whether
it's YouTube or Netflix. And the positivity about it is
that we're we're seeing that across the board, Nick, because
(37:39):
we're going to talk about some other statistics of this is the
most watched sport even ever. This was this, this was this,
despite the things that we've talked about in the industry,
being a little nervous because you know, there's TikTok,
there's Netflix, there's Amazon Prime, there's Apple TV, there's
Ted Lasso, there's, you know, all these million different TV
shows. I think there was perhaps a
little bit of a concern that youthink a share of wallet and
(38:01):
share of time, how people split those things up.
You know, what was this going tohave an effect on live sports?
But it doesn't seem like it's necessarily slowing down.
There are some spots that everyone can't say it's uniform
across the board. But you know, whether this is
for advertisers that, hey, this is still the premium thing to be
at. It just seems like there's still
(38:22):
a lot of stories that we keep hearing more and more about
record-breaking numbers of concurrent viewers, average
viewers per minute or whatever statistics they're talking about
now, Nick. There's a lot out there, right?
I think this is the tricky bit for all of us.
I think I saw a stat last week that YouTube's consumption's
gone up. Like, I don't know, another 20%
of it's video, I can't remember that's an accurate number.
(38:43):
There was a pretty big one. Look, look, I think this is the
tricky part for all this. The my point with regards to how
much is the WNBA driving audience to the platform and how
much is the platform driving audience to the WAWNBA is
whatever really know that comfortably what that actual
that actual number is. Like think about the example we
gave with Netflix and the CaneloCrawford fight.
(39:05):
They got 41 million viewers. Now what would happen if Netflix
ran the fight but they didn't give it the visibility on the
homepage and the landing page and market it to the level they
did? Would that number come down by
10%? Would it come down by 20%?
Would it come down by 50% if they didn't make it easy to find
on the platform? How much audience, how much work
(39:26):
would the audience do to find that content on the platform?
Or is it just because it was so front and centre that people
clicked and watched it? So there's it's so difficult to
define things categorically, butthere is a lot of devil in the
detail in some of these things. I've seen certain shows that
ESPN, the broadcast, the talk shows get similar numbers and
they cancel them because they also cost a lot with the talent
(39:48):
that they have on on the show aswell.
So there's lots of difficulties.Just to put.
Look at things in isolation. The word nuance is something I I
use a lot, probably too much. I've been caught at by people.
There's always devil in the detail is my point basically.
And in this instance, there is more to it than just simply the
numbers. Shorter seasons, increased
(40:09):
visibility. And also I do think that if you
want to look more positively, I think there is a rising tide
effect here with Caitlin Clark and that first season her in the
league. More of the stars.
In the league got more visibility and I think with that
you get more people following different teams, more people
following different athletes. So not just the Caitlin Clark
(40:30):
alone was getting all the coverage, getting all the
interest from fans. So inevitably I do think there's
more interest in the league and it's probably more interest in
some of the players and the teams that will, that is sticky
that will keep people coming back to the league moving
forward now. You know what?
Like it just, it's, I think it also shows power personalities
in the sense of, you know, thereare people who used to watch
(40:52):
golf is either they love Tiger or they wanted to see him lose.
The reason why I think Jake Paulturned out the Netflix numbers
that he did is because people were hoping Mike Tyson were
going to knock him out. There's going to be some people
that love Caitlyn Kark and there's some people that hope
she's going to be proven wrong. And I think there's definitely
always that. Hell, even football, I think
like Tim Tebow, there's some people that love Tim Tebow, some
people hated Tim Tebow. Like, I definitely think it
(41:13):
doesn't, certainly doesn't hurt to have that polarising figure
and you don't care why they're watching as long as they're
watching. I mean, you've nailed it.
Basically, sport is entertainment and if it's
there's got to be the typical classic storylines that you
would see in a movie. Is there a hero and is there a
villain here? If there is, you've got a good
chance that you'll get more interest following that
(41:36):
experience, that event, that moment, rather than just someone
dominating. Like we've seen this with, say,
Formula One for a while where Verstappen was just leading and
dominating. Normally we would think, oh,
someone so dominant actually drives audience a little bit
because we want to see this person do unprecedented things.
But if there's no rivalry with anyone else really underneath
that's tangible and like legitimate, even if they're
(41:59):
dominating, it just loses its fluster.
Foster is the right word there. But basically in the older days
of F1, there was always a rivalry with the personalities.
There was a bit of hero versus villain.
People would go against each other.
I just think you just it is so much more to sports than just
the sporting competition alone. Yeah, well, some more numbers
from that report just to talk about, again, more
(42:21):
record-breaking numbers. Amazon Thursday Night Football
had an average of 17.76 million viewers, peaking at 20.35
million, which is up 19% from last year's opening Thursday
Night Football game. It does make it Amazon's largest
ever stream game I believe, beating out last year's December
game. So granted, Thursday Night
(42:43):
Football little bit like boxing.I haven't watched Thursday Night
Football's game, which was the Bills and the Dolphins.
Given how the Dolphins have started the season this year, I
imagine they didn't come to those numbers so that those
things might fluctuate. But again, positive for Amazon,
Week 1 breaking records. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl
rematch between the Eagles and the Chiefs like brought in 33.8
(43:04):
million viewers, which would be Fox's largest ever non Super
Bowl audience for a game. So early season NFL is already
going and beating records, whichyou know, sometimes like you
just sort of like how many timesthe NFL just keep beating its
own records and things like that.
But they keep doing it. But I think it just goes that
whole point about the positives of things that that we're seeing
(43:25):
in sports. I'm going to keep rattling stuff
off, Nick. I'm a big college football fan
as well. ABC averaged 12.6 million
viewers for Georgia versus Tennessee.
And I still have Europeans that can't wrap their mind around the
fact that college sports is bringing in these sorts of
numbers. You know it, it's ridiculous.
And even one of the other interesting one, Knicks FIVB
(43:48):
volleyball sport near and dear to your heart, You know, they
put out some FIFA like numbers saying that they accumulated
more than 1.1 billion views across broadcast and digital
platforms in China for their World Championships.
Yeah, big numbers, Nick, big numbers.
So all that stuff is in there. There's some more stuff about,
you know, NRL coming from your world back in Australia having
(44:12):
6.67 million viewers, which is Ibelieve is a record viewing of
the sports. And they just records on records
on records everywhere. Just smashing it.
