Can the World Cup keep growing — Or is the model breaking?

0:28Hello everyone and welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime sports. My name is Chris I didn't really pay that much attention. I might have watched, actually, no, I just had a flashback. I remember now. So random story. I was in, I think, grade 10, I think at the time, and I was actually doing French immersion at school. So I was doing all my subjects in French for the first three years of high school in Australia. Yeah, I know, random. And so there was a lot of patriotism around France and the French team and they were playing and they had an incredible team. They had like Zinedine Zidane and I think Henri and just basically the world's best team or near enough there.

1:08And so I got on their bandwagon then and I supported, I said, I'll jump and support them because it fits into the French vibe that we've got here. And they won that year. And that was a really cool experience to follow them through. That was when I was in my teens, younger teens, I think from memory. So a while ago, and then my next experience is one probably over 10 years later or so when Australia made the World Cup for the first time after like 26 years. And that's really got me into the passion and the excitement of following your national football team. Yeah, I think I'm a bit similar to you, Nick.

1:42My first World Cup was in 2006. I was 16. And part of it was back then football wasn't on TV. Like you didn't have the Premier League on. like these days, like I think a lot of Americans could tell you a lot more about football because of how prevalent it is. But when I was growing up, it didn't exist. Um, I remember when I was on the internet, Nick, it was still the dial up days where you had to either be, if you got on the internet, you couldn't use the phone at the same time. Like, uh, so I remember, I remember high school YouTube came out, but obviously no one had a YouTube strategy then. So I remember 2006, my family, we'd gone to, um, Utah for a holiday and we swung into Vegas for two days at the end of it and I remember buying a Ronaldinho jersey um Brazilian Ronaldinho jersey so that was my first one in 2006 as a 16 year old but like it was never on TV well out the World Cup was but like you didn't have like the Premier League and all that stuff you know filling out the calendar between them but then I think after that 2010 Landon Donovan had the goal that sent the U.S.

2:37through against gone out of group play 2014 is one that's very close to my heart Nick I was interning at a sports agency. I had torn my ACL, so I had to go home for surgery, and I got my exams delayed. So I started an internship on a Monday. My last exam was on a Friday. So I had 48 hours to find a flat in London. I managed to find one, 500 quid a month in cash up front for three months, all bills included. The one catch was, Nick, is your shower was in the kitchen. Basically, it's this tiny little flat and you had a hose from the sink that went to the shower so that was the one catch so london central london uh vibes i've seen some classic things on on social but i've never heard anyone who's actually done that you know i was 21 at the time like i didn't really care but the world cup was on i lived next door to a pub so i literally i just didn't stay in the flat at all like it was just a plate like it had a mattress fine whatever um and i just remember that world cup was one that was in brazil and the owner of the pub would let me stay up and watch the u.s so kick everybody else he just let me sit in the bar and keep watching so that was close because to me because like you know it's just one of those things like i'll never forget living in that flat for a summer but it was great because you live next door to the pub you got to stay up all night watch games um so yeah but 2006 was my first world cup nick is a 16 year old you know but i think that's more of america not being very football heavy and just how much broadcast has evolved over the last couple years we've talked about the premier league countless times um and some of their global domination and your access to a pub to watch as well always adds a little bit of flavor and play to it yeah i've a pretty good i've not i've never been a massive football fan because it's not the first sport in australia so i didn't grow up with that but yeah followed the national team once i started to get a bit of traction but i had these these three or four teams that really just jump come to mind when i think about the world cup i think about that french team that i talked about i think about that brazilian team you talked about i think about the german team um this and They were just so dominant the year they won at Spain.

4:40And that's probably it. They're like teams that just stood above the parapet. That really just wowed me and made me watch and appreciate football so much more than I do watching anyone else. But otherwise, I've never paid that much attention to it unless purely through the lens of Australia, how's Australia doing alone. Obviously, I haven't followed England. I followed England a little bit in my later years, But I'm interested to see what the atmosphere is like here in Sweden. Because they just scraped into the World Cup, which was getting a lot of headlines here. Because they've got Graham Potter.

