Should you go all-in on YouTube? And can you really own your audience?

YouTube is the largest global video platform, but who should be using it and how? On this episode of StreamTime Sports co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone unpack the hype, hope, and truths about the platform, as well as discussing whether ‘owning’ your audience is even possible. Packed with case studies and industry stats this is your guide to the latest strategies on YouTube.

Key Points:

• Is YouTube now a ‘big screen’ sports platform? And what does that mean for right holders?
• When should a sport make YouTube its primary channel?
• Is owning your audience possible?
• How are organizations like the PGA Tour and NBA winning on YouTube? Also, how are smaller clubs Udinese, Minnesota United, and Verona punching above their weight?
• Why entertainment shouldn’t be considered a threat to sports?  

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hello everyone, and welcome backto the next episode of Stream
Time Sports. My name is Kristen.
I'm the community lead, joined as always by our CEO, Nick
Beecham. Now Nick, people know that
you've been moving around Londonto Jamaica, back to Sweden.
I I've stayed here in London andlast night I did a very British
thing. I went to the theatre and we
went, My wife and I had a few friends.
We went and saw Shakespeare, butthere was a bit of A twist.
Nick Oh, what is the twist with Shakespeare?

(00:27):
I thought. I thought with Shakespeare there
is no twist. Well, this particular production
does the the name of the production company is called
Shitface Shakespeare, in which one of the key members of the
acting group, they get fairly drunk before the show.
They continue to drink during the show with help from the
audience, and basically everyoneelse just kind of has to improv

(00:50):
around someone who's forgetting their lines, perhaps stumbling a
little bit, maybe going a littleoff piece, perhaps being a
little inappropriate with their language.
It's actually the second time I've seen the show.
The first time I saw it, it was over Christmas.
So it wasn't Shakespeare. It was Charles Dickens, A
Christmas Carol, but it was her.It was a pissed Miss Carol.

(01:11):
So last last night was Hamlet. So to be not to be.
It wasn't Hamlet who is the inebriated character.
It was Ophelia, the love interest.
But yeah, if anyone's ever in London it's £20 for a ticket, so
it's not even expensive when youstart thinking about theatre
ticket prices in London. But very fun comedy show with a
nice little twist. Is the prerequisite that the

(01:32):
whole crowd is also pissed as well, or is that just you're
only there for viewing viewing pleasure?
I mean, there were a few drinks in the crowd as well, so you
know, I. Cool, cool, cool concept.
Cool concept. No, it's very fun.
Like I said, it's right in Leicester Square, which is nice
because like I tell people all the time, you know, I live in
London. Well, wife and I don't really go
to central London that frequently.

(01:53):
Like we're not going to Soho, we're not going to Leicester
Square, Piccadilly Circus, stufflike that.
Like it's not really where we go, but it was nice to go there.
And like you come out of the show at about 10/10/30 and like,
you know, you hear some places about tourism's down and stuff
like that. City was a, was a buzz last
night and you know, it was Thursday night.
But yeah, it was a good show. City was lively in the middle of
the summer. But yeah, it's just if you're

(02:14):
ever in London and you you want to go to the theatre, maybe do
something with a little bit of Atwist.
Should face Shakespeare. Highly recommend it.
Love it. I'm going to see if there's
anything like that over this part in this deck of the woods,
but I have never seen anything quite that that interpretation.
I think that's the type of theatre that I would enjoy a lot
more than any of that very traditional, proper old school

(02:35):
play, that stuff. He's just a little bit lost on
me, but hey, I was educated in Australia so take that how you
will. Well, The thing is, is I've
never actually read Hamlet. I know some of the main
characters, obviously, like I said, the famous to be or not to
Be's you know, from there, but Idon't actually know the story.
So you know it now. No, because it's like, it was

(02:57):
just like the characters just soall over the place.
So like someone sat next to me. He's like, oh, what's happening
is like, I literally don't have a clue.
Like I'm just, I'm just laughingalong 'cause it's funny, but
like I've got no clue what's going on.
So I might still need to go, maybe go to ChatGPT and like can
you just summarise the key summaries because it was a
little all over the place. Yeah, that, that whole old

(03:18):
school old English language thing is must be incredibly
difficult for, well, firstly foranyone, let alone someone who's
not been exposed to it for, or let alone someone who English is
their, their second language or what have you to try and get
their heads around what's going on in those types of shows is,
is something else. So yeah, I, I'll add that to my
list of things to do next time I'm in London.

(03:39):
It sounds great. Make it happen, maybe not kid
friendly, but you know, you and the wife can have a have a night
out, drop the kids off somewhereelse.
But definitely well worth it. So Nick, one of the things we're
going to focus today's episode on, you know, we talked about in
the office content never sleeps.You know, you and I have been on
holiday, but that did not stop you from dropping some absolute
bombs on LinkedIn in terms of some posts.
I think you were telling me something 100,000 views across a

(04:02):
couple of different posts that you had and never stops you.
But one of the things that came up to your post were around
YouTube and we'd spoken the lasttime, you know, had a recording
when you were out at another event in Sweden getting to talk
to Roger Mitchell. He was talking about the growth
of YouTube. And I think it got your wheels
spinning a little bit. And we in the industry have
talked, you know, quite highly and with a lot of excitement

(04:23):
around what YouTube can potentially do.
But there's still a lot of questions, you know, things that
are unproven as to will this model work when we think about
sort of the traditional model that is just sort of been a
repeatable process to print money basically that we don't
know if it's going to work. And while there is a bunch of
excitement, there's still questions, layers, things we
need to peel back in terms of who the strategy is right for.

