Global Rundown: Netflix, the IPL, Sky Sports Germany, Ligue 1, and the Premier League

16:47Chris Stone:Because we've seen a whole inertia in the industry about distribution now is everything. We need to be in more places. We need to be visible. And this instantly unlocks a whole expanded set of audiences to anyone who can partner with the likes of Netflix, particularly mature markets, but indeed globally. So I just think you'll have everyone, everyone I can think of, like think about in the UK and BBC and you think in the US, all those major free-to-air broadcasters, can we be added to the Netflix interface and be part of that user experience? It's a huge win for Netflix and it's a huge win for those broadcasters to instantly increase the number of eyeballs and visibility they have.

17:25Chris Stone:And because they're being built on selling and building their business models on reach and mass audience and advertising, that can only help them drive more revenue depending on the relationship and agreement in place with Netflix. So I think it is a huge momentum shift, which might sound a bit hyperbolic to some, but I really do believe that. I think if they're doing it in France, France has been serving up some amazing stories in the last couple of years in sports and streaming media, I have to say, but they wouldn't just do this one move and just sit on this. It has to be something that expands, not only in France, to be approaching talking to all those other major distributors out there and other platforms, but completely around the globe.

18:08Chris Stone:And we'll just make sure Netflix is the only place to go to watch your content, not just one of a few.

18:15Nick Meacham:Do you find this akin strategically from a Netflix perspective, we had some of these similar conversations about Sky in the UK where they had partnerships with TNT and they were doing some other stuff with YouTube where the idea was they don't really care if you end up going outside of their network so long as the journey begins in Sky's home landscape ecosystem, however you want to call it. Is that a similar strategy where it's okay if it's not our content so long as your journey goes via Netflix?

18:43Chris Stone:I think that's what it definitely feels like. I think they want to own the entire relationship with the audience, with the customer. And by doing so, we'll continue to do that, continue to monopolize that relationship, whereas free-to-wear is going to struggle to basically have visibility through traditional linear as its consumption is being reduced market by market. So yeah, owning more of that relationship, as long as they're finding the right economic model that everyone's kind of happy with to move forward with, and they instantly have the scale there that no one else does, it's a huge win for them to continue to own that relationship and will mean people are knocking on their door to be on the platform, not the other way around.

19:24Nick Meacham:Well, we're going to stay in France, although this is a story that could potentially be something that is a model that's followed elsewhere. Because I have seen some people on LinkedIn speak really positively and optimistic about what it could mean. We've been following the story about what's happening with Legoon in France and the end of their deal after one year with DAZN. And now they're looking to take ownership of production. And now they're looking for broadcast partners, but they're still going to own that channel as far as I'm concerned. they went back to their old partners in Canal Plus and it now appears that Canal Plus is going to step away from the right, the ability, however you want to phrase it, to stream that new broadcasted produced channel from Liguen.

20:06Nick Meacham:So now that leaves them essentially in a very similar spot to last year where we're at the beginning of July. Next season is going to start in August and there doesn't appear to be a home for where this new channel is going to be. I know there's a lot of people excited about it because there's the idea that with the Premier League stepping away from IMG, Are they going to start producing their own stuff kind of the way NFL media is done? And there's this idea of how exciting this approach could be, but they still need someone to actually help with the distribution side. So this story keeps evolving, Nick.

20:34Nick Meacham:We've been following it seems like forever now. But now with the next chapter, Nick, what do you take from sort of where they're at, where it leaves them with, you know, kind of given the time constraints?

20:46Chris Stone:I'm not sure. I'm really excited to see it happen because I think it's a great litmus test and a great example of what can and can't happen in this space. But I think it's a disaster for LFP and it's not looking any better. The fact that Canal Plus has already actively said we're not going to play ball, I kind of felt like this and I don't know much. There's some great commentators on, particularly on LinkedIn around this, Thierry Fortier, Sebastien Nordeau, people I follow also on this who have French connections and the French are closer to it than I am. But I do have been following it and also have read a few French articles.