5:15You know Graham Potter, the coach? Yeah, yeah. He was the coach at West Ham to start our relegation season this year. So, yes, I unfortunately know him well. Oh, sorry about that. But he's taking on the Swedish job now. And he actually used to coach over here many, many years ago. So he led them through, although I think their record was something ridiculous. Like they never won a game and still got through somehow because everyone else basically flopped as well. But I was on stage of that SVT event that I mentioned that I've told you about in Stockholm. And the guy who was emceeing it basically said, introduced me and basically said, yeah, I think he thought it was British or English.

5:57and he said something along the lines of like, here's basically a British guy and he's in Swedish, but don't worry, he speaks better Swedish than Graham Potter. I was like, I'll take that. I'll take that. I'm happy with that. So, yeah, go on. I'll let you go. Well, I was just going to say, Nick, you know, I made a bunch of bets that the US would be good in 2026. I think I'm going to lose those bets, but it is what it is. I think you are. Yeah, probably, probably, probably. You know, they're against Australia in the pool matches. Are they? Nice. So I'll be back home during the World Cup. I might see it.

6:31Well, the funny thing is, I got actually a lot of headlines in Australia because there was footage coming that the Americans were cheering when they got announced they had Australia in their pool. And quite frankly, rightfully so. But the Aussies really took it badly. And they're like, we're going to show those Americans now. So there's a little bit of extra incentive and motivation on the Aussie side to beat the Americans. I mean, we're not playing very well. You just need to show up and you might win. So you haven't seen our team. like there's like division division two japanese league players who are in the starting 11 so i don't think i have too much to worry about i want to say not going too deep into the football and tactics you guys should at least be one of the few teams that is not as impacted by the heat i mean you guys should certainly be okay with this temperature that we're going to have yeah i think so actually i think uh actually it is a football it's a summer sport here in the year here there in australia as it is in sweden actually although sweden's temperatures are a a bit more milder than the americas but now talking about the world cup today nick we're going to look at it from a media perspective and obviously for those who are listening to this podcast you're probably aware that the world cup takes place every four years but it is the single largest global event um that takes place the finals in 2022 depending on which numbers you use we're around 1.5 billion viewers live just to give some context from my numbers the second biggest event is the olympics um opening ceremony that's usually around 800 million people the t20 cricket world cup is the third largest which i think largely comes from you know the population india is around somewhere to three to four hundred million people depending on what again which numbers you use and then the super bowl one i think everyone's pretty familiar with we're talking about 125 to 150 million so you can just see the scale of how much larger this event is than every other event out there.

8:21Now, Grant, like I said, it is every four years, but it is truly global appeal in a way I don't think many other sports can say. In terms of their media rights, Nick, interestingly, had some numbers. Now, FIFA, I don't think we have exact numbers. We're going by approximations. 2010, they apparently brought in$2.4 billion in media rights deals. The next cycle is 2.5, so just a small 4 % increase. Going to 2018, it went to$3.1 billion, which was almost a 25 % increase. 2022,$3.4 billion, so about a 10 % increase. And then this year, they're hoping to bring in just over$4 billion. So when we kind of look at all that in total, they are slowly building, building.

9:03I think pretty impressive numbers given it is only about a four week tournament. But one of the other things I think that's worth taking place, Nick, when we talk about the World Cup is there are no global deals. As far as I'm aware, they have about 175 175 different broadcast deals across the world. And we spend so much time these days talking about, you know, the Apples and the Netflixes of the world looking for these more bundled deals. That does seem like quite a lot of work for FIFA. And I am going to have specific questions about having to do all those. And then the last thing I want to add when we're talking about some of the monetization scale and reach, and we've mentioned this on some podcasts before, but we'll talk about a little bit more today, is for the first time they are introducing the two hydration breaks, which I don't think can be ignored as part of some of the things that are changing from a media broadcast landscape this year, where you'll have the opportunity for official FIFA sponsors to have commercials within those three-minute windows of time.

9:57So Nick, I guess kind of phrasing all of that and almost looking at the growth that it's had, one of the things you and I talk about quite a bit on the podcast is sports organizations needing to view themselves as media businesses, is not just sports organization. When you think about FIFA, do you feel like there was a point that that shifted where they really took the monetization and that media perspective a lot more seriously? Yeah, that was quite a while ago. I would say if you go back into the history of FIFA World Cup, you probably can follow a little bit of when they decided to be focused on generating some income.