(04:45):
Even if you do do what is the right strategy?
And they're supposed to be head on LinkedIn, which I would say
go, go check them out if you want to see 'cause I think
they're, they're averaging about30 comments apiece from very
smart people that are, you know,throwing their thoughts in
there. But, you know, Nick, we're,
we're going to talk about this over the next sort of 45
minutes. Just the nuance within YouTube
and just whether that's tempering expectations, whether

(05:07):
we need to turn up expectations and how we need to approach it.
So I guess, you know, bit of an open floor for us to go where we
want with this, but there's a lot to discuss about YouTube.
Yeah, there is. And I think there's an important
discussion to have. And also one thing to to note is
at our media summit we're running in Madrid in November,
it's the first time we're reallygoing deep on the subject.
Now we've got some of the most interesting case studies around

(05:30):
YouTube that are going to be presented at that event.
That's really exciting. We're having a dedicated forum
just on YouTube there, hours andhours of content just on
maximising the value of the platform.
So yeah, it's a really hot topicand the reason we're doing it,
everyone is talking about it fordifferent reasons.
Now everyone's talking about it and I think this is the bit that

(05:51):
I always like to be a counterbalance, whether it's in
the office or whether it's in what's being commentated about
is either try to be ahead of theconversation or counterbalance
the conversation. And what I mean by that is there
is a lot of momentum, inertia now about like, OK, whether it's
in sports or or outside of sports, YouTube's growing and an

(06:11):
insane rate. I think it's number 2IN
consumption now in the UKI thinkit's number one in the US in
terms of overall consumption against other entertainment
platforms. And so basically, and some
people are saying basically justgive up and go to YouTube and
don't do anything else. It that's where the future is,
that's where everything's going now.
And, and there possibly is a lotof validity to that for various

(06:35):
reasons, but it does come with alot of challenges.
In the same way we talked about OTT probably a few years ago, a
lot of people were excited aboutthat.
So you have to go direct, build your own audience, build that
direct relationship, monetize more effectively, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And now we've come back to a
point where that actually a blended approach is much more
important. So are we back to another stage

(06:58):
where actually YouTube rather than blended, actually YouTube
is the whole and whole and soul destination that we need to be
pointing towards as an industry?Or do we have to take continue
with that blended and more dynamic approach?
And that's the the conversation that I'm trying to, I guess not
not keep balance. Yeah, probably keep balance with
how others are talking about it at the moment, as it feels like

(07:19):
there's a lot of inertia throughdifferent channels about how
important, how valuable YouTube is, which I believe to be the
case. But there comes a lot of
asterisks is next to that aroundthe now and also around the
future. Well, I think one of the other
interesting things is just saying the frame you talk about
how popular it is, is a consumption platform.

(07:40):
I think the other thing is also how it's being consumed in terms
of some of the statistics I've seen come out about the amount
of people watching on connected TV's and, you know, smart
devices. I think historically we thought
of YouTube being a website, therefore it's very much on
desktops or it's on, you know, YouTube is, you know, iPads or
phones and things like that. But actually there's a lot of
statistics to say it's not a small screen activity.

(08:02):
It's it's a big screen activity,which I think is probably
telling towards maybe the inertia that it is headed.
Is that like where it's actuallybeing consumed at is it's not,
It's not, it's no longer. We still always talk about the
big screen experience when it comes to sports.
And if more YouTube stuff is being consumed on the big
screen, maybe that also changes the way or there's a greater

(08:22):
acceptance as to what it could be as a larger platform using
the word larger in multiple different meetings.
That might be like a triple entendre.
But yeah, I find that to be a really interesting statistic
about just how people are consuming it as well.
Yeah, it can. It seems like it's taking over
the big screen of the bigger screen, the smart TV's basically
as a as a viewing pleasure, a viewing experience.

(08:44):
I remember talking to Ralph Rivera, who was the at the time
the MD of the NBA for, for the EMEA region, who's been in
broadcasting and and in the industry for decades, digital
media and gaming. And he just calls it the biggest
screen available is what the focus needs to be.
And I think that's such a simplesync way of putting it.
It's all about what experience you can deliver and the biggest

(09:06):
screen available to the person at the time when I'm going to
watch something. And that's where the smart TV
experiences is so important. And YouTube has obviously nailed
that ability to serve content that keeps people on platform
better than anyone. So look, I, I, I, what I try to
do is, I mean, with some of the stuff I write, people ask me, do
I like, really think about it and I plan out stuff?

(09:27):
No, I normally just wake up and go actually, you know what?
I'm going to write something about this off the cuff.
The one that I wrote about was really, I did a bit of of a
brain dump was like, OK, what are what is the situation and
where I would consider going allin on YouTube as your primary
platform and when wouldn't I? So there's some things basically
I just listed down that I, I thought would be consideration

(09:50):
and that therefore did span quite a lot of feedback from
people in the industry, a lot ofagreement, but a lot of clarity.
Also a lot more context which I thought was really valuable.
So I don't know if we should runthrough some of those, Chris or
what. What do you think that?
Would be the best way to approach that.
Absolutely. Yeah, Let's let's let's go
through why you would want to goand use YouTube as your main

(10:11):
platform. So I think maybe some context
here, maybe Nick not putting words in your mouth is like if
you're a smaller organisation, or maybe should you is should
you go and build your own D to Cplatform owned and operated or
should you just bypass that completely?
Go to YouTube is basically what we're framing this as, correct?
Yeah, absolutely. So when, yeah, when should
YouTube be your lead platform? And ultimately I'd say it's a,

(10:32):
if you're targeting global and digital first fans, especially
Gen Z millennials. Now what's important about it is
the global aspect of that as well, as well as digital first,
because global there's some sports properties that are hyper
targeted to maybe local clubs, local regions, etcetera.
Is YouTube the best platform there?
Probably less so than something that is trying to reach a
multitude of different channels and audiences and has real

(10:55):
global appeal. YouTube instantly enables some
of that. The next one is your second tier
or niche sport where traditionalbroadcasters just aren't
investing, which is obviously something we're seeing more and
more of these days and having tofind alternative routes to
market. Why not go to YouTube and build
your business case to take to media organisations in the

(11:15):
future? Or just build your own business
there. If you think you can scale an
audience of some significance, say you're ready to act like a
modern day media brand, a serious modern day media brand,
not just a conventional here's my live, live rights.
Here's my highlights. Job done.
We're talking going to talk about it a bit later possibly.
But what's the secret sauce of alot of the rights owners on

(11:38):
YouTube? It's not the sports content
that's really making the the getting the momentum there.
So being able to produce contentconsistently, building community
on those platforms to the type of two way engagement you need
on those sorts of platforms, prioritising the storytelling in
the non live aspects of your sports, which will help for

(11:59):
ultimately discovery on the platform as well.
And the next one, you're exploring A wider flywheel of
direct monetization. So you're looking in
memberships, merchandise sales, live streams, advertising,
ticketing, etcetera. You're looking for all these
different ways to generate revenue, not just the one
Meteorites ticket as your main revenue driver alone.

