November 1, 2023 • 46 mins
With video consumption on social media only growing, should sports prioritise putting live content in vertical formats? Co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone discuss the growing trend and who is best placed in sports to benefit.
Talking points:
What is driving vertical video? - (8:09)
Should sports consider live broadcast in vertical formats? - (15:06)
Can social media platforms help sports monetise mobile-centric content? - (21:26) How can vertical formats increase fan engagement? - (30:16) Which sports make the most sense for vertical video? - (35:07)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Hello everyone and welcome back to the next episode of Stream
Time Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community lead, joined as alwaysby our CEO, Nick Meacham.
Now today, Nick, we're going to be talking about vertical video
formats and sports content and all the craze.
You know the different things with TikTok Instagram reels.
But before we get into it even, we're going to be talking about
vertical video. I'm going to ask you, do you
have favorite athletes for two categories, for those that have
(00:33):
been vertically blessed and those that are, perhaps we could
say, vertically challenged? Oh, good, good question.
I mean, the ones that really jump out when you you talk about
vertically blessed athletes is thinking football.
I'm thinking soccer. I'm thinking Peter Crouch.
You know, you see him running around on a football field.
(00:56):
He'd never looked like he was supposed to be there, yet he was
prolific goal scorer, played forEngland, but even when he had
the ball, he just didn't look like he was supposed to be
there, yet somehow made that lankiness work for him better
than anyone has ever done before.
And then obviously in basketballis a big one, right?
Like, you think about Manute Bowl.
(01:18):
How tall was HE676? Or is that 2 something like that
2? 230 centimetres, I guess
something like that. 225. And then that photo next to
Mugsy Bogues. You've seen that one, surely?
Right Where Mugsy? Yeah, Mugsy Bogues is up five,
Three. So what's that?
It's like 160 centimetres tall. Like, imagine those guys
(01:39):
playing, playing together on thesame team.
Will be quite, quite a laugh, but I'm trying to wreck my brain
of any other players that stick to mine.
What about you? So I'll take the easier one on
the tall people and I'm going togo Shaquille O'Neal.
But the reason I'm going to do this because there's always the
GOAT debate, you know, Michael or LeBron.
I'm going to go on a different angle and say Shaquille O'Neal
is the most single dominant athlete I've ever personally
(02:01):
watched in my lifetime. I would say there's been people
that have been more skilled thanhim, but in terms of just a man
that was 7 foot 1300 plus poundsthat moved like a ballerina,
I've never seen an individual dominated team sport and any
team sport, period, the way Shaquille O'Neal did.
I mean it was just, I thought itwas phenomenal watching.
Like, the only way people could stop him was they invented the
(02:22):
hacker shack. They basically said we actually
can't stop you other than just fouling you.
So teams had to, you know, structure their rosters to make
sure they had enough fouls to spare in the game.
So in terms of the tall people, I'm going to go Shaq because I
like I said any sport. I've never seen anyone more
physically dominant than him. Yeah, I I remember when he first
came into the league, he was shredded.
(02:43):
He was absolutely ripped. Like, what a beast and a man.
And then because everyone was failing him like crazy, he just
put on loads of weight, right? People thought he was getting
lazy, but it was basically to combat the, the hacker shack
where he was getting fouled relentlessly, right?
And it worked. A guy who has to run up the
court constantly for all game long, put on weight and actually
just use it to his advantage. Probably will never be a player
(03:06):
like that that again in the game.
I I hasten to think these days, particularly in basketball,
where the the three pointer counts so much, everyone's got
to try and shoot a three every now and again, even if you're a
centre. Yeah, basketball does seem to
have shifted a little bit in terms of the short people.
I'm going to go to the NFL though, Nick.
Before we go, before we go into the the, the, the short, the
shorts guys, I've got, I've got one other one for you.
(03:29):
Obviously. You know my volleyball roots as
well. Pop quiz.
Do you know who's in the Hall ofFame for both the American
Volleyball Federation or Association and the NBA or
basketball? Sorry, the Naismith Basketball
Hall of Fame. Not typically the NBA.
He Is it Luke Walton or is it his dad?
(03:49):
Oh, that's a really good show, because he's actually quite
good. But it is Wilt Chamberlain.
Oh gosh, yeah. So I think, I think I don't know
the exact story and someone definitely could look it up and
I was, if I was a bit more prepared, I probably would have.
But I think after he stopped playing basketball, he then went
and like started playing, playing volleyball and I think
was just being Wilt Chamberlain,just big, massive 7 foot four
(04:13):
guy dominating. And using his heart to
advantage. So that's a bit of a random one
for those that don't haven't don't know will Chamberlain as
well. Like, I mean of his he's
arguably he's arguably in the GOAT conversation for the NBA.
But given his or did he score like 100 points in a game and
averaged like 4050 points of game because he could And then
(04:34):
the next season he decided I'm just going to then he have a
lot. Then he went like to going crazy
on assists one season just to prove that he could.
I know there's a lot of asterisks around his award or
his records because he put us some absolutely ridiculous
numbers that like you just can'ttouch anymore sort of thing.
And part of it. He was like the only 7 footer at
(04:55):
the time, but I do know he set some statistics that are just
sort of never going to be touched.
Wasn't back then, before they had goaltending as well.
The ball could kind of down block stats possibly.
Yeah, because I remember seeing some stuff like Bill Russell.
Sorry for those who don't followthe basketball taking going down
a really big rabbit hole here, but they just wouldn't block
(05:16):
ball basically from nearly goingin the in the rim when they were
when they were getting close. So anyway, definitely help us to
be tall. That's the that's the thing we
learn there. Absolutely.
But I am going to shout my shortguy, which is Darren Sproles NFL
guy. Not everyone might not know
this, but he's only 5 foot six so I'll let Nick leave it to the
centimeters on that one. But you know, Terrence Sproles
had nearly a 10 year career in the NFL.
(05:37):
At 5 foot six, that is incredibly unheard of.
And not only was he 5-6 and had a long, he was actually a very
good football player. So I just want to give a prop
shout out to him because you know, not a lot of guys in the
NFL, you know, sport known for its physicality.
To be able to take the wear and tear at that size, I think it's
quite impressive. Have you seen the guy from the
(05:58):
Cowboys that they drafted? He spawn.
Yeah, have you seen the photo ofhim?
There's like a photo here next to one of the the offensive
lineman. And it looks like a little 5
year old going to the park with his with his dad he it's it's
absolutely insane. How do you put those two guys on
the field together? I I don't understand.
But speaking, I'm going to the park with his dad.
Do you know the story behind that?
(06:19):
No, no, his dad is actually a scout for the NBA or sorry for
the Dallas Cowboys. When he got drafted, he got to
call his son and said, hey son, would you like to come to work
with me next week? That that is pretty cool for the
dad, that's for sure. It's a great it's a great social
media clip. You'll find it on any of the
platforms we might be talking about later.
(06:41):
OK, who about? Short footballers.
Any footballers? Do you know?
Can you think of anything that come to mind?
I know, I see. He's pretty sure.
I don't know how tall. He's about 11 meter 70 maybe.
So what's that? That's 5859 for those playing at
home. Apparently Alexis Sanchez was
55, which I am surprised by. I didn't think it was that
(07:03):
short. But yeah, these days you have to
be basically, if you want to be successful athlete, you have to
be tall and massive and fast andbasically everything.
One thing I knew when I was growing up at school though, the
short people were always way faster than the tall people.
Always. Yeah, in athletics in in most
sports the the basically the tall people are also fast.
(07:24):
You don't see a lot of people who are like 5-5 as sprinters or
even long distance runners. They're all like lanky and.
I wonder what happens there. I wonder why is there like this?
Maybe a ceiling when you've onlygot a certain range in your
gait? Anyone who's playing at home
who's exercise scientist? I left exercise science after a
year and focused on business. Anyone who knows the answer to
(07:47):
that, I'd be very intrigued. Why?
Sure. People who get really, really
fast can't get fast enough to bebasically Usain Bolt.
Well, Usain Bolt's a great one because he's actually quite tall
or at least compared to the restcompetition.
But we will avoid the height, you know, conversation any
further. But we will continue to talk
about vertical. We'll just talk about it in a
(08:07):
video format. So today we kind of want to go
through and talk about this sortof the trends we're seeing when
it comes to vertical formats in terms of video consumption.
And we're kind of going to go through sort of 10 points that
we kind of want to work our way through.
And part of this, you know, I think started Nick, yeah, I
think back Snapchat really kind of started a lot of this with
some of their initial media, Instagram and Facebook started
(08:30):
moving towards reels. But I do feel like a lot of this
has really been pushed with the rise in TikTok in the last
couple of years and there's beena lot of experimentation with
it. But just kind of getting a sense
of why the why this is gaining traction, the direction it's
heading, what are some of the challenges involved with it and
just kind of deep dive into specifically the vertical
format. So you know, maybe perhaps you
(08:50):
know, just kind of give a general idea of sort of where
we're at in terms of some of thepeople, some of the case studies
that we're seeing of where vertical formats have been used
for live distribution. It is amazing to think that
we've been living in this smartphone world for so long
now, but yet the notion and the concept of the vertical video
particularly live is still pretty in its infancy really.
(09:12):
I mean even vertical video for like the creator world and
influences is, is, is becoming more and more prevalent as we'll
probably touch a little bit on as we go along, but.
It still feels like we've only just scratched the surface on
this video, video, vertical video.
I can't even say the words. I think to practice that tongue
twister a little bit more. Vertical video, vertical video,
(09:34):
vertical video. Got it.
OK. But yeah, it's just interesting
to see how slow we've been to get to this pace.
So it's going to be, I think, aninteresting topic to dig in.
One other question I did have for you before we do.
You ever been a Snapchat user? So I was a Snapchat user back in
the day, probably ended when I got out of university.
I don't really use Snapchat all that often anymore.
(09:55):
Don't quite honestly. I apologize to some of our
listeners who I know where couldsnap Ivan used in a long time.
I'm not 100% sure why I still have the app but back in the day
was a huge Snapchat user was definitely the way like it's
just something better about communicating through images and
short videos and was sending a text message or it's just a
great way to capture the moment you were in.
(10:17):
But it it's been a while but I think that's as much as my own
personal usage. As much as my sort of friend
group is sort of changed, we don't communicate like that
anymore. Yeah.
Well, I think that they lent into that whole anonymity and
videos and images that would disappear after a certain amount
of time, right? And I think that was their
special source initially, but then they evolved quite a lot.
(10:37):
I remember talking to some of the guys at Snap and they really
focused on being an AR business more than.
That sort of social platform, yet I don't really think anyone
thinks of them like that outsidemaybe in the business sense
about how can you create some cool fun things that young
people can use. I do when I've been travelling
seeing a lots of younger people using using Snapchat as their
(11:00):
their main sort of source of source of I guess conversation
or connection with people. So.