10:40There might have been a certain set bladder involved back in the day. But they've been driving that commercial machine from strength to strength. And it's been proven and tested that if you want to be successful and you have a global property, you have to take a market by market approach. It really works to try and do a global deal because of the, basically the ineffectiveness or the leakiness of that style and that model. And each market operates differently, right? And there's actually very few players that are truly global and don't have a visibility in each market. Because one of the major aspects of FIFA's approach and indeed also ISE's is that they have a huge sponsorship machine funding their businesses.

11:22Now, if you don't have that free-to-air-reach component included, you do risk not having the visibility that you are offering to your partners that you're bringing on board. So they have had to take a fairly market by market and very blended approach in their rights. But it has continued to grow. I would add, though, if you break that down on a sort of cycle by cycle basis and on an inflationary basis, the numbers aren't quite as strong as they might sound. And naturally, the American market, the American market is always the most lucrative commercial market to be in. um after this where do those numbers go they've always found a way the last few cycles but i do have a concern about how they can keep that momentum flying high well i do have a question around some of those concerns in the sense of as of recording this i think only as about 48 72 hours ago they managed to land a deal in china obviously an incredibly large market as far as i'm aware nick unless there's been news that i'm not aware of india still does not have a broadcast or fifa It doesn't have an Indian broadcast partner for the World Cup, which is the largest population in the world.

12:31I get maybe we think of other markets, but like not an insignificant number for reach and scale. We've talked about on the podcast quite a bit. We've seen a stagnation of media rights in Europe. Do you think FIFA is having similar challenges with just stagnating rights? I think as well, Nick, as you mentioned, this has happened in a couple of different cycles and different events. The FIFA Club World Cup last summer was very late in the day before they managed to finalize plans. the women's world cup that took place i think in 2023 if you remember nick it was very late in the window that they were managing to get deals with like england and italy and spain and you know big european markets now i think part of that had to do with the fact that that was being hosted was that in australia or new zealand nick yes it was australia and new zealand yeah it was across the yeah so there was i think some issues with their perceived value versus what the time zones were so there were you know fifa club world cup was kind of a new proposition timings didn't help out But we've seen a couple of occasions now where FIFA have struggled.

13:26So I guess, Nick, is that part of what your concern is, is that this is a part of the larger trend we're seeing with this? Well, yeah, I also think there's this the whole expectation issue where FIFA and the leadership of FIFA, Mr. Infantino are probably leading the way there, continually says to their stakeholders, their governing bodies and federations that he oversees, that he's going to continue to drive the commercial growth of FIFA because that money that gets funded and distributed through all the respective member nations and associations, that obviously helps make sure that he gets voted in each time as well as you can imagine.

14:08So I think that pressure by offering and promising more and more and more to a governing body, let's talk, remember, we're talking about a governing body, not a professional enterprise in theory. that makes it really difficult to keep that momentum that they've been talking about and suggesting and i think fundamentally fifa and football has a football problem there's just too much football in market meaning that not only is budget being spent on football in other places but also just the attention isn't potentially there although fifa will share that they've reached 25 billion people probably by the end of the the world cup given some of the numbers they've shared I remember Qatar, I did a post on this where they'd shared the numbers that were equivalent to like the entire world, basically every single person.

14:55Yeah. The number was ridiculous. They reached everyone basically in the world or five or six billion people. Did you really? Did you really? And that's the ultimately this issue about, I guess, like keep promising more, promising more to sponsors, to stakeholders, to the public, to the athletes, and then having to try and find a way to get there each and every time. That makes it a little bit trickier for them to keep riding that wave. And I'm not sure how they're going to pull it off the next World Cup, frankly. Well, Nick, one of the interesting things you just mentioned there about too much football.

15:31And, you know, we've seen UEFA expand their tournament sizes, what they do on their annual basis. But also the tournament this year is moving from 32 teams up to 48 teams. And they're going from 64 matches to 108 matches. It's a 62 % increase. We're not talking like small numbers. We're talking about a very chunky increase. I guess that the question goes to you, Nick. And like part of this will be on the media right side. part of this is also definitely on the ticketing side, you're going to have games with some very eclectic random matchups that, you know, we kind of talk about, you know, you want assets to be able to sell sponsors, want advertisement opportunities, but sure.

