June 4, 2025 • 45 mins
From AI-powered dubbing to stripped-back broadcast vans to clever piracy countermeasures, sports streaming is undergoing a major shift. In this episode of StreamTime Sports, co-host Nick Meacham shares his key takeaways from Streaming Tech Sweden, an annual event for streaming tech in the Nordics, as well as a behind the scenes at the Ice Hockey World Championships with Infront to understand what it takes to deliver a global broadcast.
Key Talking Points:
- How modern broadcast supply chains are being rebuilt from the ground up
- DYN Media proving how lean production can still scale with quality
- Infront’s thirty-one camera broadcast of the Ice Hockey Worlds shows innovation in action
- Piracy continues to grow, but smarter deterrents are emerging
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
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, Nick, I'm going to let you in on one of my guilty pleasures
and I'm going to need you to provide a little bit of a
cultural context. OK?
Yeah. So basically, well, my wife and
I, you know, sort of 8:39 PM, that's sort of, you know, too
(00:32):
late to get anything started. And you just put something on
the background on the TV, let you know Right now, Nick, my
guilty pleasure is a little bit of Married at First Sight
Australia. Oh.
Dear, Oh gosh. Well, I have to.
I would give you one of my I wouldn't say it's a guilty
pleasure. I would say I I'm happy.
I am more than tolerant but don't enjoy it too much.
(00:57):
Is love is blind, actually. So for what it's.
Worth I've heard laughs from downstairs, from from my wife,
laughing at the fact that I justadmitted to this live, live on
on the air. Yeah.
Well Nick, for what it's worth, I only know 1 Australian who's
our head of production who doesn't cringe when I mentioned
(01:17):
that show. But anyways, in the episode last
night, there was a term mentioned that I was not
familiar with. Someone was accused of being a
bogan, which I am familiar with.And then the response was I'm
not a bogan, I'm a a yabo. A Yabo.
OK, sure. Right.
Yeah, so for me, context, my family is from eastern KY in the
(01:40):
Appalachians, so I can get offended sometimes when they're
referred to as rednecks because we're hillbillies, We're not
rednecks. So I'm just, I don't know the
difference between a bogan and ayab, A yabo.
I I don't know if those things are relatable.
When you say with an American accent, but it is actually how
you how you say it. I've never thought about the
(02:01):
difference between the two untilyou've brought this up today.
So I'd say the difference is pretty similar to your, your
example of like the redneck versus hillbilly concept.
I'd say that bogan comes out of like a playbook.
Like there's a definition of like what a bogan is.
And there's like about 15 thingsof criteria and characteristics.
(02:23):
And I'll tell you, Yobo is basically something who's a bit
more just, I don't know, lazy and just a bit just a really
nothing going nothing. There's nothing about them.
They just a bit lazy. They do don't do a lot.
They just, they just don't do much and not exactly adding a
(02:44):
lot of value to society. In the nicest possible way, I'm
trying to think of a better way to describe it than that.
I'd say it's basically just someone that is, yeah, someone
who just goes around, probably doesn't do anything really nice
or well. Is that a good description out
of that? Does that replicate what a
hillbilly would be? I'm not really sure it does.
(03:06):
I don't know, I think hillbillies and regs next.
There are some cultural differences.
There's also some geographical differences.
I've just never heard the term yabo mentioned before.
So it's a bit like, well. OK, so I looked, I'm sure
uncultured person. That's that's probably a much
better way than saying what I would say, which is very
useless. I'm sure they have some use to
(03:27):
society, but uncultured is definitely, definitely one of
them. But don't follow a bogan
playbook necessarily. So you can be both is what I
would say. OK, you can be both, but Bogan's
did more of an out of a playbookthat you would define as
probably a bit like a chav in the UK.
OK, fine. OK.
All right. OK, that helps.
(03:48):
Like I said, it's just, I hadn'theard it before and you know,
sometimes, you know, just you need a little bit of local
expertise. So I appreciate you for
enlightening me, Nick. Well, I would say that I think
bogan has now become like embraced a lot more.
If you called someone bogan before initially going back 20
odd years ago, it was seeing pretty negatively through
(04:09):
negative connotations. And then it just became more and
more adopted as like, yeah, yeah, I am.
And people you see this like now, whole generation that
absolutely embrace the bogan culture to some extent, a huge
extent. So I'm not sure if that's again,
the similar sort of thing you have in the US around rednecks
and hillbillies, but that's definitely prominent in
(04:31):
Australia. When I go back I see loud and
clear. Is that the mustache and mullet
look? That's part of it, yeah.
Short shorts, singlet vest top, if you want to call it that.
Probably haven't wear worn shoesfor about 12 months.
Probably drive a certain type ofcertain type of car I could get.
(04:51):
I could keep going, but it gets worse and more specific after
that. Well, you're, you're pretty far
away from Australia these days naked.
And we mentioned last episode you had some travels around
Sweden, fortunately a quite a shorter trip than travelling
back and forth to Australia. But there was so much, you know,
we had to do 2 episodes to covereverything.
So last week we talked about your experiences at the Two
Circles event, which is very much sort of we talked about the
(05:13):
fan engagement, the media rightsbroadcast, lots of data
involved, where one of the things I thought was interesting
from that, you mentioned one of the presentations that talked
about how heavily people in Sweden specifically consume
content via streaming and that they're actually probably ahead
of the game with those things. So it makes sense that there's a
big event, the streaming tech Sweden event that you also got
(05:36):
to attend, which I will say is put on by one of my good friends
here at Sports Pro Judge at the OTT Awards, which is now the
Sports Pro Media Awards, which Ibelieve maybe by the time this
podcast ended or gone out, you might not get the early bird
special, but you can still applyfor it.
But anyways, Magnus Fenson runs that event.
I saw Jason Tebow was there alsoone of my favorites.
I like to refer them as the T Bolt.
(05:57):
He's just an awesome dude and we'll talk a little bit.
Andres Hayden was at the event. But you know, Nick, just Part 2
of your experiences. We're going to talk about that
event and then we're also going to talk about you got to go to
the International Ice Hockey World Championships, I believe
it was. So you got a lot of experiences
really looking at broadcast and streaming technology and that's
(06:17):
what we're going to focus on today.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a lot of
learnings to take away from thisand I think it's worth sharing
because I do think there's some stuff in there that helps paint
a bit of a picture of where we're going with as an industry,
not just around technology, but you know, typically the tech is
an enabler for the business changes as well.
I'll get into that in in in a second.
(06:38):
But the the the world championship was great.
I went with in front productions, who gave me a
really good deep dive into what they're doing this.
I'll jump into that in the second-half, as you said.
But yeah, the Streaming Tech Sweden event has been running
for I think about eight years orso now.
Magnusson and the team from IvanTechnology, really impressive
group of people who are really dedicated to delivering
(07:00):
basically services to the streaming industry, have done
work, do work across sports, butalso a lot of different
platforms, broadcasters, not in not only across the Nordics, but
indeed right across the world. This event, I've been to a few.
I spoke at one of them and what I would say, and I mean this in
the nice way is I would not havebeen the right person to speak
(07:21):
at this event. And I mean that is they've
they've, they've got another step further in technology with
a lot of demonstrations. I would say in the nicest way,
nerding out a little bit much more than they have in the past.
And I love that. It was great.
It really pushed my boundaries to understand more about where
where the industry is going, where the focuses are, where the
changes are coming. So full credit to Magnus on what
(07:42):
they were able to put together. A lot of familiar names were on
stage from events that we've held and it was good to see them
go a bit deeper than I think they have historically in the
past done in some instances. But a lot of really good insight
into there. And the big theme that I think I
took away was there is seems to be we're at a tipping point,
particularly that is happening with regards to production,
(08:05):
media production, the whole media supply chain.
There's a couple of examples of this where there was a
presentation done by Dyn Media, Dyn Sports with Andreas, which
I'll jump into and give a bit more detail on in a second.
But there's also one done by, I believe it was TVTV 4, which is
a Scandinavian or Nordic. I can't remember the differences
(08:27):
between the two of these days. I should know that, but they
cover Finland, Finland, Denmark,I think and the and Sweden and
they're basically completely rebuilding their media supply
chain. And that might be lost on people
who work in the business side. But for context, they're
basically intimating that the way media like broadcast content
(08:48):
has been distributed has basically not changed in 60 to
70 years. It's been expanded.
So the use of satellites and other things and fiber, but the,
the notion of it largely been a legacy approach for the last
60-70 years. And they are rewriting the
entire approach basically almoststarting from scratch.
And they use the example and theone that I'll go to and Andreas
(09:12):
is in a second that he gave is and Andreas said this in his
chat, they said we had the benefit of starting with a blank
piece of paper so we could buildit like a modern day media
business should be built and a modern day sports platform
should be built. Whereas these other broadcasters
that have been having to play this tricky balance of working
on how to evolve to this new streaming age where they're
(09:35):
going to produce more content, have it more housed in different
places. How do you, you know, a lot of
broadcasters were still using archive tape video until very
recently to cut and edit and then publish online when they
wanted to use archive footage. So there's all these little
small things that you probably don't think about that have huge
repercussions in the way a broadcaster or a platform can
(09:56):
perform. And to this, this event and the
sessions that Ivan put on, we'rereally good at painting a
picture of how these things are changing.
And I think for me, giving me a sense of where how it's
impacting sports for the future,particularly as most sports
properties are on this journey now of becoming media and
content businesses, right? We talk about it a lot, but it's
(10:18):
absolutely at the forefront of what everyone is doing and it's
only picking up pace. So you mentioned we're at a
precipice, particularly when it comes to media production.
Why exactly we are, are we at this precipice?
What is, what is pushing us to this point that you know where
there is it? Is it, is it a cost thing?
Is it an efficiency thing? Is it a scale thing?
(10:40):
What's gone us to this point that it seemed to be such a
point of emphasis? Sure, there are a couple of
parts to it. 1 is we have not seen a lot of super out and out
successful stories of media companies in this space growing
as streaming's coming to the fore.
They've had the challenge of trying to drive monetization and
that has been trickier than I think many expected.