Yeah, it's interesting to see just how that hasn't really gone
to the places I thought it wouldwhen I when it first popped up.
I thought it would continue to grow scale, but it seems like
others have maybe moved around it quick, very quickly and kept
it at Bay. Yeah, it does feel like more of
a communication app, at least inmy experiences, because I can
(11:23):
tell you the university footballteam I still coach, you know, 18
to 21 year olds, they're all still very active on Snapchat.
But yeah, I think it's much moreabout sending those personal
messages and communicating is less so than what you see from
Tiktok or Instagram with the Reels where it's more about a
content platform. I'm sure Snap would say that
they are content platform, but yeah, I just don't know if that
(11:45):
necessarily reflects what I've seen in terms of usage from
people, but I I maybe not their target audience anymore.
Well, they remember that they've, they had those glasses
as well. Gosh, I'm sounding old here.
Can I talking about those? All the kids use these days but
there you go, I'm they see the glasses.
I actually saw them in the there's a second hand store
around the corner. I just happened to walk in there
(12:05):
looking for something for my formy son who is half to something
specific and I went in there andI saw these the Snapchat goggles
in there. I'm like I wonder if they're
even like a collector's item these days because they came and
went so quickly. But anyway, they don't really do
much for the video vertical video format.
So already going very off topic.Yeah, so there you go.
But you know, like we said, one of the things we are seeing
(12:26):
people lean into probably more on the TikTok side of things.
You know, most recently we've seen the ICC in the Cricket
World Cup with some of the work that they're doing with Disney
Star in India we saw the the Qatar Grand Prix on Sky Sky
Deutschland on TikTok. There were a couple of instances
last year where La Liga was doing some individual games with
the work they were doing. Media pro.
(12:47):
I'm trying to think as well. We'll probably talk about some
of the opportunities but you know someone like Burnley
Women's Football Club have been using TikTok.
So we are starting to see it in a range of different sports in
different areas at the moment. But no one's I don't.
It feels like no one's quite made a a long term effort.
It seems like they're in sort ofsmall usage cases.
No one's necessarily, maybe outside the Burnley example.
(13:09):
Really committed to kind of a long term approach on this.
No, completely. I I think what's been
interesting that you've given some great examples of
organizations that have dabbled.And I do just wonder what what
they're looking for, what success looks like in these
situations because quite often the examples that we're
referring to are typically builtaround live sports.
(13:31):
But this day and age we we know that going through a smartphone
and watching live sports isn't really the main platform for
that. Unless I just it's not the main
platform. People will go to a connected TV
or a big as big as device as possible to watch live sports.
And where the phone comes to life is for all the non live
related content. So I think we've been all hoping
(13:53):
there's a bit of a Holy Grail tocome from the vertical video
format for live, but it just hasn't really reared its head in
probably the way a lot of peoplewere hoping.
But what has been interesting, you know, TikTok, you mentioned
they actually were sponsors and partners of what UA for EUR the,
you know, the Burnley Football Club, as you mentioned, a bunch
of rugby properties including the Six Nations, the women's,
(14:14):
the women's Six Nations. And so they've they've they've
definitely not, they've really gone all into all the NS
probably stretched for a multi multi billion dollar global
platform, but invested a lot of time and effort into engaging
with this space probably for different reasons.
My my view on like Tik Tok's moves are probably in a little
bit of brand perception as well across Europe, as well as the
(14:39):
opportunity to test the video and vertical formats.
So I think there's still plenty of work to be done for TikTok in
particular to keep engaging withsports in a way that really does
drive value for all parties other than just being another
another sector on on their on their platform itself.
You know, those those longer dwell times, the vertical video
(15:01):
they hope to create. It's still just I think a long
way to go before we actually seethat.
Yeah. And to be clear, I think really
what we're talking about throughthis podcast is going to be the
live sports side. I think we all can recognise the
value that these platforms can have for highlights or the
shoulder content in between matches where you're having
promotional or reviews like those sorts of things.
I think we all understand how that works pretty simply, but
(15:23):
it's more specifically the the distribution of live content
that I think they were referringto.
So I'm going to try to stay on point with kind of talking about
our ten points. So those are some examples that
if you were wondering who's beendoing that, there are some other
examples out there. But I guess that next one is
kind of looking at why we're getting to hearing some of those
kind of changing consumer habits.
And there was a study that was done by some of our friends at
(15:43):
La Liga Tech. I'm in Nielsen and I think the
survey had something like 20,000people globally.
And one of the things was, you know, 46% of those respondents
within the younger age gap, which is 34 years and younger
said they prefer to watch eventson their smartphones or tablets.
So you're almost looking at 50% of that younger demographic
wants to watch things on those devices, which as you say that's
(16:06):
sort of a change in habits, you know, used to be watching
everything on the big screens and now you know 50% of that
upcoming generation is basicallysaying that they do want to
watch things on those different devices.
So you know, is this something atrend I guess you think is going
to push the sports industry to further consider this?
Oh, it's a good question. I I think they're going to keep
(16:26):
trying it because the mobile phone is such an important
device for everyone and it keepsbeing, you know, central part of
your lives, I think. Be Personally, I'm finding it
tough sometimes to put my phone down, even if it's like it's
almost like a reflex to look at your phone when you're got a
spare few seconds. I think being prioritising the
mobile experience more than the traditional model just has to be
(16:49):
the priority for everyone involved in in content,
particularly around the sports base.
Just the question is whether there's an opportunity in live
or not and I think we're we're still hoping to see some of
that. We'll, I don't know if it's the
time to talk about some of thoseexamples yet, but there are some
examples which I I like the concept of like the ICC one you
mentioned where they will mix between vertical video as in
(17:12):
just for those that aren't familiar with Cricket, it's
quite vertical in its broadcast production.
You know, the pitch they play onis vertical.
Think about. Getting more of like a longer
form lens on say maybe baseball perhaps where you just see the
picture and and the capture. I mean most of our I think good
chunk of our audience is probably you British base.
So they probably would understand that quite
(17:32):
comfortably. So it but it fits really well in
that vertical format and that they're going to lace that with
having split screen SO2 horizontal images running up and
above below each other, which could be either alternate camera
views. And or a mix of stats and and
insights around around the game and maybe commentators and so
forth which makes a truckload ofsense.
(17:53):
And I think would if you you really are changing the way
their production's created intertwining the vertical format
and the horizontal split screen.All of a sudden I think you have
got a bit more of an an engagingexperience, particularly if you
also add the layer of interactivity into that as well
where some of that data might beinteractive, so.
Yeah, I think there's still plenty of work to be done.
(18:15):
We're finally seeing some scenesof true innovation on the that
layer of production. But the jury's out whether
that's going to drive serious, serious engagement and increase
in watch times. On for on smartphones Hello
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Hope you guys enjoy the rest of the podcast and we hope to see
you in Madrid. Well that that's really
interesting that you mentioned this sort of split screen
approach to that because within there they also talked about the
(19:19):
fact that something like 51% of Gen.
Z when they were watching sportswere looking for live statistics
during play. So I think to your point, just,
you know, it doesn't have to be a dedicated vertical format.
It can be that split side by side where it it is having you
did a good job of translating cricket to baseball for the
American fans. That might not get that from a
visual perspective, but just imagine you're watching, you
(19:41):
know, game six of the ALCS and you're just looking down from
the picture the batter. It's very similar to cricket.
But yes, almost having that thatsort of setup where it doesn't
have to be solely dedicated, just that vertical screen it can
be laid over with statistics andbits like that.
Yeah, completely. And if you you actually spend
some time watching live streams of video, generally not just
sports related, but say just anything where you've got
(20:03):
creators, perhaps publishing stuff and on chat.
A huge proportion of those audiences watching them are
watching on vertical or on smartphone devices, right?
And if you watch the chat function, the chat goes
absolutely bonkers. People are riding at a prolific
rate on those chats. And so the the, the, the theory
I think all the research shows that basically people are
(20:25):
watching actually those videos in a horizontal format on a
vertical device and engaging with the chat underneath the
vertical, sorry the horizontal video.
So so they're probably doing that though your point about
their whole ability to look at stats while you're watching
live, I think it's super important if people want to give
vertical live live video a chance to succeed because a lot
of people are just going to haveto close down the live feed all
(20:46):
the time unless you have a pop up video.
But even the pop up video experience, I'm I'm I've had
mixed experiences on when I've tried that it's not prolific
yet. So yeah, I think that's a really
important point about the whole engagement piece or the access
to information that is that is meaningful.
I remember using the NF LS Game Pass version which now doesn't
(21:07):
exist anymore, but when I was using that, sometimes the data
wasn't quite up to date from memory.
So. So that just was a bit OK, well,
I'm going to actually go have togo somewhere else to see the
right information or the data wasn't presented in an engaging
way that I could really get the information I wanted in the
right way whilst watching. So again, yeah, I think it's
super important. Yeah.
Well, we're kind of starting to touch into some of the other
(21:28):
ones. We'll move along.
And I think kind of the Third Point is kind of talking about
monetization specifically. And I think that's one of the
probably the big challenges whenwe talked about, you know,
looking backwards and saying, you know, oh, is Twitter, back
when it was still Twitter going to go for live rights, Is
Facebook now meta going to go for live rights.
And I think one of those challenges was the monetization
(21:48):
piece amongst other things. So usually when we're talking
about vertical video, it's not that maybe you know in a direct
to consumer platform they might not be able to set this up.
But realistically at the moment we're really talking about doing
this on existing third party social media platforms like a
TikTok. And does it do those platforms
at the moment or do we think offer a legitimate way to
(22:09):
monetize this type of content when we think about how
expensive it is to acquire live rights to begin with?
You know, what are the challenges associated with
potentially trying to do this orlook at this as a viable model?
Well, I I do think the, the opportunity to monetize is
there. What I don't believe I'd love to
hear from anyone if they know otherwise is that the notion of
(22:32):
programmatic video advertising in a vertical format.
I think it's pretty early stagesfor for live, live sports like I
do believe actually I think evenon things like Shorts and
Tiktok, they're more like sponsored posts than they are
say traditional advertising. So there is some, there's
(22:52):
traditional ways to monetise in that way where you can get a
traditional advertising revenue or Rev share with the platform
of choice if you're working withthem. e-commerce is now getting
much more robust on social platforms in the video.
So video, the vertical video format allows if you can get a
higher engagement, you can just keep driving people to those
(23:12):
platforms. One thing that YouTube is
getting better and better at is bringing e-commerce more to
life. So if you are watching a video,
I've seen videos with a sponsored post actually at the
bottom of the vertical video. Actually, sorry that wasn't
Facebook were doing that. So if you're watching a a video
(23:32):
in a vertical format at the bottom overlaid across, it was
actually an ad that was half, half transparent.