(12:20):
The next one is you're really wanting to tap into the creator
economy. And that could be through
partners, partnerships with Youtubers.
It could be athletes themselves as part of the stakeholders.
It could be just influences around in or around your sport
and also not within your sport, but tapping into that group of
audiences. If you really believe that, that
is a great way of scaling audience fast, particularly if

(12:43):
you think about what we see witha lot of sports that come to
market these days, these new disruptor leagues, they always
have either athletes or creatorsattached to the investment
rounds, right? So those are the types of sports
that are clearly looking towardsthis.
And finally, that you're really looking to drive value beyond
just ad revenue alone, because YouTube is still not a proven

(13:06):
source of revenue directly through YouTube's channels
alone. They are an enabler and they
generate some income. But if you talk to most people
who manage YouTube channels and products in market, the the
monetization relative to the audience scale is pretty weak
still. But if you're able to do content

(13:27):
sponsorships, maybe a data and you know, basic sponsorships
around digital sponsorships around the content itself.
So sponsoring the shows you're creating, that's where you can
get all you're looking to build a greater picture of the type of
audience that you have connectedwith your sport to then help

(13:47):
either sell into broadcasters orto sponsors.
Just having the extra layer on of value coming out of the
content outside of just pure direct ad revenue has to be part
of the approach if you want to make YouTube your lead platform.
Now we'll talk about this nuanceis going to be a part of all

(14:07):
this. I don't think we're saying any
of these are a steady, hard, fast rule.
But I think one of the things we've talked about is sometimes
you might be a tier one in your domestic market, but you might
be a Tier 2 product in other markets.
And just blending that strategy together.
Where maybe, you know, you want to go to a large domestic
broadcaster in your home market,but you need to think about
elsewhere where you're not goingto get those media rights deals

(14:28):
where you're probably going to have to have a blended strategy.
Where to your point, maybe internationally is when you
start bringing in content creators to to to build your
message in the local markets where there's an affinity for
them. You know, this isn't very few
occasions are we going to talk about or any of these
strategies, whether it's YouTubesubscription, whatever is going
to be a hard fast model globally.
But I think to your point, it's just worth mentioning like there

(14:49):
is that nuance so that we're like it's not one way or
another. In some cases, you might have to
be doing multiples of these strategies depending on the
markets that you're actually trying to go into.
Completely and I think actually looking towards the creator
world again, you can get a senseof what you need to be doing to
maximise the value. Look at some of the biggest
creators in the world. You know your your Logan polls,
you might even look at so so thegolf, the golf creator economy

(15:12):
and how they sell themselves on platform.
I watched a bit of content recently.
We talked about Grant Hover the other day and I actually watched
some of his content. He did a A2 on 2 with Phil
Mickelson against Bryson Dejambeau and the GM golf car.
I can't remember what his name is, but basically they had loads
of product placement through it.They were selling.

(15:32):
That was. So Phil Mickelson, the reason
he's on it, by the looks of it, is, is the exposure is great,
but he's actually selling. He's like an owner of these
recovery munchies or something. They're called them, but they
do, they're driving in the golf cart.
They do a big sales pitch on howgreat this product is.
The same with Logan Paul and Prime, the Prime drinks and they
need that they're adding and Mr Beast and the various things

(15:56):
that they've launched festivals or whatever.
Yeah, but, but, and some of themare gimmicky as heck, But what
has the the results shown that actually loads of people buy
that stuff because they they're,they're being backed by people
they follow and, and, and support.
And therefore, you know, the idea of sponsorship.

(16:16):
That's a great example of how itcan work really well if you've
got a product and you can createsome brand alignment there.
But if sports can add those consumer aspects to it more and
bring it more front and centre alongside some of these athletes
talking about it. But maybe there's a legitimate
revenue stream to be made out ofthat.
Not just using the e-commerce tools that exist online, but the

(16:37):
actual just marketing of of commerce products and
merchandising and other things in that channels as well as
something that has to be really considered.
Well, we're going to come back and speak about golf
specifically PGA Tour being one of the examples that we want to
look into their particular strategy.
But they're just some of the positives of when you should be
prioritising or considering putting YouTube at on a higher

(16:58):
pedestal, if we want to put it that way.
But if we flip it on the other end, when you maybe should not
be putting YouTube at the top ofyour media strategy, what are
some of the conditions you wouldsay flip this narrative a little
bit? Sure.
So here's the few that I listed out before 1 is you actually own
your premium live rights. So those are still effectively
monetized way more effectively selling them on traditional

(17:22):
broadcasters or even own throughyour own digital direct to
consumer platforms. So generally if they're they're
premium enough, stick your live rights somewhere else would be
my my suggestion for now. But the beauty of YouTube is you
can do non exclusive and have iton both if you want.
You know the new ones comes intoplay or you can flip a switch

(17:42):
down the line whenever you thinkyou're ready.
You've got a captive enough audience on there if you want
to. But if you're in premium live
rights is 1. You're a sport that is built for
advertising in integration. So basically you have think of
the NFL as the most easiest example.
It's built for high quality ad slots throughout it's sporting
experience. You can't maximise the revenues

(18:06):
on that advertising space in thesame way through YouTube as you
would ever through traditional broadcasters.
So you're going to be always more appealing to a linear
broadcaster who's selling advertising then then YouTube
can ever generate through revenue.
The example that I actually shared was that Fox came out and
said they were achieving around 40 to $60.00 for CPMS on the

(18:28):
FIFA Women's World Cup. But typical sports content for
YouTube is in the single digits,somewhere between like 2 to
maybe $10 at best. So think about the gap that
you're talking 4 to 10/4 to 10/15 times depending on who you
are and what markets you're in. So that's why still the
monetization optimization of advertising sales is through

(18:50):
traditional media still, but could change.
Now your fan base is still leansheavily towards linear viewing.
So there's lots of sports that have a legacy there.
Don't walk away from them now, like keep serving them if that's
where your roots are and just find out ways of perhaps carving
out parts of your rights could be going on YouTube or other
places. And also when there's a really