(11:02):
But costs have been going up because they've been launching
new approaches, new models and layering up what they're doing.
So now the focus is about cost efficiency.
So how can you run your media workflows, your media channels
and distribution and and contentmanagement and a more effective,
more efficient way in hint, AI has a massive role to do in that
(11:22):
and bring down the cost implications there.
So then the ability to produce and distribute more content is
massively, massively amplified. And that has a direct
correlation with what's happening in sports.
You think about sports outside the top tier and their ability
to broadcast matches live to fans and consumers all across
the world through all the different channels.
(11:43):
If it's really expensive to do, they won't do it.
But if you can get those costs down, they are able to do a lot
more. And the technology is making it
so much easier to democratize that.
This video example we had a couple of weeks ago is one
example of that. But there's a whole host of
other layers to the media workflow that everyone has to
take into account to make sure they're able to keep evolving at
(12:06):
the right pace. Now I'm understanding this is
not a dedicated sports event. Now obviously Andres would have
been providing an example of a sports case study and we can
speak about that in a bit. But just curious from your
perspective, did you hear anything from these more
generalized broader media companies that seems different
from what you've heard from other sports companies?
(12:26):
Or is there something that sports companies really should
be paying attention to, which I'm sure the really senior
people do look at those macro trends?
We're just curious if you heard things more broadly outside of
sports? Well, the interesting thing
about this event is it it is much more technical.
So a lot of very technical people in the room.
It's for technical people to learn.
So for me, there's some instances where I was, I
(12:46):
wouldn't say I was on on stage content.
I would say I was able to followpretty well the, the bulk of the
conversation. But the stuff around encoding
and decoding that I'm not reallyFA with.
I couldn't really tell you much about it or otherwise other than
that I know that exists and they're an important part of
the, the workflow. And when I talk to people off
stage that I, I got lost in conversations, sometimes I like
(13:06):
laughing away and agreeing and nodding.
And I'm like, I don't really know what I've just been told
that it sounds important. So look, and I would say I don't
know if this is this is the right way to put it.
But if you ask anyone, even in our company in sports pro, I'm
probably one of the most knowledgeable on the streaming
space. And I had no clue what some of
some of the stuff they were covering.
So it's a much deeper event in that in that vein.
(13:28):
And I'm, I'm probably giving myself a disservice saying that,
but there's some bits of that itwas pushing me to go, oh, right,
I need to learn more about that because it's really important
and it's changing quite a lot. So the, the point is that they
are talking much more about a much deeper technical
transformation, whereas still sports is more focused on the
business transformation part mainly, I think.
(13:49):
And that's they need to get a better grasp.
And that's the role we're tryingto play.
That's definitely the role that streaming tech Sweden plays and
what Ivan play is like just trying to bridge that gap of
going, hey, how do we get, we know we need to do more content.
We know you need to manage that.It's really laborious effort to
do it. How do we do it more
(14:11):
effectively? We'll hear these all these tech
solutions. Now sports doesn't need to know
the depth of that doesn't need to know the breadth and depth of
some of the encoding decoding stuff, because if they're not
broadcasting at the scale that some of these other broadcasters
are, well, they don't need to beso worried about latency.
If they're a lower tier sports property, they don't need to be
worried about some of these things and they're working with
(14:31):
more of an end to end partner. Then they can just leave it to
the experts to get on with it. And they just got to focus on
the business side a little bit. So sports doesn't always need to
know the breadth and depth. I think if you can speak close
to that language, I mean, it's, you know, when you talk to
someone like an Andreas, who's he's, he's, he's so impressive
to listen to. Yeah, he, he understands
(14:52):
everything from the business side through all, all layers of
the tech side. That's the, I think that's the
North Star. You basically want to be as a,
as a leader if if you're runningan organization like he is.
But I don't think in sports specifically, you need to have
that breadth in depth. But it certainly helps to have a
more, a bigger understanding just so you can ask the right
questions. You can ask the questions of
(15:14):
your team. We can ask the right questions
of your partners and providers. And one of the things I think
that's difficult to overcome in this industry is if you don't
have enough knowledge and you'relooking at doing something to
take the step to say yes, we're going to go ahead with working
with you. If it's too much of A leap of
faith, you'll never, it's reallydifficult to say yes to that.
You don't want to make a big decision, a big massive business
(15:36):
decision and do it with risk, right?
So you have to have the confidence that you know what
you're signing up for. So you do.
I think the importance of havinga baseline technology
understanding is really important for business execs.
But you just don't need to know what to the degree perhaps what
I was getting some of that exposure to.
I hope you're enjoying this episode of Stream Time Sports,
but we just wanted to draw your attention to what's next in the
(15:56):
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(16:18):
excellence. Impact X Where creativity meets
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Pro Impact X to find out more. Yeah, well that gives us a
perfect segue to then go and talk about Andre specifically,
which if you don't know about Dime Media, we won't go fully in
depth because maybe we're hopeful.
We'll keep our fingers crossed we can get them in to come on
the pod and talk about some of their journey.
(16:39):
We've covered it in the past, some of the early investment
rounds that they did and where it's gone.
But it sounds like, you know, there's some wink winks to to
you, then maybe there's some other things, but hopefully
they're in a place to talk a little bit more.
But just what you took from Andre is particularly from the
production side because there are some unique elements as to
what Dine is doing that may be different from an NFL Premier
(16:59):
League in terms of the scale andthe types of sports that they
are covering. Absolutely, I would say this.
I would say that Dine is one of the most important examples of a
case study that we have in sports today because they're
proving out within a couple of years how to build out a
dedicated sports streaming service at a decent scale with
(17:23):
meaningful sets of rights. And they've done it in a really
cost effective manner, which I think is really important for
the entire industry to understand.
Because even if you're someone who's launching a platform
that's not a sports property, there's plenty to learn from
what they've done. But also, even if you are a
sport and you're really thinkingabout, do we do it ourselves?
Well, I think there's a truckload you can learn from
these guys. You'll, you'll learn quickly
(17:44):
that you need to know what you're talking about, but you
can also find people that can help you along the way really
comfortably if you do the the big thing that Diane talked
about, so I will give a real topquick top view of their, their
macro business strategy is, is you know, they are they picked
and identified 5 key sports to really super serve right and
that they basically create a subscription proposition, which
(18:06):
is at a such a cost effective rate that you get access.
It's going deeper on those five rather than being too broad
stroked and having say 1015 sports available on the
broadcast. There's five that they would say
that they sort of own basically or they're really the leading
platform in Germany for So they're a German or DAC region
platform, right? And it's, it's subscription LED.
(18:27):
They do drive some revenue from advertising, but it's, it's, you
know, the by far the majority isthrough subscription based and I
think the price is around €15.00a month.
So pretty very cost effective asa price point.
The main thing that he was presenting there and I think
this is the, the important part is about production.
So it's about how they're producing their content and
doing it as a as a cost effective way and it resource
(18:49):
light as possible. So one of the big things that he
talked about was taking much more hybrid approach.
And what I mean by hybrid approach, you might have heard
that a lot at the events that werun.
We talk about a lot of this stuff and have been talking
about it for quite some time, but they've actually made it
happen. So what they did is they laid,
so they, they, they partnered upwith these different rights
(19:10):
holders, they went to the arenasand they actually laid dedicated
fibre and cable to make sure their connections were really
strong. And then they basically rebuilt
the concept of a outside broadcast van from scratch.
And the, the example he used on stage was they basically if you
see one of these broadcast fans broadcast trucks, they are
(19:32):
enormous in qualifying. You might see a couple of them
at an event, which is what I didsee at the World Championship
that I'll talk about a bit lateron, but they would have
basically get it down. So it was just a van that would
drive to events, a very simple van that anyone could drive.
And they had this thing that it's basically like production
cart that was equivalent the size of 10 cases of beer that
you could roll into an arena andthen you could broadcast
(19:54):
completely seamlessly broad thatlive experience.
They had next to no issues from a delivery standpoint, which
brought down all sorts of costs and and these weird things like.
He uses an example, but it's a serious thing.
If you need to drive a truck, you need to have the right type
of people to drive the truck. It's expensive to drive a truck.
It's expensive to build the truck versus just having a van,
(20:17):
any old hire van you could use to get your stuff from point A
to point B. And so they reinvented that.
So it was completely hybrid. They they had next to nothing.
They had to bring on site did a bunch of the the commentary and
other stuff remote and it has been a huge success for them to
keep their costs massively down and using AI and other
technologies as well to make basically make that work.
(20:39):
So the point really for him to highlight was it was quite in
detail. And if we get him on it, we'll
get him to talk about it in, in,in in some level of detail, give
people a sense of the complexity.
But they build everything from basically from scratch.
And then they just talked about the fact they're really
committed to getting out as muchhighlight content through as
many different channels, partners and social.
(21:00):
And he used to turn the 95 to 96% of those rights is lost
after the game is actually broadcast, right?
So why sit on those highlights? Just get him out there and let
them go to work and try and build fandom on the sport, Which
I thought was just an interesting contextualization on
that. A number, putting a number
attached to the value differencethat they saw on that.
Well, just on that, I, I find this incredibly interesting
(21:22):
because I feel like it's a bit opposite where, and again, this
will come down to the meteoritesdeals where I think Premier
League teams like don't get access to highlights from the
Premier League until like 24 hours after the match takes
place. So, and I get it, that would
because they've got deals with Sky and TNT and things like
that. But yeah, just an interesting
point there. Like I said, I've never heard
the statistic mentioned that way, but it it makes sense that
(21:43):
it probably is as high as 95% that you should be trying to
push that stuff in real time as much as possible wherever you
can. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think, look, that you're 4to 5% of, you know, a billion
dollars, if you're talking in the Premier League is, is a
chunky piece of money. But the net, the, the benefit of
getting your content out there to more audiences is that it can
(22:05):
drive long term value. But it's difficult to quantify
that sometimes. I think that's a tricky bit that
people might, might face. So yeah, he gave a really
detailed description of the livefeed production, how they manage
that, how much of its themselves, the different
partners they use along the way,and then how they deliver
through the different partners, which I've got a I've got some
slides and stuff that he shared on the screen, which we just
(22:25):
gave a better picture of the types of partners they're
working with. But in short, it's it's been a
big success. They've launched this hybrid
approach which has kept costs really, really low.