So they're bringing in that advertising sort of almost that
that native overlay or an overlay on the vertical video to
drive people to either call to actions from the video or to
just third party ads that are running over the top of the
(23:54):
content. So that will innately drive a
bit more revenue out of verticalvideo whether it's live or non
live, probably it's that's probably going to mainly be non
live. And the other way is obviously
just driving further engagement on platforms that serve as
vertical video because vertical video seems to be growing at an
incredible rate. You think about TikTok, what
(24:14):
video short, what shorts are on YouTube now every, every
platform even, I don't know if you've even seen on Twitter.
Now if you watch a video on Twitter and scroll up on any
video you watch and now it starts serving you other videos.
So I think everyone's just goingto keep pushing into this video
space and therefore monetizationwill get better and better and
better and more competitive and where live sports particularly
(24:38):
plays a a role as it can normally drive a higher premium
on those CPMS which makes it more attractive for all partners
and parties to use. Finally, the one thing I think
that is potentially the interesting part in all of this
is the the, the targeting aspect.
Those social media platforms allow really sort of hyper
targeting to those audiences. So if you wanted to run
(25:01):
advertising in and around some of the video content, you can be
super targeted who that is reaching in terms of
geographical split, demographicsetcetera to a way that can be
both used by the sports propertyas well as potentially partners
or advertisers if they want to leverage that.
So I'm sure that which which thenet benefit could be for
example, you could have a a video playing of the next match
(25:25):
playing. Let's say that the Hammers are
playing their next game and Stratford and they're looking
for people to buy tickets. They could service people and
it's last mint, they've got a few extra seats leftover.
They can just target people within East London to do so if
they want to and choose to. So that's the hyper targeting
that is available now depending on how much they're willing to
pay for that that access and that specificity.
(25:48):
In terms of the just thinking you know, I've we can use the
Premier League for example. I've got my deal in place with
Sky Sports and TNT and Amazon, you know.
How difficult do you think it would be at that point to sort
of retroactively say, hey, we also want to look at doing this
on our TikTok channels or doing this on YouTube shorts or
whatever particular channel you want to do that on.
(26:09):
How difficult do you think that is to retroactively sort of
embed some of that into it or isit something to say, you know,
for example, at the moment the Premier League?
Only 52% of their games get shown to those.
You know is it one of those remaining 48% or it's some sort
of other non premium game where they try to do those sorts of
things, You know how does, how does that, how do you think that
(26:29):
works for those rights holders? Are you referring to like the
live live video? Correct.
Yeah. So I mean interesting when we
had we had one football on the the pod a couple of weeks ago,
right. And obviously I'm suspecting
they will lean into it more and more and more as well.
You know providing a platform for those non live those non
premium rights perhaps to be accessible on in those formats
(26:53):
and on those platforms. I mean we had we have heard on
this pod earlier in the day about what Bundesliga was
trialling with TikTok and just with vertical video and I I
think you you can you definitelysee that as a as a possible Ave.
just to make the make those games more discoverable.
But ultimately we've seen a few has been a lot of trial and
error on that vertical format and indeed across different
(27:14):
platforms and obviously it's notset the world on fire.
So I'm not sure where we can getto on say vertical video
providing a new lease of life onsome of those rights.
I think highlights really is this bread and butter.
You know that the highlights aregreat for for giving people a
taste and in a vertical format you can just focus in on what
(27:35):
you need to focus on rather thansitting there and just watching
and hoping and waiting for something to happen.
You know the SIM, SIM sports that just resonates so well with
which you can probably have a have a take at what we think are
some of those sports in a second.
But yeah, I think, I think vertical has a role to play, but
I think it's going to struggle to ever unlock a new opportunity
for live sports that I didn't have.
Yeah. And to be fair, I probably
(27:56):
didn't phrase that question. It's probably not going to come
from the rights holders necessarily, probably come from
a Sky Sports wanting to broaden the reach of one of theirs as
opposed to the Premier League maybe necessarily going in doing
this. But you know from a moving from
monetization talking to engagement, why particularly?
You know, do you think this is aa better strategy?
We talked a little bit about this as a way to overlay
statistics into this. There's a way, like said, the
(28:18):
chat functions. I thought something that was
interesting is the one that runsthe OTT awards, so shout out to
anyone wanting to show up to that evening.
I'm sure someone from our team would love to talk to you about
getting you out to Madrid this year and attending the OTT
awards, even if you've not been shortlisted.
But one of the, I believe the winner of the innovation of the
year last year was actually broadcast done by Media Pro,
(28:38):
broadcasting a La Liga game directly onto Tiktok.
And one of the things they talked about within their
submission was using, you know, different social media platform
influencers to basically offer alternative commentary the way
we've seen with the Manning cast.
You know, I think that's some ofthe interesting stuff there.
When you think about the Gen. Z audience, not only are they
wanting to watch in vertical as opposed to the traditional
(28:59):
linear, you know, wide format, they're probably not wanting to
listen to the old traditional commentators or probably are
wanting to listen to something alittle bit different.
Yeah. Well, I think one thing that
that the vertical that leaning into vertical works really well
for sports is we talk a lot about discoverability as an
issue. And think if you're on, let's
say you're on TikTok, you're on YouTube shorts, etcetera.
And you just flick to the next video and all of a sudden
(29:22):
there's a live feed of the game on on your on your phone all of
a sudden out of by accident you stumble across it.
That discoverability of us almost just gets completely,
completely unlocked as a result of a result of that.
So I do think there's a play there where it can.
You know, the vertical video format comes up and maybe it's
only playing for a short amount of time, but then there's a call
(29:43):
to action to drive people to perhaps the the full widescreen,
widescreen version that could. That could definitely play a
role to sort of open up to new audiences.
I can't remember what the question was, though.
Was it engagement? Wasn't it?
Engagement. Well, yeah, we're talking about
engagement. Yeah.
So I I think just that access tothose audiences are engaging the
vertical format because otherwise they won't ever
(30:05):
stumble across watching, watching the game in a
traditional format. You know, I think in my view the
mobile is the first screen. It's normally talked about as a
second screen experience. But realistically I have an I
make this argument a lot is those sports that you know when
people put live sports on these today's that's actually like the
background noise to people who are engaging in and using their
(30:26):
phone. So you know that's why the NFL
is so great as a as a live sports product because not
because people watch it for fourhours, but actually allows them
to play around on their phone, engage in people, talk with
people not necessarily NFL related, do whatever they like
in between plays. So they can dip in, in and out
of focus rather having to stay half focused all the way
(30:48):
through. So that that that's really for
me where the opportunity lies. It engages much younger
audiences because it just puts you in front of them, even if
it's by by accident. And ultimately, we're all
talking constantly about how do we engage younger audiences and
even if it's not what they want,if we find a way to get in front
of them, even if it is by accident, that is better than
not being found at all. Yeah, I'm just looking through
(31:10):
some of the statistics from thatlittle ego match.
So I mentioned one innovation ofthe year and they said within
there they had 506,000 unique viewers, they had 1.2 million
likes and they had 7000 shares. And I think the impression part
is they had 68,000 comments in the chat.
You know, that seems like quite a high level of engagement just
(31:31):
going on there. Now, granted, this is an awards
application, so we'll take everything with a pinch of salt.
How many of those 68,000 comments were legitimately about
the game and somewhere else? I don't know, but you know
they're good looking stats. Did you say half a million views
but 1.2 million likes? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out
how the 1.2 million views are like.
Sorry, how the unique viewers isless than the total number of
(31:55):
likes. I don't know if that's because a
view has to be a certain length of time.
I don't know Nick. I'm just reading off the
application verbatim. Those confidential applications
that we're not supposed to talk about.
Oh, a year later should be fine,but but I I guess it's probably
a time a time limit on those. But nevertheless, you know
that's the thing with those formats is that you you see this
(32:17):
incredible amount of engagement on on any sort of video, video,
vertical video format, whether it be live or or non live.
You go to Instagram these days and the the amount of post you
see, I mean Twitter gets a bad rap right in terms of the types
of people that go onto Twitter and write quite bad stuff on
there but Instagram is not much better.
(32:39):
I can tell you I've I've looked through some of the stuff I've
seen posted on from from athletes and it's pretty pretty
gruesome reading. So yes, engagement's good, but
not all engagement is good, I guess.
For sure. And moving forward, just talking
about different formats and different sports and this can
either be from just a logistics perspective but also from an
(32:59):
opportunities perspective. You know, we've talked about
cricket makes a lot of sense. Something like baseball could
make sense if you were able to blend in some of the other
angles. You know, things like racing
appear to have worked well because you can sort of track
the way they're coming down. But then there's also the
question of ultimately, you know, we just talked about
football and La Liga performing very well, but certainly it does
(33:21):
seem like certain sports would struggle more with a vertical
format than perhaps other sports.
So I guess purely from a tech side, do you see some sports or
maybe perhaps lean into this vertical format before we maybe
talk about where the opportunities live, maybe from a
business perspective? Yeah, I think from the from the
non live and the highlighter perspective, some sports really
do get a lot of value out of theformat.
(33:42):
Cricket's a great one. I think baseball's a good one.
I've seen basketball highlights,they do work quite well on that.
Exception is when they pass the ball and it's kind of out of
shot because it's a bit zoomed in.
You miss a bit of those plays. I think the NFL is OK on the
vertical format, but it actuallyworks really well.
They use those unique camera angles, you know, the there's a,
you know the ones I've talked about over there like.
(34:03):
Thick Cam Yeah, the spider cam'sincredible.
The fix, the fix shot. I don't know there's a term for
it, but the one where like holdsthe person in the middle of the
the the action the whole time and everything else moves
around. They look amazing when you see
players darting in and around and breaking tackles and all
those sorts of things, but the camera angle, what brings brings
that to life? It actually it's making the
vertical video work rather than being an amplifier.
(34:27):
Outside of those, I I'm trying to think of anything else, I
think. Golf would be good if you had it
from the golf shop, being able to see that go off.
Yeah, yeah, golf's really good now.
Particularly how they have the new shot.
Trace. Well, not the the new.
It's been around for years now but they're using it pretty much
everywhere now. They've made it much more
accessible. And even now you see creators or
I keep, I keep interchanging between this.
But influencers who are like golfing influencers, they can
(34:50):
use their own smartphone. And you, as in you could go to
the golf course, actually use your smartphone for the shot
tracer, and somehow the app is able to follow the ball behind
you. So you get that PGA style
experience by your mate filming behind you.
It's pretty pretty awesome. Without that though, watching
cricket and watching golf these days is pretty dull.