(19:12):
strong local TV consumption component to again, think about
in the US with RSNS, perhaps where we should get to in
certain football leagues across Europe with really hyper service
serving localised sporting content to your key market.
And most likely you probably skew older as a as a demographic

(19:34):
than some of those other sports.Another one is you don't really
have the team internally to produce enough to build a real
subscriber base and audience on the platform, let alone monetize
it. What we've seen and we've talked
about quite a bit is actually a number of the major sports
properties have wound back some of their capabilities on content
creation, NFL selling off the NFL Network as an example with

(19:58):
ESPN. It isn't all bells and whistles
just to do more, more and more, add more resource internally.
It comes with a lot of burden that you have to like turn that
into some sort of return. And the other thing is you're
not really ultimately in a position to invest long term in
content strategy like and that's, let's face it, I hear

(20:19):
that a lot like most sports wantinstant results from the content
they output. They need to because of the
different stakeholders wanting success immediately.
They're not up for building a longer term plan over the couple
of years of building a massive subscriber base or really
investing into content output for non live.
Really only the top players havethat capacity to do so.

(20:40):
So those things I think are really why someone just
shouldn't be looking at YouTube yet as a primary platform.
It's a platform you have to havevisibility on.
It can be where you can funnel certain pieces of content, maybe
create some bespoke, but the idea of going all in on it
really shouldn't be for those people that I've just been
through. Yeah, and you, you talk about,

(21:01):
you know, the lack of productionresources I think as well just
people always underestimate, youknow, things like customer
service and marketing and thingslike that.
You know, maybe YouTube helps a little bit on that front, but
it's just, I think people it's, we'll use them again for the
100th time. You know, the, the former CEO

(21:21):
Crystal Palace that always talksabout all the Premier League
should just whip up Aott platform, sell for £100, make
$10 billion or whatever stupid number is.
They just don't understand how how difficult that actually is
or how unrealistic that that sort of mentality is towards it.
The great example, I think it's a great example.
Someone might tell me otherwise,but I think the great example of

(21:42):
that particular predicament you just described is that we heard
the numbers that Sky Deutschlandjust got sold to RTL and there
was a number floating around that basically the acquisition
for a subscriber was roughly theequivalent or around 2 years of
subscription to get one subscriber.
Now if people that have been doing it for decades have a huge

(22:02):
audience and have a real inability to drive new
subscribers to the platform. And then you look at sports who
has is relatively inexperienced actually marketing product
themselves. They are the channel.
They're not the ones that are actually the ones typically
doing the marketing in general terms.
There's no way that they could say and think that they could do
a better than most of the major broadcasters and platforms of

(22:24):
the existing market. It's just way more complicated
and we've got way more case studies or examples with OTT
that most have failed trying to do that with misaligned goals
versus what's really what's a realistic outcome for those
those platforms. So yeah, I think that's a great,
great example of like, yeah, marketing is one of these things

(22:45):
within all of this is how do youleverage that audience and
leverage that platform to maximise the value of it.
Sports is still learning how to do all that, and they're a long
way from like knowing how to do that really effectively.
Well, like most things we talk about do not there were some
agreement in the comment section, but then there was also
some disagreements in the comment section.
And I think one of the key things that came with, I think
everyone agrees that YouTube needs to be a part of your

(23:05):
strategy. I think to what degree, you
know, there was, there's different layers of that, but I
thought there were a couple of interesting examples where
people talked about, you know, we're not a Tier 1 sport.
We, we don't have that. But what YouTube allowed us to
do was to collect data to then go out and find broadcast
partners or to go sell to sponsors.
And that's the kind of thing if you, if you have no access to
linear or even if you can build an OTT platform, you just don't

(23:30):
have the reach or the scale to drive people to your niche
platform. YouTube gives you the
opportunity for oh, Nick, what do we call it?
The other day when you just walkinto something where we created
our own word. I remember we created your own
word about people just stumble ability.
I was stumble. Yeah.
Yeah. Where?
Like, you know, there's a couplepeople in the comments section.
Because of YouTube, we were ableto prove our business case that

(23:52):
we were worthy of sponsorship orwe were worthy of a broadcast
deal, which I think sometimes you got to walk before you can
run. You know, the idea of building
an OTT platform might be great, but YouTube might at least
validate that you have an audience for it or, you know,
build out the sponsorship there.So I thought that was a really
interesting comment that came from people about how YouTube
can be used in that way. Yeah, someone who commented
there, which was obviously, and he's actually spoken to us as

(24:19):
well, must have run the pod, butdefinitely the sports pro team.
And he's a really good, really good person to be listening to
and following with his insight around how a club or a team or
maybe the league is trying to enable this type of activity and
is good at also bringing it backdown, like calming people down a
little bit about the excitement.But his point was that the

(24:41):
analytics available on YouTube are really first class in
comparison to perhaps some otherplatforms, whether it be your
own director, consumer or whether it be other social media
platforms out there. And I've looked at them and I
completely agree with that. I think that's that is the
special source that YouTube does.
They give you really a full spectrum of access into the
insights of how all your contentis performing.

(25:03):
Whereas I've seen some subscription platforms,
including ones that we have thatI am still after a couple of
years trying banging the drum for more insight into how our
content's performing. I worry that's all there are on
a platter. So I think particularly for
anyone who's in this early stage, so it is not to your
point a great set of validation.I think the tricky bit that
comes on that part though, is what we talked about before

(25:24):
Again, we're going to say it again, but that entertainment
versus sports part, right? Because if the most successful
content in YouTube is a non sports part of that, their
content then is actually validation of your sports or
your, your, your, your thesis onwhat a good sport probably looks
like. Or is it just that you can the
thesis, you can great create great content and doesn't need

(25:45):
to be that sport or could be something else that would make
you successful. I think that's the tricky bit
there and which we'll can talk abit more about and some stats in
a second. But is does that really prove
anything out on ultimately the the the the possible success you
might have with that property? I'm not sure.
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll read because I got I got the stats in
front of me now. And, you know, shout out to

(26:05):
Paula Marinoni. I believe you've appeared on her
podcast before. She, you know, X Google, X
YouTube, great follow, puts out a tonne of information, tonne of
data. And I'd be lying to you if I
told you I hadn't looked at multiple, multiple of her posts
to find a lot of inspiration on this.
But to your point, she was talking about, you know, is
entertainment a friend or foe ofsport?
And she did some research basically looking at the top