They launched and went on 90% ofplatforms from day one,
delivering to 6 digit audiences regularly.
They track every single movementon their platform.
(22:46):
Like they are really granular onthe data side more than I think
most are. And going through the experience
that I've had with our website trying to get intelligence on
our own platforms performance, it's harder than you think to
get that sort of data. But they've been really focused
on on that. The other cost saving bit that
was really interesting, which might be boring to some people,
but it is interesting to me is one of the cost implications
(23:07):
they have when you're trying to go very cloud based is it's very
expensive to run on cloud servers like AWS and the like.
But they took away that basically they scaled up and
scaled down the use of AWS immediately before and after
matches. And and that's a small thing,
but it actually end up being quite a significant cost saving
to bring their baseline of cost down, making it again, this
(23:29):
whole thing about sustainable, more viable to produce more of
these games through the cloud at, at a much financially viable
number, basically. So I'm not sure I've done him a
good service there, but he was, it was incredibly interesting to
hear him talk about all that stuff.
And they've created their own bespoke disk content desk
management solution to manage all their content just really
(23:49):
gone. They've really gone deep on
being a tech business first, basically to make sure they
deliver, not just think, lookingat what you see at the end
product and having a subscription model that
hopefully, fingers crossed, works.
Well, that'll go back to his DFLdays with the, the glass to
glass analogy that they always spoke about.
One quick question I had for you, Nick.
When you mention the AWS, I'm curious how they, they made that
(24:11):
deal work because to my knowledge, you know, one of the
things I speak about, I, I do some onboarding for some of our
new employees. When I talk about media, I talk
about one of the difficult things is you need to pay enough
for a service that you can handle the peak traffic moments,
but you also don't want to pay so much that you're overpaying
for what you actually need. So I I didn't realize that you
(24:34):
could up and down your service of AWS.
So I'm just curious to know how that worked out.
Yeah, so that that is not not souncommon, but he he described it
like so for example, we you can buy flexible servers.
So basically when you, when traffic peaks, they kick into
gear and you, but you pay a premium for that ability to have
the, the dynamism of, of, of that service.
(24:56):
But when you're talking about the scale that they are for live
broadcast, it has to be even more robust and profound how you
do that. That's a bit above my knowledge
base. So I'm not too sure how that
differs. But I know, for example, when
we've done launches with our website, we had to make sure we
had certain servers in place. We've launched big reports and
big announcements where we will go from, you know, hundreds of
(25:17):
people on the website to 10s, you know, 10,000 on the website.
All of a sudden, when we've had that before that create, create
a huge pressure. So you do need the right sort of
infrastructure in place and AWS is probably the best in the
business for that. And obviously also that
Andreas's background with DFL, he'd be very familiar with AWS
because of AW was a major partner of the Bundesliga.
(25:41):
So before I move you on to ice hockey where we can, is there
anything else that you've got towrap up on that you kind of your
key learnings? Yeah.
Look, I'd say the main thing is,as I said to you, was that I've
sort of covered the main bits, which is a big focus on
production, big focus on production at the broadcast
level, getting that efficiency out of the way.
Content is being produced, it's being stored, it's being managed
(26:02):
and distributed is what everyonewas hugely, hugely focused on.
There was an interesting exampleon site which I had Meta
presenting their AI technology on translations, which I think
is going to be coming be playinga huge role.
So basically it would just be ushaving this conversation and you
recorded on one of their devices.
(26:23):
You just press a button and it will do the dubbing the lip sync
in another language and even showed what was called.
They showed how they do it because there's things like in
certain languages, it might takeyou longer or less time to say
the same thing. So they were able to make that
all work basically with with a lot of work engineering.
So you can do it as a flick of abutton.
(26:44):
And I can imagine a lot of sports properties will start
using that. So that the goal is that it will
allow if your content is a basic, if we do this POD and
then we did it on say Instagram,it would just in Spanish
markets, you press a button and in Spanish markets, it would be
dubbed in Spanish with and fullylip sync.
So it would look like us talking.
And that's going to come zooming.
More and more of those countriescoming out, which I think will
(27:06):
become one of those sneaky things will be hugely, hugely
valuable for a lot of sports properties who are very global
and frightening at the same time.
Because it gets one of one of those examples of like, not deep
fakes, but like how you can easily just manipulate what
something's on screen just by the click of a button.
Well, it also means you won't have to listen to me say the
word yabo with an American accent anymore.
(27:28):
Yeah, we can get an Australian translation just for that.
The other one was just, again, there was another big, big thing
on piracy and I talked to peopleoff stage and they are really
frightened on where it's going. It's getting worse and it's
worse and worse, and that's where a lot of people agreed
with my thesis on we just have to find a way to make
advertising models work in this space.
(27:50):
It's the only way. It's a bit like the whole
Spotify, Napster or Pirate Bay journey, but there's the numbers
they use the. RIP to my computers about 20
years ago. Yeah, exactly.
They start. They use 50% of people watching
via piracy. 25% subscribe to IPTV illegally.
(28:11):
That's 750,000 households in Sweden alone.
Yeah, that's a lot when the country is only 10 million.
They actually did a piracy demo,which is really cool.
So basically they hacked, they created a website and they just
showed people how to hack the site and that was really cool
and frightening how easy it was.I mean, they're obviously the
(28:32):
one of the guys who did it. And as he's from Akamai, he's a
he's a really cool guy. But he showed the example on
screen and he said in a couple of hours in the evening, I
basically did this and he showedexactly how to RIP it off and
put it up, put it live and available.
And one of the interesting tips that they gave, and I think this
is the probably the bit I'll leave it at is sports needs to
(28:53):
just try stop trying to stop thepirates because they can't stop
them. So what they gave a visual where
they showed where the when they cut off a pirate.
A few more minutes later they came back again and found
another way in. And a few months later they came
back in again. They found different ways in and
they gave the techno technological examples as to why
(29:15):
and how they do it. So they said instead the trick
is to just make it harder for them, harder for them to get.
But also you can do little tricks.
Like for example, one example they gave, which I thought was
really cool was they change the video so they see someone's
being hacked, this video feed's being hacked.
They will change the video that they're hacking to like a piracy
(29:39):
message. And so the person watching will
get served this this message, which will be like you realise
you've, you've been trying to watch a pirate of viewing.
And the reason that is interesting is the the pirates
won't see that that change has happened and they'll just keep
serving this video out. And all they'll see is the
bandwidth and the usage and the consumption still going on.
(30:01):
So as far as they know, they're still serving the same piece of
content. And there's a few little tricks
they did like that, which I thought was quite, quite fun.
One other frightening part aboutit, which is a massive enabler
for piracy was the one of the bigger problems is that pirates
are stealing from pirates. So because the pirates don't
have as much protection on, on their platform as perhaps the
(30:22):
sports properties and the, the broadcasters do.
And so the pirates RIP off the other pirates who've got the
content. So now it's going through like 2
sets of hands, meaning that it, it just becomes the, the, the,
the reach and extensive nature of it becomes prolific.
So piracy is, is, is an even bigger problem.
And I don't know, even for someone who's running a media
company, I don't know how to approach this from our point of
(30:43):
view. Like do we need to do more about
talk more about it? Because what we've done stuff
about it, some people care aboutit loads and some people just
sort of say accept that's, you know, that's what it is a bit
like what we were kind of talking about before.
So it's a tricky 1 to to digest.No loyalty amongst thieves,
apparently. Yeah.
And it's just the acceptance that it's OK, just it's this,
(31:04):
this societal acceptance, like I'm not stealing.
It's it's fine to do and this this willingness to share that
I'm stealing is absolutely fine to do.
There's a huge there's a huge conundrum there that will not be
solved in any other way except gross change in the model.
And the the final bit was there was 2 ones 2 but quickly was a
(31:28):
shuttle from ease live who's presented our events and they
won a bunch of awards at their sports and media awards.
They've been a real leader, interactive content and features
in streams, one of the market leaders on that front for some
time now with some great examples of what they've done in
with the US, which I think it was with yes, network was one of
(31:50):
the major examples. They've shared a bunch.
There was a couple of interesting stats I thought were
sharing 77% of users multitask while watching live now, which
is not surprising. But you think about, we've
talked about this before, you think about the fact that what's
the primary screen in someone's experience?
Then if 77% of people are on their phone basically or doing
(32:15):
something else at the same time,the sports in the background, is
it the primary focus? Not always is the obviously
answer. The other things were that when
you Add all these interactive layers, they see 50% increase in
engagement time and watch times.And when you add polls and other
things, they can see as much as a 5 to 10 times engagement rate
increase in the feed. And what they basically enable
(32:37):
is the use of team info, stats, betting odds, poles and even ads
to be made available in the feed.
And their conclusion is very simply that it has huge, it has
huge impact on consumption to the positive, which I had not
seen a lot of stats on that. I heard a lot of talk about it,
but it's good to see some of that quantified.
I. Want to say I think one of the
(32:59):
interesting things I saw about what they did was.
It gives. The user, the ability to almost
control the production in the sense of, you know, if I watch a
Premier League by Sky, as far asI'm aware, the only sets I can
get or whatever they choose to display on the screen.
But maybe in real time, I want to pick up and say, what is the
past completion percentage of X midfielder?
(33:20):
How many shots on goal are as opposed to me having to wait for
Sky Sports to present to me? I think that's what I've seen
some of what the ES live have been able to do where you can
sort of manipulate the broadcastso that you can choose what data
you want to see and how you wantto see and which again, is a
super fan like that's the, I think it's just a nice way to be
able to, as you say, engage withthe content.
(33:40):
Yeah. But also yes to that and also
the fact that you, the broadcastof the the platform owner can
still dictate some of that feed and control as well.
So they can, if they think, you know, we want to basic control
what's going on your screen a bit like you would see in a
major broadcast production. They can still do that and just
have a lot more creativity actually than what sometimes
some of the broadcasters can have.