Yeah. The thing is, you always hear
about the records. You don't hear about all the
ones that aren't hitting those records.
I mean, the volleyball one doesn't surprise me too much and
but see they said cumulative viewers very clear what that is.
That's just a cumulative audience of a number of views
(44:33):
and content. I can buy that all day.
Saying I've reached 2.7 billion fans is a different proposition.
Anyway, I digress, I digress. Now it is good to see actually
and the college stuff being available in on the zone now
globally. We'll be interested to see how
that performs to see if they will be able to generate any
interest from audiences outside of those that those Americans
(44:55):
who may be feeling nostalgic andwant to follow their favourite
college teams. But I think you're going to
continue to see numbers and records being shared.
The the world is the world is buying into live sports at the
point to your end. The favourite one underneath
that top end is the ones that are struggling necessarily to
get cut through. But there's ultimately more con
consumption. There's more consumption of
(45:16):
content than ever. And so those records being
broken, I don't necessarily think they give us an
unequivocal tick of approval that we're on this incredible
path of growth. I think it's just a part of this
whole situation of where consumption is going up across
the board. Yeah.
Well, at the end of the episode,Nick, we'll give them more
(45:36):
errors we go through. But again, talking about sports
for Media Summit coming up in Madrid over the next month or
so, you're going to hear some interviews that we're going to
do with some of the key speakersfrom that event, almost as like
a pre match, pre fight the conversation.
But hopefully because they'll beon the stream Pom podcast,
anyone that's been to events, usually those sessions are 2530
minutes. We're going to get them for a
(45:57):
much longer time. So you're going to hear from
some of those key speakers includes Sky Deutschland to be
PSG, hoping to get Tim Cocker, who we refer to getting the the
YouTube who got the the French rugby rights.
He's tentatively said yes, but we're going to be doing more
stuff in that build up to the Sports for Media Summit and
Madrid and all these sorts of shifts, all these different
(46:19):
changes, advertisement versus subscription, all that will
certainly be heavy heavily covered in that event coming up.
So we're just going to keep bringing things to you as we go
towards that event. We sure are.
Lots, there's lots going on there at that event.
And the more I'm I'm really excited actually, I'm really
sorry about that event because Ithink we made some big changes
(46:40):
this year to make sure we went much deeper on other topics than
we have traditionally. And that's really seems to have
been a smart move because the stuff we've been covering of
late, but the stuff we've been covering of late is almost was
even way deeper going on things like YouTube and streaming than
I ever thought we would to the level we have been so excited to
get really attend that event. We've got some great content on
(47:03):
stage. I mean, speaking to Bundesliga
about their strategy, which obviously very topical given
what I've done in the UK, the zone CTO talking about how they
delivered the Club World Cup. So I might see if I can get a
few questions in there somehow given what we did last week.
But we're looking forward to that event, that's for sure.
Brilliant, awesome and everyone,we will catch you on the next
episode.
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the next episode of Stream
Time Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community league joined as always by our CEO, Nick Meacham.
Now Nick, I had a little check. I believe it will be Monday,
will be the autumn solstice. And for those that don't know, I
studied history as an undergraduate.
My particular area that I've found most interesting or where
(00:24):
I did my dissertation things wasaround mediaeval European
history. I'm in the Vikings or my
favourite group of historical figures.
Yeah, yeah, I love Vikings and when I think of Sweden, I think
of Vikings. When I think of Vikings, I think
of Pagan traditions. And when I think of things like
the solstice, I think of, you know, pagans and Vikings.
I'm just curious, like do they do anything in Sweden around
(00:45):
the, you know, the autumn solstice or any of the solstice?
I just, maybe that's a, maybe that's a stereotype, but I just,
I'd be curious to know if there's anything going on that,
you know, maybe your kids are going to do in school.
I've not heard anything yet, actually.
Now you've got me wondering. There is one thing that.
I'm just checking if. It's if it's when they do do
(01:07):
something, I think that's later,earlier in the year, which I
think we completely missed. It's like the crayfish party.
I just, I feel like there's got to be some sort of traditions.
I'd be, I'd be really disappointed if they if they'd
lost their ways. Maybe no one talks about it and
it just had something just happens.
When is that? That's a great question.
(01:29):
I from what I understand, no. All I can tell you though, it is
getting bleak here fast. We're losing 5 minutes a day, 5
minutes a day of sunlight and now the morning to pitch black,
whereas just a month ago I thinkwe lose something like 2 1/2
hours. Did I say that last pod?
I, I I. We, we, we had a podcast where I
think it was during the summer solstice perhaps where you're
(01:51):
talking about like basic, like every day you were gaining like,
yeah, well. What goes up must come down.
Yeah, what goes up must come down.
And now we're, we're definitely on the downward, downward trade.
No, I don't know if there's anything specific though.
There is the crayfish party, theCrest Weaver, it's called.
And that is something that happens to mark the end of
summer. But I've just had a quick look
(02:14):
and that is typically held at the end of August.
So just missed it. I have to say my experience of
it was a bit mixed that just basically with shellfish, small,
smelly. It's not my bag, I have to be
honest. But no, they definitely
basically what happens in now we've got told, oh, I've got
(02:34):
told and I've been here loads oftimes, is people just going to
basically start going into hibernation over the coming
months. So literally you just start
seeing people less and less and they live what they call more of
a music life, which basically means cosy.
You'll never hear the word cosy more than you will in Sweden.
And so music and neuter, which means basically you have to
(02:57):
enjoy things Neuter is to enjoy stuff.
So have a have a have a music castle basically means candles
everywhere dark. There's candles, lights in every
window. It is quite pretty, but it is
pretty bleak for a few months. So this will be my first full
winter. I've done a couple of months
here before and that was quite acool experience actually because
(03:18):
I was staying at my in laws place.
And what I basically did, I got into running.
And so I would run every other day and sometimes the weather
would be around 0 the next day it'd be -10 and sometimes I was
running in snow, snow packed compact snow and other times it
was super wet. And this is an interesting
(03:40):
dynamic to go from. And I never got hot till I
finished the run. Basically after the run I
started the warm up but otherwise I was freezing the
whole way around. But it was I enjoy kind of enjoy
running in the the icy cold conditions.
So that's something I'm looking forward to nostalgically.
I've stopped running now intentionally too.
I make sure I get more excited when it's time well.
One thing I want to do, and I don't know if it's anywhere near
(04:01):
you in Sweden, but I'm sure the Instagram reels.