(26:27):
most 8 watched long form videos of all time on the NBA, the NFL,
Major League Baseball and NHL channels to figure out in terms
of long form, what are people tuning in for sports or
entertainment. Eight out of eight for the NFL
and Major League Baseball were entertainment, not sports
related. For the NBA, it was 6 out of
eight. And then I'm not great at math,

(26:48):
but looking at the NHL, that must be 5 out of eight.
I think I can figure out if it's62.5, it must be 5 out of eight.
But the point being is if you kind of look at all those, I'd
probably say about 7 out of eight of the most long form
watch videos are entertainment. And it just goes to shows for
that YouTube strategy in terms of, you know, how do you balance
that out? And I, I thought that was a
really interesting statistic that she was able to dig out

(27:09):
there. Yeah, completely.
I think it definitely got me thinking.
And now there's there's some tricky aspects to that, right.
So those major properties don't have any premium rights on those
platforms. They would have all of theirs
wrapped up in other deals. However, they do publish a lot
of highlights related content onthose platforms and they aren't

(27:30):
showing at the top end. Now again, you could be, you
could find some logic to that. My my speculation would be that
yes, the NFL publishes highlights, but it publishes
highlights on every single game and it publishes multiple
lengths of every single game. So the the saturation of
highlights therefore would be only servicing certain groups,
whereas entertainment is effectively servicing everyone

(27:53):
potentially if depending on the type of content it actually is.
So maybe just that entertainmentrelated content, this has much
more broader appeal for people that are consuming it, whereas
the highlights and the sports specific stuff might be
servicing specific fan groups and fan sets more.
So does that make sense? Like you as a Bengals fan, you

(28:13):
want to watch more Bengals highlights.
But if something happens that I don't know what one of the the
top examples was, but I know something happening at the Super
Bowl that was funny or random, that's a very that's really
relevant or interesting to everyone.
So I think it's that that nuancethere that that can shift the
needle different ways. If you look took it below that
top tier with their rights spread across other markets or

(28:39):
other platforms, would that lookthe same way?
I think it would actually. But it's just it's something to
think about. I think is that complexity of
highlights versus non live and YouTube being a platform that to
your point is, it's not really is it a sports platform?
Is it a platform of sports consumption?
Or is it just a platform where people consume stuff and you're

(28:59):
there? And that's the tricky
predicament, I think, with YouTube.
Well, I think we we dive into one of the case studies and you
know, again pulled up some numbers, Paula listed them out.
So giving credit where credit it's due, she's saving me the
work of having gotten to it. But one of the examples she
pulled out a couple of months back was the PGA Tour and just
some figures from back when whenthat was in May.
So some of these numbers they'llthey'll have likely gone up.

(29:20):
But you know, as of about six weeks ago, they had 1.6 million
subscribers on their YouTube channel.
They had 1.9 billion lifetime views and they had posted
21.3000 videos. So just give you an idea of the
scale of what's on there. Now.
I think just for some context, if you've been an idea, because
we're talking about entertainment and we, we already
mentioned Grand Horvath earlier.The PGA Tour has 1.6 million

(29:43):
followers, but Bryson de Chambo has 2,000,000 followers.
Good Good Golf has 1.8 million followers and grants just behind
them with 1.4 million followers.So you're seeing this golf
ecosystem with the creator content.
One of the other stats was really interesting.
Paul pulled out was in a 30 day period within May they had
amassed one or they had amassed 15.2 million views from shorts,

(30:06):
which represented 54% of the channel's total content, which I
find really interesting because I'm on YouTube or sorry, I'm on
TikTok. I don't actually consume YouTube
shorts, although that's sort of their apples to apples product.
But I do think it is interestingto see how much of their content
is consumed in that fashion. And then the other part about
YouTube is what or sorry about the PGA Tour.

(30:27):
We talked about is they have putin an effort to tap into the
creator economy, which I think you can see from what they're
doing with some of the comparable channels.
You know, in 2024 they launched their creator classic, which was
to get it was a different model,right?
Using YouTube, ESPN plus Peacockto get content creators golfing.
And I think this last year they've started getting people

(30:47):
like Marquis Brownlee, the tech YouTube influencer involved.
They've also got a creator council that what I read in
reports, meets once a month. The whole strategy around, you
know, finding Gen Z. And I think golf is really
interesting because you're talking about who should and who
shouldn't go YouTube, where you should prioritise it.
And we know golf skews a little bit older, so you don't

(31:08):
necessarily want to leave that linear audience.
But at the same time you're saying, is that necessary long
term strategy, the sustainable? Probably not.
So you need to also put things into YouTube.
And I do find the PGA Tour to bereally interesting this way that
they still have their traditional models via Sky,
ESPN, their traditional partners.
But they have made a really concerted effort about what they
do digitally. And I think you are starting to

(31:30):
see some of the benefits of whatthey've done, some of that's not
directly their channels, it's the creator economy around that.
But it also feels like they've embraced that creator economy
and they've not tried to. I know we talked the other week
about not letting Grant film on the tour, but there are some
places we can't go too far. But it seems like they're doing
a really good job of bouncing those two approaches.
Well, the, the numbers certainlyshow that and I think they are,

(31:52):
they have been, from my experience, consuming their
content. They've been really good at
using highlights in different types of ways that are really
interesting to watch and going back into the archive probably
as well as anyone to show cool shots and cool experiences
happening. And that stuff is really good to
watch. I, I find it very interesting
and, and I'm not a massive golfer, although I've got

(32:13):
pictures of Woods and great Norman behind me.
I'm more aspirational than aspirational golfer at the
moment. But my point is they they had
done a really good job with the construct that they've got.
Now. I'm going to contradicted a
little bit. I would say that this might be
controversial, but in many ways,I do believe that with Liv

(32:35):
coming to the game, it really upset the apple cart in a lot of
ways. And one of the reasons that
upset things with Liv's Golf wasvery different, much more open
on access. And we've seen what happened as
a result of that with Bryson doing his channels, that Phil
Mickerson's doing his stuff now and that accessibility, the that
more relaxed nature, you know, even small things.