(34:02):
And your bit about the customizing your experience.
Well, the final session that I was on stage was Tiled Media,
who's been in a few of our events and are presented some of
their wares as well. It was really cool because they
showed up. They basically are really one of
the leading platforms. There's a few that do this type
of thing now, but the multi screen style experience, what
they were really was quite impressive.
(34:23):
Was he really talked about how they do and that was kind of the
they really, they're not the epiphany, but it was the eye
opening reaction, realization that it's freaking hard to do
some of these things that you say that you might take for
granted like you like, why can'tI have just multi screen
experience? And then he showed how to do it.
And there are other examples. And it's really, really complex
(34:46):
to do much more complex than youwould think.
But he gave a great example of how how custom you could get if
you wanted to, whether it be, you know, there's a whole bunch
of sports that have loads of different camera views.
You might just want to have a few on on the side and running
in smaller view like F1, like other, you know, other sports
that might have different anglesin I think you could do the NF
golf would be a perfect example of that.
(35:08):
So, and obviously not obviously,I said obviously too many times,
but YouTube using it, they were one of the first to launch as a
major feature of their Sunday ticket offering.
I believe, if I remember correctly was what the multi
screen offering that was last year.
That has been another enabler ofconsumer behaviour changing
(35:30):
where people are like, I really want that feature now actually,
can I have more of it? Not that that hasn't existed
before, but the the ability to choose and tailor yourself is
now. It's something that people
actively really want. So definitely people wanting
more, more and more control. That's for sure.
Well, now, now that you mentioned Nick as a as a
football nerd, I now want multi screen, but I also want the all
(35:52):
22 or what we refer to as all 22sets when you get like the full
footage, because I'm cool with the broadcast angles and all
that, but I also want to be ableto watch the all 22 the whole
time. Usually, you know, just it's
like most sports. Very few of them do you actually
see the whole pitch and things like that.
I want the whole 22. So what?
Was cool, yeah, yeah, definitely.
What was cool with tile media, he gave a demonstration on
(36:13):
screen and the fact that he could just so easily expand or
reduce the size of the camera angle.
So you could have one main shot,you could have two main shots,
you could have 15 different little thumbnails.
If you wanted to have that depththere, you could do it all and
have that complete control. And I think, you know, that sort
of experience, if you're settingyourself up for the day and
(36:34):
wanted to, it'd be perfect, yeah.
So we'll switch things over now to to ice hockey and what you
got to experience on the back end with in front.
So I've seen the vans because you know, the NFL and the NBA,
they do a good job sometimes of showing some love to the behind
the scenes people and they show you in the production, but you
don't really get a ton of. It was really cool when we had
our first ever Sports Pro OTTUSAevent in Atlanta down at the
(36:58):
Turner Studios where we got to kind of go through the back in
there. But again, that was all back and
they weren't doing anything liveat the time.
Maybe share a little bit of that, you know, behind the
scenes that you got to and in front.
Obviously you've been in the game for a long time.
Lots of big partners, you know, just sort of that experience
behind the scenes. Absolutely, so it was a really
great opportunity that it was all happening whilst I was there
(37:18):
and credit to the team in front for you know, inviting me along
and getting me to experience at all first hand.
It was really timely given and also I was going to this the
Streaming Tech Sweden event where there was a lot of talk
about production more on the tech side.
This is more about the doing andthe the delivery side of that.
But I, you know, for yeah, for context in in front is one of
(37:40):
these. What would you, I guess you
called them an agency that's been in the market for quite a
long time. They have a lot of major sets of
rights right across the industry.
They're in front and they are connected with HBS host
broadcast services as well. But the in front partnership is
basically they call themselves like a marketing partner for the
ice hockey World Championships and have that relationship until
(38:03):
I think it's 2033 and basically deliver all the broadcast
production for them. Yeah, but this this deal is a
pretty significant one. Basically the relationship with
them is when you talk about marketing partnership, there's
also a right element to it as well as the production and and
delivery of it. So basically they are dealing
with all the commercial rights and all the core services, you
know, ticketing and broadcast production that they are doing
(38:26):
for them. So it's a pretty comprehensive
relationship with the Ice HockeyFederation.
But really my main focus was to take a look at basically how
they were doing the broadcast production and also some of the
innovations they were bringing to it, which is really
interesting. So I got a chance to see the
broadcast track and all the the layers to that.
What was interesting is they were having live matches happen
(38:49):
both in Denmark and Sweden at the same time.
And I got to watch Sweden versusCanada, which is one of the the
top, the top matches in the competition, which was great.
And in in Sweden to the crowd was was awesome as well.
But they were they were broadcasting both games at the
same time and there was an element of where they were doing
some of the production from the Denmark game in Sweden as well.
(39:11):
So there's an element of remote production on site, but some of
the innovations they've brought to the fore are they're bringing
extras like super slow MO cameras into the the footage of
it. And you think about ice hockey,
sometimes that puck is just moving too fast, right?
And it's hard to keep a grasp ofwhat's actually happened.
You know, how a goal's actually been scored.
And today using these extra super slow MO's to really bring
(39:32):
that to life. And I saw some of the examples
of that and that was that was really cool.
The other thing that was interesting, they have this,
what do they call them Cam on ice or ice Cam?
They basically have a guy that comes on regularly through the
game whenever there's a little bit of a break in play.
It could just be the whistles blown or whatever and there's a
guy all dressed in white to hireto be like hidden away in the
(39:55):
ice from fans going out with thecamera and follows players
around, follows the action mightbe follow.
He might go on the ice for a penalty shootout.
So getting way more close to theaction, just taking the the
standardised feed and that actually you could really see
the difference there when I watch some of the broadcast
footage of that as well. They did more around getting
people into lockers and games and they're also using what they
(40:15):
call it, they call it ultra motion cameras into the feed,
which just get you a little bit closer, closer to the action.
And I, I really like that. So it's nice, a nice array of
innovations. They've got 31 cameras I think
on site. So it's a big, it's a big
broadcast production, something like 90 different media partners
and it's one, it's one of the biggest events of the of the
(40:36):
year really from in terms of a broadcast production
perspective. So it's good to get close to
that. Well, I have said people like
ice hockey I think is one of thebest in venue sports to go watch
because it's fast, it's physical, there's still a bunch
of skill involved. And then for someone like myself
who overheats, the venues are never too warm.
But I will say watching on TV, I'm the same way.
(40:57):
Like there is a bit of a struggle, you know, to keep up
with the puck because it's not avery large item and it is moving
around all the time. I think ESPN one time like
failed and trialled like having like a like a tail that came.
Off the back of the puck. So you could sort of like fall,
which I'm sure at the time was incredibly innovative to be able
to to have that in place, but I don't think had the viewer
(41:17):
experience that people were looking for.
So anything, yeah, that can be done to to help especially from
ATV perspective because I do feel like it is a is a very
different experience watching itlive versus watching it on TV.
Yeah, I mean, even when you're watching it in person that you
can lose the pocket times, but not to the same challenge that
you do on the screen, I find. And that's where the Super slow
(41:38):
mode because it was there was some goals scored and you just I
always have this you like you'renot really sure what's happened.
You're really trying to work out.
How do we get it? Squeeze it through.
There and you get the Super slowmeet up.
Oh, OK, that's really cool and that you don't ever appreciate
the play until you see those super those super slow MOS.
So definitely needed. I think you need to, I'm sure it
(41:58):
happens with a lot of sports, but once you've seen something
live, then you appreciate it 10 times more when you watch it on
TV. And I think that's one of those
sports that really comes to the fore.
So really cool experience to saythat in action.
Very impressed with, you know how in front we're putting all
that together, managing quite a major broadcast production.
I, I didn't really expect it to be the scale it was, but it was,
(42:23):
it was really impressive to see it all all up closely in person.
Well, fingers are crossed that we may hear from Philippe
Blatter the, the CEO. They're here not, not on the
podcast, Nick, not on the podcast, but it appears we might
be setting up an interview. I believe in front of, I've got
my memory correct, might be 25 years old as of this year
officially. So it's something along those
(42:44):
lines. They're, they're celebrating
some sort of significant anniversary.
So it'll be interesting to hear from him.
That'll be done by our editorialteam in a written format just to
kind of hear what they've seen because like you've mentioned,
that business has has evolved quite a bit over the years.
So I think there'll be an interesting piece to keep an eye
out for later in the summer. Heck of a journey they've had
over the last 10-15 years in particular.
(43:05):
And that we followed them through their journeys with
their ownership, with Wanda taking a huge investment into
them, their relationship with Ironman over the years.
And these pretty significant relationships they have, like
with the IIOHF, which are are really significant.
And I think sometimes might be lost on the more mainstream
sports community. But here's here's a partner that
(43:28):
they're basically IIHF is basically not handing over the
keys, but almost the same like you take care of the broadcast
production, you take care of thesales, you take care of the
experience we're delivering in hospitality and just make it
make it really good every time we have this event.
And I think the world championship is every year
actually. So I think it's one of those
(43:48):
more regular ones that has, yeah, has a is a really well
polished machine, I have to say.Well, Nick, I know as a
recording this afterwards you'regoing to take some time off and
it sounds like you need it because you just went and did
everything you possibly could and you didn't even have to to
leave your own country to do it.Yeah, I did that in the base of
about 36 hours. I also had a lot of fun riding
(44:10):
around in E scooters all over the place getting around town,
although after a few drinks after the ice hockey I took the
Uber and said that time because there was probably a safer
option. But it was nice to get around
and see Stockholm for I've only been there once in my life and
that was actually to go to the same arena to watch The Rolling
Stones in action. So this time I got to watch the
(44:30):
skating Swedes, but it was a lotof fun.
So it was good to get out there and good to get that experience
on my belt. And I I learned a lot more than
I had expected. And not because I wasn't
expecting good things, but just it was, it was really, really
blew me away about how much I took away from it.
Well, you can now enjoy your holiday Nick, and for everyone,
I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll catch you on the next
(44:51):
episode of Streamtown Sports. Thanks everyone.