If you don't see where the ball,which direction the ball's
(35:10):
going. Which is crazy to think when I
used to watch golf as a kid, I'll be like, watching it, and
they show the sky and then there's a ball there somewhere
in the white in the clouds and then magically just pops up and
like, how on earth did the cameraman follow that video,
follow that ball the whole way? And I don't think they actually
do anything, like just guessing.And then all of a sudden they
they get to it really quickly when it lands.
(35:31):
But yeah, I think golf's a greatgreat.
Golf. I was going to say it sounds
like my real life golf, Nick, where I hit the ball and I kind
of stare where I think the ball's landing and if it doesn't
land there, I'm screwed. Yeah, I pretend I don't know
where my ball went because it normally went across the other
other fairway. Actually, the other one is
tennis does work really well in the highlights for like just
sits. It sits perfectly in that
vertical screen because actuallyif you think watching it
horizontally you just get a lot of wastage on the sides of the
(35:54):
the core. So it doesn't take much for
those those to really just be filtered into into that sort of
experience. Yeah, that makes sense.
And in terms of, it's almost. Kind of backed our conversation
around monetization, but more the specific opportunities for
sports. So you know we referenced you
know what Burnley has done with TikTok or what the women's EUR
was able to do. You know, what's the opportunity
for vertical formats just in terms of, you know, like we
(36:16):
said, I think OTT is becoming more accessible from a
technology perspective, but who perhaps should be looking at
doing this to monetize that, youknow isn't necessarily going to
have access to the more traditional linear broadcast
money. Well, what I think I'd be the
ones who should really focus on this focus a lot of attention in
my view are the big, you know, international streaming players
(36:39):
because they have audiences bothboth on mobile phones across the
world and indeed through traditional channels.
So to get people on the road andon the go to get those casual
fans or you know, those fans at night might not be super
passionate, but you give them a chance.
Actually, you know what, I mightwatch this while I'm out and
about and put it, put it somewhere to to engage with.
Otherwise, I think this day and age, people's time is so
(37:01):
precious they if it's not in a comfortable place, not easy to
watch, they just won't watch it.So they have to, in my view lean
into and have it on the verticalformat.
So like in the zone, like an Amazon Prime, all those bigger,
bigger guys have to have some sort of option.
And even if the option for now is as simple as you go from a
horizontal shot to the vertical shot and for some sports it just
(37:23):
takes the middle of the feed, that is better than some sort of
where you do really need someoneprobably having a bit more
attention on what's in shot at the time.
You know, like football would bea great example of that where
you probably you need some pretty good camera work to make
sure it stays in the shot, otherwise things could easily
fall, fall out of by the wayside.
So yeah, I I do think just all streaming players have to spend
(37:45):
more time focusing on how they can bring this to life.
I think there's some great tech enablers that Media Media Pro
example's a good one. We've seen a bunch more recently
of people trying to do more in this space.
So I just think we have to see more and more of those
incumbents I suppose leaning into it and yeah like you sort
of alluded to before less pressure on perhaps some of the
sports properties and more pressure on those broadcasters
(38:07):
to innovate and make the the phone more valuable as a as a
live sports, live sports experience.
One thing I I do think I didn't really touch on much is I I
remember going to that YouTube event where they sort of talking
about some of the the numbers and shorts was growing at an
insane rate right. The vertical format and one one
example they had was it was likeinstruction videos on how to it
(38:29):
was AI think it was a cricketingvideo and their their metric
success was an average watch time of 2.5 times the video.
So normally you're talking about20%, fifty percent, 60% of a
video maybe won't be success. This is 302 hundred and 50% or
150% watch time. They're creating these videos
(38:52):
and loops that people have to watch two or three times to get
the full experience of. Otherwise I miss a bit of what's
going on. So I just think that's the same
for us to be talking about is that the the game is completely
changed on how you measure success in this vertical format.
It is about keeping people watching the same video a couple
of times rather than just ratherthan just getting to watch for a
few seconds and that's job done.Which I think kind of nicely
(39:15):
leads us into, you know, I'm notlike I'm not sure where I'm out
of my numbers, but we're trying to get our 10 things, we had
them lined up whether or not I'mkeeping a track of numbers
because we're moving around going off piece.
Let's talk about the tech and sort of some of the things that
are going to need to be available to do that.
You know, one of the examples was the German Football League
Super Cup, which was I think produced by Scott Deutschland.
They did that with, you know, viz.
(39:36):
RT who's a company that we've worked with in the past in terms
of just some of the tech stuff that needs to be, you know, make
this possible. And I think one of the things
they talked about with the TikTok production that they did
in the German Cup was sort of the watch party and some of
those social elements. You sure think about some of
those companies that. You know, it's not just the
traditional broadcasted, you know, you might do with other
(39:57):
things. You're going to have some of
those other companies I'm tryingto remember who are the ones,
Nick, during lockdown that theirwhole business model was to make
sure that if you were streaming with your friends, they would
take into account latency. So you could have the watch
party and it would be like, maybe, yeah, yeah.
So really cool technology, right?
Really cool technology where youyou basically wherever you are
(40:19):
in the world, it it it it's, it's, it's really cool to watch.
So even if you come in and join the video at different times,
they basically slow down and speed up bit rates.
So they eventually you come In Sync after a few seconds and
then you watch at the same time.It's really, really cool stuff
and I think there's still a big marketplace for it.
You know, I think we've seen a couple of the major US networks
lean into that also bringing in influencers or ex athletes to
(40:40):
watch with fans, which is quite a cool concept.
So I think you'll still see the watch together, watch together
formats continue to be available.
Just what? What's the scalability of that?
I just, I just don't know. I haven't seen a lot of data on
that recently. Yeah, But you know, I think the
point I'm trying to get is sort of where, you know, just are
there other parts do you think that are perhaps currently
limited? You know, I think one of the
things we talked about, it's like it's always great to have
(41:01):
these ideas and these ambitions to do these things.
But you need the tech to be ableto actually distribute.
And I know, say and jog our friend over the Disney hot star
was talking about, you know, thethe special camera set up they
were going to have specifically to be able to perform what
they're going to do for the ICC Cricket World Cup, making sure
that they could have all the different angles as the ball
would. Move into play.
You know, what are you know? Do you think that this is
(41:23):
something that's you know too far away or something that
they've just not focused on yet but could very easily address?
Well, I think that's a, it's a good point where a couple years
ago when you know, we spoke to Andreas Hayden on the pod of one
of the first episodes on this pod.
I'm not sure if he said it on air or off here, but he he
definitely talked about the factthat when they're doing the,
when they trialed the vertical format, literally all they had
(41:46):
to do was just turn the camera on its side and film it right,
which which sounds pretty primitive, but that's actually
literally how they did the testing and then they were able
to use it from there. Whereas you know what they're
going to have to have is more dedicated technology and
dedicated camera tech to be ableto service that.
So the the quality of the outputis to standard.
(42:09):
I think one thing you mentioned Sanjog, I think it's a really
important point as well is aboutthe Indian market being so
smartphone first that you know we've talked about briefly
before, but they almost bypassedthe laptop and even tablet era
went straight to smartphones. So they're so used to watching
things on a smartphone device. I do think you're going to
(42:31):
continue to see more and more innovation come out of out of
the Indian market because they are.
So they have it so centrally focused in their approach on how
they talk to fans and engage with fans and produce that sort
of content. And I think other technologies
that you're going to continue tosee play a big role is is
artificial intelligence and AI where there's companies like
(42:52):
Magnify and also WSC and others that and also even ones like
grab you on the production side that they're leaning more into
the AI side. And they will allow those
highlights packages to be created a click of a couple of
buttons and to those vertical formats to be made even if they
are using horizontal traditionalcameras.
That will make it easier and easier for more and more of
(43:14):
those video formats or vertical formats to be used.
I mean they're already doing this, but it still feels like
we're only just the the beginning point and most of
that's around the highlights side.
So how that transitions into to the live game will be what we
really have to follow. Well, great job hitting the
India point because that was oneof our ten points.
So we can take that off our box of things but just as a kind of
(43:34):
a, a sign off here, Nick, you know we've talked about we we
still are relatively in the infancy of the vertical video
format. Do you have a prediction whether
you want to be bold about or whether you want to be realistic
about it. You know, if we do this podcast
and say 12 months time, do you expect this to be something
that's continued to grow or do you think it might be something
that? It's like some of the other
things we've seen where it kind of proliferates for a little bit
(43:57):
and then eventually we kind of go back to what we've always
had. Yeah we we do do a lot of that
in, in the industry, right. I I do think you'll see more and
more lean into it. I think that you know the IC CS
putting a lot of investment intoit, nearly every match is going
to be in the in the vertical format.
And so that will be I think a bit of a there could be a bit of
(44:18):
a spark or igniter for major events and other sports
properties to lean into it further because they are having
such an array of activity aroundthe vertical format.
So I'd love to see the numbers after the ICC World Cup and to
see if that has really deliveredwhat you know Disney Hot Star
are expecting and indeed ICC is expecting in those instances.
And if it does, I think you're going to continue to see more
(44:40):
and more of it. The challenge is, as I said,
it's the fact that broadcasters pretty much have to look at this
one by one and whether these these other markets that aren't
so smartphone first are going toadopt in the same way.
But hey, if it's going to work in India, that's a good good
start for anyone. Yeah, well, it's another further
sales pitch to come to the Sports per Madrid event later in
(45:00):
November because Sanjag will be present.
So, Nick, that'll give us an opportunity because by then
he'll surely have the digital footprint of how everything
performs. So we'll be able to hear it
from, I believe the proverbial saying is directly from the
horse's mouth, and we'll be ableto to understand how that
performed and, you know, be a great place for everyone else to
hear how that went. Maybe that's what we do when we
find him in Madrid. We'll hunt him down and whether
(45:21):
he likes or not, we'll keep asking the question until he
gives us an answer. Absolutely, because we are
persistent. If nothing else, good stuff.
Awesome. Thank you everybody for joining
us this week. Before you go, myself and Nick
would just like to thank you fortuning into this episode of
Stream Time. If you found the episode
insightful, please make sure youlike and subscribe on whichever
platform you listen to. As a growing podcast, we'd
(45:42):
greatly appreciate your support in sharing or writing a review.
Ultimately want this podcast to not only entertain you, but also
hopefully help you navigate the digital sports landscape.
If you have any feedback on previous episodes or any topics
and speakers you'd like to hear from in the future, please don't
hesitate to reach out. You can find myself and Nick
Meacham on LinkedIn or on Twitter.
My Twitter handle is at Sports Pro Chris.
(46:04):
One Nick can be found at Sports Pro Nick.
Of course, if you want to stay fully up to date on the sports
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Media website or sign up to one of our several newsletters to
make sure you don't miss anything.