21:20Chris Stone:And the crux of it is that the economics are getting worse and worse on various metrics. The cost is going down for users and yet they're still not able to attract the audiences to make this a viable approach for them and make it sustainable for the future. And with Canal Plus stepping away, largely the most reputable, from what I understand, the most reputable sports service, I suppose you would call it, in France, this is a huge challenge because they are really looking for broadcasters. I think you said broadcasters. I would say it's just a distribution channel, right? They want to have a place to be visible and available and there'll be some sort of agreement, whether it's a minimum guarantee, whether it's a revenue share component is part of that and try and reach as many people and drive as many subscriptions as possible now the price point that they wanted to sell this at i believe was around 15 euros now if you remember correctly i think the zone if i remember appropriately was about double that 30 or 40 euros um now the ceo of the lfp media who's taken over i believe from ben Morel is aiming for at least 1 million subscribers in their first year.

22:32Chris Stone:So you can do some math on

22:35Nick Meacham:that, but that is not nowhere near the revenue generation that has been forthcoming in previous

22:42Chris Stone:cycles or even indeed making it viable for any broadcaster that consider paying the premiums that they historically generated before. Now, Thierry Fortier was someone who posted something about this and for context here that the the actual cost to watch all the lfp the league and matches peaked at around 89 euro euros a month around 2008 2012 which is extortionally high right but that's that's what it was at and now you're looking at basically 15 euros a month you should be able to get access to all the games like what a what a dramatic turn of events for them So I don't know how they overcome this.

23:22Chris Stone:The million number sounds like a nice number to aim for. Is it achievable? I think we have all seen the sports industry constantly neglect the fact that marketing is really difficult to do and it can't just be around price alone. I think the price point is trying to address piracy because piracy is so prevalent in that market, but they still need all the distribution partners available to them because otherwise, I just don't know how this is a long-term viable commitment. Now, it could be for one year and it could be that this is the, what would you call the limit, the case study for us to be able to go to market next year and then sell it.

23:58Chris Stone:But it does not sound like the, I can't see a road to success unless they're willing to play the long game. And I can't believe that all the investors that exist around Ligun are willing to take three to five years to hopefully turn the tide on all that massive media rights gap that is clearly there now.

24:16Nick Meacham:So you're saying it's not going to be like one of my favorite podcasts we've ever done. Go search it up. It was something about David versus Goliath, I think might have been the title, where we were talking to Pauk FC in Greece, where they talked about they didn't get the broadcast deal that they wanted. So they said, fine, screw it. We'll build our own DTC. And actually, I think it ended up getting what, double what they were offered the year before because they were so successful. So you don't think it's going to be that situation?

24:42Chris Stone:I would love it. I would love it to be the case. I would absolutely love it because it would make the idea of a sports property, a premium sports property, doing it alone, a viable, truly viable option, which would give so much. The net result of that would give so many more rights owners the ability to play that trump card of we're going to do it ourselves. And if you want these rights, sports broadcaster, pay the check. but they've just been they've been hit they've been punched you know left hook right hook uppercut the whole way through this journey of the last 10 years or seven eight years whatever the timeline is i just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet taking this approach but what i could see is solving this is they take this approach and then someone else does come to the table and helps them get the expanded reach they need i'm just not sure who it is netflix could be one of them.

25:39Nick Meacham:Yeah. Well, like I said, I'll just shamelessly plug that podcast I mentioned. If you're interested in a good story, if you're interested in a good story of an underdog having to be really resourceful and innovative of how to launch a DTC platform, basically to get back at the broadcasters and double the money they made. It's a really great story. I do believe it's called like David versus Goliath. It's PAUC, which P-A-O-K. I'm sure if you Google it, it'll come up. Great podcast. If I do say so myself, Nick.

26:06Chris Stone:Yeah, no, it's a great, it's one of the great stories, one of the great success stories and actually flew very much under the radar because it's a smaller tier organization. But yeah, the whole journey there and the numbers really paint a picture of what can be done if you do challenge the status quo sometimes.

26:21Nick Meacham:Yeah. Now, speaking of numbers, Nick, we're going to go on the complete other side. We're going to talk about some of the biggest numbers you've ever seen. In honor of July 4th and not getting too political Donald Trump, The numbers are huge, huge with a Y, not with an H. You had a post on LinkedIn about the IPL final. And then there were some numbers about the England and India test match setting records. I mean, Nick, some of the numbers are honestly just staggering when you just start looking at the numbers. And I get it may be limited to certain regions that actually follow cricket. But again, I would suggest go to Google, type in IPL, type in Nick Meacham, and it'll come up with a post right away.