(32:57):
But like them allowing play golfplayers to wear shorts on tour,
Like, how mad is it the PGA Tourdevice can't wear shorts no
matter what the temperature is? But that that was a that was a
rule. And all these things they
started to do, I think forced the PGA Tour to to innovate in a
lot of ways. You know, they had, I think it
was pre Liv, they had. Do you remember that?

(33:18):
There was like an index basic, like a popularity index of like
players. Yeah.
Yeah, there's some sort of bonusscheme at the end of this tour.
Yeah, I forget what it was called, but I know exactly what
you're talking. About that was an interesting
approach that I've known if thatstill exists or not, but
basically it's like a bonus for those that are getting
visibility and marketable. They get like a top up basically
of earnings on top of what they would earn on the tour, which I

(33:40):
thought was an interesting move.I'm not sure if it was a it
worked out well and made everyone happy, but for those
the top end giving the most visibility to the sport, I think
it makes a lot of sense. And so I do think some of that,
some of that had to innovate by need to stay relevant to keep
growing audiences through those digital channels.

(34:02):
And I do think innately now people will talk about golf as
a, as an older person's sport, older demographic, but all the
content I see, maybe because I'ma young buck is, is quite young,
you know, younger demographics that are playing, you know, it
doesn't feel like it's trying toservice the older demographics

(34:24):
in that content. So maybe it's a small sample
size. Maybe I'm, I'm consuming stuff
that is targeted at younger generations that happens to hit
me. But but my point is that it does
feel like the, the flexibility and this approach by both PGA
Tour and live golf and its and its players has helped skew that
audience much younger. And anecdotally, when I have

(34:46):
been to the range here and in Sweden and there's a, a short
golf course nearby, I only see young people playing only like
it is, it's, it's incredible howyoung it skews there.
So maybe that investment by the PGA Tour and, and all those
other channels that I mentioned has led to it getting younger

(35:07):
and interest and popularity and weird quirk in Sweden, really
weird quirk. You know how like baseball caps
are big, right? Like, you know, everywhere you
go, like everyone's got a Dodgers or a Yankees cap or
some, some sort of variation of that.
Golf caps are massive here. Like all brands or not.
Not just like MLB. Like I'm talking titles pink.
Tailor. Tailor made kids going to school

(35:29):
now maybe I'm living in two posture area.
Maybe that might be might be part of it.
But I do see it all the time AndI was like, what is that cool?
I'm sorry. I feel like I'm just now aged
myself exponentially by like judging teenagers and what they
wear. But it's a weird quick.
I never thought I'd ever see that golf clothing.
Is is is cool? Fair, Fair enough.

(35:50):
Yeah. Well, pivoting back, Nick, one
of the comments that did come upon that first YouTube post that
we we've sort of talked about here that you, I wouldn't say,
you know, the kids sometimes saycalling it clapping back is some
of the things when someone says something, you clap back at
them. You know, someone talked about
ownership and their criticism iswhen you post your content on

(36:11):
YouTube, you therefore basicallyare giving up ownership of your
content. And, you know, not to put words
in their mouth. The way I interpreted was that's
a negative that you shouldn't begiving up your ownership because
in the long term, it's not sustainable, it's not maximising
value. And then you went and created

(36:31):
another post sort of elaboratingon, you know, what is the
importance of owning your data. And you know, there was a
YouTube sort of tinted perspective on that.
But again, lots of people commenting on sort of how
valuable is that data? How valuable is ownership?
But maybe for those who haven't seen the LinkedIn post, just
giving them a little bit more ofa flavour, kind of what you were

(36:52):
getting across on that one. Yeah.
I, I just, I've heard this quitea lot over the years.
And now I think where we're at now with all these other
platforms, I think this conversation about owning versus
either renting an audience is it's quite frankly a bit bit
naive, a bit misplaced, which might be a bit harsh to some.
But to say you own an audience is, you know, unless you own an

(37:16):
active paying the subscriber base, I don't think you can even
remotely suggest you own anything.
You you, you don't own their their time and attention.
Your your, your access to that audience is only as good as your
content. If you get you keep get them
coming back. Just because you've got them to
subscribe on like YouTube, doesn't mean they're ever going
to come back again. In fact, the people that

(37:38):
subscribe to various channels that that that exist out there,
if you don't engage with a couple of pieces of content, you
won't even get served that againuntil you engage with it again.
Like you'll just be off the spectrum there.
So that's on YouTube. But if you are owning a
platform, let's say you're own an OTT product and you are, you
have, I'll say you have their first party data because they've

(37:59):
signed up to the platform. They may never come back to you
again. So do you, what do you own?
You own 100% of nothing there. You just own, you own some data
points like what do you do if they're not consuming the
content? You don't own their time or
anything else with it. So I just think the idea of
owning audience versus not owning it is very misaligned
because it's ultimately the, theconsumer is the one that owns

(38:22):
that time and that that, that time and attention.
And all you're doing is doing whatever you can to get them get
their attention and they get themaximum value out of that
attention. And it doesn't really matter if
you own it or rent it. And that's, I think fun.
That's a fundamental thing that you do.
You'll hear a lot of people say,well, first party data is
everything, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(38:42):
And look, I do think first partydata is really important.
A bit like you talked about withthe YouTube point about the day,
access to data and insight aboutwho your audience is gives you
all sorts of levers you can pullto sell and monetize that
audience if you know who they are in a deeper way.
You can't call it owning your audience.
I just don't. I don't think you can ever put

(39:04):
it that way. I just don't think that really
works in any example that I can think of that you can legitimise
it in that sense. Yeah, there are a few comments I
found interesting. One of them was Jason Steele
commenting. Basically the idea of driving
people to your own and operated app, just it's a complete 180 on
consumer behaviour. You know, people are going to

(39:24):
YouTube naturally, they're goingto Tiktok.
Naturally. The idea of trying to drive them
to another platform, while we can sit here as a business and
say why that's really valuable to have that person come onto
our platform. You're really trying to change
the behaviours that exist these days and you're constantly
swimming against the current. And is the cost of marketing

(39:46):
people to go to that platform, the cost of building that
platform going to be outweighed by the benefit you get from
finally succeeding and driving in there?
Because the only people, I don'twant to say only, but the
majority of people who want to go there, they're the hard
cores. Like you probably weren't going
to have trouble capturing them to begin with.
You probably already know that person because they're buying

