Can Formula 1 succeed on Apple where MLS fell short?

0:04Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the community lead, joined as always by our CEO, Nick Meacham. Now, Nick, there is a funny little, I don't know, maybe funny is not the right word, but there was something that popped up on my social media that just reminded me, you know, for those that don't know, you know, a little Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, you know, I always make sure, Nick, that, you know, I send you over the script. I give you the prep, the questions, the things we're going to talk about. and I don't know if you saw the video of the president of the IOC having a little post Olympics wrap-up and someone might be losing their job in a very public fashion yeah she was very quick to throw them under the bus if you haven't seen the clip I'd be surprised if you haven't if you work in sports you probably have seen it but if you haven't she pointed out multiple times to her team not giving her what she needed which is just like we I've never seen that sort of reply before not at least i need to warn it we'll look into it further it needs investigation for us before i can comment no my team's not giving me what i need and so it's created a very divided reaction across the the industry like is is kirstie coventry at fault here is it her comms team that has briefed her at fault um what what's the the lay of the land here I think my take on all of that is that the IOC, I don't know the exact specifics, but they have a briefing during the Olympics pretty much every day of different things that are going on.

1:32And it is an open forum for questions to be asked. So the expectation to have everything nailed going into that, I think is probably a tough ask for her team to have every single thing covered, particularly if the president's running around all over the place. i just think that she needed a better response basically rather than just throwing it straight my team's not briefed me and staring them down at the side of the of the stage which is uh pretty unprecedented but it has got a reaction from the the rest of the industry like a mix between everything i've seen from she's not up for it and which is a bit of a reaction i don't really i think she's done some made some great steps forward since she's taken over the responsibility and it's a very quick reaction through to throwing the comments people under the bus.

2:17And I just think it's probably somewhere in the middle. Although if we start to see some news in the headlines that the communications chief's been moved on, then we'll know what the reaction was. Yeah, exactly. That would be the icing on the cake. Well, the thing is we run events, right? And we're not in the business of making people look silly because it's not good for our audience. It's not good for us. It's not good for them. So we always try to prep, but there's always the Q &A, right? And there's only so much you can do. And we've used Slido as a way to maybe sort of circumvent some of that, but it always happens.

2:46There's always a question you didn't prep for. And I think to your point, that question may feel inappropriate. It may feel unprepared. It's just we'll look into it. I think to your point, I don't think I want to judge my entire CEO based off of their ability to handle a press conference. There are bigger things in the bottom line to be looking at over that. But, yeah, it's just I don't know. It's one of those things we talked about before the Olympics. There's always these funny stories that come up. I mentioned the. the Swedish guy eating pastries at the Summer Olympics and then the Canadians and the curling like there's always these little funny interesting stories and I guess that's just one more to kind of close things off with yeah I think it's it's almost a little bit meme worthy which is a bit sad I mean the only thing I would say that the comms person definitely should have done is given her a better response if she gets something she's not ready for rather than like give make sure she's briefed from every single thing happening in the world at some time so we'll have to see what happens for that hopefully I don't know well hopefully nothing happens but if something happens also fun to talk about so uh i'll keep an eye on things but i don't expect much to change from from here to the next olympics like i said well we'll keep an eye on the uh linkedin job pages but nick moving into serious business today what we're going to kick off with is we're going to talk about apple and look at it from two different you know broadcast partners that they have and the first one we're going to start off with is the mls the mls has just started off their newest season to my understanding if i've done my my knowledge or to my knowledge is correct and i've done my research which i provide my own notes so i've got no one to blame but myself if i'm wrong uh they're kicking off their 31st season what i guess is a bit interesting is at the end of last year it basically got announced that their partnership with apple was going to be cut short after the 2029 season now just for a little bit of history this deal was signed in 2022 it was a 10-year deal worth 2.5 billion which we talked about quite a bit and we're going to go back and talk about that some more but essentially we are now kind of four years into that deal and apple has already essentially sort of pulled the plug i think the other thing worth understanding about that deal is initially it was exclusively on apple now they did have some sub licensing but you had to get an apple tv subscription and then you had to pay for an additional mls season pass on top of that so essentially you needed two subscriptions to be able to access the MLS content.