26:59Nick Meacham:and you put down a bunch of facts and figures about it. But some of the numbers about the IPL final that just came up a couple of weeks back genuinely are the type of thing. If you're not paying attention to cricket, you really should be at least understanding the scale of what they're being able to do right now. Oh, but completely.

27:14Chris Stone:I think it's lost on people sometimes that we have to keep reminding people that, hey, go check out the Indian market. They're delivering high quality product at scale that belittles every other challenge of every other broadcaster who can't deliver scale. They're like, well, we're smashing this in a market that actually has, it's a developing country. It has not got the scale of infrastructure that some of the other countries have, and yet they just continue to deliver event after event. And the scale is something to behold. And cricket obviously is the number one passion and sport. I think India's population number one now in terms of scale.

27:50Chris Stone:So it is just built to deliver massive numbers when you have the right type of sporting event. I haven't got the numbers in front of me, but I think there was something like 670-odd million views of the final, which I think is just an incredible – 678 total streams were of the IPL final and 578 million in the first innings. like what what sort of numbers are they they're just ridiculous numbers and then you couple that with 169 million unique viewers through linear now granted there's obviously some crossover there of audience they just blow everyone away in terms of the scale that you are talking about in terms of audience consumption and you think about the we talk about advertising a lot like that is still in its infancy it's still in a growing marketplace within uh the indian economy because of the you've at this mass scale, but can you drive the CPMs that you can in Western markets?

28:50Chris Stone:Clearly you cannot, but they are driving a premium. The valuations in India for teams and the IPL itself are insane. And that market just keeps going from strength to strength. I just don't know how they do it. Yeah.

29:03Nick Meacham:I mean, it's truly incredible. And I think just when we talk about just the scale to be able to deliver those sorts of things, it probably isn't talked enough just in terms of the feet that's required to do. You know, we talk about like, oh, can Netflix, you know, live stream some games on Christmas? And like, or they nick maybe like 25 million, I think was roughly the number of people that watch the NFL game. So like, you're talking about just, you know, quadruple, quintuple. I don't know how those words continue to multiply, but like you're talking in a completely different stratosphere. You know, we were concerned about Netflix and you got people like Gio that are just doing it all the time.

29:39Nick Meacham:Like it's no problem.

29:41Chris Stone:Yeah, it's completely mad now. The tricky bit when you look at data is you do need to go away from, you've got to try and dissect it a little bit further, right? Because it can be misleading. I think every now major social platform uses one second as a view time for content, which therefore makes it tricky to digest. But based on some of the estimates of some of those numbers I just shared, you're still talking about the actual true reach of that game to be around 400 million people. 400 million people tuning in to watch an event, 50 to 60 million concurrent viewers, peak concurrency on streaming alone.

30:16Chris Stone:Those numbers are pretty baffling. And we have covered that from the business side a few times. Also on this podcast is some examples of that. But I think I need to do some nerding out and understand how they're actually able to do that from the tech side because it is truly an incredible feat. So fair play to them. I think the main thing that people need to understand about that Indian market that I think is just interesting to consider is most of that is revenue generation to fund this is done through advertising partnerships that again is not hidden behind paywalls. And that model has been the approach has been one that has existed in India for some time and it continues to deliver results in terms of value creation for the IPL.

30:57Chris Stone:So they found a way to make it work and bypassed a lot of say steps and challenges that say the Western market has had.

31:04Nick Meacham:All right, Nick, sounds like I need to do some recruitment, get someone from GEO to come in and talk to us about everything that they're doing on some of those crazy streaming numbers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, that'll mean our good friend William Tubbs will get a message from me. Good stuff. For those that don't know, William Tubbs is our head of programming. So he does all the agenda content. So if you've been to one of our events, which is probably likely if you're a listener, Will's the one that leads all that content that he puts together. So yeah, he'll get a little message from me. There's a shout out with Tubbsy.