(40:07):
jerseys on your e-commerce platform or something.
You probably already know those individuals, but how many people
are you capturing outside of that that aren't going through
that stream? And I thought that was a very
pragmatic way to think about that.
Yeah, completely. But it's a harsh reality for a
lot of people. Is your content really good
enough to drive people to your own platform, to make it
worthwhile to invest all that effort in resource and marketing

(40:30):
and content creation to create something different and special
to drive people to your platform?
Or is it just reskinning what's already like for like, maybe
you're not producing, but other people have similar stuff out
there that you've got on your own platform, actually existing
channels. It's something that we talk
about have to deal with in our business and sports pro as well.
We produce so much content. We have to be really ruthless

(40:52):
with ourselves and talk about that.
So I was like, OK, is this stuffgoing to bring people here and
make them come back again and again?
Or do we have to do more where they are?
You know, there's, there's, there's very studies in data
I've seen over the years about how like app downloads are going
down on smartphones and so forth.
People just rely on the big, bigsocial ones.
And there's the, the utility apps that you need.

(41:15):
So like could be buying stuff, keeping track of your banking,
all those essentials. Shazam.
Shazam. My all time favourite app.
You know I just love it. 11 use perfect.
That's it. And that's that's great utility
for that. But if you were trying to create
a destination that people come back to, I think you'd be quite
naive to think that if you buildit, they will come, which we use

(41:38):
the line we've used many times over the years.
And I think that's even more pertinent than ever these days.
So I think that's that is a tricky balance.
If you believe that you can create something that is really
special and valuable and valuable enough to bring people
to your platform, then do it. And then you need to just make
sure that you've got the flow ofaudience coming to it to engage

(42:00):
with. And hopefully you can turn that
into real value. I'm not saying don't do that,
but you've got to ask yourself the question in sports and
media, is it actually that or isit actually stuff I can get all
ready for free on those existingplatforms that they're already
on all the time? And that's tricky.
Yeah, and another really smart individual that we've had on the

(42:20):
pot before, he's been in our events, you know, he commented
on their anagram key over 1 football.
Basically, don't own your audience, Know your audience.
And, you know, still there's allthis argument, like, you can
have first party data, but if you don't actually know the
audience, does owning them actually really matter?
And, you know, you sort of put, you know, true D to C still
remains A myth. And I think that goes back to
your point. It is a bit of a harsh reality.

(42:41):
Like you may have first party data, but like if you're not
doing anything with it, you don't have the ability to do
anything with it. Like is it, does it really
matter? Is it just a nice thing to say?
Like, as as difficult as that may sound.
Oh, it's so true though, that I've had stuff come up, come up
internally around like audience and date and I'm, and I'm
basically saying to them we haveto be more focused on behaviour

(43:03):
than we have to be on what date or who's someone has filled out
a form before or signed and signed to a newsletter.
Because if they're not consumingthe newsletter, then they're
redundant to us. They're not someone who's
actually interested in active with us, but those people that
are behaving and consuming things actively, they're the
ones we have to focus on. What are those behaviours that

(43:24):
are needle movie that we can then offer more value to?
And that I, I think is a, is a growing trend the industry needs
to be much more focused on. So I think ultimately comes back
to, but the conclusion here is always, it's a balance.
I think you need a direct, you need a first party place.
You can get some audience. You need to do the YouTube bits
so you can get some audience data.
Then you can marry and compare those up and see how aligned

(43:45):
those are. And maybe you might see the 1
skews way one way or the other. Like maybe there's some things
you can learn from that. But it is a risky game to say
that you know, YouTube's not worth doing because you don't
own the audience. Someone else is owning it
because will you ever? I own them.
I don't know. I don't.
They're just, they're, they're fickle creatures, Nick, you
know? If you start paying them, I'll

(44:07):
tell you what, if you start paying them to company platform,
that's the the thing speculated for a while is that the date is
so important. Imagine if media platforms
started paying them to be on theplatform.
That would be a whole other ballgame.
But let's not open up that kind of words, Chris.
No, not not today. Now there's there's lots of
examples, different people that are doing different things.
You know, we, we've historicallytalked about the NBA sort of
when they initially opened up the floodgates where there was

(44:29):
an opportunity to put up the walls to say, no, you can't have
access. NBA were one of the first people
to sort of knock down the walls and say, hey, we'll figure out
ways to work with content creators to use our highlights
because we know it's really goodfor us.
We've seen people like DisruptorLeague's Kings League coming in,
Baller League coming in doing different things and mostly all
the Ballers league has a bit of a Sky Sports thing, largely

(44:52):
doing things by YouTube and Twitch.
We've talked about Kaza TV in Brazil and what they're doing
from a content creator perspective.
And there's different angles of which we can go talking about
different things. But one of the other interesting
bits that came up, Paula did again just reference her.
She has AI think it was a 64 slide breakdown of YouTube
channels across, you know, the, you know, the major football

(45:14):
leagues and looking at individual teams and some of the
interesting things that come up sort of causation versus
correlation. How many videos are people
producing versus how many usually getting per creation?
And there were some interesting statistics in there and sort of
comparing and contrasting the two sort of which leagues are
doing better than the rest. And you know, Nick, I don't know
particularly for you if there's anything that came out from

(45:36):
there, particular teams, leaguesor little Nuggets of information
just about sort of those YouTubestats.
Well, I think we've reached, we've mentioned Powell so many
Times Now that well, hopefully she sees that as some solid
plugging, but also we probably get her on at some stage and get
her give us a little bit of a deep dive on it.
No, it was an interesting read. It's, it was basically, I think

(45:58):
in partnership with the SFS event that exists in in Italy.
And I mean, the most the typicaltop clubs were at the top end of
the bulk of the relevant stats. There was a few interesting ones
I'd like to focus on. Let's say the random ones, the
surprise packets rather than theones that you expect.
You obviously expect Real Madridand Barcelona to be at like the

(46:19):
top of the, the Liga, right? That's, that's not too
surprising. There's there's a couple of ones
that I took away that I thought might be worth rattling off.
I thought firstly one was interesting.
That was Athletico Madrid's who actually secured more
subscribers last year than all of the others, including
Barcelona and Real Madrid, whichI still, I didn't think that was
really achievable. Now it looks like from the data

(46:42):
very top level, but they have really only started heavily on
YouTube last year, which is probably why they grow so grew
so quickly versus the others. But still the size of audience
that they're competing against with with Barcelona, Real Madrid
did really make me think that they would struggle to ever be
able to compete with them on a year, year perspective.