5:03Now, despite ending that partnership early, they are still going to continue working together until the end of the 2029 season. You will still be able to access content on Apple, but to my understanding, it will no longer require an additional MLS season pass. Essentially, if you are a standard Apple TV subscriber, you will have access to the MLS. We've also seen some things where they've done some stuff with OneFootball and other people, essentially trying to get more people onto the platform. So Nick, as we initially start about this, maybe let's just go back a little bit and talk about at the time, what were some of the thoughts we had, the pros, the cons, or just sort of the, maybe the new news of having Apple step into this space, just to remind people before we get to where we're going to work ourselves to.

5:48Yeah. I remember when that deal was announced and it was quite exciting at the same time, massive flags and concerns when I saw this announced that we've done episodes on this, so you can sense check what I'm about to say and cross-reference of what I'm saying now and see how accurate we were back then. I think we always thought that, A, launching a dedicated platform and destination on Apple came with its risks, basically. And we've seen that proven out since then where no one can build a single point of destination to drive fans to and rely on that alone to really build an audience. And you've seen the moves that Apple and MLS have made have proven that out, even interestingly the timing of this announcement of the 2029 break clause was only the month before was the announcement they were going to make it free to access so they make it much more available on the apple tv plus product so the the road to it is actually an interesting one just to make reference to and we had seth bacon before on from the mls who's talked a bit about that deal as well but the mls were intentional many years ago to basically line up all their media rights and what they wanted to do was have the opportunity to sell on to a big tech company to a big major global deal.

7:02And Apple was the one that obviously came to the table with a check and investment, which was higher than anyone else was willing to give. And that got everyone excited because of the X factor Apple has. Many concerns about the ability to deliver it, but you think if anyone can pull a rabbit out of its hat, find a new way of doing things, one of the best tech companies at the time should be able to find that drawcard. I was interested to see how they were going to use Apple products to drive audiences to that platform organically, whether it be through notifications, different app services, they launched an Apple sports product, for example, how were they going to funnel people to this premium product?

7:43Here we are today. I would say also one thing that stood out from back in time was Apple hired a guy called Jim DiLorenzo. He came from Amazon. He was in charge of Amazon's sports business when they really got up and running on their sports product. So it was a clear statement of Intenna, we're going to make a move into sport that Apple made back then. And really, since the MLS deal, I've been left wanting, waiting for a little bit more to come out of this arrangement. And my theory is that Apple loves the idea of control, the global side of things. They also got a lot of brand visibility as part of that agreement.

8:23And I'm just, my speculation here is particularly from a US lens is they weren't able to get any deal anywhere close to having that flexibility, dynamism and controls that come, that came with the MLS deal. And maybe the results haven't been what they wanted either. So I'm not surprised at all that we are here. It is not clear whether that means Apple will step away. What it means is they've initiated the exit clause. It could be that they renegotiate a deal. 2029 is a number of years away, right? So they have a lot of time for each other to work themselves out to see if this approach, which is having it more in front of the paywall, leads to bigger audiences.

9:03And obviously, coupling with what they're doing with Formula One is another layer to all this. But they could still renegotiate a deal well before the 2029 rate clause is manifested or exited. and they could continue business as usual, but just in a different vein, a different shape to what they've committed to today. We will get to Formula One, but a few other things to dig into there. And one of the things Seth mentioned, I think is worth mentioning, MLS, not only did they make the choice to try to align all of their rights, be able to go all in on one direction, they also were proactive in lining up their tech stack where one of the things with working with Apple, if I remember correctly, is that they were going to be in charge of all the production as well, similar to what we've seen.

9:42The MLS will be in charge of production. Correct. Yeah, yeah. Which is a, I don't want to say a unique strategy, but it is something that was an intentional choice by them to do that. And then the other side of that as well was there was the Messi effect, which was spoken about quite a bit, that the hope of that superstar draw would help bring in subscriber numbers. And then also it is 2026. The World Cup is being hosted in America. And I think there were other factors taking place that it wasn't even solely dedicated just to the strength of the league itself, but also the sport of soccer football itself is going to be growing with the build up to 2026 in the World Cup.

10:16We've also got Lionel Messi where they probably hope there might be some more superstars. There were things that went into this decision to think that they could justify going to a exclusively behind the paywall approach with what they did with Apple. Yeah, they certainly did. And they've made some steps since then that I think have been all really smart decisions. The first step that I really loved about the relationship was the fact they gave all MLS season ticket holders access to the platform as part of a season ticket. I just love that. I don't think that exists in any other major leagues or major sports properties that I'm aware of, largely because of the rights approach.