16:09I mean, just where is that line? You know, we talk about the NFL does a really good job because they have such a tight schedule where someone like major league baseball, you know, are we, we hitting that point with a hundred and two, 108 matches over the course of, you know, five weeks. well look i think on a media perspective i would say that there's a lot to like about this for a couple of reasons one is that this means that basically 30 uh 30 or 40 percent more markets you're going to have the national team playing in the world cup that hasn't always been the case right so you'll get people like i don't know people in jamaica watching just because they want to watch the world cup not like it but if they're not in the competition there's obviously going to be a limited amount of national tribalism and backing and to get that maximum visibility this just increases that so for those smaller games they're going to have a lot more visibility in those markets which i think is really compelling i don't think it's you know it's not a linear growth number in terms of visibility in the the more mature markets you're not going to see more people watching i don't know no hating on these guys but like ecuador versus french guyana i don't even know who's in the world cup but like two two minnows it's not going to get a lot of interest and actually does sometimes get people lost in what is important or what I used to basically turn on every match that was happening in the World Cup when it was on free-to-air.

17:30Now, if you've got to pick and choose, you start getting a little bit – you risk starting getting a little bit disconnected, I think. But I think it's a smart move for them from a media perspective. What I think is much trickier is how they fill stadiums. It's fine and there's all sorts of stuff we're going to talk about, maybe about ticketing in a second. But the tricky thing of when you're having so many games is how do you create such an appetite and the infrastructure to manage and deliver all of that? I think media-wise, it can work for them, particularly on the global approach, less so necessarily on the local approach.

18:03People aren't going to watch every game going on, right? They're only going to watch a handful. I think they'll just be even more selective than they ever have. People won't pick. In England, they might not pick the Spain versus Germany match they would have otherwise picked before just because they might be a bit tired of some of that stuff. is my estimation of what will happen. Well, one of the things we were talking about sort of when FIFA hit that sort of new mindset and approach, obviously we're talking about this has happened much earlier, but I think something that's not insignificant was the launch of FIFA Plus, which Nick, that must have been four or five years ago now.

18:37I mean, time flies, but I remember we were talking about it at SportsPro. It was still the OTT Summit back then, Nick. It's now gone from SportsPro OTT Summit to SportsPro Madrid to SportsPro Media Summit. So I think that's how old FIFA Plus is. But just, you know, FIFA Plus does not necessarily have the premium rights. We've always talked about that. It's an ad-based model. But, you know, we're talking about some of these things where there are difficulties potentially with certain markets or just the changing landscape of the marketplace. place is there ever a world where fifa plus becomes a place to host some of those or becomes an option where you're struggling to negotiate a media rights deal in a particular market that you could host it on fifa plus for certain countries well i don't know what the plan is these days with fifa plus my assumption is that it doesn't even barely exist anymore but i have not checked it out for some time because they did that deal with disown where they basically integrated fifa plus into to zone now they were intentional and i had a few conversations with people around the industry but basically the deal was done and agreed between mr anfantino and to zone let's say shy so give or whoever was involved but there wasn't a lot of detail agreed to this said deal and therefore um they had to work it out afterwards what does this mean for the platform no one would give me a straight answer is like does this mean fever plus is dead or not so I generally don't know if it's actually dead as a platform, but all that's really happened is that I know of is that DAZN has a FIFA plus destination where it's just got a whole load of archived football content on the platform.

20:15I have no idea if they're doing what they were doing at the time, which was basically broadcasting a lot of live matches for those lower clubs that couldn't get the visibility. There was an outlet and a place that they could direct all their broadcast streaming content and it would get picked up on those channels. What I also know is that they had huge problems trying to monetize that, that reach and that scale. And they tried to help the lower tier associations take advantage of that visibility that they were able to give them. That's a really, really tricky proposition to do. So, again, this comes down to that whole thing a bit like the meteorite stuff of like expectations were just gargantuan for this platform.