I have seen the places where youcan go out in like a cabin in
the woods and like have a pack of keys and go out there and
just mush, mush and just be fun to be on a dog drawn.
God, why can't why can't I thinkof the word if we're going to go
do that Husky sledding. Yeah, yeah.
They're just, yeah, I've done that.
(04:23):
I've done that before. I did it in the Arctic Circle in
Finland. Really cool experience, but
you've got to be quite a way up north now.
For context, I think it's like 10 more 10 at least 1011 hours N
from here before you get to the Arctic Circle, I think from
memory. So it's a it's a long way up
north though I did rain, reindeer and Husky sledding, ice
(04:47):
fishing, a couple of other things I can't remember now was
a long time ago. It was a really cool experience.
I would highly recommend doing something like that as a, as a
thing. Problem is where I live
actually, the snow comes and goes quite a lot because it's
quite South. So it's not quite as beautifully
snowy. And we live near the near the
(05:08):
sea and the sea basically just the air takes everything away.
So it's not quite as idealistic as you would think.
Yeah, well, not just, you know, flipping in on the the complete
opposite, Nick, not just talkingabout the winter and the Arctic.
We had a hot event last week on the beach.
That beach being in Amsterdam and IBC.
Oh, I know I'm just, I'm, I'm getting better with age and, you
(05:30):
know, time and just, but yes, wehad a, we had a stream time
event at the beach at IBC. You and I were not able to
attend, but I saw all the videos, saw all the photos look
like a very busy place. Lots of our members there, which
is always very exciting and, youknow, intersection of the
industry. But Nick, you know, maybe just
your sort of highlights as well,just like from an IBC
(05:53):
perspective and sort of where that sits in and just being able
to host that event within there.Yeah, we've always been
interested in doing something out at the RBC event.
We normally send a couple of people out to the event.
It's an event now for context, for those listening who aren't
familiar with it, there's like nearly 40,000 people to go to
it. It's a very tech heavy broadcast
show. It's not really a place where a
(06:14):
lot of sports go, but there is some there because at 40,000
you'll get some people that are interested in crossover into
that space. And we were keen to do something
Aaron and see what the appetite was like.
And also when talking to our members that we have as part of
the stream time community, it's an important date in their
Diaries in a lot of for for a lot of them.
(06:36):
So we're excited to do our firstexperience out there.
I think they have well over 100,a 120 people attend.
All members are invited as part of their membership.
And then we invited some select people within our community.
A big shout out to the our partners for that event led by
media kind and FX digital and alike to and to coders.
I can't remember the last one, so sorry about that.
(06:58):
But you got exposure on the day.But no, it was a good experience
to to get to seek, see that sortof come to fruition.
And I'm pretty bullish about doing something a little bit
bigger out there next year. So for those that are listening
who are interested, get in touchif you want to share your
thoughts on what we should do out there.
But I've already got some ideas percolating, so I have to wait
and see. Oh, and I know there's some
(07:20):
whisperers, you know, in the background, potentially extreme
time golf day. We'll see if that happens.
But you know, we're always open to all ideas.
We're always open to all ideas. The golf thing, my problem is
that since I moved over here, I've been itching to play golf
and all I've done is play at thepath recourse with my son where
I just take basically a pitchingwedge and a putter and that's
(07:42):
all I need for the whole round. So I haven't done enough
training if we're going to take that.
So I'm going to have to dust offthose clubs and get out there a
little bit more. But he's already got a better
swing than me, so maybe I'll just send him Alamo for half
instead. Yeah, it's just that flexibility
they have when they're that young.
You know, I just, I can't, you know, rotate my back that way.
It's ridiculous. I'm looking at like I can't, I
(08:02):
can't move my hips hot like quarter of the way around than
I'm supposed to and he's hyperextending them.
It's ridiculous. But anyway, oh, to be young
again. Oh, to be young.
So Nick, moving into the news stories, the first one we're
going to start with or I'm goingto take us is on the Netflix
Canelo Crawford fight that took place over the weekend.
The numbers that came out looking at 41 million global
(08:22):
viewers across the day, the average minute audience, which
I'm sure you can explain to people what that that means.
I'm sure probably fairly logical, but you know, they're
coming up with new stats all thetime.
Nick had that at 36.6 million. the US audience is 20.3 million.
For those that, you know, if you're not following Nick on
LinkedIn, go do it. You did a big long post.
But I do think one of the interesting things you came up
(08:44):
with that is the week prior we talked about the YouTube game
that NFL hosted there and the sort of disparity between the US
and the rest of the world. You know, I just said there's 41
million viewers here. They're talking about the US
audience is 20 million so far more global audience.
It didn't match the numbers thatthe Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight
(09:04):
had. But still we're not talking
about insignificant numbers. And I think another point did
the pay-per-view bottle. But it may be in for a struggle
long term. But Nick, just looking at that
Canelo fight being on Netflix again, they keep adding more and
more events, the boxing events, the NFL games, They're just
adding more events and looking like any doubts that may have
(09:27):
been. How can an on demand video
platform survive with the the large streaming challenges when
you're doing live sports? They just, they keep knocking
them off, Nick. Yeah, look, I have this weird
feeling that in years from now, what we're going to see is not
only people like Netflix and YouTube hosting more live
sports, but I think they will basically be able to hold some
(09:51):
of these sports to ransom. Not they're not a few years, but
in down the line and say, hey, we can guarantee you 40 million
viewers to your event if you give us your rights for free.
And that's what I think is goingto happen.
Some says YouTube are kind of already doing that a little bit,
but that's why the NFL case willactually put some money on the
table was interesting. But I think that was done to
(10:14):
prove the business case themselves that they could do
it. But I just think that these the
the power that like Netflix has to generate an audience for in
some instances, you know, boxingis boxing is so primal and so
easy to follow in the same way Iwould say like football is in
terms of from a sporting perspective that anyone can
(10:34):
watch it and engage with that. That and it was a really big
match up, like 2 of the the bestin the for this generation
basically fighting against each other.
But if you were because of the legacy of pay-per-view and what
it's done to, I guess driving down awareness of the sport and
focusing on those super fans to pay the pay-per-view price that
(10:56):
has been asked of them to see them now ramp up these numbers
to the scale that they did. I still find really impressive.
Now that the Tyson Paul fight, Imean, that's that shows what
happens when you've got big brands and names.