10:50But that synchronicity between being a season ticket holder and having access year round, I just love the value that that provides to a fan and makes the season ticket almost worth just a lot more as a result of that value add that it brought to the table. They have sub-licensed some of the rides. They've created more visibility on Fox and other channels. They've also now put it more in front of the paywall. And I think they really needed moves that had to happen. But now I just wonder where MLS is. They had to make, I guess, a needle-moving change here if what they were seeing, because we haven't got full visibility on their ratings, We've got a couple of numbers that have been shared around.

11:31Wasn't working. And I can't see how it could at the scale that they were after. Because if you think about soccer in the US, you think about the scale of it at the grassroots level. There's such a lovely funnel of audience opportunity there. And that's why MLS has been a massive drawcard for investors and also probably what Apple saw as well. So I just think that they needed to make a needle moving change to their approach, which could still lead to this being a successful investment for Apple and for MLS, I guess, in some ways about the visibility, not just the check that they were receiving.

12:07But if they stayed on the course, I think they were pretty much doomed for failure, quite frankly, if they didn't do something significant. So I haven't ever watched the MLS on Apple. I've just because of the the nature of I don't have an iPhone I don't have an Apple product I could go and find a username and create one because my kids have got an iPad but I can't be bothered and that's the thing I think the challenge they're always going to have by putting their eggs in the the Apple basket is just that ability to really to really achieve mass reach mass audience for the games that matter so sub-licensing continue and get more visibility on free-to-air has to be a priority so now we're going to shift things a little bit in that other direction towards formula one this will be the season that commences them being the u.s provider for formula one exclusively um some of the people in the office right oh we're going to be able to watch this like no guys you're still going to go through sky sports but i guess the question here Nick is maybe twofold question.

13:13Should the way this has worked itself out be a red flag for formula one? Or do you think formula one as a product is unique enough or potentially will take strategic approaches from Apple's side as well, having worked with MLS that they will be able to avoid a similar situation? Cause I think what's worth keeping in mind. and I try to explain this to the people in the office is Formula One is not in America what you think it is over here in the UK. There's still the NFL, there's still the NBA, still Major League Baseball, NHL, all the college sports. And we talked about this with Kean Brittle, our Black Book writer.

13:50Even in the States, you still have NASCAR, you still have IndyCar. Like I'm not saying Formula One isn't popular, but Formula One is still, I don't want to say emerging sport, but it's certainly not a tier one sport in America the way it is in the UK. And just in terms of, i think some people in the office were a little bit taken aback but then like i said keem brittle our black book editor you know made that comment about it as well so it's just do you think nick is this a rad if i was formula one would i be concerned or are they perhaps being naive that their product is good enough to not have those problems or do you think apple will take a different approach just threw it on the wall nick how it sticks i'll let you go uh look there's a few things in there isn't it i would say the short answer on the reality check that i think i think formula one knows their status i think they probably see that nazcar and indycar getting huge media rights checks they're multi-billion dollar deals that they have in place whereas formula ones is a much smaller year-on-year roi that there's a big upside if they get a right and they can usurp those other two properties but they have decades and decades of legacy in those markets and fans that that's not easy to just rip away after building up for so long i'm sure they could see themselves as a competitor with indycar and alike and see if they could you know take back or secure some of those audiences of fans as part of theirs instead but today we've not seen the the unequivocal growth in ratings and audience even or even after the drive to survive you know wave that was generated all those years ago that's still still going and going strong for them in terms of audiences and visibility there's been a disconnect between turning that into live race goers now there's a couple things does it does it matter do they need big ratings when you've got this sort of ecosystem available like the the events hosts pay a huge premium to host formula one right across the year the big races in the u.s do actually rate really well but all the others just because the time zones as well aren't set up for success so does their model need to have higher ratings is the question I have.

15:57I just, maybe they've taken an approach that with the strength of their social media engagement, with the strength of some of their other properties, like the Formula One movie, which was a partnership with Apple and Drive to Survive and the like, maybe they've got enough touch points that maybe they have taken a more progressive way of approaching their business model than perhaps others will give them credit for. But what I would say is a bit weird i did see the ceo of f1 stefano dominicali state and the headline is oh we're going to have more eyeballs and more visibility now that we're on now that we're on apple and i just can't see what way you can look at that that's going to be achieved because espn's reach and visibility is some is is what every property's dream is basically particularly for tier two um so i haven't looked at the specifics of what he was referring to or try to work out an upside or logic to his statement.