20:59And if they just kept it a bit like I think UEFA is taking a bit more pragmatic approach. They've just been a bit more pragmatic with its role and its place in market. I think FIFA Plus was such a great initiative and a really powerful platform for them to have. it's when the expectations like the Olympic channel uh as well where they just think they want it to be this new multi-billion dollar revenue business and it just ain't gonna happen unless they start siphoning off the the rights that they're looking to sell for billions of dollars so it was always i don't want to say it was doomed because i actually really love their approach and strategy as a product it just had a price tag on it that never gave it a chance yeah that'll happen in terms of the the business side of things i think i read a statistic there it's just shy of about 50 of all the revenue that fifa will make on the world cup does come from its broadcast rights and obviously you're talking about sponsorships um being a big part of that ticketing um but broadcast largely being the largest chunk of that and we said at the top of the show the introduction of the hydration breaks i think nick in my personal opinion this probably won't necessarily have a massive monetization play on it simply because you're only talking about probably four minutes of commercials over the course of a game because I think the rules are it's a three-minute hydration break and commercials have to at like 30 seconds after the break and have to end 30 seconds before the break so like you're only talking about I think a couple of minutes and I think my understanding is is the advertisements are exclusive to FIFA sponsors so So even local broadcasters couldn't necessarily.

22:33Well, that's why ITV came out and said that they weren't going to do the hydration break commercials because they said, A, in the UK, you can only have so many commercial minutes per hour that they chose to rather have the end game and halftime ones. But I think I also read somewhere that FIFA was holding those to be exclusive for FIFA sponsors. So like you would you were limited on the amount of money. maybe we'll check that maybe i'll come back with a little correction in the bio if i'm wrong on that nick but i think i read somewhere there are limitations on who can have those ad breaks oh that would be the masters yeah that would be interesting if that is the case i was just thinking the same thing when we had that conversation about the masters and the exclusivity that they were getting as a result of that that would surprise me uh if that was the case but uh who knows but i think the the objective of the hydration break isn't just about monetization today i i think this is a longer term play yeah to basically integrate hide these these types of breaks into football because quite frankly i think football needs it firstly i think it needs it because of the the focus and attention in a 45 minute minute match is trickier than i think it has been some will contest that and they'll say you know i can say that attention spans are actually not dwindling but for a match that's not end-to-end exciting stuff you can lose people along the way and because of what we've talked about that monetization challenge in a whole host of markets and the monetization opportunity in markets like the us adding significant ad breaks will drive no doubt significantly more income for those broadcasters that lean into that and that's why this is the starting point they're able to find a loophole to make this work and i think you this will not be the end i think you will see it um in all in various competitions sooner rather than later not all necessarily particularly the ones that aren't built on advertising led monetization offerings that maybe not in the premier league initially for quite some time because it's funded by sky sports and pay tv largely but for those that have an unfunded marketplace or need ad funded to drive up the value i think you're going to see this be something that everyone's going to want to lean to over time and fifa's taking the shot here and they can because they're the governing body uh and maybe no one will do it until the next world cup and they'll still be able to lean into that but it will start to embed that this is okay to be in the experience and that's really i think at least if they get nothing more than marginal revenue gains for the broadcasters this time around but sort of acceptance of this as a as the future that'll be a huge win for them for again monetization and growth perspective of the economy around football i agree with you nick i don't think it's about what's happening this year but what happens long term and i think it's not even about the hydration breaks because i i could see where you're like hey we're playing in england in january like don't need a hydration break but what i think is similar what we saw in six nations it becomes a potential pathway for in-game advertising where it might not necessarily be a hydration break where we stop but you know as we've talked about before there's a injury on the pitch or there's something going on it's a screen in what do they call the screen in screen uh commercials you know i'm talking about where like just in the small corner there's a specific word for it nick you mean overlays or overlay ads or the ones in play ads yeah yeah in picture yeah yeah but basically that's what i think this is the gateway to yeah i i think so as well i think this is basically they need to do this they need to make it more uh viable and probably a lot of leagues are too afraid to do it because of the fan pushback uh if it happens but fifa doesn't really have that concern because I think they kind of have a bit of a brand, which is to commercialize the sport as effectively as possible.

