How are fans really watching the World Cup

0:05Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone. I'm the community lead joined as always by our CEO, Nick Meacham. Now, as of recording this podcast, we're working our way through the World Cup. We are past the group stage, just a little bit into the knockout stages. Unfortunately for Nick and I, both actually all three of the US, Sweden, and Australia have been eliminated from the tournament. So Nick, we have to put all of our faith in England now. Yeah, I'm all in now. Next time I'm coming to the UK, I meant to find some time on this trip I just did this week to actually try and buy some English shirts and get into the paraphernalia of England and lean into it a bit more.

0:44But I've been watching a lot of the content and watching all the England matches as well and getting right into it. I found that I've been way more supportive than I expected. I think the 15 plus years in the country has really rubbed off on me now more than I expected. Also, perhaps because all my other teams are out as well. I also just kind of root for England because I know if they win, we'll get a bank holiday. So it's just more out of selfishness than anything else. That'd be a good thing for the prime minister to send himself out on. Basically, I'm about to quit, but I'm going to give you all the bank holiday to remember me by if that happens.

1:18It's a long way to go. I mean, yeah, but look, I also could say that I'm still a bit nervous for England because going up to, they should not lose to Norway, but I have been really impressed with Norway as a team. They look really good. And then if they play, they still have Argentina. They still potentially go to Argentina, who've looked good as well. There's just a lot of good competition ahead of them. And I don't know what success looks like for England, but I think really success has to be at making the finals again, frankly. um so uh a tough road ahead still for them i would say because on the other side of the draw it's a lot easier well before we get into it nick just again just to figure out how active you are on social media as compared to me i'm gonna let you guys know right now football twitter has been absolutely the funniest most hilarious thing i've ever seen during my world cup you might not have realized this x is now introduced an auto translation feed or an auto translation feature so historically i like obviously there's people that make football memes from around the world but like if it's not in english i don't really understand it so i get served a lot of like localized stuff oh my god nick this new auto transit like football fans in like brazil and spain are absolute animals some of the content on twitter is so funny nick it is and like they're using all the ai stuff now we're like they've got holland dressed up as like like a viking it's like the AI, like featured films, and he's storming England and Harry Kane's the defender.

2:43Like genuinely football Twitter has been gold. And the auto translation feature that I can now read Brazilian Twitter, like some of the jokes, Nick, they have, it's been my favorite part. Honestly, it's Twitter. It's been on fire. It feels like a good old Twitter's making a bit of a comeback in that way as a, as a platform. You know, everyone else has just gone into pure video play and I feel like they found this nice, nice balance of things that it's just given them a bit more prominence again i feel like uh i don't know they found they found a bit of a place in the in the marketplace again after all these um this roller coaster ride since uh musk took them over uh but i haven't seen that too many of those i have seen a few examples of that and there is a lot of cool viral stuff popping up around around the world cup and i think that can be just as entertaining frankly as some of the matches i've watched but uh yeah uh it's quite it's quite cool to see and it's pretty cool that you get access to all different cultures and the content they're producing is on not just the the uk and american stuff yeah absolutely and in terms of watching nick uh i think i mentioned one of the previous episodes i went home for a two-week holiday and i was really kind of interested to kind of compare and contrast my experiences between watching the two um and i went back home and i think i've mentioned this before but my parents are youtube tv subscribers that's how they get their stuff i mean we live on 10 acres we're like half a mile off the main road so cable is not even an option for us we used to do satellite um now with streaming we can do it via broadband but like we couldn't even do cable if we wanted to because like it was going to cost 10 000 like dollars just for them to run the cable line all the way back to where we live um so they're on youtube tv now and we've talked about the preferred platforms that they were doing with youtube and tiktok and our understanding was is they would show the games for free on youtube and those platforms for the first 10 minutes and then they would send you over to uh to the local broadcaster who had the rights to it.