16:51Maybe there is something that I've missed. Maybe there's more rights or more live events going to be shown on the channels, which they think are going to move the needle. But Apple does not have a big audience or footprint. Go check out all the different sources out there on streaming engagement. Apple doesn't have a big audience out there. So there's a lot of work to be done. And my fear is that they've taken a little bit more money from Apple than they would have elsewhere. And ultimately, they're going to come out the other side of it. and i do sense a little bit deja vu where they're going to come back to a point where like well how do we grow our audience again get more visibility on free to wear and all those types of things will we see more sub licensing deals come back to the fore again because they need to get more visibility yeah i will see nick i think you raised a good point you know it's like the mls where it's domestic and you know it's a bit harder to excuse why aren't people turning in at prime time i could understand when there's a race going on in you know japan and it's a whatever time in the morning it doesn't tune in so maybe that that plays a factor in it but i do think i'm a big fan of exposure i'm a fan of free to air we're going to talk about free to air um and our next story and i just i do think um it could be a similar case but maybe to your point that doesn't matter as much for them well final thing i'll say is i believe i didn't look this up but i'm pretty sure that the f1 tv pro product their premium otc product is being made available through apple tv I believe, for the US audiences.

18:12So it's another example of that vertical integration we've seen for a bunch of streamers where they're able to get access to the free product and then get marketed to buy that premium product. We've seen with DAZN and the NFL, Amazon with the NBA. And I'm just intrigued to see if that works as effectively as they hope it is because they'll have to migrate audiences and fans from the traditional product into the Apple ecosystem, which might be easy, but we know it comes with any technical migration comes with its challenges. And we've talked about that a few times over the years. Yeah. Well, shifting over to free to air, there was a story that came out with the rugby six nations, which, you know, rugby is not maybe the biggest sport, but I think it's a really great story for us to cover a, because of how much we're talking about advertisement and the fact that, you know, we've talked about European football leagues, stagnating TV revenues.

19:02Does advertising need to be something that becomes a bigger part of them? And the story that came out for this is for the first time ever on free to air broadcast of the Rugby Six Nations in the UK, they introduced in-game advertisements. So to be very clear about this, I think there were two advertisements that took place during the game. So, you know, a very, very small portion of the game itself. And this is the first time that this has been done, whether for rugby, football. And pretty much when the results came back were engagement numbers for brands, very good as they wanted. but unsurprisingly for people who've never had in-game advertisements they were incredibly lopsided in terms of being opposed to having commercials involved and i guess nick the question is does it matter does it matter that the fans were upset by the commercial they were talking about two spots um within the game if it opens up more revenue does it really matter how much your fans actually care like i know they'll say if i could be without it i wouldn't want it but how much do they actually really care well look british fans and also many other countries not just british like to complain about stuff and i'm not surprised that they would if they have a choice of not having it versus having it what will they answer to it but the other way to ask that question is if the choice is it for going to be behind a paywall pay tv to zone or whatever versus being made freely available free to wear for everyone to access which one would you choose if you had to have commercialization ramped up with a couple more ads pretty sure no answer you would get in reality so look i think when any anytime you get changed there's going to be a reaction to it and change always leads to negativity in almost every aspect you can think of so i'm not surprised obviously there's some considerations that they will have to make so they don't disrupt the viewing experience too much but the reality is with a sport like rugby there is a lot of stoppages in play perfect for running for any ads of some description and running it in game or in play so it's split screen and the like will have marginal if any difference impact to the overall viewing experience of someone's exposure to an 80 minute game or two hour tv experience so i think it's it's something because it's new it is nothing in the future and it's essential for sport to see this succeed because again what we've talked about previously is this idea of advertising's role becoming greater and greater in sports to ramp up the value it provides from monetization is going to be critical for sports and live sports success.