31:31Nick Meacham:So moving back over to Europe and we're going to focus the next two stories around Germany. Again, a story that we followed a little bit, we haven't mentioned in a while, but we have known that Comcast has been looking to potentially sell certain parts of the business, particularly from the Sky side within Europe. And it looks like RTL, who's one of the domestic broadcasters in Germany, is now going to acquire Sky Deutschland, which includes Sky Sports Germany. That's reported to be around 150 million euros. So we have seen the writing on the wall for a little bit of time, Nick, that Comcast was trying to offload some of this.

32:04Nick Meacham:But what do you make of it beyond being perhaps a little bit inevitable, what it maybe means for just the marketplace? Because we've seen a few of these mergers, acquisitions taking place seemingly quite a bit over the last 12 months.

32:19Chris Stone:Yeah, we have seen. I do expect to see more of them. What took me by surprised was a couple of things. But one, it really is that just the price, the value. You think about the value of the rights they're actually sitting on, Skydeutschen, just from the sporting perspective, and they're worth hundreds of millions through the cycle. And they only sold for 150 million euros total. Now, granted, there is upside, but that's all dependent on RTL share price. So if the share price like that is completely protecting RTL's basically future. They're not committed to this massive check down the line if things don't go to plan and then the market doesn't see what they've done as value additive.

33:00So I would have

33:01Chris Stone:thought going into this, Sky Deutschen's position was pretty solid. The business was pretty solid. This could sell for a couple of close, a billion plus was kind of what I was expecting the number to be. It wouldn't have surprised me. Now, there's no doubt experts who are closer to the action who will tell me all the reasons why it's not. One of the things I did here was that the subscriber acquisition costs for Sky Deutschland were actually insanely high. So they were taking something like two years worth of subscription value to secure a subscriber. I can't remember where I read that. I read that on LinkedIn from one of the experts in the space.

33:36Chris Stone:So apologies for that. I'll try and give him a shout out if I can when I post something about this. But the point is okay subscriptions are really hard to sell that's one of the drivers of this this challenge and the basically the low price point that sky deutschland has sold like can you think about the possibility of sky in the uk given its dominance its market share now it's a different business and different scale but to even be in that stratosphere of price is is beyond shocking to me so um that's one thing the other bit is just now that rtl becomes a home for a huge amount of content they already had things like the premier league i think europa league and a few other things from a football perspective now they get f1 they get bundesliga they get the nfl they basically get just more market share and dominance that this depending on how they package all this up makes them the the destination you must subscribe to i'm sure wouldn't make some of the other competitor platforms like DAZN in that market, particularly happy about seeing them come together because it means that there's even more competition for WIF.

34:44Chris Stone:If you're going to subscribe to one or multiple subscriptions, you're going to go to these guys. You're not going to go to someone smaller, perhaps. So a bit of a challenging market for those also playing in that space, but a huge, huge move by RTL at that price. Who can blame them? Yeah.

35:00Nick Meacham:I remember speaking to someone and I think Germany was like the last European market to legalize the ability to have pay TV. So I think for the longest time, everything was free to air. So I think to your point, when you think about the UK having subscription to Sky Sports, like I could never imagine Sky Sports just making a deal with the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, whoever it may be. But I do remember someone saying like Germany was one of the last countries to domestically legalize it. So they've just, they've always been on the lower end of, I guess, affinity to pay for content. It's always been a struggle in the market.

35:35Nick Meacham:So that probably does explain the lower costs. And then I'm trying to remember which story it was we were talking about, Nick. Who was it that paid someone to give away their rights? And the idea behind it was, is that they're going to now have to take on the payments for those rights. So they're paying someone to take it from them, but that person is also going to have to use that money to pay the rights holder. Who was that story?

35:56Chris Stone:Yeah, that was IMG Arena paid sport radar for the betting right side. Yeah. So I think that's definitely a factor here. And obviously, there's some pretty impressive finance experts. And obviously, we have an investment event that's happening as with this podcast will be coming out to market, I believe, happening where I'm hopefully getting a bit more insight on how these things are valued. But those economics clearly play a pretty major role in how things are managed. I mean, the other massive X factor here is naturally, I think they started to share some numbers online about where the cost savings, the optimizations will have basically, so it'll drive up the profitability of these two bodies coming together.