We start, we start them behind them.
You can move in, you can get anyone to anything basically,
(11:18):
because obviously it wasn't a legitimate fight and and that
record may may never be broken, but I saw that Netflix were very
quick to outline this was the number one most viewed boxing
championship. Yeah, ever.
So they they're trying to createtheir own narrative now.
They're now trying to softly shift away from the Tyson thing
a little bit when when they can.But yeah, the 41 million is
(11:41):
massive. That over half the audience was
outside the USI think it's superinteresting also because of the
time zone thing. It was a late night fight in the
US. I'd love to know.
And I think the numbers were top10 on Netflix in 91 different
countries and top and #1 on Netflix in 30 countries.
That just shows the pulling power and the variability Dr
(12:03):
audiences to the sport. I'm not just going to say it's
boxing. Boxing's done well here.
But Netflix's ability to drive people to those I think also has
to be really commended. So yeah, some, some big numbers
on the AMA side. The average minute audience is
what it sounds like. It's the average audience on a
permanent basis. And that is now the, the, what
you call up the, the, the, the go to streaming measure that
(12:26):
most are using the benchmark, the benchmark.
Yeah, the benchmark stat that they're using.
I was a little bit compute confused and I wrote this in my
post about how some of these numbers work.
So if anyone can explain it to me, I either think I don't want
to do this like I'm I feel like I'm getting on a bit of a high
horse now about ratings and dataThe last couple of weeks with my
shots at FIFA and and YouTube and the like in the NFL.
(12:48):
But that in fact they've said they had 4141 million global
viewers total. So live plus the next 24 hours
afterwards, then a 24,000,000 peak concurrent and then 36.6
million average minute audience.Now what I struggle with is how
can you have 36.6 million average a 24,000,000 peak
(13:12):
concurrent. So if anyone is listening can
answer that question for me because they do not sound
logical and I asked that GBT or I hope we can before I posted
about it. Like maybe I'm just thinking
really stupid, yeah stupidly here and missing a trick, but if
anyone can explain that number to me I would really appreciate
(13:33):
it. I agree, I have a similar
thought, one I hear, but I just assumed someone smarter than me
has figured it out and I'm just going to trust them.
Nick. But one of the things I hope for
Nick because one of the things we might talk about piracy later
in the streamy story, but like one of the things that they talk
about is accessibility. Like that's what drives a piracy
because I think, you know, there's statistics.
It's like, you know, 3/4 of people will be willing to pay
(13:55):
for something if it was just legally there to be watched.
And we talk about what causes piracy, the challenge with it
and it's accessibility. I boxing's different because
it's such you only get these fights once maybe twice a year,
whereas the NFL, the Premier League like very set schedule.
I would just love to see, I knowNetflix is not free to air, but
(14:16):
it's the lack of the pay-per-view.
And it feels like at this point,like Netflix is almost like
Wi-Fi where it's sort of like, yeah, it's not free, but like it
just feels like such a common commodity that like it almost
feels free to air. YouTube quite literally being
free to air. I hope other people see this and
you know, maybe maybe Sky startsdoing stuff on YouTube where
(14:39):
like they might do a Sky game ofthe week on YouTube or so.
I don't know. I'm just pulling things out of
the hat, Nick, but I just, I want more stuff that's not
behind a Bay wall. Yeah.
And, and look, I think the scaleof Netflix and other platforms
like Prime, which I was going tomention a bit later as well, but
the scale of these platforms andtheir audiences.
Now, it isn't like the days of pay TV versus linear where
(14:59):
you're limiting your audience scale.
In fact, it's the opposite. Netflix can increase the scale
because they're a global approach and their ability to
make sure that you're in and notowning every home in the US for
AUS based event. But you're also being watched
right across the globe and can and basically can change or
shift your audience metrics to the number I shared in in my
(15:20):
post is that they the previous Canelo flights, Canelo flights
that I checked out, they had around 900,000 pay per views and
1.2 million. So roughly 40 times the amount
of people watched that fight to the pay per views.
Now that is obviously legal pay per views.
So let's let's suspect it's double or triple or quadruple
(15:42):
that. But still that is more than 10
times consumption on Netflix. So anyway, back my point is that
that sort of level of visibilityis enormous for the sport.
And I think that the sport, we'll be thrilled that it can
drive that value to Netflix and Netflix can drive that value to
them because they're getting that sort of eyeballs for for
(16:05):
people like Canelo and Crawford is incredible value for them and
their brand longer term as well.So the question ultimately will
be, is is 40 million enough? Is 40 million enough for Netflix
to get value for what they've committed to on the rights,
whether it be from both an acquisition and a retention
play? And because they have the
ability to really focus on double, because they're not just
(16:26):
focused on acquisition, because it's such a mature organisation
and but you have a mature audience, they can get, I think
enough value out of that 40 million number pretty pretty
comfortably. But I'm I'm not an expert and
look at doing all the math on that.
Yeah. I mean, we're going to look at
some numbers later on the ratings roundup that we'll talk
about, but you know, that 40 million is significantly higher
(16:46):
than the NFL games are going to reference.
It's higher than the NASCAR races that we're going to
reference. Like granted, I mentioned boxing
is not as frequent. So it's sort of like Wimbledon
is great, but Wimbledon's only on for four weeks.
You're not going to pay as much for a four deferred event that's
over at that spam. But you know, if you're talking
about advertiser sponsors, that is not an insignificant number.
(17:07):
So yeah, I think, like I said, Ihope it works just purely for
the way that I consume sport. I think it'd be great to see
more stuff like this. And I imagine you're right,
Nick. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think I agree with you. I my other code sort of key
takeaways from this is I wonder if we can use this measure of
(17:28):
say this roughly 40 times the viewership as a measure to what
to expect from when UFC goes live and and sort of part of the
paramount offering. I'd be interested to see if that
is roughly the numbers that we're able to get visibility on,
if we are able to get visibilityon those numbers.
And I just thought one other thing that stood out for me is
(17:50):
that if these numbers are close to right, these Netflix numbers,
I'm still holding my breath thatif I'm, if I'm wrong, I, I mean,
my problem, right? I'm going to, I'm going to say
where he is. But my problem is that normally
when I'm sceptical about something, I'm normally right.
And that really annoys me. I actually would rather be wrong
about these things. Like there's too many smart
people in the world working these two organisations.