26:16So it kind of will help that. So I'm intrigued to see how quickly there is adoption of this, but I think more and more will want to lean into this sooner rather than later. And I actually think on the sporting perspective, it will have to change the sport. I think you're going to have to see, you're going to end up seeing athletes having to be even fitter than before because they're going to work in like little sprints, a bit like four quarters of basketball, right? Where you've got that period where you can push a little bit harder because you know you're getting out of break in a couple of minutes.

26:45But normally there might be a lull 25 minutes in. Now this could be, we're pushing to that break. So I think it'll change the game over time. Yeah, we will see. Now, Nick, on the media side, that's the broadcast side, but they are taking a different approach when it comes to reach and scale with the introduction of preferred platforms. This year, they've announced that they're going to have both TikTok and YouTube as preferred platforms. Now, both of these are going to have some similar content. Some of them are going to have some different options. So with TikTok, it's going to be heavily focused on creator content, behind the scenes access, a range of archive content.

27:18And then similar to what we saw in the Club World Cup is a TikTok World Cup hub, which is going to kind of be that place where everything is centralized. Official media partners are going to be allowed to monetize certain parts of the matches and monetize their own content there. For YouTube, for licensed broadcasters, they're going to be able to stream up to the first 10 minutes live of every match from their official YouTube channels before people are going to have to then switch over to the official broadcaster. They're also, FIFA is pledging to have full match, full past length matches from historic games on the platform.

27:57And there will also be YouTube creators being granted access on the ground to capture moments from the tournament. And then just as another side piece, someone we've talked about, but it's worth mentioning again, is Brazilian streamer Casemiro and Kaza TV will be live streaming exclusively in Brazil. No, not exclusively. He will be streaming in Brazil. So, Nick, we have these preferred platforms that YouTube or with YouTube and TikTok that FIFA is talking about. So from your perspective, what does that actually mean for FIFA to call them preferred platforms? Is it just a marketing label or does this really represent a shift in distribution?

28:35Yeah, it was an interesting topic. I've had a number of people who will speak to me about this. And actually the SVT event that I was involved with in Stockholm, that was something that we talked quite a bit about. What I would say is I'll ask you this question before I answer that Chris says. Well, firstly, I'll answer the first bit about marketing and then I'll ask you the question I was asked as well. look I think firstly it is a bit of both it is basically FIFA coming up with a new way of engaging the big tech platforms to spend a bit of money on the marketing side but also unlock potentially a new ecosystem around around their content around football around FIFA the FIFA World Cup and I really like like the concept of it from from that point of view the question I have to you is what do you what would you do if you were running a massive major broadcaster what would you lean into this model and lean into the having 10 minutes on tiktok and 10 minutes on youtube or would you would you steer away from them yes question is how much effort i guess for me i'm thinking about how much squeeze of that piece of fruit is going to give me how much juice i don't know how complicated that is um to necessarily i mean i would like to think these days live streaming can be set up pretty quickly but i also know that some of these teams aren't always maybe is have as many people on site as possible.

29:57So I just, it feels like it might be a lot of work for something that you might not be able to tangibly say gives you a lot of squeeze or a lot of juice, but maybe the argument is you're not squeezing that hard. So any juice is appreciated. Oh, there's too much squeezing and juicing going on there. I would say, look, I think it will be fairly straightforward. The idea is for it to be as seamless and frictionless as possible so let's say you're on um on a requisite platform one click and you should be basically on their broadcaster in markets on platform to watch it's going to be trying to be as seamless as that now obviously the technicalities come when you talk about whether it's a paywall environment or a non-paywall environment now uh the question that uh was raised to me is like well do we really want to be helping TikTok and YouTube building audiences and getting our audiences on their platforms?

30:50And this comes to this more existential question about how do you view a platform, particular platform like YouTube? Do you view it as a platform that you're giving your rights to? Or do you view it as a distribution portal, a distribution channel in the same way that Fast TV or OTA or an OTT platform are? And this is the conundrum. I don't say I haven't got an answer on this well i can give you my view but i'm very like open-minded to being swayed but i think you have to look at youtube as a distribution channel for your content for your network for your platform and if you look through that lens it just means you can reach other audiences through that as long as you're able to aggregate justify that value um of the sum of all parts and not treat it as uh something that's cannibalizing your other channels which i think the perception of this could well be.