21:33And also to, I guess, pull away from, particularly markets like the UK, from the tentacles of someone like Sky and PayTV, which has historically overpaid, I would say in inverted commas, for the rights because they were able to turn that into more meaningful value. Now this gives them just another mechanism to drive a little bit more revenue, a little bit more value out of those rights and that can only be a positive for broadcasters and a positive to keeping these live sports events free to watch and i think it it just needs to happen and i all just from a business perspective as well in the sense of domestically and we're going to talk about international rights next after this but domestically it is stagnating and that's the simplest easiest way to instantly add value with which i will say like apologies maybe it's just because i'm an american i've been brought up with and i don't care it really doesn't matter it really doesn't matter when you think about how long a football match is a rugby match is you're not going to really care no like you might moan about it but to your point who's going to sit there after the game and be like oh that was a great football game but i really hated that commercial i don't think anyone's i don't think anyone's not turning in the next week because of that yeah no people will get over it very quickly i mean we've had a few other people talk about ads in recently and red zone was a big one that got the headlines and that that went by and now we're just business as usual on that front and i just think you're just going to see that become part and parcel but it has to be commitment to it almost like i think now it's just going to become part and parcel of the game and if it does then people won't won't even mention it in the future and i think the knock-on effects of what fifa is going to be doing around the world cup and their hydration break which is basically a nice way of bringing ads into the the game um whichever way they've been able to pull that off.

23:21It's just going to become more and more part and parcel of it because it has the net benefit of having more ads incorporated that don't upset the overall viewing experience significantly will be worth the investment. I agree. I think it's coming. I think people just are going to need to accept that.

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24:20Speaking about the Premier League and its dominance and its ability to make money, although I did reference just a minute ago that domestic rights have mostly stagnated, and that's just not in the UK. We've obviously spoken about legal and however many times in the last couple of months, but we've seen the same with Syria and Italy. We've seen the same with Bundesliga in Germany, the major leagues there. One place that the Premier League isn't slowing down is its international space. And the reason I bring this up, there is a deal that ESPN is now going to be broadcasting the Premier League in Latin America for a 450 million pound extension, which is a 25 % increase on their previous broadcast rights deal, which if numbers are right, I think it brings the Premier League's international broadcast value up to 12.25 billion for the 2025-2028 cycle.

25:07That's a big number. It is a big number. And again, still to this day, it is the only league that makes more money internationally than it does domestically. And I guess the question to phrase it this, Nick, like, why do we care about the broadcast rights in Latte? And that's not to belittle those markets. But, you know, this isn't the biggest deal that we're going to talk about or have talked about. I guess for me is at a time in Europe when we are seeing stagnation of broadcast rights domestically, what does it say for the other European leagues that they're having those issues domestically, but the Premier League seemingly be seemingly the one that is dominating internationally?

25:40and there's no other market really to go to like it's just just is this really problematic for them well look i i think that the we've also talked about that the top tier sports properties are in general particularly the premier league in the nfl bucking all the trends and continue to drive up values and the premier league has been doing international deals and still seeing that across a number of markets over the last year or two and quite frankly culturally the premier league is in a place of its own like every time i travel anywhere in the world premier league hits me from somewhere whether it be from people asking me about it through just to seeing it covered talked about in in the media whatever it might be the premier league has has massive weight in conversation and fandom and anyone i speak to whenever i've traveled will always have a local team and a premier league team basic at a minimum of their focus and i think to some extent maybe la liga had that and particularly in markets like latam i think that's where la liga is is pretty strong so la liga will not be happy to see premier league getting such a big uplift now when we do talk about uplifts we have to put in perspective in real terms because of inflation and so forth so 25 sounds massive it's not quite as big when you're putting into into you know compound annual growth but it's still a surprise number and it's not a small number of 450 million to see talked about because i've not even seen really that deal talked about in media circles yeah that number makes it instantly something that i'm going to be following moving forward so the domestic price obviously went sorry the per game value has been dropping premier league still keeps winning and i just don't see where that changes now i just think the alarm bells have to be ringing for the liga and bundesliga especially because they sort of sit i think above the next tier in terms of their international deals i won't put syria in that mix or definitely not legal because they have some major major deals out of the us and with espn will with the growth of the premier league and the fact that the league has lost messi since the last deal was struck messi's gone to the us ronaldo's gone out a lot of the major spanish players have moved out of that market i don't know i just feel like they might be getting a little bit nervous about that renewal deal looks like it's a big number right now it's big billion dollar deals in the u.s i just don't know if they'll be able to keep it up anywhere near that level but obviously bundesliga's major usp in their rights is the fact that they provide a ready ready to serve production of the bundesliga and they've got i think they've still got some americans playing in the league which obviously gives them a little bit of x factor there so i think they'd be very nervous though to see what what could manifest in the next cycle well we'll avoid talking about the european super league nick and why that's inevitable and this being part of that so we're not going to talk about that but we will talk about a little bit germans um with the bundesliga and two former bundesliga employees christian seifert and our good friend andreas hayden and the media business that they set up a couple years back with dine media please go back look up some podcasts we've spoken about dine before i'm essentially basically trying to own the german market for everything except for football, I think is kind of their thing.