Once again, thank you and we look forward to you joining us
next week on the Stream Time Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the next episode of Stream
Time Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the
community lead, joined as alwaysby our CEO, Nick Meacham.
Now today, Nick, we're going to be talking about vertical video
formats and sports content and all the craze.
You know the different things with TikTok Instagram reels.
But before we get into it even, we're going to be talking about
vertical video. I'm going to ask you, do you
have favorite athletes for two categories, for those that have
(00:33):
been vertically blessed and those that are, perhaps we could
say, vertically challenged? Oh, good, good question.
I mean, the ones that really jump out when you you talk about
vertically blessed athletes is thinking football.
I'm thinking soccer. I'm thinking Peter Crouch.
You know, you see him running around on a football field.
(00:56):
He'd never looked like he was supposed to be there, yet he was
prolific goal scorer, played forEngland, but even when he had
the ball, he just didn't look like he was supposed to be
there, yet somehow made that lankiness work for him better
than anyone has ever done before.
And then obviously in basketballis a big one, right?
Like, you think about Manute Bowl.
(01:18):
How tall was HE676? Or is that 2 something like that
2? 230 centimetres, I guess
something like that. 225. And then that photo next to
Mugsy Bogues. You've seen that one, surely?
Right Where Mugsy? Yeah, Mugsy Bogues is up five,
Three. So what's that?
It's like 160 centimetres tall. Like, imagine those guys
(01:39):
playing, playing together on thesame team.
Will be quite, quite a laugh, but I'm trying to wreck my brain
of any other players that stick to mine.
What about you? So I'll take the easier one on
the tall people and I'm going togo Shaquille O'Neal.
But the reason I'm going to do this because there's always the
GOAT debate, you know, Michael or LeBron.
I'm going to go on a different angle and say Shaquille O'Neal
is the most single dominant athlete I've ever personally
(02:01):
watched in my lifetime. I would say there's been people
that have been more skilled thanhim, but in terms of just a man
that was 7 foot 1300 plus poundsthat moved like a ballerina,
I've never seen an individual dominated team sport and any
team sport, period, the way Shaquille O'Neal did.
I mean it was just, I thought itwas phenomenal watching.
Like, the only way people could stop him was they invented the
(02:22):
hacker shack. They basically said we actually
can't stop you other than just fouling you.
So teams had to, you know, structure their rosters to make
sure they had enough fouls to spare in the game.
So in terms of the tall people, I'm going to go Shaq because I
like I said any sport. I've never seen anyone more
physically dominant than him. Yeah, I I remember when he first
came into the league, he was shredded.
(02:43):
He was absolutely ripped. Like, what a beast and a man.
And then because everyone was failing him like crazy, he just
put on loads of weight, right? People thought he was getting
lazy, but it was basically to combat the, the hacker shack
where he was getting fouled relentlessly, right?
And it worked. A guy who has to run up the
court constantly for all game long, put on weight and actually
just use it to his advantage. Probably will never be a player
(03:06):
like that that again in the game.
I I hasten to think these days, particularly in basketball,
where the the three pointer counts so much, everyone's got
to try and shoot a three every now and again, even if you're a
centre. Yeah, basketball does seem to
have shifted a little bit in terms of the short people.
I'm going to go to the NFL though, Nick.
Before we go, before we go into the the, the, the short, the
shorts guys, I've got, I've got one other one for you.
(03:29):
Obviously. You know my volleyball roots as
well. Pop quiz.
Do you know who's in the Hall ofFame for both the American
Volleyball Federation or Association and the NBA or
basketball? Sorry, the Naismith Basketball
Hall of Fame. Not typically the NBA.
He Is it Luke Walton or is it his dad?
(03:49):
Oh, that's a really good show, because he's actually quite
good. But it is Wilt Chamberlain.
Oh gosh, yeah. So I think, I think I don't know
the exact story and someone definitely could look it up and
I was, if I was a bit more prepared, I probably would have.
But I think after he stopped playing basketball, he then went
and like started playing, playing volleyball and I think
was just being Wilt Chamberlain,just big, massive 7 foot four
(04:13):
guy dominating. And using his heart to
advantage. So that's a bit of a random one
for those that don't haven't don't know will Chamberlain as
well. Like, I mean of his he's
arguably he's arguably in the GOAT conversation for the NBA.
But given his or did he score like 100 points in a game and
averaged like 4050 points of game because he could And then
(04:34):
the next season he decided I'm just going to then he have a
lot. Then he went like to going crazy
on assists one season just to prove that he could.
I know there's a lot of asterisks around his award or
his records because he put us some absolutely ridiculous
numbers that like you just can'ttouch anymore sort of thing.
And part of it. He was like the only 7 footer at
(04:55):
the time, but I do know he set some statistics that are just
sort of never going to be touched.
Wasn't back then, before they had goaltending as well.
The ball could kind of down block stats possibly.
Yeah, because I remember seeing some stuff like Bill Russell.
Sorry for those who don't followthe basketball taking going down
a really big rabbit hole here, but they just wouldn't block
(05:16):
ball basically from nearly goingin the in the rim when they were
when they were getting close. So anyway, definitely help us to
be tall. That's the that's the thing we
learn there. Absolutely.
But I am going to shout my shortguy, which is Darren Sproles NFL
guy. Not everyone might not know
this, but he's only 5 foot six so I'll let Nick leave it to the
centimeters on that one. But you know, Terrence Sproles
had nearly a 10 year career in the NFL.
(05:37):
At 5 foot six, that is incredibly unheard of.
And not only was he 5-6 and had a long, he was actually a very
good football player. So I just want to give a prop
shout out to him because you know, not a lot of guys in the
NFL, you know, sport known for its physicality.
To be able to take the wear and tear at that size, I think it's
quite impressive. Have you seen the guy from the
(05:58):
Cowboys that they drafted? He spawn.
Yeah, have you seen the photo ofhim?
There's like a photo here next to one of the the offensive
lineman. And it looks like a little 5
year old going to the park with his with his dad he it's it's
absolutely insane. How do you put those two guys on
the field together? I I don't understand.
But speaking, I'm going to the park with his dad.
Do you know the story behind that?
(06:19):
No, no, his dad is actually a scout for the NBA or sorry for
the Dallas Cowboys. When he got drafted, he got to
call his son and said, hey son, would you like to come to work
with me next week? That that is pretty cool for the
dad, that's for sure. It's a great it's a great social
media clip. You'll find it on any of the
platforms we might be talking about later.
(06:41):
OK, who about? Short footballers.
Any footballers? Do you know?
Can you think of anything that come to mind?
I know, I see. He's pretty sure.
I don't know how tall. He's about 11 meter 70 maybe.
So what's that? That's 5859 for those playing at
home. Apparently Alexis Sanchez was
55, which I am surprised by. I didn't think it was that
(07:03):
short. But yeah, these days you have to
be basically, if you want to be successful athlete, you have to
be tall and massive and fast andbasically everything.
One thing I knew when I was growing up at school though, the
short people were always way faster than the tall people.
Always. Yeah, in athletics in in most
sports the the basically the tall people are also fast.
(07:24):
You don't see a lot of people who are like 5-5 as sprinters or
even long distance runners. They're all like lanky and.
I wonder what happens there. I wonder why is there like this?
Maybe a ceiling when you've onlygot a certain range in your
gait? Anyone who's playing at home
who's exercise scientist? I left exercise science after a
year and focused on business. Anyone who knows the answer to
(07:47):
that, I'd be very intrigued. Why?
Sure. People who get really, really
fast can't get fast enough to bebasically Usain Bolt.
Well, Usain Bolt's a great one because he's actually quite tall
or at least compared to the restcompetition.
But we will avoid the height, you know, conversation any
further. But we will continue to talk
about vertical. We'll just talk about it in a
(08:07):
video format. So today we kind of want to go
through and talk about this sortof the trends we're seeing when
it comes to vertical formats in terms of video consumption.
And we're kind of going to go through sort of 10 points that
we kind of want to work our way through.
And part of this, you know, I think started Nick, yeah, I
think back Snapchat really kind of started a lot of this with
some of their initial media, Instagram and Facebook started
(08:30):
moving towards reels. But I do feel like a lot of this
has really been pushed with the rise in TikTok in the last
couple of years and there's beena lot of experimentation with
it. But just kind of getting a sense
of why the why this is gaining traction, the direction it's
heading, what are some of the challenges involved with it and
just kind of deep dive into specifically the vertical
format. So you know, maybe perhaps you
(08:50):
know, just kind of give a general idea of sort of where
we're at in terms of some of thepeople, some of the case studies
that we're seeing of where vertical formats have been used
for live distribution. It is amazing to think that
we've been living in this smartphone world for so long
now, but yet the notion and the concept of the vertical video
particularly live is still pretty in its infancy really.
(09:12):
I mean even vertical video for like the creator world and
influences is, is, is becoming more and more prevalent as we'll
probably touch a little bit on as we go along, but.
It still feels like we've only just scratched the surface on
this video, video, vertical video.
I can't even say the words. I think to practice that tongue
twister a little bit more. Vertical video, vertical video,
(09:34):
vertical video. Got it.
OK. But yeah, it's just interesting
to see how slow we've been to get to this pace.
So it's going to be, I think, aninteresting topic to dig in.
One other question I did have for you before we do.
You ever been a Snapchat user? So I was a Snapchat user back in
the day, probably ended when I got out of university.
I don't really use Snapchat all that often anymore.
(09:55):
Don't quite honestly. I apologize to some of our
listeners who I know where couldsnap Ivan used in a long time.
I'm not 100% sure why I still have the app but back in the day
was a huge Snapchat user was definitely the way like it's
just something better about communicating through images and
short videos and was sending a text message or it's just a
great way to capture the moment you were in.
(10:17):
But it it's been a while but I think that's as much as my own
personal usage. As much as my sort of friend
group is sort of changed, we don't communicate like that
anymore. Yeah.
Well, I think that they lent into that whole anonymity and
videos and images that would disappear after a certain amount
of time, right? And I think that was their
special source initially, but then they evolved quite a lot.
(10:37):
I remember talking to some of the guys at Snap and they really
focused on being an AR business more than.
That sort of social platform, yet I don't really think anyone
thinks of them like that outsidemaybe in the business sense
about how can you create some cool fun things that young
people can use. I do when I've been travelling
seeing a lots of younger people using using Snapchat as their
(11:00):
their main sort of source of source of I guess conversation
or connection with people. So.
Yeah, it's interesting to see just how that hasn't really gone
to the places I thought it wouldwhen I when it first popped up.