(18:12):
So I, I feel like I must be wrong about this.
And someone can explain to me onthe assumption that it is right,
that these are the sort of numbers they can produce.
I, I think this, the, the closeness of the total numbers
to the average minute audience is an incredible result and
shows the stickiness of someone on a Netflix platform.
(18:33):
So if someone logs in on Netflix, they're going to be
there to stay and to watch what they're watching.
I think that's the challenge that YouTube might have is that
ability to keep an audience oncethey bring them onto the
platform, because that's normally not how you use
YouTube. You're bouncing between shorter
related content. So that's just a little anecdote
or a little side part of the conversation is how sticky is
(18:57):
that audience once it does land on the platform if it is on
other ones like like a YouTube? Well, I'll bring it back up
later when we we talk about thatradiant roundup because I have
some thoughts that maybe lead into that.
But just to move us on to the next story, we're going to get
another update on Lee Gunn. We talked about.
It's been a crazy couple of years for them up and down zone,
no to zone, waiting till the last minute to get things sorted
(19:18):
out. Some sort of partnership
distribution with Amazon. They did launch their own League
One streaming platform and it came at a very reduced rate in
terms of pricing. They also had a discounted price
for under 26. Doing a lot of things to try to
make this work and something we've really not probably seen
from a league of their size and their own domestic market.
And they'd said their goal was to reach 1,000,000 Subs by the
(19:39):
end of the season and looking around 2.5 to really 3 million
in the long term. By the opening weekend, they
reached 600,000, which we thought was a good place to
start. According to the reports.
Now they are now at over 1,000,000 Subs.
So for them, you know, their goal is to reach that number by
the end of the season. They seem to have done that
within basically the 4th week ofthe season.
(20:00):
So Nick, positive signs, you know, surely you know, if you
set a target, you want to hit it, you know, maybe sometimes
you set the bar low, just a smash through it.
So you know, you can, you can tell the narrative, but you
know. Surely this has got to be a
positive sign. It's certainly positive.
I think there's no way to to think no other way to think
(20:22):
about it in terms of being positive of the audience
engagement and the adoption. Look what what are the things we
can take away from this. So firstly, I did, I did a
little quick calculation and roughly the zone ended up with
around half a million subscribers, I think was the
number that was reported at about €30 a month.
(20:42):
Why those calculations Extrapolating at a half million,
let's just say at a, a static rate, the, the number works out
to about 180 million of revenue,right, for the year.
Again, assuming static, which isnot accurate because it's
growing, but just just for argument's sake, well, the
number that they've developed, the number, the number that
they've created now with a million followers at around
(21:05):
€15.00 a month with a promo and stuff in place adds up to the
exact same number for for revenue that the zone would have
on the, on that static as a static measure.
So I think it's just quite funny.
And that's interesting just to see that despite the number
being over double. Well, actually, let's go back to
basic economics here, OK, Economics shows that if you sell
(21:28):
something for cheaper, you should get more subscribers.
Not a huge shock there. The question is, can they keep
that momentum to a place that issignificant enough?
Like you said, that million was the report of the goal they went
for. I am sure that they went for a
conservative number in public because they've got so much
(21:49):
grief over the last couple of years.
There's no way they would have set a goal publicly that was
high. And they've already controlled
the narrative on that a little bit.
So my guess is that they wanted to, they maybe had expectations
that it would, They have requirements that it needs to go
higher. That's for sure.
Because the gap between what they were expected to be earning
(22:10):
a few years ago to now and that even though the zone deal is
still quite significant, right, so.
It's it's good. Momentum 72% people signing up
for the full season package is also positive.
So people just making the long term commitment to the platform.
But it's still really early daysto say like, oh, Lagoon is out
(22:30):
of the out of hot water because it's going to be clubs
undergoing huge financial pressure over the next coming
the coming years because they haven't got the media revenues
coming in that they expected. We hope you're enjoying the
show. I just want to give a quick
shout out to one of our foundingstream Time community members,
Lucid Link. Distributed teams, Massive
(22:51):
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(23:35):
Well, let me try to keep spinning this, Nick in the
positive. Like, you know, we spoke with
Paula Donovan of Media Kind and I'm going to talk about piracy
game Nick, because, you know, I love it.
And one of the things you talkedabout when it comes to piracy is
that you have to convince the user of the value with which
they're paying. So I might even spin it to say,
Nick, hey, maybe they aren't making any more money than what
they made last year, but the fact that they have more users
(23:57):
is actually a positive simply because, you know, more first
party data or less people accessing your content via
piracy. You know, have they found more
of a middle point or we could goway back in The Time Machine to
one of our favourite podcast. I think it was David versus
Goliath was the name of the podcast where we talked about
Palk FC. The the too long didn't read
(24:20):
story on that is Greek football club fails to get broadcast.
He also launches their own OTT platform. 12 months later,
broadcaster come back in and offers them more money than they
made the year before. You know, maybe legal and if
they can drive the numbers up, maybe they don't make more
money. But they say here's a subscriber
base and maybe Canal Plus does come back to the table.
You know, that's just me and Nick trying to just to give it
(24:41):
that positive spin. Yeah, well that, I mean that's
definitely a viable play here. I think that's and that would be
a great outcome for them. Like let's be clear on the
design situation is they were making way more money out of the
design relationship, but design wasn't making enough money to
justify their investment in the media rights.
And that was the predicament whydesign made the unprecedented
(25:03):
move of pulling out of their deal so early.
Now, what I think is really important about this moment in
time is that having the price solow allows them to try to break
consumer behaviour of taking thepirated approach and going for
something that look, it's so cheap at 15 a month.
(25:24):
I can, I can, I can actually payyou that.
I'm OK with it. But when it's at the higher
price point of 30 or or or 30 plus at one stage if you put all
the offers together, it was over80 or odd EUR a month that
people would have had to pay to watch all the matches.
But just for the zones alone, that's enough of a tipping point
that consumers say no, screw you, I'm going to find it by
(25:45):
other means. So hopefully for their benefit,
having this low price point willstart to shift what is a very
piracy centric market into beingmore comfortable with paying for
access to these rights and for this content.
And then down the line, they'll probably start to push up like
we saw with all streamers if they keep continuing with
(26:07):
streaming it themselves and distributing it through carriers
is pushing up that price gradually over time.