28:58Although maybe we've said that one day, given who, you know, Christian Seifert, former CEO of Bundesliga, and then Andres, formerly the CEO of DFL Media. So they've got some ties there. But what's interesting is it's just been announced after the launch of Dynemedia that the company is going to split itself into Dynesport and Dynemedia, Dynesport being the sort of consumer facing product, which will continue operating as it has been, and then Dyn Media being the tech in production and essentially trying to accelerate growth by basically offering their streaming services to other people is my understanding.

29:33So Nick, I guess part of me is not really surprised given who the two head men of this organization is that this structure is going to take that sort of approach and splitting out parts of the business. But what's your spin on this or what's your take on this? Is this the smart thing in terms of Dine trying to diversify its revenue opportunities or seeing that B2B actually probably has a larger financial opportunity for them as opposed to sort of the level of rights that they're at. And that's not to downplay what they're doing. If I've seen the stats correctly, they're doing something like over 4 ,000 live games a year across all the sports.

30:10So it's not, it's a small, I think it's just over 3 ,000. So it's not a small operation of what they're putting on dime media but the technology behind it could potentially be worth more we think about like bam tech back in the day with major league baseball selling that off to disney or something like that it's gonna be intriguing to see where it goes i think what when i saw before they launched this new initiative i saw andreas present what their work the work they'd done around creating this content desk or content hub and initiative that they have launched since and it was super impressive basically when they launched dine they did it on a shoe shoe they they launched it as a startup right they had to make not only investments but ways of really cost saving and using technology to become more efficient in their delivery to make every subscription worth more to them by selling that as their core business so that what they ended up doing because they needed to and they had a blank piece of paper was almost reinvent or redevelop the whole way of delivering live sports through this very remote cloud-based approach that many major broadcasters simply can't mirror because of the legacies of how they work.

31:24And so Dyn have been super successful with this product to create super efficiency on how they operate and I guess help with the margins of revenue to delivering the live broadcast product. So that's sort of the scene setting as to why they've done it. And it is really cool to see, I think I've talked about it briefly, actually, when I did a review of the Swedish event, the Streamy Tech Sweden event, where it was presented. But basically, turning an outside broadcast truck, a bunch of trucks into one little van was all you would need. And just taking away some of the practical production aspects that would normally cost a lot of money, they'd simplified it and made it more efficient and effective.

32:02So it's a really interesting business, innovation that the industry really needs to improve the value of each and every gain that is the Bing live broadcast and trying to remove some of the costs that are attached with it, but still be able to deliver it and deliver it out of standard that moves the needle and is valuable enough to audiences. Now, how big will this opportunity be? I mean, you use the Bantech example, that's probably the most obvious one where I can think of as well, where there's a major rights owner that's a rights holder that is splitting and setting up shop. I don't know how big that opportunity is.

32:37I would hesitate to say it's going to be a bigger opportunity than the Dynesport proposition, but it could be a more profitable one. you know just because if it's run well it's getting lots of clients on board there's not a huge cost because they're able to innovate and keep developing the product through the dine sport business and just keep transferring that into the other business then you can see quite quickly that becoming more profitable at least in the interim until dine scales to the level that their investors are hoping it will and just one thing you made a point before about the fact that the intention of focusing on non-football fans who was involved the last investment round bundesliga so we're actually involved and now they are invested into it so i'm not saying that means anything definitively but they definitely want some skin in the game because if they do continue to scale their audience particularly in the DAC market what's a logical next step for them is to perhaps start looking at football as a possible investment opportunity but they don't have to rush ahead they've got lots of areas to grow and develop the business from here a story will continue to follow we need to get andreas back so i will i'll speak to him like hey how we get you on an upcoming episode because i'm sure he can give us more in depth maybe we can get some things out of him long term but we do need to get andreas back on one thing i would say is that my only fear i think so it's super exciting to see this stuff i hope it really works for them i'll my piece of anecdotal feedback will be i just hope that they really find a way to balance the management of two very different businesses whilst the connect technologies are obvious selling services to the sports industry selling tech services is way easier said than done and versus making decisions around how you broadcast live sports.