4:29So I went out there. I wanted to test things. I wanted to try things out, Nick. So the first time I went and did it, I went on YouTube on my phone and I tried to watch the first 10 minutes and just didn't let me at all. Wasn't there. So I was like, fine, whatever. Like no big deal. I was only doing this to test it. I might've been more annoyed if I was actually trying to watch, but it was like, fine, whatever. So then the next game turned on. and what I try to do is my parents all smart devices I went onto the YouTube app and I was able to watch the first 10 minutes then when I got there to 10 minutes it then auto-directed me to Fox's streaming service now what I found really interesting about this my parents have YouTube TV they have the same app downloaded on the same TV what I would have anticipated because they have fox sports as part of their youtube tv package i would have expected i would have just been bumped over from youtube to oh would you like to continue your experience on youtube tv which you're already a subscriber to instead it took me directly to the fox sports app that you would have had to pay for and subscribe and so like i didn't do that because obviously i've already got a youtube tv subscription in my in my dispense but i just i found it really interesting um given youtube and also youtube tv being a part of the same ecosystem that it wouldn't just pull me directly into YouTube TV where I would have had access to Fox Sports.

5:54Now we could argue like the whole purpose is to drive it to the broadcasters who won the rights to it. But I just found that to be a bit of an underwhelming experience that YouTube didn't just directly link me to its own service that I already pay for that has the feature that I have there. So I just I found that a bit interesting, Nick. I did not, I mean, I think we questioned beforehand how seamless it was going to be. I didn't particularly find it seamless. And I found it, I guess, slightly redundant, given it tried to get me to subscribe to a platform with which I already have access to the content through licensing through YouTube TV.

6:30So can't say I had a successful experience with that one, Nick. Yeah, look, I guess one of those, one of the challenges that we're always going to have with this approach is to how to funnel people to the right platform of choice. if they're going to take this preferred platform model out to market, given all that nuance of all the different distribution deals that exist in play. But realistically, they probably can't add that conditionality into something, particularly as this is effectively a beta model, right? They've never done this before. So I guess the logic is they're only going to point you to one journey, one destination, that being the platform of choice and the right owner's platform themselves.

7:08because ideally what they want to achieve is turn you into a new customer on their platform. That's why they're allowing those rights because effectively, remember, Fox owns those rights still. They still want to get something out of you. So pushing you to their own platforms is the most logical and likely destination they would want you to go to. But I agree to your point. Idealistically, that is not the play. It should be more than that. It should be pushing you to the platform of choice. But I think technologically that could be quite tricky to actually pull off. Because what happens if you do have a subscription to a Fox platform and also YouTube TV, which there would be some people there with Fox 1 and YouTube TV, then you're relying on the platform to know everything.