I thought it would continue to grow scale, but it seems like
others have maybe moved around it quick, very quickly and kept
it at Bay. Yeah, it does feel like more of
a communication app, at least inmy experiences, because I can
(11:23):
tell you the university footballteam I still coach, you know, 18
to 21 year olds, they're all still very active on Snapchat.
But yeah, I think it's much moreabout sending those personal
messages and communicating is less so than what you see from
Tiktok or Instagram with the Reels where it's more about a
content platform. I'm sure Snap would say that
they are content platform, but yeah, I just don't know if that
(11:45):
necessarily reflects what I've seen in terms of usage from
people, but I I maybe not their target audience anymore.
Well, they remember that they've, they had those glasses
as well. Gosh, I'm sounding old here.
Can I talking about those? All the kids use these days but
there you go, I'm they see the glasses.
I actually saw them in the there's a second hand store
around the corner. I just happened to walk in there
(12:05):
looking for something for my formy son who is half to something
specific and I went in there andI saw these the Snapchat goggles
in there. I'm like I wonder if they're
even like a collector's item these days because they came and
went so quickly. But anyway, they don't really do
much for the video vertical video format.
So already going very off topic.Yeah, so there you go.
But you know, like we said, one of the things we are seeing
(12:26):
people lean into probably more on the TikTok side of things.
You know, most recently we've seen the ICC in the Cricket
World Cup with some of the work that they're doing with Disney
Star in India we saw the the Qatar Grand Prix on Sky Sky
Deutschland on TikTok. There were a couple of instances
last year where La Liga was doing some individual games with
the work they were doing. Media pro.
(12:47):
I'm trying to think as well. We'll probably talk about some
of the opportunities but you know someone like Burnley
Women's Football Club have been using TikTok.
So we are starting to see it in a range of different sports in
different areas at the moment. But no one's I don't.
It feels like no one's quite made a a long term effort.
It seems like they're in sort ofsmall usage cases.
No one's necessarily, maybe outside the Burnley example.
(13:09):
Really committed to kind of a long term approach on this.
No, completely. I I think what's been
interesting that you've given some great examples of
organizations that have dabbled.And I do just wonder what what
they're looking for, what success looks like in these
situations because quite often the examples that we're
referring to are typically builtaround live sports.
(13:31):
But this day and age we we know that going through a smartphone
and watching live sports isn't really the main platform for
that. Unless I just it's not the main
platform. People will go to a connected TV
or a big as big as device as possible to watch live sports.
And where the phone comes to life is for all the non live
related content. So I think we've been all hoping
(13:53):
there's a bit of a Holy Grail tocome from the vertical video
format for live, but it just hasn't really reared its head in
probably the way a lot of peoplewere hoping.
But what has been interesting, you know, TikTok, you mentioned
they actually were sponsors and partners of what UA for EUR the,
you know, the Burnley Football Club, as you mentioned, a bunch
of rugby properties including the Six Nations, the women's,
(14:14):
the women's Six Nations. And so they've they've they've
definitely not, they've really gone all into all the NS
probably stretched for a multi multi billion dollar global
platform, but invested a lot of time and effort into engaging
with this space probably for different reasons.
My my view on like Tik Tok's moves are probably in a little
bit of brand perception as well across Europe, as well as the
(14:39):
opportunity to test the video and vertical formats.
So I think there's still plenty of work to be done for TikTok in
particular to keep engaging withsports in a way that really does
drive value for all parties other than just being another
another sector on on their on their platform itself.
You know, those those longer dwell times, the vertical video
(15:01):
they hope to create. It's still just I think a long
way to go before we actually seethat.
Yeah. And to be clear, I think really
what we're talking about throughthis podcast is going to be the
live sports side. I think we all can recognise the
value that these platforms can have for highlights or the
shoulder content in between matches where you're having
promotional or reviews like those sorts of things.
I think we all understand how that works pretty simply, but
(15:23):
it's more specifically the the distribution of live content
that I think they were referringto.
So I'm going to try to stay on point with kind of talking about
our ten points. So those are some examples that
if you were wondering who's beendoing that, there are some other
examples out there. But I guess that next one is
kind of looking at why we're getting to hearing some of those
kind of changing consumer habits.
And there was a study that was done by some of our friends at
(15:43):
La Liga Tech. I'm in Nielsen and I think the
survey had something like 20,000people globally.
And one of the things was, you know, 46% of those respondents
within the younger age gap, which is 34 years and younger
said they prefer to watch eventson their smartphones or tablets.
So you're almost looking at 50% of that younger demographic
wants to watch things on those devices, which as you say that's
(16:06):
sort of a change in habits, you know, used to be watching
everything on the big screens and now you know 50% of that
upcoming generation is basicallysaying that they do want to
watch things on those different devices.
So you know, is this something atrend I guess you think is going
to push the sports industry to further consider this?
Oh, it's a good question. I I think they're going to keep
(16:26):
trying it because the mobile phone is such an important
device for everyone and it keepsbeing, you know, central part of
your lives, I think. Be Personally, I'm finding it
tough sometimes to put my phone down, even if it's like it's
almost like a reflex to look at your phone when you're got a
spare few seconds. I think being prioritising the
mobile experience more than the traditional model just has to be
(16:49):
the priority for everyone involved in in content,
particularly around the sports base.
Just the question is whether there's an opportunity in live
or not and I think we're we're still hoping to see some of
that. We'll, I don't know if it's the
time to talk about some of thoseexamples yet, but there are some
examples which I I like the concept of like the ICC one you
mentioned where they will mix between vertical video as in
(17:12):
just for those that aren't familiar with Cricket, it's
quite vertical in its broadcast production.
You know, the pitch they play onis vertical.
Think about. Getting more of like a longer
form lens on say maybe baseball perhaps where you just see the
picture and and the capture. I mean most of our I think good
chunk of our audience is probably you British base.
So they probably would understand that quite
(17:32):
comfortably. So it but it fits really well in
that vertical format and that they're going to lace that with
having split screen SO2 horizontal images running up and
above below each other, which could be either alternate camera
views. And or a mix of stats and and
insights around around the game and maybe commentators and so
forth which makes a truckload ofsense.
(17:53):
And I think would if you you really are changing the way
their production's created intertwining the vertical format
and the horizontal split screen.All of a sudden I think you have
got a bit more of an an engagingexperience, particularly if you
also add the layer of interactivity into that as well
where some of that data might beinteractive, so.
Yeah, I think there's still plenty of work to be done.
(18:15):
We're finally seeing some scenesof true innovation on the that
layer of production. But the jury's out whether
that's going to drive serious, serious engagement and increase
in watch times. On for on smartphones Hello
everyone, just a brief interruption.
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(18:36):
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(18:58):
discount. When going to check out, please
type in the word all one word stream time 20.
That is stream time and then thenumber 22 zero.
Hope you guys enjoy the rest of the podcast and we hope to see
you in Madrid. Well that that's really
interesting that you mentioned this sort of split screen
approach to that because within there they also talked about the
(19:19):
fact that something like 51% of Gen.
Z when they were watching sportswere looking for live statistics
during play. So I think to your point, just,
you know, it doesn't have to be a dedicated vertical format.
It can be that split side by side where it it is having you
did a good job of translating cricket to baseball for the
American fans. That might not get that from a
visual perspective, but just imagine you're watching, you
(19:41):
know, game six of the ALCS and you're just looking down from
the picture the batter. It's very similar to cricket.
But yes, almost having that thatsort of setup where it doesn't
have to be solely dedicated, just that vertical screen it can
be laid over with statistics andbits like that.
Yeah, completely. And if you you actually spend
some time watching live streams of video, generally not just
sports related, but say just anything where you've got
(20:03):
creators, perhaps publishing stuff and on chat.
A huge proportion of those audiences watching them are
watching on vertical or on smartphone devices, right?
And if you watch the chat function, the chat goes
absolutely bonkers. People are riding at a prolific
rate on those chats. And so the the, the, the theory
I think all the research shows that basically people are
(20:25):
watching actually those videos in a horizontal format on a
vertical device and engaging with the chat underneath the
vertical, sorry the horizontal video.
So so they're probably doing that though your point about
their whole ability to look at stats while you're watching
live, I think it's super important if people want to give
vertical live live video a chance to succeed because a lot
of people are just going to haveto close down the live feed all
(20:46):
the time unless you have a pop up video.
But even the pop up video experience, I'm I'm I've had
mixed experiences on when I've tried that it's not prolific
yet. So yeah, I think that's a really
important point about the whole engagement piece or the access
to information that is that is meaningful.
I remember using the NF LS Game Pass version which now doesn't
(21:07):
exist anymore, but when I was using that, sometimes the data
wasn't quite up to date from memory.
So. So that just was a bit OK, well,
I'm going to actually go have togo somewhere else to see the
right information or the data wasn't presented in an engaging
way that I could really get the information I wanted in the
right way whilst watching. So again, yeah, I think it's
super important. Yeah.
Well, we're kind of starting to touch into some of the other
(21:28):
ones. We'll move along.
And I think kind of the Third Point is kind of talking about
monetization specifically. And I think that's one of the
probably the big challenges whenwe talked about, you know,
looking backwards and saying, you know, oh, is Twitter, back
when it was still Twitter going to go for live rights, Is
Facebook now meta going to go for live rights.
And I think one of those challenges was the monetization
(21:48):
piece amongst other things. So usually when we're talking
about vertical video, it's not that maybe you know in a direct
to consumer platform they might not be able to set this up.
But realistically at the moment we're really talking about doing
this on existing third party social media platforms like a
TikTok. And does it do those platforms
at the moment or do we think offer a legitimate way to
(22:09):
monetize this type of content when we think about how
expensive it is to acquire live rights to begin with?
You know, what are the challenges associated with
potentially trying to do this orlook at this as a viable model?
Well, I I do think the, the opportunity to monetize is
there. What I don't believe I'd love to
hear from anyone if they know otherwise is that the notion of
(22:32):
programmatic video advertising in a vertical format.
I think it's pretty early stagesfor for live, live sports like I
do believe actually I think evenon things like Shorts and
Tiktok, they're more like sponsored posts than they are
say traditional advertising. So there is some, there's
(22:52):
traditional ways to monetise in that way where you can get a
traditional advertising revenue or Rev share with the platform
of choice if you're working withthem. e-commerce is now getting
much more robust on social platforms in the video.
So video, the vertical video format allows if you can get a
higher engagement, you can just keep driving people to those
(23:12):
platforms. One thing that YouTube is
getting better and better at is bringing e-commerce more to
life. So if you are watching a video,
I've seen videos with a sponsored post actually at the
bottom of the vertical video. Actually, sorry that wasn't
Facebook were doing that. So if you're watching a a video
(23:32):
in a vertical format at the bottom overlaid across, it was
actually an ad that was half, half transparent.