36:38Chris Stone:That typically means there'll be a lot of cost savings made likely with people and personnel as well. So I would expect to see quite a bit of shift, a bit of a shift with people and some massive changes on the workforce front for these two organizations. And obviously, it naturally will be interesting for the industry to see how they come together. Will it all just wrap under the RTL brand? Will they just run them is different products, Skystay is the pay TV proposition, RTL is the free-to-air access product, or will they just merge under one big super brand? The time will tell, but it is a hugely disruptive move for the German market, it has to be said.

37:13Nick Meacham:Well, staying in the German market and staying particularly around the investment side, again, another short one following, a good friend of ours, and I think most people in the industry will know him, our friend Andreas Hayden. Apparently, when you saw him in Sweden, mentioned there might be some stuff they're cooking up. And it does appear as though that news has now been put out publicly. And that's Dine has expanded its shareholder base. It's now valued at 80 million euros. And some of the people that are coming on board are very interesting given who they've said they are targeting and what they're not targeting.

37:45Nick Meacham:It's a little interesting who's now an investor in that space. But it does seem as though what Andres and team have been able to do with Christian Seifert, who used to be the CEO of the Bundesliga as well. It's interesting, Nick. It seems like two really smart guys are seeming to continue to do really smart things.

38:05Chris Stone:Yeah, you've got to love how this has come almost full circle back to DFL in this instance. And it raises loads of questions about what the future looks like, right? Like Dine is now at the precipice. They really went focused on their proposition. I think they picked five sports from the beginning. We have a double down, super serve these people that are underserved. and we're going to build everything around this group of people and build a sustainable business out of this. Now, the devil is in the detail. And I think what Andreas has done with his technological background has really focused on keeping costs down, using the cloud, using AI, using efficiency in their broadcast production to make the value of the broadcast so much more valuable to them, really made sure they work with partners that understand the relationship, making sure that money is feeding through grassroots to grow the sport, making sure those rights owners are pushing awareness and visibility of this subscription offering and positioning it as a positive for them.

39:06Chris Stone:It's not, we're asking money from you now, we're giving you a better service. And that has obviously resulted in various measures of success leading to this huge set of investment they've received. So the questions now for us is what is the future for this? They've received more funding. We had obviously Flow Sports on recently valued at 100 million. This is basically a sim evaluation for the dime business based on what we, depending on what reports you follow, is what is next for them. They've proven a case that they can build a subscription-led model, not subscription only. I think advertising still makes up, I'm not sure what's been reported, but a portion of their – a meaningful portion, it's not the majority.

39:46Chris Stone:The majority is definitely subscription. Where do they go from here? Now, DFL coming on board raises all sorts of flags. They're like, all right, does that mean now with what's happening with RTL and Sky Deutschland, does that mean that now Dyne's potentially going to be a viable player for them? In Germany, firstly, given they're in the market. Now, that would be a surprise because of the premium relationships they have with broadcasters, but it does raise the question. The next question it raises is where do they go from here from a market perspective? Do they keep doubling down and focusing on the German market alone or the DAC region I think they are across?

40:26Chris Stone:Or do they keep growing further and further afield into different markets? Do they use the same brand? Do they basically try and build a DAZN-like global streaming service? Now, they would need a lot more money in their rights war chest to take that approach. But if they are doing deals that are super serving underserved sports properties and underserved sports fans, then it won't cost as much as you would think to start going after a couple of other markets that maybe are set up for that sort of opportunity. So I think if they found the model, they believe the thesis is solid, that they can run these events cheaper than most and still deliver a really high quality product.

41:09Chris Stone:They can target those fans effectively, more effectively than most. We've spoken to Andreas a number of times. He's been at our events and so forth. He's clearly a shrewd operator. He balances beautifully that business understanding and the technical side as well as anyone. He's the ideal person for this type of opportunity. it's just a matter of what they want to prioritize first. And some pretty interesting investors behind them with DFL and then the owners of Lidl behind them to enable this, right? So I'm really excited to follow what their next steps are and how bold they'll be from here. Yeah.

41:43Nick Meacham:And to your point, I remember Andres when he was first talking about this, they were very explicit. I forget what the number was. I feel like it was somewhere between like 30 and 40 % where they're like 30 to 40 % of sports fans in Germany are not fans of football. and we explicitly want to go and target that community of people. And I feel like the statement was, we're not football. We're not going to do football. But when you think about Christian, you think about Andreas, you can't help but make that connection. So to your point, the fact that the DFL is now an investor, given what those two are doing, I don't know football is the next step because as you say, some of those rights are going to be already so wrapped up.