Now before you go, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to
rate and review and just let me know what you think on social.
You can find me on most social platforms at Sports Pro Nick.
Now please do spread the word ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
whether that be in person or on social media.
And if you don't like what you've heard, what you think we
(45:12):
should be doing more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
Hello, everyone, 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, Nick, I'm going to let you in on one of my guilty pleasures
and I'm going to need you to provide a little bit of a
cultural context. OK?
Yeah. So basically, well, my wife and
I, you know, sort of 8:39 PM, that's sort of, you know, too
(00:32):
late to get anything started. And you just put something on
the background on the TV, let you know Right now, Nick, my
guilty pleasure is a little bit of Married at First Sight
Australia. Oh.
Dear, Oh gosh. Well, I have to.
I would give you one of my I wouldn't say it's a guilty
pleasure. I would say I I'm happy.
I am more than tolerant but don't enjoy it too much.
(00:57):
Is love is blind, actually. So for what it's.
Worth I've heard laughs from downstairs, from from my wife,
laughing at the fact that I justadmitted to this live, live on
on the air. Yeah.
Well Nick, for what it's worth, I only know 1 Australian who's
our head of production who doesn't cringe when I mentioned
(01:17):
that show. But anyways, in the episode last
night, there was a term mentioned that I was not
familiar with. Someone was accused of being a
bogan, which I am familiar with.And then the response was I'm
not a bogan, I'm a a yabo. A Yabo.
OK, sure. Right.
Yeah, so for me, context, my family is from eastern KY in the
(01:40):
Appalachians, so I can get offended sometimes when they're
referred to as rednecks because we're hillbillies, We're not
rednecks. So I'm just, I don't know the
difference between a bogan and ayab, A yabo.
I I don't know if those things are relatable.
When you say with an American accent, but it is actually how
you how you say it. I've never thought about the
(02:01):
difference between the two untilyou've brought this up today.
So I'd say the difference is pretty similar to your, your
example of like the redneck versus hillbilly concept.
I'd say that bogan comes out of like a playbook.
Like there's a definition of like what a bogan is.
And there's like about 15 thingsof criteria and characteristics.
(02:23):
And I'll tell you, Yobo is basically something who's a bit
more just, I don't know, lazy and just a bit just a really
nothing going nothing. There's nothing about them.
They just a bit lazy. They do don't do a lot.
They just, they just don't do much and not exactly adding a
(02:44):
lot of value to society. In the nicest possible way, I'm
trying to think of a better way to describe it than that.
I'd say it's basically just someone that is, yeah, someone
who just goes around, probably doesn't do anything really nice
or well. Is that a good description out
of that? Does that replicate what a
hillbilly would be? I'm not really sure it does.
(03:06):
I don't know, I think hillbillies and regs next.
There are some cultural differences.
There's also some geographical differences.
I've just never heard the term yabo mentioned before.
So it's a bit like, well. OK, so I looked, I'm sure
uncultured person. That's that's probably a much
better way than saying what I would say, which is very
useless. I'm sure they have some use to
(03:27):
society, but uncultured is definitely, definitely one of
them. But don't follow a bogan
playbook necessarily. So you can be both is what I
would say. OK, you can be both, but Bogan's
did more of an out of a playbookthat you would define as
probably a bit like a chav in the UK.
OK, fine. OK.
All right. OK, that helps.
(03:48):
Like I said, it's just, I hadn'theard it before and you know,
sometimes, you know, just you need a little bit of local
expertise. So I appreciate you for
enlightening me, Nick. Well, I would say that I think
bogan has now become like embraced a lot more.
If you called someone bogan before initially going back 20
odd years ago, it was seeing pretty negatively through
(04:09):
negative connotations. And then it just became more and
more adopted as like, yeah, yeah, I am.
And people you see this like now, whole generation that
absolutely embrace the bogan culture to some extent, a huge
extent. So I'm not sure if that's again,
the similar sort of thing you have in the US around rednecks
and hillbillies, but that's definitely prominent in
(04:31):
Australia. When I go back I see loud and
clear. Is that the mustache and mullet
look? That's part of it, yeah.
Short shorts, singlet vest top, if you want to call it that.
Probably haven't wear worn shoesfor about 12 months.
Probably drive a certain type ofcertain type of car I could get.
(04:51):
I could keep going, but it gets worse and more specific after
that. Well, you're, you're pretty far
away from Australia these days naked.
And we mentioned last episode you had some travels around
Sweden, fortunately a quite a shorter trip than travelling
back and forth to Australia. But there was so much, you know,
we had to do 2 episodes to covereverything.
So last week we talked about your experiences at the Two
Circles event, which is very much sort of we talked about the
(05:13):
fan engagement, the media rightsbroadcast, lots of data
involved, where one of the things I thought was interesting
from that, you mentioned one of the presentations that talked
about how heavily people in Sweden specifically consume
content via streaming and that they're actually probably ahead
of the game with those things. So it makes sense that there's a
big event, the streaming tech Sweden event that you also got
(05:36):
to attend, which I will say is put on by one of my good friends
here at Sports Pro Judge at the OTT Awards, which is now the
Sports Pro Media Awards, which Ibelieve maybe by the time this
podcast ended or gone out, you might not get the early bird
special, but you can still applyfor it.
But anyways, Magnus Fenson runs that event.
I saw Jason Tebow was there alsoone of my favorites.
I like to refer them as the T Bolt.
(05:57):
He's just an awesome dude and we'll talk a little bit.
Andres Hayden was at the event. But you know, Nick, just Part 2
of your experiences. We're going to talk about that
event and then we're also going to talk about you got to go to
the International Ice Hockey World Championships, I believe
it was. So you got a lot of experiences
really looking at broadcast and streaming technology and that's
(06:17):
what we're going to focus on today.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a lot of
learnings to take away from thisand I think it's worth sharing
because I do think there's some stuff in there that helps paint
a bit of a picture of where we're going with as an industry,
not just around technology, but you know, typically the tech is
an enabler for the business changes as well.
I'll get into that in in in a second.
(06:38):
But the the the world championship was great.
I went with in front productions, who gave me a
really good deep dive into what they're doing this.
I'll jump into that in the second-half, as you said.
But yeah, the Streaming Tech Sweden event has been running
for I think about eight years orso now.
Magnusson and the team from IvanTechnology, really impressive
group of people who are really dedicated to delivering
(07:00):
basically services to the streaming industry, have done
work, do work across sports, butalso a lot of different
platforms, broadcasters, not in not only across the Nordics, but
indeed right across the world. This event, I've been to a few.
I spoke at one of them and what I would say, and I mean this in
the nice way is I would not havebeen the right person to speak
(07:21):
at this event. And I mean that is they've
they've, they've got another step further in technology with
a lot of demonstrations. I would say in the nicest way,
nerding out a little bit much more than they have in the past.
And I love that. It was great.
It really pushed my boundaries to understand more about where
where the industry is going, where the focuses are, where the
changes are coming. So full credit to Magnus on what
(07:42):
they were able to put together. A lot of familiar names were on
stage from events that we've held and it was good to see them
go a bit deeper than I think they have historically in the
past done in some instances. But a lot of really good insight
into there. And the big theme that I think I
took away was there is seems to be we're at a tipping point,
particularly that is happening with regards to production,
(08:05):
media production, the whole media supply chain.
There's a couple of examples of this where there was a
presentation done by Dyn Media, Dyn Sports with Andreas, which
I'll jump into and give a bit more detail on in a second.
But there's also one done by, I believe it was TVTV 4, which is
a Scandinavian or Nordic. I can't remember the differences
(08:27):
between the two of these days. I should know that, but they
cover Finland, Finland, Denmark,I think and the and Sweden and
they're basically completely rebuilding their media supply
chain. And that might be lost on people
who work in the business side. But for context, they're
basically intimating that the way media like broadcast content
(08:48):
has been distributed has basically not changed in 60 to
70 years. It's been expanded.
So the use of satellites and other things and fiber, but the,
the notion of it largely been a legacy approach for the last
60-70 years. And they are rewriting the
entire approach basically almoststarting from scratch.
And they use the example and theone that I'll go to and Andreas
(09:12):
is in a second that he gave is and Andreas said this in his
chat, they said we had the benefit of starting with a blank
piece of paper so we could buildit like a modern day media
business should be built and a modern day sports platform
should be built. Whereas these other broadcasters
that have been having to play this tricky balance of working
on how to evolve to this new streaming age where they're
(09:35):
going to produce more content, have it more housed in different
places. How do you, you know, a lot of
broadcasters were still using archive tape video until very
recently to cut and edit and then publish online when they
wanted to use archive footage. So there's all these little
small things that you probably don't think about that have huge
repercussions in the way a broadcaster or a platform can
(09:56):
perform. And to this, this event and the
sessions that Ivan put on, we'rereally good at painting a
picture of how these things are changing.
And I think for me, giving me a sense of where how it's
impacting sports for the future,particularly as most sports
properties are on this journey now of becoming media and
content businesses, right? We talk about it a lot, but it's
(10:18):
absolutely at the forefront of what everyone is doing and it's
only picking up pace. So you mentioned we're at a
precipice, particularly when it comes to media production.
Why exactly we are, are we at this precipice?
What is, what is pushing us to this point that you know where
there is it? Is it, is it a cost thing?
Is it an efficiency thing? Is it a scale thing?
(10:40):
What's gone us to this point that it seemed to be such a
point of emphasis? Sure, there are a couple of
parts to it. 1 is we have not seen a lot of super out and out
successful stories of media companies in this space growing
as streaming's coming to the fore.
They've had the challenge of trying to drive monetization and
that has been trickier than I think many expected.
(11:02):
But costs have been going up because they've been launching
new approaches, new models and layering up what they're doing.
So now the focus is about cost efficiency.
So how can you run your media workflows, your media channels
and distribution and and contentmanagement and a more effective,
more efficient way in hint, AI has a massive role to do in that
(11:22):
and bring down the cost implications there.
So then the ability to produce and distribute more content is
massively, massively amplified. And that has a direct
correlation with what's happening in sports.