But one step at a time and let'ssee how far they can get by the
end of the season. Hopefully they can keep some
momentum up. Like I said, we'll we'll
continue to follow it. It's a story that won't go away,
Nick. It stays near and dear to our
hearts. I'm sure we'll continue to cover
it. But next one flipping back
(26:28):
across the pond. Starting from 2026 within the
US, Amazon Prime will now streamthe Masters.
This is going to complement someof the coverage from ESPN and
CBS as well. Paramount Plus is also being
involved. Paramount Plus seeming to be
everywhere would Nick just this seems like to me another example
(26:50):
of Amazon doing largely what Amazon does, which is being very
selective about picking certain events, never maybe necessarily
taking the lion's share of something, but just picking and
choosing the right moments that they want to try different
things. Is is there any reason that
shouldn't be the interpretation of this move?
(27:12):
Well, I think it's really interesting because the masters
are actually quite well known inthe industry for taking a very
unique approach and how they approach their meteor rights.
For example, they actually leavea lot of money on the table for
the meteor rights deals. They instead of getting the best
deal possible, they've been veryfocused on keeping the control
(27:32):
over what is done with those rights rather than a broadcaster
paying a premium and then letting them do what they want
to do with it. So they're very have been very
good at dictating to CBS how they want the broadcast
production delivered, all the little subtle nuances that come
with, you know, how advertising serves during the broadcast.
(27:53):
They keep huge amount of controlon that.
They've got a long standing relationship with CBS and and
indeed Paramount that's been very successful and lauded for
the high quality experience thatthe Masters does deliver from a
broadcasting perspective. And so they haven't gone and and
sought out numerous meteorites partners in the US anyway for
(28:14):
for quite a long time. And so the fact that they are
taking this big step with Amazonis, I think, pretty significant
as I get another example or another another moment where you
start to say probably streamers become more legitimised, even in
the most traditional forms of broadcasting relationships like
(28:35):
the Masters used to have. And this will give the Masters
again, more visibility. So the what was historically a
fairly under covered set of dayson the on the Thursday and
Friday of the tournament will now be visible to to fans.
So I'm very intrigued that why you at the Masters decided to go
with Prime Video, because quite frankly, I think everyone would
(28:58):
have been pretty keen to get a piece of those rights if they
were up for it. And whether there was a
significant meteor rights check attached to it, given they
haven't really sought that out from the relationship they have
had with CBS. So it's just a very interesting
unique situation that is pretty much an anomaly for the industry
to see someone so protective. It is a little bit Wim Wimbledon
(29:21):
esque, I suppose, but even even more, even more so.
Well, you know the one thing. You have to respect about
Augusta and the Masters and it'sjust me as someone like Steve
Food, you know, they're there's all they're notorious for the
fact that they've never raised like their food prices, you
know, very from what I've been told.
And once you get there and then it's a not as expensive
experience. You mean like you go to most
(29:42):
ballparks in America, you're paying like $18.00 for a beer or
something like that or whatever concessions.
So apparently it's not just the meteorites, it's the
concessions. And to your point as well about
the CBS stuff, like I can just cheer the the Masters on CBS,
Like I can just cheer the littleJingle play in my head because
I've heard it for 35 years now. It's very, I can't think of the
(30:02):
masters without the, you know, that CBS little song Jingle that
they play every time that, you know, we're getting to that time
of year. Yeah, look, they've done a great
job with it. The Masters are happy with it.
And Augusta National, which is the Golf Club basically they
play it at, owns that competition.
As far as I understand they have.
They have no need to really try and squeeze every dollar out of
(30:24):
the rights. They rather keep control, make
sure they're there. Their tournament continues to be
the most prestigious in the golfand because of that, they are,
they are sitting in the box seatin terms of that position that
there's no, it's unquestionable that tournament is the most,
what would you call it most influential in the marketplace?
And they're in a great position as a result of that.
(30:46):
One thing I would say is though,that does get a lot of coverage
the the pricing of the of the food, but do you know how much
it costs to get a ticket to the Masters itself?
So it's basically it's almost money can't buy, but you can by
your way in. So yeah, maybe it doesn't cost
you an arm a leg when you're on the ground, but you probably
spent an arm a leg to get. There to get there.
(31:06):
Yeah. Well, just some quick facts for
this out there. You talk about the expanded
coverage. Historically, it's been because
of the new streaming deal used to be 18 hours of coverage, now
27 hours. That's an increase of 50%.
So that's not an insignificant number.
You know, we talked about, you know, Sky adding more and more
coverage with, you know, football and things like that.
So it's not a small number that they're adding.
(31:28):
And then just for reference, last year's Masters that they
set a record. Now, obviously, that is always
going to depend on who's in the finals, how close is it, things
like that. But it is certainly a growing
commodity. We've talked several times about
sort of the PGA's resurgence andhow much of that can potentially
be on personalities jumping intothe YouTube space, growing it.
But it is a property overall that seems to be growing and
(31:51):
they're going to be offering more coverage.
So just like I said, add add some statistical context to some
of this as well. Well, it feels mad, right, that
there's the prospect if they hadn't done this deal is that
there would be a huge chunk of the Masters not really available
to watch, like the most prestigious tournament would not
easily be accessible to fans in the US.
(32:13):
So it does kind of feel like a deal had to be done.
I know they have a really interesting mix of partners.
I don't, haven't, haven't got those rights fragmented in
different places. What I mean by that is like
there's not three different broadcasters having it on at the
same time. It's all exclusive to the
broadcasters in question that they're working with.
I, I thought I, I have to love their, their approach, but it's
(32:36):
also very idealistic that you don't need to chase the biggest
check, which is not how this industry works, fortunately or
unfortunately. No, it is not.
So Nick, we're going to we're going to pivot over Josh in on
our editorial team does a a frequent reoccurring article,
the ratings roundup where he goes through find some
interesting numbers, facts and figures worth knowing.
(32:59):
So we won't go through every single figure that's in there,
but definitely something to to keep an eye out for as you're as
you're adding things to your list of how do I stay on top of
the industry? Definitely come back and
reference that article. I'm pretty sure it's exclusive
to Sports Pro subscribers as well.
There you go, a reason to go sign up.
And if you need that, you can talk to Nick and I.
We'll, we'll, we'll introduce you to the right people to get
(33:19):
you sorted so you can be the best in the business and the
most informed. So yeah, maybe this is exclusive
coverage of your. Own it's at the same price as a
month of subscription for the league for league in.