(47:05):
The other one that was quite surprising.
Just that Sevilla publishes pumps up the most content.
So I don't know what's on that platform, but in fact, they're
publishing that much. They're only maybe they're not
even in the top five. I think of actual content
ranking is something just again a reminder of perhaps more.
It's not always better. From from Siri's perspective, it

(47:27):
was super interesting. He was the lead content
producer. There was Eudanese was producing
Double or any other single club was producing which is.
Extraordinary. And I and I think that's really
interesting because you know, we've spoken to Mike Armstrong,
who's no longer a Juventus, but we know he built up a huge, you

(47:49):
know, content team there. We know AC Milan with the
American investment they've got,they built their own recording
studios. And you know, I've gone to speak
to some of the AC Milan folks. They're they're regulars at our
Madrid event. I'm sure we'll see them again
this year. There's a couple teams in Syria
that like have put massive investment into like creator
networks, content network. So I agree with you.
That is an interesting stack given what I know some of the

(48:10):
other teams are investing in that place.
Yeah, super interesting to see. Then there.
I mean, it was a clear line delineation between like the top
five clubs in Syria and everyoneelse.
But then you've got randomly Udanesi popping up with
producing more uploads than anyone else, yet they're only
11th in views in all time, whichis not surprising random fact.
But Verona, which generates the most views per subscriber, which

(48:36):
I don't know, just a bit random.I don't even know where the
owner is, but there you go. And with three of the big 5
clubs in Syria doing the worst or the least, again, I think
that's a victim of when you've been around for a long time,
you've got a lot of subscribers,difficult to get engagement,
perhaps like new sets of subscribers to keep those
numbers up. But nevertheless see three of

(48:57):
the five. Well, compared that to other
leagues, the numbers weren't as bottom end.
What I mean by that is that the top end wasn't as low in the
purviews views per video front. Quickly I'll go through a couple
more. The Premier League just
basically I've heard Liverpool talked about a lot as like the
lead is on YouTube and they are absolutely crushing in promise

(49:20):
pretty much almost every every category.
Man City was also up there, which is no real surprise.
I think Brighton and oh, there was another one was right up
there on like a views per video front.
I did see Fulham. My I'd say my old old club.
I haven't really followed them too closely over the years since

(49:41):
I've moved out away from from that area was pretty average and
mediocre across all all levels of of measure.
And the final one I thought was really interesting was the MLS
intimate. Miami was leading the way, but
not surprising. They have they have Messy, they
have a bunch of other incredibleplayers there.

(50:02):
No shock there. But what was really random was
that Minnesota United FC, which I've never even heard of before,
was number. Relatively new franchise.
Yeah. Well, they're number 2 when it
comes to generating new subscribers.
Now they are relatively new by the sounds of it, which is
ideal. That probably helps, but still

(50:22):
the the rate of growth you wouldexpect from some of the bigger
clubs I thought would still beatsomething like me, Minnesota
United FC. So I don't know, just shout out
to some of those small organisations doing what they
can to fight with the big guys. It shows it doesn't always.
It's not always the big ones that are doing the most out

(50:43):
there. There are some some leagues and
teams that are still punching above their weight.
Yeah. Well, what I think is
interesting is we'll come back to what I'm going to is quality
versus quantity because we talked about on YouTube, the way
the algorithm works, if your content's not good, you'll find
out real quick. At the same time, what does seem
to be consistent is all the organisations that are doing

(51:06):
well on YouTube. It's not a passive play.
You know, we talked about PGA Tours got 21,000 videos.
There was some other data that Ilooked into about how many
videos the NBA has. You know, we're talking 10s of
thousands. We talked about the these clubs
that we're surprised by them being successful.
It's also because they are stillproducing a pretty high quantity

(51:27):
of content as well. You know, I don't think is a
real or sorry, as optimistic as we are by YouTube that we're
saying just plug and play you doand you're going to have
success. You still actually need to have
an active strategy to be publishing multiple times.
So I do think that is one takeaway where the balance
between quality and quantity matches up.
I'm not sure, but it definitely feels like there's a minimum

(51:49):
threshold with which your quantity must hit to be able to
be discoverable and to go through there.
No one on here is producing one video a week and having success.
It is something they are actively pushing out content.
Yeah. And the other word really is
iteration, Chris. Like I bang this drummer a lot
here as well at Sports Pro is like, we have to keep iterating

(52:10):
stuff because quite frankly, if you keep publishing the same
stuff, you need to be consistentwith the amount of content you
are publishing. If you want to grant create
visibility and get a follower base.
But if you keep publishing crap also, you won't get very far,
right? So you need to make sure you
keep iterating and making it better and better.
And that's where the the the tools of YouTube are so

(52:31):
strongly. You can really see where people
are dropping off, where they're coming from, what content isn't
working and, and, and is, and what content sits on the air on
the fence. So we have some stuff that goes
out and one video might do well and the other one might do
terrible. And I can't really tell you what
the difference is and why, but sometimes it could be algorithm
related and that's it, right? So I think you've got to get a

(52:53):
good sample size of content and be able to make some decisions
and keep iterating all the way through and not just expecting
everything to just work magically just because you're a
football club in a Major League.Absolutely, and there's still so
many other topics we talk about.There's still some case studies
we want to personally talk aboutand we will do in later
episodes. And like I said, maybe we need
to call Paul up after how much for stuff we've gone through

(53:14):
with on the next time we talk about YouTube.
But I do appreciate everybody tuning in.
Like I said, go find those LinkedIn post of Nick's if you
want to see some of the comments.
They're averaging about 30 comments.
Lots of people, lots of opinions, lots of interesting
stuff there. But do appreciate you joining us
for this episode of Stream Time Sports.
Tell us what you think as well. Reach out to us throughout
requisite social channels, whether it be on those posts

(53:35):
that Chris mentioned or just reach out to us through DMS or
e-mail if you want to. And let us know what you think
and join the conversation. But thanks everyone for joining.