You think about sports outside the top tier and their ability
to broadcast matches live to fans and consumers all across
the world through all the different channels.
(11:43):
If it's really expensive to do, they won't do it.
But if you can get those costs down, they are able to do a lot
more. And the technology is making it
so much easier to democratize that.
This video example we had a couple of weeks ago is one
example of that. But there's a whole host of
other layers to the media workflow that everyone has to
take into account to make sure they're able to keep evolving at
(12:06):
the right pace. Now I'm understanding this is
not a dedicated sports event. Now obviously Andres would have
been providing an example of a sports case study and we can
speak about that in a bit. But just curious from your
perspective, did you hear anything from these more
generalized broader media companies that seems different
from what you've heard from other sports companies?
(12:26):
Or is there something that sports companies really should
be paying attention to, which I'm sure the really senior
people do look at those macro trends?
We're just curious if you heard things more broadly outside of
sports? Well, the interesting thing
about this event is it it is much more technical.
So a lot of very technical people in the room.
It's for technical people to learn.
So for me, there's some instances where I was, I
(12:46):
wouldn't say I was on on stage content.
I would say I was able to followpretty well the, the bulk of the
conversation. But the stuff around encoding
and decoding that I'm not reallyFA with.
I couldn't really tell you much about it or otherwise other than
that I know that exists and they're an important part of
the, the workflow. And when I talk to people off
stage that I, I got lost in conversations, sometimes I like
(13:06):
laughing away and agreeing and nodding.
And I'm like, I don't really know what I've just been told
that it sounds important. So look, and I would say I don't
know if this is this is the right way to put it.
But if you ask anyone, even in our company in sports pro, I'm
probably one of the most knowledgeable on the streaming
space. And I had no clue what some of
some of the stuff they were covering.
So it's a much deeper event in that in that vein.
(13:28):
And I'm, I'm probably giving myself a disservice saying that,
but there's some bits of that itwas pushing me to go, oh, right,
I need to learn more about that because it's really important
and it's changing quite a lot. So the, the point is that they
are talking much more about a much deeper technical
transformation, whereas still sports is more focused on the
business transformation part mainly, I think.
(13:49):
And that's they need to get a better grasp.
And that's the role we're tryingto play.
That's definitely the role that streaming tech Sweden plays and
what Ivan play is like just trying to bridge that gap of
going, hey, how do we get, we know we need to do more content.
We know you need to manage that.It's really laborious effort to
do it. How do we do it more
(14:11):
effectively? We'll hear these all these tech
solutions. Now sports doesn't need to know
the depth of that doesn't need to know the breadth and depth of
some of the encoding decoding stuff, because if they're not
broadcasting at the scale that some of these other broadcasters
are, well, they don't need to beso worried about latency.
If they're a lower tier sports property, they don't need to be
worried about some of these things and they're working with
(14:31):
more of an end to end partner. Then they can just leave it to
the experts to get on with it. And they just got to focus on
the business side a little bit. So sports doesn't always need to
know the breadth and depth. I think if you can speak close
to that language, I mean, it's, you know, when you talk to
someone like an Andreas, who's he's, he's, he's so impressive
to listen to. Yeah, he, he understands
(14:52):
everything from the business side through all, all layers of
the tech side. That's the, I think that's the
North Star. You basically want to be as a,
as a leader if if you're runningan organization like he is.
But I don't think in sports specifically, you need to have
that breadth in depth. But it certainly helps to have a
more, a bigger understanding just so you can ask the right
questions. You can ask the questions of
(15:14):
your team. We can ask the right questions
of your partners and providers. And one of the things I think
that's difficult to overcome in this industry is if you don't
have enough knowledge and you'relooking at doing something to
take the step to say yes, we're going to go ahead with working
with you. If it's too much of A leap of
faith, you'll never, it's reallydifficult to say yes to that.
You don't want to make a big decision, a big massive business
(15:36):
decision and do it with risk, right?
So you have to have the confidence that you know what
you're signing up for. So you do.
I think the importance of havinga baseline technology
understanding is really important for business execs.
But you just don't need to know what to the degree perhaps what
I was getting some of that exposure to.
I hope you're enjoying this episode of Stream Time Sports,
but we just wanted to draw your attention to what's next in the
(15:56):
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but now it's time to understand how.
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(16:18):
excellence. Impact X Where creativity meets
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Pro Impact X to find out more. Yeah, well that gives us a
perfect segue to then go and talk about Andre specifically,
which if you don't know about Dime Media, we won't go fully in
depth because maybe we're hopeful.
We'll keep our fingers crossed we can get them in to come on
the pod and talk about some of their journey.
(16:39):
We've covered it in the past, some of the early investment
rounds that they did and where it's gone.
But it sounds like, you know, there's some wink winks to to
you, then maybe there's some other things, but hopefully
they're in a place to talk a little bit more.
But just what you took from Andre is particularly from the
production side because there are some unique elements as to
what Dine is doing that may be different from an NFL Premier
(16:59):
League in terms of the scale andthe types of sports that they
are covering. Absolutely, I would say this.
I would say that Dine is one of the most important examples of a
case study that we have in sports today because they're
proving out within a couple of years how to build out a
dedicated sports streaming service at a decent scale with
(17:23):
meaningful sets of rights. And they've done it in a really
cost effective manner, which I think is really important for
the entire industry to understand.
Because even if you're someone who's launching a platform
that's not a sports property, there's plenty to learn from
what they've done. But also, even if you are a
sport and you're really thinkingabout, do we do it ourselves?
Well, I think there's a truckload you can learn from
these guys. You'll, you'll learn quickly
(17:44):
that you need to know what you're talking about, but you
can also find people that can help you along the way really
comfortably if you do the the big thing that Diane talked
about, so I will give a real topquick top view of their, their
macro business strategy is, is you know, they are they picked
and identified 5 key sports to really super serve right and
that they basically create a subscription proposition, which
(18:06):
is at a such a cost effective rate that you get access.
It's going deeper on those five rather than being too broad
stroked and having say 1015 sports available on the
broadcast. There's five that they would say
that they sort of own basically or they're really the leading
platform in Germany for So they're a German or DAC region
platform, right? And it's, it's subscription LED.
(18:27):
They do drive some revenue from advertising, but it's, it's, you
know, the by far the majority isthrough subscription based and I
think the price is around €15.00a month.
So pretty very cost effective asa price point.
The main thing that he was presenting there and I think
this is the, the important part is about production.
So it's about how they're producing their content and
doing it as a as a cost effective way and it resource
(18:49):
light as possible. So one of the big things that he
talked about was taking much more hybrid approach.
And what I mean by hybrid approach, you might have heard
that a lot at the events that werun.
We talk about a lot of this stuff and have been talking
about it for quite some time, but they've actually made it
happen. So what they did is they laid,
so they, they, they partnered upwith these different rights
(19:10):
holders, they went to the arenasand they actually laid dedicated
fibre and cable to make sure their connections were really
strong. And then they basically rebuilt
the concept of a outside broadcast van from scratch.
And the, the example he used on stage was they basically if you
see one of these broadcast fans broadcast trucks, they are
(19:32):
enormous in qualifying. You might see a couple of them
at an event, which is what I didsee at the World Championship
that I'll talk about a bit lateron, but they would have
basically get it down. So it was just a van that would
drive to events, a very simple van that anyone could drive.
And they had this thing that it's basically like production
cart that was equivalent the size of 10 cases of beer that
you could roll into an arena andthen you could broadcast
(19:54):
completely seamlessly broad thatlive experience.
They had next to no issues from a delivery standpoint, which
brought down all sorts of costs and and these weird things like.
He uses an example, but it's a serious thing.
If you need to drive a truck, you need to have the right type
of people to drive the truck. It's expensive to drive a truck.
It's expensive to build the truck versus just having a van,
(20:17):
any old hire van you could use to get your stuff from point A
to point B. And so they reinvented that.
So it was completely hybrid. They they had next to nothing.
They had to bring on site did a bunch of the the commentary and
other stuff remote and it has been a huge success for them to
keep their costs massively down and using AI and other
technologies as well to make basically make that work.
(20:39):
So the point really for him to highlight was it was quite in
detail. And if we get him on it, we'll
get him to talk about it in, in,in in some level of detail, give
people a sense of the complexity.
But they build everything from basically from scratch.
And then they just talked about the fact they're really
committed to getting out as muchhighlight content through as
many different channels, partners and social.
(21:00):
And he used to turn the 95 to 96% of those rights is lost
after the game is actually broadcast, right?
So why sit on those highlights? Just get him out there and let
them go to work and try and build fandom on the sport, Which
I thought was just an interesting contextualization on
that. A number, putting a number
attached to the value differencethat they saw on that.
Well, just on that, I, I find this incredibly interesting
(21:22):
because I feel like it's a bit opposite where, and again, this
will come down to the meteoritesdeals where I think Premier
League teams like don't get access to highlights from the
Premier League until like 24 hours after the match takes
place. So, and I get it, that would
because they've got deals with Sky and TNT and things like
that. But yeah, just an interesting
point there. Like I said, I've never heard
the statistic mentioned that way, but it it makes sense that
(21:43):
it probably is as high as 95% that you should be trying to
push that stuff in real time as much as possible wherever you
can. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think, look, that you're 4to 5% of, you know, a billion
dollars, if you're talking in the Premier League is, is a
chunky piece of money. But the net, the, the benefit of
getting your content out there to more audiences is that it can
(22:05):
drive long term value. But it's difficult to quantify
that sometimes. I think that's a tricky bit that
people might, might face. So yeah, he gave a really
detailed description of the livefeed production, how they manage
that, how much of its themselves, the different
partners they use along the way,and then how they deliver
through the different partners, which I've got a I've got some
slides and stuff that he shared on the screen, which we just
(22:25):
gave a better picture of the types of partners they're
working with. But in short, it's it's been a
big success. They've launched this hybrid
approach which has kept costs really, really low.
They launched and went on 90% ofplatforms from day one,
delivering to 6 digit audiences regularly.
They track every single movementon their platform.