So they're bringing in that advertising sort of almost that
that native overlay or an overlay on the vertical video to
drive people to either call to actions from the video or to
just third party ads that are running over the top of the
(23:54):
content. So that will innately drive a
bit more revenue out of verticalvideo whether it's live or non
live, probably it's that's probably going to mainly be non
live. And the other way is obviously
just driving further engagement on platforms that serve as
vertical video because vertical video seems to be growing at an
incredible rate. You think about TikTok, what
(24:14):
video short, what shorts are on YouTube now every, every
platform even, I don't know if you've even seen on Twitter.
Now if you watch a video on Twitter and scroll up on any
video you watch and now it starts serving you other videos.
So I think everyone's just goingto keep pushing into this video
space and therefore monetizationwill get better and better and
better and more competitive and where live sports particularly
(24:38):
plays a a role as it can normally drive a higher premium
on those CPMS which makes it more attractive for all partners
and parties to use. Finally, the one thing I think
that is potentially the interesting part in all of this
is the the, the targeting aspect.
Those social media platforms allow really sort of hyper
targeting to those audiences. So if you wanted to run
(25:01):
advertising in and around some of the video content, you can be
super targeted who that is reaching in terms of
geographical split, demographicsetcetera to a way that can be
both used by the sports propertyas well as potentially partners
or advertisers if they want to leverage that.
So I'm sure that which which thenet benefit could be for
example, you could have a a video playing of the next match
(25:25):
playing. Let's say that the Hammers are
playing their next game and Stratford and they're looking
for people to buy tickets. They could service people and
it's last mint, they've got a few extra seats leftover.
They can just target people within East London to do so if
they want to and choose to. So that's the hyper targeting
that is available now depending on how much they're willing to
pay for that that access and that specificity.
(25:48):
In terms of the just thinking you know, I've we can use the
Premier League for example. I've got my deal in place with
Sky Sports and TNT and Amazon, you know.
How difficult do you think it would be at that point to sort
of retroactively say, hey, we also want to look at doing this
on our TikTok channels or doing this on YouTube shorts or
whatever particular channel you want to do that on.
(26:09):
How difficult do you think that is to retroactively sort of
embed some of that into it or isit something to say, you know,
for example, at the moment the Premier League?
Only 52% of their games get shown to those.
You know is it one of those remaining 48% or it's some sort
of other non premium game where they try to do those sorts of
things, You know how does, how does that, how do you think that
(26:29):
works for those rights holders? Are you referring to like the
live live video? Correct.
Yeah. So I mean interesting when we
had we had one football on the the pod a couple of weeks ago,
right. And obviously I'm suspecting
they will lean into it more and more and more as well.
You know providing a platform for those non live those non
premium rights perhaps to be accessible on in those formats
(26:53):
and on those platforms. I mean we had we have heard on
this pod earlier in the day about what Bundesliga was
trialling with TikTok and just with vertical video and I I
think you you can you definitelysee that as a as a possible Ave.
just to make the make those games more discoverable.
But ultimately we've seen a few has been a lot of trial and
error on that vertical format and indeed across different
(27:14):
platforms and obviously it's notset the world on fire.
So I'm not sure where we can getto on say vertical video
providing a new lease of life onsome of those rights.
I think highlights really is this bread and butter.
You know that the highlights aregreat for for giving people a
taste and in a vertical format you can just focus in on what
(27:35):
you need to focus on rather thansitting there and just watching
and hoping and waiting for something to happen.
You know the SIM, SIM sports that just resonates so well with
which you can probably have a have a take at what we think are
some of those sports in a second.
But yeah, I think, I think vertical has a role to play, but
I think it's going to struggle to ever unlock a new opportunity
for live sports that I didn't have.
Yeah. And to be fair, I probably
(27:56):
didn't phrase that question. It's probably not going to come
from the rights holders necessarily, probably come from
a Sky Sports wanting to broaden the reach of one of theirs as
opposed to the Premier League maybe necessarily going in doing
this. But you know from a moving from
monetization talking to engagement, why particularly?
You know, do you think this is aa better strategy?
We talked a little bit about this as a way to overlay
statistics into this. There's a way, like said, the
(28:18):
chat functions. I thought something that was
interesting is the one that runsthe OTT awards, so shout out to
anyone wanting to show up to that evening.
I'm sure someone from our team would love to talk to you about
getting you out to Madrid this year and attending the OTT
awards, even if you've not been shortlisted.
But one of the, I believe the winner of the innovation of the
year last year was actually broadcast done by Media Pro,
(28:38):
broadcasting a La Liga game directly onto Tiktok.
And one of the things they talked about within their
submission was using, you know, different social media platform
influencers to basically offer alternative commentary the way
we've seen with the Manning cast.
You know, I think that's some ofthe interesting stuff there.
When you think about the Gen. Z audience, not only are they
wanting to watch in vertical as opposed to the traditional
(28:59):
linear, you know, wide format, they're probably not wanting to
listen to the old traditional commentators or probably are
wanting to listen to something alittle bit different.
Yeah. Well, I think one thing that
that the vertical that leaning into vertical works really well
for sports is we talk a lot about discoverability as an
issue. And think if you're on, let's
say you're on TikTok, you're on YouTube shorts, etcetera.
And you just flick to the next video and all of a sudden
(29:22):
there's a live feed of the game on on your on your phone all of
a sudden out of by accident you stumble across it.
That discoverability of us almost just gets completely,
completely unlocked as a result of a result of that.
So I do think there's a play there where it can.
You know, the vertical video format comes up and maybe it's
only playing for a short amount of time, but then there's a call
(29:43):
to action to drive people to perhaps the the full widescreen,
widescreen version that could. That could definitely play a
role to sort of open up to new audiences.
I can't remember what the question was, though.
Was it engagement? Wasn't it?
Engagement. Well, yeah, we're talking about
engagement. Yeah.
So I I think just that access tothose audiences are engaging the
vertical format because otherwise they won't ever
(30:05):
stumble across watching, watching the game in a
traditional format. You know, I think in my view the
mobile is the first screen. It's normally talked about as a
second screen experience. But realistically I have an I
make this argument a lot is those sports that you know when
people put live sports on these today's that's actually like the
background noise to people who are engaging in and using their
(30:26):
phone. So you know that's why the NFL
is so great as a as a live sports product because not
because people watch it for fourhours, but actually allows them
to play around on their phone, engage in people, talk with
people not necessarily NFL related, do whatever they like
in between plays. So they can dip in, in and out
of focus rather having to stay half focused all the way
(30:48):
through. So that that that's really for
me where the opportunity lies. It engages much younger
audiences because it just puts you in front of them, even if
it's by by accident. And ultimately, we're all
talking constantly about how do we engage younger audiences and
even if it's not what they want,if we find a way to get in front
of them, even if it is by accident, that is better than
not being found at all. Yeah, I'm just looking through
(31:10):
some of the statistics from thatlittle ego match.
So I mentioned one innovation ofthe year and they said within
there they had 506,000 unique viewers, they had 1.2 million
likes and they had 7000 shares. And I think the impression part
is they had 68,000 comments in the chat.
You know, that seems like quite a high level of engagement just
(31:31):
going on there. Now, granted, this is an awards
application, so we'll take everything with a pinch of salt.
How many of those 68,000 comments were legitimately about
the game and somewhere else? I don't know, but you know
they're good looking stats. Did you say half a million views
but 1.2 million likes? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out
how the 1.2 million views are like.
Sorry, how the unique viewers isless than the total number of
(31:55):
likes. I don't know if that's because a
view has to be a certain length of time.
I don't know Nick. I'm just reading off the
application verbatim. Those confidential applications
that we're not supposed to talk about.
Oh, a year later should be fine,but but I I guess it's probably
a time a time limit on those. But nevertheless, you know
that's the thing with those formats is that you you see this
(32:17):
incredible amount of engagement on on any sort of video, video,
vertical video format, whether it be live or or non live.
You go to Instagram these days and the the amount of post you
see, I mean Twitter gets a bad rap right in terms of the types
of people that go onto Twitter and write quite bad stuff on
there but Instagram is not much better.
(32:39):
I can tell you I've I've looked through some of the stuff I've
seen posted on from from athletes and it's pretty pretty
gruesome reading. So yes, engagement's good, but
not all engagement is good, I guess.
For sure. And moving forward, just talking
about different formats and different sports and this can
either be from just a logistics perspective but also from an
(32:59):
opportunities perspective. You know, we've talked about
cricket makes a lot of sense. Something like baseball could
make sense if you were able to blend in some of the other
angles. You know, things like racing
appear to have worked well because you can sort of track
the way they're coming down. But then there's also the
question of ultimately, you know, we just talked about
football and La Liga performing very well, but certainly it does
(33:21):
seem like certain sports would struggle more with a vertical
format than perhaps other sports.
So I guess purely from a tech side, do you see some sports or
maybe perhaps lean into this vertical format before we maybe
talk about where the opportunities live, maybe from a
business perspective? Yeah, I think from the from the
non live and the highlighter perspective, some sports really
do get a lot of value out of theformat.
(33:42):
Cricket's a great one. I think baseball's a good one.
I've seen basketball highlights,they do work quite well on that.
Exception is when they pass the ball and it's kind of out of
shot because it's a bit zoomed in.
You miss a bit of those plays. I think the NFL is OK on the
vertical format, but it actuallyworks really well.
They use those unique camera angles, you know, the there's a,
you know the ones I've talked about over there like.
(34:03):
Thick Cam Yeah, the spider cam'sincredible.
The fix, the fix shot. I don't know there's a term for
it, but the one where like holdsthe person in the middle of the
the the action the whole time and everything else moves
around. They look amazing when you see
players darting in and around and breaking tackles and all
those sorts of things, but the camera angle, what brings brings
that to life? It actually it's making the
vertical video work rather than being an amplifier.
(34:27):
Outside of those, I I'm trying to think of anything else, I
think. Golf would be good if you had it
from the golf shop, being able to see that go off.
Yeah, yeah, golf's really good now.
Particularly how they have the new shot.
Trace. Well, not the the new.
It's been around for years now but they're using it pretty much
everywhere now. They've made it much more
accessible. And even now you see creators or
I keep, I keep interchanging between this.
But influencers who are like golfing influencers, they can
(34:50):
use their own smartphone. And you, as in you could go to
the golf course, actually use your smartphone for the shot
tracer, and somehow the app is able to follow the ball behind
you. So you get that PGA style
experience by your mate filming behind you.
It's pretty pretty awesome. Without that though, watching
cricket and watching golf these days is pretty dull.