There you go, there you go. Get on it.
No excuses. So what we'll start with Nick is
WNBA coverage and this year has and we talked about a little bit
(33:40):
earlier in the year, we saw thatinitial game between the Sky and
the Fever Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark, which actually to
be in the most watched game of the year, 2.7 million.
But across the season on ESPN, ABC, the games that were
publicly broadcast average 1.3 million viewers across those 25
games. That's a 6% increase year on
year and across all of their channels average 969,000 viewers
(34:04):
per game. So Nick, numbers are going up.
And I think one of the other things to mention as well, we we
talked, we asked the question atthe beginning of the year, how
much of this was the Caitlin Clark effect?
How much was it, you know, similar with Tiger and the PGA,
you know, Lewis Hamilton, Formula One for a long time.
But actually, you know, one of the things is like Caitlin
Clark, I think missed like 2/3 of the season.
(34:25):
She only played a small portion of the games.
Like she maybe only played thirteen games across the season
and they were still managing to drive these numbers.
So there's always been talk about, you know, the WNBA and
it's a very interesting time because they're currently going
through ACBA where they're asking for more money.
So this is probably really positive for them in that
conversation to show those are growing.
But they just overall just that the growth, what that means in
(34:47):
terms of the fact that they are getting more coverage.
Is this proof that, you know, wecould say the same thing for WSL
if the WSL gets more investment from Sky, like, you know,
causation versus correlation, how much is a positive that it
wasn't driven exclusively by Caitlin Clark, you know, just
sort of the growth of what you saw this year?
Well, I think the fact that Caitlin Clark wasn't involved is
(35:09):
a massive, massive moment for the WNBA because that was the
criticism up until this point islike, there's this incredible
story around Clark and that is that is basic what everyone is
following. And the ratings did lean that
way, that basically her team wasgetting more visibility than
anyone. And stadiums were selling out or
sorry arenas were selling out etcetera along the way as a
(35:29):
result of that. But for them to be able to then
follow that up and still drive an increase in ratings after
that first year success and the numbers aren't that far away
from the NBA. The optics for the WNBA look
pretty good right now. Now, when you correlate that
with the meteorites deal that they have versus what the NBA
(35:50):
has, they are only getting a fraction of their audience.
But here's where it gets really tricky for me to digest.
Now, firstly, you can compare the 969,000 average viewers per
game across ESPNABC and Cbsi think about that with ESPN and
ABC was 1.3 million for the, youknow, for for the, for their
(36:11):
channels like that. How much of that number is
because they're on the main networks and the net just live
sport, decent live sports in those channels would already
bring that audience to the the table because across the entire
industry, there is innately a general set of growth of
audiences in all live sports we're seeing, right.
(36:35):
So how much of that's driven just by being in the right place
where people are consuming and how much of it is the WNBA
pushing audiences to those platforms?
And that's the tricky bit we can't really answer, but
nevertheless, the disparity between what they're earning
versus what their ratings are, relatively speaking, is quite
significant. Now for those that will quickly
point to just the disparity between the NBA and WNBA, let's
(36:57):
remember how many extra games the NBA plays each year. 82
games plus playoffs for 32 teamsis a very big different prospect
to what is it like. I don't even know how that it's
a very short season for the WBA comparison.
So it is night and day to compare those two properties
together because of the relativescale that you can't just
(37:18):
measure every game in isolation as it stands.
Nevertheless, they have to be buoyed by that extra increase in
interest and visibility. Well, this was the thing that I
said I was going to come back towhen we got to the Radians
roundup, talking about kind of the Netflix by then, whether
it's YouTube or Netflix. And the positivity about it is
that we're we're seeing that across the board, Nick, because
(37:39):
we're going to talk about some other statistics of this is the
most watched sport even ever. This was this, this was this,
despite the things that we've talked about in the industry,
being a little nervous because you know, there's TikTok,
there's Netflix, there's Amazon Prime, there's Apple TV, there's
Ted Lasso, there's, you know, all these million different TV
shows. I think there was perhaps a
little bit of a concern that youthink a share of wallet and
(38:01):
share of time, how people split those things up.
You know, what was this going tohave an effect on live sports?
But it doesn't seem like it's necessarily slowing down.
There are some spots that everyone can't say it's uniform
across the board. But you know, whether this is
for advertisers that, hey, this is still the premium thing to be
at. It just seems like there's still
(38:22):
a lot of stories that we keep hearing more and more about
record-breaking numbers of concurrent viewers, average
viewers per minute or whatever statistics they're talking about
now, Nick. There's a lot out there, right?
I think this is the tricky bit for all of us.
I think I saw a stat last week that YouTube's consumption's
gone up. Like, I don't know, another 20%
of it's video, I can't remember that's an accurate number.
(38:43):
There was a pretty big one. Look, look, I think this is the
tricky part for all this. The my point with regards to how
much is the WNBA driving audience to the platform and how
much is the platform driving audience to the WAWNBA is
whatever really know that comfortably what that actual
that actual number is. Like think about the example we
gave with Netflix and the CaneloCrawford fight.
(39:05):
They got 41 million viewers. Now what would happen if Netflix
ran the fight but they didn't give it the visibility on the
homepage and the landing page and market it to the level they
did? Would that number come down by
10%? Would it come down by 20%?
Would it come down by 50% if they didn't make it easy to find
on the platform? How much audience, how much work
(39:26):
would the audience do to find that content on the platform?
Or is it just because it was so front and centre that people
clicked and watched it? So there's it's so difficult to
define things categorically, butthere is a lot of devil in the
detail in some of these things. I've seen certain shows that
ESPN, the broadcast, the talk shows get similar numbers and
they cancel them because they also cost a lot with the talent
(39:48):
that they have on on the show aswell.
So there's lots of difficulties.Just to put.
Look at things in isolation. The word nuance is something I I
use a lot, probably too much. I've been caught at by people.
There's always devil in the detail is my point basically.
And in this instance, there is more to it than just simply the
numbers. Shorter seasons, increased
(40:09):
visibility. And also I do think that if you
want to look more positively, I think there is a rising tide
effect here with Caitlin Clark and that first season her in the
league. More of the stars.
In the league got more visibility and I think with that
you get more people following different teams, more people
following different athletes. So not just the Caitlin Clark
(40:30):
alone was getting all the coverage, getting all the
interest from fans. So inevitably I do think there's
more interest in the league and it's probably more interest in
some of the players and the teams that will, that is sticky
that will keep people coming back to the league moving
forward now. You know what?