42:18Nick Meacham:They're also going to be so expensive. But yeah, the whole expression where there's smoke, there's fire, It just feels like there's something, but maybe we're completely wrong. Who knows?

42:29Chris Stone:But I think their secret sauce here is they're not the first company or organization to come in like, oh, we're going to target lower tier sports and try and do this. But they have just taken a subtly different approach and they focus heavily, heavily on execution. So efficiency, classic German, I guess, what trademark of like being hyper-focused on excellence in efficiency of delivery. and that has stood them out from perhaps where you might see i don't know i don't want to generalize too much but maybe a big us company goes i will disrupt them they will disrupt europe and go big but not think about the minor details they've been focused on the remote production side of things i did they did a great presentation andres did a great presentation um at the streaming tech sweden event that went into the detail of that i i'm i'm don't want to I don't want to promise anything, but I'm sure we'll get him down to Madrid in some capacity out of our media summit this year.

43:25Chris Stone:And I think they've just proven out that if you're smart about your approach from tech as well as strategy, then you can really find a model that works.

43:36Nick Meacham:The last story of the day is around the Premier League and its new deal with Microsoft. I think in the article that was written by our technology editor, Steve McCaskill, I think he writes that the Premier League is so big, it's afforded the opportunity to be a late mover. At times, it doesn't always have to be taking risks that it doesn't have to. But this deal with Microsoft is a significant deal, just given the scale of the business. Also, the fact that we know the last couple of years, Alexandra Willis has come in with the idea of building out their digital network, digital ecosystem. And this is going to be coming with a brand new app that's just been rolled out, brand new website.

44:14Nick Meacham:I think they've described it as all these new digital ecosystems. What do you think, Nick, when you include the fact that they're moving on from IMG, they've got this new deal with Microsoft, not saying those two things are connected, but they're probably not entirely exclusive, but just these continued steps by the Premier League in terms of seeming to take a more sophisticated approach to their digital strategy that we maybe have felt that they've been behind maybe someone like the NFL or the NBA on in recent years?

44:40Chris Stone:Well, it's interesting you put it as they've been afforded, or Steve put it as. I haven't read the full article. I've got it on my tabs to read because it's quite a piece of work by Steve there to explain all the detail. But whenever you see an announcement like this and you see, I'd say here's my skeptic side, is that you see Richard Masters doing the big sell-on working with Microsoft and Copot. You know this is a heavily laden commercial.

45:04Nick Meacham:There's a heavily laden commercial aspect of this deal.

45:08Chris Stone:Microsoft obviously did the app efforts with the NBA. And so I'm guessing they probably followed a similar playbook and approach. I haven't spent much time on the platform, but I have seen two people on my social feeds basically saying that the platform wasn't working for them at the time. So some skepticism, some negativity to begin with, but they are delivering something at a huge scale. So inevitably, you can give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll sort it out and be in a better place after the fact. But it's clearly a commercial relationship with Microsoft. They're with the NBA. They're with the NFL.

45:44Chris Stone:They're not just signing up with Microsoft purely because they want to integrate Copilot into their app platform. And they can afford the last mover, or they are last movers for a couple of reasons. One, my view is that they can't ever get it wrong. but you know that's the thing it's not that man united man city vertex example i've shared before is they're on such a pedestal that they make one mistake and everyone rips them apart a bit like the example i've said of people on my feed jumping into it to say that they've had issues on the platform versus more disruptors they can they can basically get up and running earlier and make some errors along the way and ultimately sort it out as they go along so what i don't know what to expect.

46:31Chris Stone:I don't know if this is the finished product, whether this is just the starting point for them. But it's another great opportunity for Microsoft to get in front of huge audiences and keep their connectivity and give them another channel to market one of their other assets. Previously, I remember with the NFL, it was originally around there. Microsoft Surface was a big part of the activation you saw come to life. With the NBA, it was just, I can't remember exactly what they were as a marketing platform for them. Now with this, I love to see where it goes and if they can really innovate, have a truly innovative platform.