If you don't see where the ball,which direction the ball's
(35:10):
going. Which is crazy to think when I
used to watch golf as a kid, I'll be like, watching it, and
they show the sky and then there's a ball there somewhere
in the white in the clouds and then magically just pops up and
like, how on earth did the cameraman follow that video,
follow that ball the whole way? And I don't think they actually
do anything, like just guessing.And then all of a sudden they
they get to it really quickly when it lands.
(35:31):
But yeah, I think golf's a greatgreat.
Golf. I was going to say it sounds
like my real life golf, Nick, where I hit the ball and I kind
of stare where I think the ball's landing and if it doesn't
land there, I'm screwed. Yeah, I pretend I don't know
where my ball went because it normally went across the other
other fairway. Actually, the other one is
tennis does work really well in the highlights for like just
sits. It sits perfectly in that
vertical screen because actuallyif you think watching it
horizontally you just get a lot of wastage on the sides of the
(35:54):
the core. So it doesn't take much for
those those to really just be filtered into into that sort of
experience. Yeah, that makes sense.
And in terms of, it's almost. Kind of backed our conversation
around monetization, but more the specific opportunities for
sports. So you know we referenced you
know what Burnley has done with TikTok or what the women's EUR
was able to do. You know, what's the opportunity
for vertical formats just in terms of, you know, like we
(36:16):
said, I think OTT is becoming more accessible from a
technology perspective, but who perhaps should be looking at
doing this to monetize that, youknow isn't necessarily going to
have access to the more traditional linear broadcast
money. Well, what I think I'd be the
ones who should really focus on this focus a lot of attention in
my view are the big, you know, international streaming players
(36:39):
because they have audiences bothboth on mobile phones across the
world and indeed through traditional channels.
So to get people on the road andon the go to get those casual
fans or you know, those fans at night might not be super
passionate, but you give them a chance.
Actually, you know what, I mightwatch this while I'm out and
about and put it, put it somewhere to to engage with.
Otherwise, I think this day and age, people's time is so
(37:01):
precious they if it's not in a comfortable place, not easy to
watch, they just won't watch it.So they have to, in my view lean
into and have it on the verticalformat.
So like in the zone, like an Amazon Prime, all those bigger,
bigger guys have to have some sort of option.
And even if the option for now is as simple as you go from a
horizontal shot to the vertical shot and for some sports it just
(37:23):
takes the middle of the feed, that is better than some sort of
where you do really need someoneprobably having a bit more
attention on what's in shot at the time.
You know, like football would bea great example of that where
you probably you need some pretty good camera work to make
sure it stays in the shot, otherwise things could easily
fall, fall out of by the wayside.
So yeah, I I do think just all streaming players have to spend
(37:45):
more time focusing on how they can bring this to life.
I think there's some great tech enablers that Media Media Pro
example's a good one. We've seen a bunch more recently
of people trying to do more in this space.
So I just think we have to see more and more of those
incumbents I suppose leaning into it and yeah like you sort
of alluded to before less pressure on perhaps some of the
sports properties and more pressure on those broadcasters
(38:07):
to innovate and make the the phone more valuable as a as a
live sports, live sports experience.
One thing I I do think I didn't really touch on much is I I
remember going to that YouTube event where they sort of talking
about some of the the numbers and shorts was growing at an
insane rate right. The vertical format and one one
example they had was it was likeinstruction videos on how to it
(38:29):
was AI think it was a cricketingvideo and their their metric
success was an average watch time of 2.5 times the video.
So normally you're talking about20%, fifty percent, 60% of a
video maybe won't be success. This is 302 hundred and 50% or
150% watch time. They're creating these videos
(38:52):
and loops that people have to watch two or three times to get
the full experience of. Otherwise I miss a bit of what's
going on. So I just think that's the same
for us to be talking about is that the the game is completely
changed on how you measure success in this vertical format.
It is about keeping people watching the same video a couple
of times rather than just ratherthan just getting to watch for a
few seconds and that's job done.Which I think kind of nicely
(39:15):
leads us into, you know, I'm notlike I'm not sure where I'm out
of my numbers, but we're trying to get our 10 things, we had
them lined up whether or not I'mkeeping a track of numbers
because we're moving around going off piece.
Let's talk about the tech and sort of some of the things that
are going to need to be available to do that.
You know, one of the examples was the German Football League
Super Cup, which was I think produced by Scott Deutschland.
They did that with, you know, viz.
(39:36):
RT who's a company that we've worked with in the past in terms
of just some of the tech stuff that needs to be, you know, make
this possible. And I think one of the things
they talked about with the TikTok production that they did
in the German Cup was sort of the watch party and some of
those social elements. You sure think about some of
those companies that. You know, it's not just the
traditional broadcasted, you know, you might do with other
(39:57):
things. You're going to have some of
those other companies I'm tryingto remember who are the ones,
Nick, during lockdown that theirwhole business model was to make
sure that if you were streaming with your friends, they would
take into account latency. So you could have the watch
party and it would be like, maybe, yeah, yeah.
So really cool technology, right?
Really cool technology where youyou basically wherever you are
(40:19):
in the world, it it it it's, it's, it's really cool to watch.
So even if you come in and join the video at different times,
they basically slow down and speed up bit rates.
So they eventually you come In Sync after a few seconds and
then you watch at the same time.It's really, really cool stuff
and I think there's still a big marketplace for it.
You know, I think we've seen a couple of the major US networks
lean into that also bringing in influencers or ex athletes to
(40:40):
watch with fans, which is quite a cool concept.
So I think you'll still see the watch together, watch together
formats continue to be available.
Just what? What's the scalability of that?
I just, I just don't know. I haven't seen a lot of data on
that recently. Yeah, But you know, I think the
point I'm trying to get is sort of where, you know, just are
there other parts do you think that are perhaps currently
limited? You know, I think one of the
things we talked about, it's like it's always great to have
(41:01):
these ideas and these ambitions to do these things.
But you need the tech to be ableto actually distribute.
And I know, say and jog our friend over the Disney hot star
was talking about, you know, thethe special camera set up they
were going to have specifically to be able to perform what
they're going to do for the ICC Cricket World Cup, making sure
that they could have all the different angles as the ball
would. Move into play.
You know, what are you know? Do you think that this is
(41:23):
something that's you know too far away or something that
they've just not focused on yet but could very easily address?
Well, I think that's a, it's a good point where a couple years
ago when you know, we spoke to Andreas Hayden on the pod of one
of the first episodes on this pod.
I'm not sure if he said it on air or off here, but he he
definitely talked about the factthat when they're doing the,
when they trialed the vertical format, literally all they had
(41:46):
to do was just turn the camera on its side and film it right,
which which sounds pretty primitive, but that's actually
literally how they did the testing and then they were able
to use it from there. Whereas you know what they're
going to have to have is more dedicated technology and
dedicated camera tech to be ableto service that.
So the the quality of the outputis to standard.
(42:09):
I think one thing you mentioned Sanjog, I think it's a really
important point as well is aboutthe Indian market being so
smartphone first that you know we've talked about briefly
before, but they almost bypassedthe laptop and even tablet era
went straight to smartphones. So they're so used to watching
things on a smartphone device. I do think you're going to
(42:31):
continue to see more and more innovation come out of out of
the Indian market because they are.
So they have it so centrally focused in their approach on how
they talk to fans and engage with fans and produce that sort
of content. And I think other technologies
that you're going to continue tosee play a big role is is
artificial intelligence and AI where there's companies like
(42:52):
Magnify and also WSC and others that and also even ones like
grab you on the production side that they're leaning more into
the AI side. And they will allow those
highlights packages to be created a click of a couple of
buttons and to those vertical formats to be made even if they
are using horizontal traditionalcameras.
That will make it easier and easier for more and more of
(43:14):
those video formats or vertical formats to be used.
I mean they're already doing this, but it still feels like
we're only just the the beginning point and most of
that's around the highlights side.
So how that transitions into to the live game will be what we
really have to follow. Well, great job hitting the
India point because that was oneof our ten points.
So we can take that off our box of things but just as a kind of
(43:34):
a, a sign off here, Nick, you know we've talked about we we
still are relatively in the infancy of the vertical video
format. Do you have a prediction whether
you want to be bold about or whether you want to be realistic
about it. You know, if we do this podcast
and say 12 months time, do you expect this to be something
that's continued to grow or do you think it might be something
that? It's like some of the other
things we've seen where it kind of proliferates for a little bit
(43:57):
and then eventually we kind of go back to what we've always
had. Yeah we we do do a lot of that
in, in the industry, right. I I do think you'll see more and
more lean into it. I think that you know the IC CS
putting a lot of investment intoit, nearly every match is going
to be in the in the vertical format.
And so that will be I think a bit of a there could be a bit of
(44:18):
a spark or igniter for major events and other sports
properties to lean into it further because they are having
such an array of activity aroundthe vertical format.
So I'd love to see the numbers after the ICC World Cup and to
see if that has really deliveredwhat you know Disney Hot Star
are expecting and indeed ICC is expecting in those instances.
And if it does, I think you're going to continue to see more
(44:40):
and more of it. The challenge is, as I said,
it's the fact that broadcasters pretty much have to look at this
one by one and whether these these other markets that aren't
so smartphone first are going toadopt in the same way.
But hey, if it's going to work in India, that's a good good
start for anyone. Yeah, well, it's another further
sales pitch to come to the Sports per Madrid event later in
(45:00):
November because Sanjag will be present.
So, Nick, that'll give us an opportunity because by then
he'll surely have the digital footprint of how everything
performs. So we'll be able to hear it
from, I believe the proverbial saying is directly from the
horse's mouth, and we'll be ableto to understand how that
performed and, you know, be a great place for everyone else to
hear how that went. Maybe that's what we do when we
find him in Madrid. We'll hunt him down and whether
(45:21):
he likes or not, we'll keep asking the question until he
gives us an answer. Absolutely, because we are
persistent. If nothing else, good stuff.
Awesome. Thank you everybody for joining
us this week. Before you go, myself and Nick
would just like to thank you fortuning into this episode of
Stream Time. If you found the episode
insightful, please make sure youlike and subscribe on whichever
platform you listen to. As a growing podcast, we'd
(45:42):
greatly appreciate your support in sharing or writing a review.
Ultimately want this podcast to not only entertain you, but also
hopefully help you navigate the digital sports landscape.
If you have any feedback on previous episodes or any topics
and speakers you'd like to hear from in the future, please don't
hesitate to reach out. You can find myself and Nick
Meacham on LinkedIn or on Twitter.
My Twitter handle is at Sports Pro Chris.
(46:04):
One Nick can be found at Sports Pro Nick.
Of course, if you want to stay fully up to date on the sports
business news cycle, please makesure to visit the Sports Pro
Media website or sign up to one of our several newsletters to
make sure you don't miss anything.
Once again, thank you and we look forward to you joining us
next week on the Stream Time Podcast.
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