Like it just, it's, I think it also shows power personalities
in the sense of, you know, thereare people who used to watch
(40:52):
golf is either they love Tiger or they wanted to see him lose.
The reason why I think Jake Paulturned out the Netflix numbers
that he did is because people were hoping Mike Tyson were
going to knock him out. There's going to be some people
that love Caitlyn Kark and there's some people that hope
she's going to be proven wrong. And I think there's definitely
always that. Hell, even football, I think
like Tim Tebow, there's some people that love Tim Tebow, some
people hated Tim Tebow. Like, I definitely think it
(41:13):
doesn't, certainly doesn't hurt to have that polarising figure
and you don't care why they're watching as long as they're
watching. I mean, you've nailed it.
Basically, sport is entertainment and if it's
there's got to be the typical classic storylines that you
would see in a movie. Is there a hero and is there a
villain here? If there is, you've got a good
chance that you'll get more interest following that
(41:36):
experience, that event, that moment, rather than just someone
dominating. Like we've seen this with, say,
Formula One for a while where Verstappen was just leading and
dominating. Normally we would think, oh,
someone so dominant actually drives audience a little bit
because we want to see this person do unprecedented things.
But if there's no rivalry with anyone else really underneath
that's tangible and like legitimate, even if they're
(41:59):
dominating, it just loses its fluster.
Foster is the right word there. But basically in the older days
of F1, there was always a rivalry with the personalities.
There was a bit of hero versus villain.
People would go against each other.
I just think you just it is so much more to sports than just
the sporting competition alone. Yeah, well, some more numbers
from that report just to talk about, again, more
(42:21):
record-breaking numbers. Amazon Thursday Night Football
had an average of 17.76 million viewers, peaking at 20.35
million, which is up 19% from last year's opening Thursday
Night Football game. It does make it Amazon's largest
ever stream game I believe, beating out last year's December
game. So granted, Thursday Night
(42:43):
Football little bit like boxing.I haven't watched Thursday Night
Football's game, which was the Bills and the Dolphins.
Given how the Dolphins have started the season this year, I
imagine they didn't come to those numbers so that those
things might fluctuate. But again, positive for Amazon,
Week 1 breaking records. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl
rematch between the Eagles and the Chiefs like brought in 33.8
(43:04):
million viewers, which would be Fox's largest ever non Super
Bowl audience for a game. So early season NFL is already
going and beating records, whichyou know, sometimes like you
just sort of like how many timesthe NFL just keep beating its
own records and things like that.
But they keep doing it. But I think it just goes that
whole point about the positives of things that that we're seeing
(43:25):
in sports. I'm going to keep rattling stuff
off, Nick. I'm a big college football fan
as well. ABC averaged 12.6 million
viewers for Georgia versus Tennessee.
And I still have Europeans that can't wrap their mind around the
fact that college sports is bringing in these sorts of
numbers. You know it, it's ridiculous.
And even one of the other interesting one, Knicks FIVB
(43:48):
volleyball sport near and dear to your heart, You know, they
put out some FIFA like numbers saying that they accumulated
more than 1.1 billion views across broadcast and digital
platforms in China for their World Championships.
Yeah, big numbers, Nick, big numbers.
So all that stuff is in there. There's some more stuff about,
you know, NRL coming from your world back in Australia having
(44:12):
6.67 million viewers, which is Ibelieve is a record viewing of
the sports. And they just records on records
on records everywhere. Just smashing it.
Yeah. The thing is, you always hear
about the records. You don't hear about all the
ones that aren't hitting those records.
I mean, the volleyball one doesn't surprise me too much and
but see they said cumulative viewers very clear what that is.
That's just a cumulative audience of a number of views
(44:33):
and content. I can buy that all day.
Saying I've reached 2.7 billion fans is a different proposition.
Anyway, I digress, I digress. Now it is good to see actually
and the college stuff being available in on the zone now
globally. We'll be interested to see how
that performs to see if they will be able to generate any
interest from audiences outside of those that those Americans
(44:55):
who may be feeling nostalgic andwant to follow their favourite
college teams. But I think you're going to
continue to see numbers and records being shared.
The the world is the world is buying into live sports at the
point to your end. The favourite one underneath
that top end is the ones that are struggling necessarily to
get cut through. But there's ultimately more con
consumption. There's more consumption of
(45:16):
content than ever. And so those records being
broken, I don't necessarily think they give us an
unequivocal tick of approval that we're on this incredible
path of growth. I think it's just a part of this
whole situation of where consumption is going up across
the board. Yeah.
Well, at the end of the episode,Nick, we'll give them more
(45:36):
errors we go through. But again, talking about sports
for Media Summit coming up in Madrid over the next month or
so, you're going to hear some interviews that we're going to
do with some of the key speakersfrom that event, almost as like
a pre match, pre fight the conversation.
But hopefully because they'll beon the stream Pom podcast,
anyone that's been to events, usually those sessions are 2530
minutes. We're going to get them for a
(45:57):
much longer time. So you're going to hear from
some of those key speakers includes Sky Deutschland to be
PSG, hoping to get Tim Cocker, who we refer to getting the the
YouTube who got the the French rugby rights.
He's tentatively said yes, but we're going to be doing more
stuff in that build up to the Sports for Media Summit and
Madrid and all these sorts of shifts, all these different
(46:19):
changes, advertisement versus subscription, all that will
certainly be heavy heavily covered in that event coming up.
So we're just going to keep bringing things to you as we go
towards that event. We sure are.
Lots, there's lots going on there at that event.
And the more I'm I'm really excited actually, I'm really
sorry about that event because Ithink we made some big changes
(46:40):
this year to make sure we went much deeper on other topics than
we have traditionally. And that's really seems to have
been a smart move because the stuff we've been covering of
late, but the stuff we've been covering of late is almost was
even way deeper going on things like YouTube and streaming than
I ever thought we would to the level we have been so excited to
get really attend that event. We've got some great content on
(47:03):
stage. I mean, speaking to Bundesliga
about their strategy, which obviously very topical given
what I've done in the UK, the zone CTO talking about how they
delivered the Club World Cup. So I might see if I can get a
few questions in there somehow given what we did last week.
But we're looking forward to that event, that's for sure.
Brilliant, awesome and everyone,we will catch you on the next
episode.
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