34:17They've got some really smart people, so I'm pretty confident if anyone could work it out. The people I've met there all are pretty good operators, but that is still not going to still be a little challenge here. That doesn't just sell itself, right? You've got to really work at it. So it'd be interesting just to see how much momentum and how much they do prioritize that. So not just having it there as like an organic growth vehicle, but really invest into sales and marketing resource and developing more, getting more clients on board and how big they go with it whilst trying to balance everything else.

34:47That's a tricky balancing act for any leadership team to manifest. Yeah, well, going from one of our friends, Andres Hayden, to another friend, David Guinan. Because of David Guinan, you and I now are obviously massive fans of rodeo, equestrian, and all those sorts of sports. And it also ties in massive, massive. I love it. You know, I need to get my subscription renewed for the cowboy channel not done that since david's left but not only that are we we just we're big fans now but also because you are also for the sports pro new york event going to be interviewing somebody uh that may have a little bit of relevancy to this is looking at an investment made by a cvc group um global sports group they have just are preparing to acquire the equine network for around $300 million.

35:36Now, I think what's interesting here, Nick, is we've talked about private equity. We've talked about CVC. They've done things with rugby. They've done things with League Un. They've done things with Volleyball World all around the media rights space. Some of them more successful than others. Some of them still to be determined. Some of them, maybe they're not going to maybe necessarily make their money back on, but they're making different investments, Nick. And$300 million is not a small investment. And it is into something that some of us might say is a little bit niche but i think it also might mean that you know david guyon's favorite expression is niches get riches um and that's not to say there isn't a large equine audience out there but nick it's not a it's not a small amount of money they're preparing to look at acquiring and i guess maybe the question is nick when you think about some of the other investments that have come from global sports group and what cvc have done how something like equestrian aligns with some of the more mainstream investments that they've made?

36:32What's interesting for me is how it sounds like on paper, from what I've read, the Equine Network is a very vertically framed or set up business. And it's probably, if you're looking at other investments, probably mirrored most likely by the Volleyball World operation, where they are running events, they are managing broadcasting and OTT offerings. And it's all kind of in the same ecosystem. Now, from what I've heard is that some people, it's not as beautifully vertically presented as it looks on paper. But that is sort of the thesis here is that perhaps they get maximizing the value of each and every audience member that you are generating for that content.

37:13And it's a long established platform with a very wealthy and affluent audience space. Typically, the equine audience is one that you want to be getting a piece of i'm not sure how much that offsets with the cowboy channels audience but generally the equine world is a is a pretty expensive one to be invested into as a as a fan so but in short it's that whole it feels like from outside in and i'm going to be talking to mark alera who's the chair of the global sport group which is the sports dedicated arm of cvc which is invested in f1 historically and exited from that say successfully and also all the other businesses that you mentioned previously is this vertical approach really what they were after were they looking for an organization where they can all own the whole fan experience be able to drive monetization through e-commerce through subscription sales through live event sales is that the play here to get more value out of each and every fan because it feels like it is and if it is it's a really intriguing prospect to see what their investment and their their experience their their their mistakes and their successes what that can lead them to do with something like this, which has way more touch points than a typical investment just in a sports property alone.

38:23It'll be interesting, Nick, because our Sports Pro New York event does incorporate investment. It'll be, I think, the first, no, last year we did investment in that as well as a new segment. I'm trying to remember, Nick, we've had our Sports Pro Investment event. I'm trying to remember if we had an investment track last year or not. I don't think we did. I think we had some content on it, but not dedicated focus. So we have more investor-related content than we've ever had at the US, the New York-based events. So definitely will be at the heart and soul of the conversation for sure. Yeah, and especially at the time where the NBA and the NFL, I think, have changed some of their ownership rules about private equity and just sort of the general questions, whether or not, you know, I'm even seeing it with the NIL and the college sports space, you know, where are the opportunities for investors to make money out of sports?

39:06I think I've heard a lot of people say it's actually a terrible place to invest money. And if, you know, it's nice if you just have money and you want to spend it because you like sports, but it's not necessarily the best place to go for things. But it is certainly something that's growing and is going to have an impact just simply based on sports needs more money or maybe their businesses aren't structured as sustainably as they need to and they're looking for investment or injection. It's not going anywhere regardless of whether people think it's maybe for the best for the sport or not. Well, the CVC approach has been interesting to investing into sports.