(22:46):
Like they are really granular onthe data side more than I think
most are. And going through the experience
that I've had with our website trying to get intelligence on
our own platforms performance, it's harder than you think to
get that sort of data. But they've been really focused
on on that. The other cost saving bit that
was really interesting, which might be boring to some people,
but it is interesting to me is one of the cost implications
(23:07):
they have when you're trying to go very cloud based is it's very
expensive to run on cloud servers like AWS and the like.
But they took away that basically they scaled up and
scaled down the use of AWS immediately before and after
matches. And and that's a small thing,
but it actually end up being quite a significant cost saving
to bring their baseline of cost down, making it again, this
(23:29):
whole thing about sustainable, more viable to produce more of
these games through the cloud at, at a much financially viable
number, basically. So I'm not sure I've done him a
good service there, but he was, it was incredibly interesting to
hear him talk about all that stuff.
And they've created their own bespoke disk content desk
management solution to manage all their content just really
(23:49):
gone. They've really gone deep on
being a tech business first, basically to make sure they
deliver, not just think, lookingat what you see at the end
product and having a subscription model that
hopefully, fingers crossed, works.
Well, that'll go back to his DFLdays with the, the glass to
glass analogy that they always spoke about.
One quick question I had for you, Nick.
When you mention the AWS, I'm curious how they, they made that
(24:11):
deal work because to my knowledge, you know, one of the
things I speak about, I, I do some onboarding for some of our
new employees. When I talk about media, I talk
about one of the difficult things is you need to pay enough
for a service that you can handle the peak traffic moments,
but you also don't want to pay so much that you're overpaying
for what you actually need. So I I didn't realize that you
(24:34):
could up and down your service of AWS.
So I'm just curious to know how that worked out.
Yeah, so that that is not not souncommon, but he he described it
like so for example, we you can buy flexible servers.
So basically when you, when traffic peaks, they kick into
gear and you, but you pay a premium for that ability to have
the, the dynamism of, of, of that service.
(24:56):
But when you're talking about the scale that they are for live
broadcast, it has to be even more robust and profound how you
do that. That's a bit above my knowledge
base. So I'm not too sure how that
differs. But I know, for example, when
we've done launches with our website, we had to make sure we
had certain servers in place. We've launched big reports and
big announcements where we will go from, you know, hundreds of
(25:17):
people on the website to 10s, you know, 10,000 on the website.
All of a sudden, when we've had that before that create, create
a huge pressure. So you do need the right sort of
infrastructure in place and AWS is probably the best in the
business for that. And obviously also that
Andreas's background with DFL, he'd be very familiar with AWS
because of AW was a major partner of the Bundesliga.
(25:41):
So before I move you on to ice hockey where we can, is there
anything else that you've got towrap up on that you kind of your
key learnings? Yeah.
Look, I'd say the main thing is,as I said to you, was that I've
sort of covered the main bits, which is a big focus on
production, big focus on production at the broadcast
level, getting that efficiency out of the way.
Content is being produced, it's being stored, it's being managed
(26:02):
and distributed is what everyonewas hugely, hugely focused on.
There was an interesting exampleon site which I had Meta
presenting their AI technology on translations, which I think
is going to be coming be playinga huge role.
So basically it would just be ushaving this conversation and you
recorded on one of their devices.
(26:23):
You just press a button and it will do the dubbing the lip sync
in another language and even showed what was called.
They showed how they do it because there's things like in
certain languages, it might takeyou longer or less time to say
the same thing. So they were able to make that
all work basically with with a lot of work engineering.
So you can do it as a flick of abutton.
(26:44):
And I can imagine a lot of sports properties will start
using that. So that the goal is that it will
allow if your content is a basic, if we do this POD and
then we did it on say Instagram,it would just in Spanish
markets, you press a button and in Spanish markets, it would be
dubbed in Spanish with and fullylip sync.
So it would look like us talking.
And that's going to come zooming.
More and more of those countriescoming out, which I think will
(27:06):
become one of those sneaky things will be hugely, hugely
valuable for a lot of sports properties who are very global
and frightening at the same time.
Because it gets one of one of those examples of like, not deep
fakes, but like how you can easily just manipulate what
something's on screen just by the click of a button.
Well, it also means you won't have to listen to me say the
word yabo with an American accent anymore.
(27:28):
Yeah, we can get an Australian translation just for that.
The other one was just, again, there was another big, big thing
on piracy and I talked to peopleoff stage and they are really
frightened on where it's going. It's getting worse and it's
worse and worse, and that's where a lot of people agreed
with my thesis on we just have to find a way to make
advertising models work in this space.
(27:50):
It's the only way. It's a bit like the whole
Spotify, Napster or Pirate Bay journey, but there's the numbers
they use the. RIP to my computers about 20
years ago. Yeah, exactly.
They start. They use 50% of people watching
via piracy. 25% subscribe to IPTV illegally.
(28:11):
That's 750,000 households in Sweden alone.
Yeah, that's a lot when the country is only 10 million.
They actually did a piracy demo,which is really cool.
So basically they hacked, they created a website and they just
showed people how to hack the site and that was really cool
and frightening how easy it was.I mean, they're obviously the
(28:32):
one of the guys who did it. And as he's from Akamai, he's a
he's a really cool guy. But he showed the example on
screen and he said in a couple of hours in the evening, I
basically did this and he showedexactly how to RIP it off and
put it up, put it live and available.
And one of the interesting tips that they gave, and I think this
is the probably the bit I'll leave it at is sports needs to
(28:53):
just try stop trying to stop thepirates because they can't stop
them. So what they gave a visual where
they showed where the when they cut off a pirate.
A few more minutes later they came back again and found
another way in. And a few months later they came
back in again. They found different ways in and
they gave the techno technological examples as to why
(29:15):
and how they do it. So they said instead the trick
is to just make it harder for them, harder for them to get.
But also you can do little tricks.
Like for example, one example they gave, which I thought was
really cool was they change the video so they see someone's
being hacked, this video feed's being hacked.
They will change the video that they're hacking to like a piracy
(29:39):
message. And so the person watching will
get served this this message, which will be like you realise
you've, you've been trying to watch a pirate of viewing.
And the reason that is interesting is the the pirates
won't see that that change has happened and they'll just keep
serving this video out. And all they'll see is the
bandwidth and the usage and the consumption still going on.
(30:01):
So as far as they know, they're still serving the same piece of
content. And there's a few little tricks
they did like that, which I thought was quite, quite fun.
One other frightening part aboutit, which is a massive enabler
for piracy was the one of the bigger problems is that pirates
are stealing from pirates. So because the pirates don't
have as much protection on, on their platform as perhaps the
(30:22):
sports properties and the, the broadcasters do.
And so the pirates RIP off the other pirates who've got the
content. So now it's going through like 2
sets of hands, meaning that it, it just becomes the, the, the,
the reach and extensive nature of it becomes prolific.
So piracy is, is, is an even bigger problem.
And I don't know, even for someone who's running a media
company, I don't know how to approach this from our point of
(30:43):
view. Like do we need to do more about
talk more about it? Because what we've done stuff
about it, some people care aboutit loads and some people just
sort of say accept that's, you know, that's what it is a bit
like what we were kind of talking about before.
So it's a tricky 1 to to digest.No loyalty amongst thieves,
apparently. Yeah.
And it's just the acceptance that it's OK, just it's this,
(31:04):
this societal acceptance, like I'm not stealing.
It's it's fine to do and this this willingness to share that
I'm stealing is absolutely fine to do.
There's a huge there's a huge conundrum there that will not be
solved in any other way except gross change in the model.
And the the final bit was there was 2 ones 2 but quickly was a
(31:28):
shuttle from ease live who's presented our events and they
won a bunch of awards at their sports and media awards.
They've been a real leader, interactive content and features
in streams, one of the market leaders on that front for some
time now with some great examples of what they've done in
with the US, which I think it was with yes, network was one of
(31:50):
the major examples. They've shared a bunch.
There was a couple of interesting stats I thought were
sharing 77% of users multitask while watching live now, which
is not surprising. But you think about, we've
talked about this before, you think about the fact that what's
the primary screen in someone's experience?
Then if 77% of people are on their phone basically or doing
(32:15):
something else at the same time,the sports in the background, is
it the primary focus? Not always is the obviously
answer. The other things were that when
you Add all these interactive layers, they see 50% increase in
engagement time and watch times.And when you add polls and other
things, they can see as much as a 5 to 10 times engagement rate
increase in the feed. And what they basically enable
(32:37):
is the use of team info, stats, betting odds, poles and even ads
to be made available in the feed.
And their conclusion is very simply that it has huge, it has
huge impact on consumption to the positive, which I had not
seen a lot of stats on that. I heard a lot of talk about it,
but it's good to see some of that quantified.
I. Want to say I think one of the
(32:59):
interesting things I saw about what they did was.
It gives. The user, the ability to almost
control the production in the sense of, you know, if I watch a
Premier League by Sky, as far asI'm aware, the only sets I can
get or whatever they choose to display on the screen.
But maybe in real time, I want to pick up and say, what is the
past completion percentage of X midfielder?
(33:20):
How many shots on goal are as opposed to me having to wait for
Sky Sports to present to me? I think that's what I've seen
some of what the ES live have been able to do where you can
sort of manipulate the broadcastso that you can choose what data
you want to see and how you wantto see and which again, is a
super fan like that's the, I think it's just a nice way to be
able to, as you say, engage withthe content.
(33:40):
Yeah. But also yes to that and also
the fact that you, the broadcastof the the platform owner can
still dictate some of that feed and control as well.
So they can, if they think, you know, we want to basic control
what's going on your screen a bit like you would see in a
major broadcast production. They can still do that and just
have a lot more creativity actually than what sometimes
some of the broadcasters can have.
(34:02):
And your bit about the customizing your experience.
Well, the final session that I was on stage was Tiled Media,
who's been in a few of our events and are presented some of
their wares as well. It was really cool because they
showed up. They basically are really one of
the leading platforms. There's a few that do this type
of thing now, but the multi screen style experience, what
they were really was quite impressive.