31:39It could be perceived by some as it's cannibalizing the audiences that they want to have on their own owner-operated platforms. And that is really understandable. So I think it's an incredible test case for us to see how much of this approach can really drive engagement on those platforms, but also funnel people to the rights owners themselves. it's going to be an incredible it's one of the most interesting test cases and case studies I think we've had in the industry in terms of from an event-based perspective that I can think of in recent times well I think we maybe spoke about it when we when BBC signed the deal with YouTube in terms of that partnership they were going to do which is I don't know what granularity we're going to get on some of that data but what happens if we see we'll just use good round numbers a hundred people were watching on YouTube.

32:31And then when the 10 minutes changed, only two more people watched the official live stream. You know, what does that tell you? I mean, that's a very severe drop off, but let's just say like there's a, even a 50 % drop off between YouTube to not switching over. What does that say existentially in terms of like, do we need to be on YouTube more? Does YouTube need to be the home of things? You know, I feel like there's numbers depending on what granularity we get for it could tell you various different things. Yeah, I think there'll be a lot, because of the scale of what we're talking about, there should be a lot of conclusions we can generate of this.

33:07I think the challenge or the existential challenge that's going to be a deciding factor here is what is ultimately the rights holder? What is their objective? What is their business? And what I mean by that is my view is if you're a public service broadcaster, you are trying to serve the public, right? So you need to be where they need to be. You need to be distributed in the appropriate places and as many of the public as possible consume the content that you are delivering. That's your duty. The difference is if you're a paid platform or a cable operator or a pay TV provider, you're needing to turn that visibility on those platforms into cold hard cash at some stage.

33:50monetization value can be retention potentially as well even people discovering that you've got it on and will go back to their own accounts but it has to turn into meaningful value for those parties so i think it's more valuable for someone that's publishing free-to-air and just can use the visibility in multiple ways or just has a duty in a public service broadcaster's perspective of serving the community and the public. But it is much trickier, I think, for, say, let's say, DAZN, if they were to have the World Cup, which they do not. But if they did, how do they funnel people through to become meaningfully valuable subscribers, in this instance, to their platform?

34:31Now, there was a case of some of this, which TikTok have tried to do with the Club World Cup. I can't remember if it was the live broadcast was also included. But from what I've heard, DAZN struggled to keep those people as subscribers but they did get loads of people subscribing from that that journey so it is tricky it's gonna be a fascinating case there's gonna be loads to learn from it and there might be a case they'll be come out to it coming out after and go all right well this type of approach really works for these people it doesn't actually work for them but that is is okay uh so i'm very fascinated to see what happens well that it's sort of these we've talked about social media being a bit of a leaky bucket where can FIFA effectively balance reach and scale through their platforms while also driving revenue, which is largely the broadcasters.

35:21We talked about that apparently around$4 billion. That's coming from broadcasters. That's not coming from TikTok and YouTube is, you know, can they effectively balance out those two things to not over-service or over-provide value to the social media platforms? because if that does impact broadcasters, that impacts their bottom line and just finding that balance between the two. What 100 % because it could be that this sort of like little concern I've got is that it doesn't work and neither, basically the ultimate, the rights holder that's buying the rights and spending the most money does not get the requisite value from that reach.

35:59And if that happens, then we know that YouTube and TikTok, whilst they may have invested in this preferred platform opportunity, ain't going to be forking out the balance there if it is really significant, at least on the near future. I believe that TikTok and YouTube want to show their wares as this conduit between live sports content and funneling to rights owners. They don't want to necessarily be the sole destination alone. They would love to be probably in some ways, but basically they accept that that's not going to be the case. And if they can act as a really solid conduit, they kind of get the best of both worlds.

36:33They get really serious engagement on their platforms with premium content, and they can drive value for some of these broadcasters. And I would expect potentially at some stage, you might see some sort of affiliate-style relationship happening between the broadcasters and those platforms if it does work as well as it could. Now, specifically looking at Casa TV in Brazil, we've obviously talked about we think creators have a space moving forward. in presentations we've done. We've talked about how in Europe, we've seen content creators become broadcasters with smaller tier rights. Obviously, we're not talking about small tier rights here.