47:04Chris Stone:So I'm positive they'll work it out if they have some challenges at the moment. I think that's inevitable with these organizations. They work it out quickly. But I always am skeptical when I see a big tech company partnered in this environment. I don't think you need to, if you're the Premier League, need to work with a big tech company to create the best experience possible for a fan. Instead, you're doing it because there's a commercial reason. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just think it needs to be, everyone needs to understand that's why we're here.

47:33Nick Meacham:Well, I think one of the interesting things, I've heard this from a couple of different people. One of the challenges, this was actually, no big secrets, I'm not naming names. We held a CTO form at our Sports Pro AI event, which again, is going to be running September 23rd, 24th in London again. One of the things that came up in the CTO form talking about the struggles that sit between the CTO and say the chief commercial officer is the chief commercial officer is trying to get the biggest partnership available. The CTO is trying to build the best platform available. And oftentimes the CTO is basically got his hands tied behind his back because that's the best commercial deal that comes in.

48:07Nick Meacham:And they say, inevitably, if you build this new platform with said partner, what happens in five years when they don't want to renew? Well, either A, you have to completely rebuild the platform again with a new tech partner, or you hire a new tech partner and you still have to pay the old tech partner for the platform they built for you. So you're kind of screwed either way. So I do find some of these things a little bit interesting where we talk about sort of synergies within business where the CTO and the chief partner, officer, chief commercial, they don't always see eye to eye and where those two things line up is actually probably trickier than most people

48:43Chris Stone:realize that's a great it's a really great point i think it is one of the biggest growth areas in the sports industry is this ability to partner with technology and then activate that by making their technology part of their product and what you will normally hear on the negative side is companies that are startups a little bit more developed but also even the big ones saying this and these are b2b organizations right they're not selling globally in a big tech like the scale of a Microsoft is like, we're getting told we have to pay huge checks to some of these rights owners for us to provide their services.

49:18Chris Stone:How are we supposed to run a business if we have to pay them when we think they should be paying us for what we're giving to them? And it takes that tricky conundrum. And that's why you do see these types of announcements, these types of platforms are partnered with these big tech organizations. And in fact, F1, particularly on the Teams side, is by far the leader in these textile partnerships because they are able to bring those things to life. They're able to create these stories where the tech company can then go, hey, we did this for this tech company and they work in thousands of a second.

49:51Chris Stone:We can do it for you. And that storytelling is actually a really powerful sales tool for any of these types of organizations going to market either at a consumer level or even on a B2B level in some instances. So I'm definitely not knocking these types of partnerships that the industry has needed them and it's been a huge growth area. And one of the reasons sponsorship revenue has been growing is because of this relationship. It just makes it tricky, to your point, how the organization itself sets itself up so it doesn't get basically screwed at the other end, having to deal with the aftermath if the relationship or agreement, sponsorship deal, whatever you want to call it, goes awry.

50:30Chris Stone:And that's tricky.

50:31Nick Meacham:It absolutely is. Well, Nick, that has been an absolutely jam-packed episode with all kinds of different news stories. You know, we've kind of thrown it out there. If you're a French expert, please let us know on LinkedIn what we got wrong. If you're a German expert, let us know what we got wrong. If you know stuff about India, we're trying to learn more about it. But really great episode, Nick. Lots of good stuff in there for everybody. And, you know, for those that are American, I hope looking back at this, you had a lovely 4th of July. And yeah, just another good time to be with you, Nick.

50:58Chris Stone:And absolutely. And obviously, as this recording comes out, we're going to be in London together. We'll be hosting also our first Streamtime Connect event for exclusive for our membership base, which I think is worth giving a shout out. So really excited. We're going to have a full house for that event, which will be happening in London at SNAPS headquarters, which is a great space for us to host that. So looking forward to getting back together in person, Chris, for that one. And if you're interested in the Streamtime membership, then get in touch with us and we can give you some more information.

51:26Chris Stone:But otherwise, I'll see you in person next week. And thanks for listening, everyone. Thank you, everybody. 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 sportsproneck. And please do spread the word of the 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, or you think we should be doing more or less of something, then reach out and let me know as I'd love to hear from you.

51:52Chris Stone:Thanks, Dream Timers. Until next time.