(34:23):
Was he really talked about how they do and that was kind of the
they really, they're not the epiphany, but it was the eye
opening reaction, realization that it's freaking hard to do
some of these things that you say that you might take for
granted like you like, why can'tI have just multi screen
experience? And then he showed how to do it.
And there are other examples. And it's really, really complex
(34:46):
to do much more complex than youwould think.
But he gave a great example of how how custom you could get if
you wanted to, whether it be, you know, there's a whole bunch
of sports that have loads of different camera views.
You might just want to have a few on on the side and running
in smaller view like F1, like other, you know, other sports
that might have different anglesin I think you could do the NF
golf would be a perfect example of that.
(35:08):
So, and obviously not obviously,I said obviously too many times,
but YouTube using it, they were one of the first to launch as a
major feature of their Sunday ticket offering.
I believe, if I remember correctly was what the multi
screen offering that was last year.
That has been another enabler ofconsumer behaviour changing
(35:30):
where people are like, I really want that feature now actually,
can I have more of it? Not that that hasn't existed
before, but the the ability to choose and tailor yourself is
now. It's something that people
actively really want. So definitely people wanting
more, more and more control. That's for sure.
Well, now, now that you mentioned Nick as a as a
football nerd, I now want multi screen, but I also want the all
(35:52):
22 or what we refer to as all 22sets when you get like the full
footage, because I'm cool with the broadcast angles and all
that, but I also want to be ableto watch the all 22 the whole
time. Usually, you know, just it's
like most sports. Very few of them do you actually
see the whole pitch and things like that.
I want the whole 22. So what?
Was cool, yeah, yeah, definitely.
What was cool with tile media, he gave a demonstration on
(36:13):
screen and the fact that he could just so easily expand or
reduce the size of the camera angle.
So you could have one main shot,you could have two main shots,
you could have 15 different little thumbnails.
If you wanted to have that depththere, you could do it all and
have that complete control. And I think, you know, that sort
of experience, if you're settingyourself up for the day and
(36:34):
wanted to, it'd be perfect, yeah.
So we'll switch things over now to to ice hockey and what you
got to experience on the back end with in front.
So I've seen the vans because you know, the NFL and the NBA,
they do a good job sometimes of showing some love to the behind
the scenes people and they show you in the production, but you
don't really get a ton of. It was really cool when we had
our first ever Sports Pro OTTUSAevent in Atlanta down at the
(36:58):
Turner Studios where we got to kind of go through the back in
there. But again, that was all back and
they weren't doing anything liveat the time.
Maybe share a little bit of that, you know, behind the
scenes that you got to and in front.
Obviously you've been in the game for a long time.
Lots of big partners, you know, just sort of that experience
behind the scenes. Absolutely, so it was a really
great opportunity that it was all happening whilst I was there
(37:18):
and credit to the team in front for you know, inviting me along
and getting me to experience at all first hand.
It was really timely given and also I was going to this the
Streaming Tech Sweden event where there was a lot of talk
about production more on the tech side.
This is more about the doing andthe the delivery side of that.
But I, you know, for yeah, for context in in front is one of
(37:40):
these. What would you, I guess you
called them an agency that's been in the market for quite a
long time. They have a lot of major sets of
rights right across the industry.
They're in front and they are connected with HBS host
broadcast services as well. But the in front partnership is
basically they call themselves like a marketing partner for the
ice hockey World Championships and have that relationship until
(38:03):
I think it's 2033 and basically deliver all the broadcast
production for them. Yeah, but this this deal is a
pretty significant one. Basically the relationship with
them is when you talk about marketing partnership, there's
also a right element to it as well as the production and and
delivery of it. So basically they are dealing
with all the commercial rights and all the core services, you
know, ticketing and broadcast production that they are doing
(38:26):
for them. So it's a pretty comprehensive
relationship with the Ice HockeyFederation.
But really my main focus was to take a look at basically how
they were doing the broadcast production and also some of the
innovations they were bringing to it, which is really
interesting. So I got a chance to see the
broadcast track and all the the layers to that.
What was interesting is they were having live matches happen
(38:49):
both in Denmark and Sweden at the same time.
And I got to watch Sweden versusCanada, which is one of the the
top, the top matches in the competition, which was great.
And in in Sweden to the crowd was was awesome as well.
But they were they were broadcasting both games at the
same time and there was an element of where they were doing
some of the production from the Denmark game in Sweden as well.
(39:11):
So there's an element of remote production on site, but some of
the innovations they've brought to the fore are they're bringing
extras like super slow MO cameras into the the footage of
it. And you think about ice hockey,
sometimes that puck is just moving too fast, right?
And it's hard to keep a grasp ofwhat's actually happened.
You know, how a goal's actually been scored.
And today using these extra super slow MO's to really bring
(39:32):
that to life. And I saw some of the examples
of that and that was that was really cool.
The other thing that was interesting, they have this,
what do they call them Cam on ice or ice Cam?
They basically have a guy that comes on regularly through the
game whenever there's a little bit of a break in play.
It could just be the whistles blown or whatever and there's a
guy all dressed in white to hireto be like hidden away in the
(39:55):
ice from fans going out with thecamera and follows players
around, follows the action mightbe follow.
He might go on the ice for a penalty shootout.
So getting way more close to theaction, just taking the the
standardised feed and that actually you could really see
the difference there when I watch some of the broadcast
footage of that as well. They did more around getting
people into lockers and games and they're also using what they
(40:15):
call it, they call it ultra motion cameras into the feed,
which just get you a little bit closer, closer to the action.
And I, I really like that. So it's nice, a nice array of
innovations. They've got 31 cameras I think
on site. So it's a big, it's a big
broadcast production, something like 90 different media partners
and it's one, it's one of the biggest events of the of the
(40:36):
year really from in terms of a broadcast production
perspective. So it's good to get close to
that. Well, I have said people like
ice hockey I think is one of thebest in venue sports to go watch
because it's fast, it's physical, there's still a bunch
of skill involved. And then for someone like myself
who overheats, the venues are never too warm.
But I will say watching on TV, I'm the same way.
(40:57):
Like there is a bit of a struggle, you know, to keep up
with the puck because it's not avery large item and it is moving
around all the time. I think ESPN one time like
failed and trialled like having like a like a tail that came.
Off the back of the puck. So you could sort of like fall,
which I'm sure at the time was incredibly innovative to be able
to to have that in place, but I don't think had the viewer
(41:17):
experience that people were looking for.
So anything, yeah, that can be done to to help especially from
ATV perspective because I do feel like it is a is a very
different experience watching itlive versus watching it on TV.
Yeah, I mean, even when you're watching it in person that you
can lose the pocket times, but not to the same challenge that
you do on the screen, I find. And that's where the Super slow
(41:38):
mode because it was there was some goals scored and you just I
always have this you like you'renot really sure what's happened.
You're really trying to work out.
How do we get it? Squeeze it through.
There and you get the Super slowmeet up.
Oh, OK, that's really cool and that you don't ever appreciate
the play until you see those super those super slow MOS.
So definitely needed. I think you need to, I'm sure it
(41:58):
happens with a lot of sports, but once you've seen something
live, then you appreciate it 10 times more when you watch it on
TV. And I think that's one of those
sports that really comes to the fore.
So really cool experience to saythat in action.
Very impressed with, you know how in front we're putting all
that together, managing quite a major broadcast production.
I, I didn't really expect it to be the scale it was, but it was,
(42:23):
it was really impressive to see it all all up closely in person.
Well, fingers are crossed that we may hear from Philippe
Blatter the, the CEO. They're here not, not on the
podcast, Nick, not on the podcast, but it appears we might
be setting up an interview. I believe in front of, I've got
my memory correct, might be 25 years old as of this year
officially. So it's something along those
(42:44):
lines. They're, they're celebrating
some sort of significant anniversary.
So it'll be interesting to hear from him.
That'll be done by our editorialteam in a written format just to
kind of hear what they've seen because like you've mentioned,
that business has has evolved quite a bit over the years.
So I think there'll be an interesting piece to keep an eye
out for later in the summer. Heck of a journey they've had
over the last 10-15 years in particular.
(43:05):
And that we followed them through their journeys with
their ownership, with Wanda taking a huge investment into
them, their relationship with Ironman over the years.
And these pretty significant relationships they have, like
with the IIOHF, which are are really significant.
And I think sometimes might be lost on the more mainstream
sports community. But here's here's a partner that
(43:28):
they're basically IIHF is basically not handing over the
keys, but almost the same like you take care of the broadcast
production, you take care of thesales, you take care of the
experience we're delivering in hospitality and just make it
make it really good every time we have this event.
And I think the world championship is every year
actually. So I think it's one of those
(43:48):
more regular ones that has, yeah, has a is a really well
polished machine, I have to say.Well, Nick, I know as a
recording this afterwards you'regoing to take some time off and
it sounds like you need it because you just went and did
everything you possibly could and you didn't even have to to
leave your own country to do it.Yeah, I did that in the base of
about 36 hours. I also had a lot of fun riding
(44:10):
around in E scooters all over the place getting around town,
although after a few drinks after the ice hockey I took the
Uber and said that time because there was probably a safer
option. But it was nice to get around
and see Stockholm for I've only been there once in my life and
that was actually to go to the same arena to watch The Rolling
Stones in action. So this time I got to watch the
(44:30):
skating Swedes, but it was a lotof fun.
So it was good to get out there and good to get that experience
on my belt. And I I learned a lot more than
I had expected. And not because I wasn't
expecting good things, but just it was, it was really, really
blew me away about how much I took away from it.
Well, you can now enjoy your holiday Nick, and for everyone,
I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll catch you on the next
(44:51):
episode of Streamtown Sports. Thanks everyone.
Now before you go, if you liked what you heard today, be sure to
rate and review and just let me know what you think on social.
You can find me on most social platforms at Sports Pro Nick.
Now please do spread the word ofthe podcast.
There's no better way of marketing than word of mouth,
whether that be in person or on social media.
And if you don't like what you've heard, what you think we
(45:12):
should be doing more or less of something, then reach out and
let me know as I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks. Stream timers until next time.
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