7:50And you'd say, well, AI should be able to solve all those things. But it's not as easy as it sounds. That's not what I've heard, Nick. I've heard AI is going to replace all of us. I heard AI is the answer to everything. Apparently so. Apparently is the answer to everything. But I think it's not the answer to everything yet. It will be, though, apparently. where and then how have you been watching things in sweden before i talk about my uk experiences well i can't say that i have been served any of the preferred platform experiences though i must say i don't think i've looked up looked for them either so i don't i know when i was talking to the guys at svt they were very hesitant to commit to trialing it i don't know if they ended up doing it or not but i've not seen that sort of journey what i have been doing is watching it um so i don't have access to free-to-air tv for some reason where i live there's only access basically to streaming services only so i do have the streaming services which are tv4 and svt where i've been able to watch those they're basically split between the two free-to-air providers one being a public service broadcaster um uh what actually i found was that the second public service broadcast of tv4 um on the streaming platform you have to actually buy a sports package to watch it so i think you can get it for free if you have linear traditionally linear free-to-air tv but to watch it on streaming you've got to pay for the sports package and it's at 50 off for the for this three-month period but i wasn't very happy with that because i know that it's free on linear just because i haven't got linear set up that i can't get it for free but in the end I just said screw it it's the world cup and I'm leaning into it I'm gonna pay this discount affair and they have got uh pretty much so many great rights uh in under their locker and they've got the Al Svenskan which is the Swedish football league they've got uh a couple other things that I was like yeah that's probably worth it so I'll at least give the next few months but it wasn't cheap it was like equivalent like 20 US dollars a month for subscription to the platform for their sports package so they you know subscriptions here for sports related content whether it be via play or whether it be through tv4 or like they're expensive they are not cheap i think if you want to get the via play package it's something like uh 55 us dollars a month or something like that so you've got obviously a lot of people do deals with their telcos where it's combined and then with telly and these other platforms that exist in market i'm not too afraid with how that all exists but i know that that's quite common as people buy that as a package which makes it probably more incentivized but yeah i've just decided screw i'm going to remove all that friction and just pay for the premium and i've been watching games live but i've also watched both the extended highlights packages and the shorter highlights packages depending on my interest levels in those matches um and it was quite good actually for the for the i think it was the last england match we got up early but we didn't get up for the match but we got up at i don't know five or six in the morning to watch the full match on replay and just didn't turn any uh notifications on and uh it was great watched the whole match through and uh enjoyed it just as much as i would if i got up at two in the morning which i'm glad i didn't because they they changed the time of the match kickoff last minute which would have really annoyed me if i'd woken up an hour before i needed to in the middle of the night well now that's the experience i've had here in the uk um particularly because i got back after really most of the group stage was done so once you get in the knockout stages you're usually talking primetime tv so quite late kickoffs over here um i've not watched a ton of live content since i've gotten home it's largely been on the um the replays and what i will say is like i've always said the reason i've always been willing to pay for nfl game pass is for the sunday night monday night thursday night games that i don't want to stay up live for so i have been really pleasantly surprised with the adoption that itv and bbc put out because i don't remember this um for previous editions of the world cup granted they're only every four years so technology takes quite big jumps and sometimes depending on where the location is you might not even necessarily need the replays but i have appreciated the manner with which they've gone about doing it um the manner in which they've gone about doing it spoiler free because i've been on here before i've said one of my biggest pet peeves with sky and tnt now hbo max is they always put the scores and the thumbnails i hated that um so i've appreciated by bbc and itv you can go on the apps afterwards and you can go in and watch the full replay and it's not a thumbnail with the score or any sort of spoilers with it so that's been my experience over here is largely watching everything or i'd say at least 75 percent of content on the next morning whether that's the extended highlights or i've done what you've done before where i've gone and watched the full two hour replay afterwards so i think there's been a really excellent job by both of those organizations taking that into account and making that a spoiler free because i really do think that matters for sports more than anything else trying to avoid spoilers yeah absolutely i think it's good to hear that you've had a pretty smooth experience one thing that has um surprised me uh and annoyed me quite frankly uh has been the disparate range of times matches have been starting yeah all over the place no consistency yeah there's no consistency and like in my view if they were consistent with that you want to create that appointment a viewing experience to have the same time for every match kicking off whether it's on the east coast west coast or whatever and we all would just know when to turn our tvs on but i'm like they're definitely losing opportunity i feel that there's obviously a business reason that they're doing that or an attention reason that they are doing that but some days don't matches don't start till after i'm not due in bed other times they're starting at 5 p.m it is a bit confusing and i don't really understand the logic there forward unless um they're trying to serve different markets at different times to like align with perhaps perhaps like other live sporting events experiences to try and not compete with attention it's my only thinking that's how it's all been planned out but i'm really really speculating there but i found it really quite frustrating to to navigate those things and i've lost i've missed events or just given up on stuff because i'm like this is just it's a bit messy so i don't really understand that i would love to know the reason why yeah i would love to know the reason as well because i completely agree where you know if you remember when we spoke to seth bacon and mls they made a really big point about one of the things about them having their own platform is that they were going to standardize kickoff times for the mls because he said they used to have like 80 different starting times now they only have like five and you know when they're at i mean it's the same thing with the nfl even when west coast teams play like hey if you're got an east coast time slot you're going to play at that time anyways um so yeah there were some times like they just weren't consistent um it wasn't like every game's going the kickoff at 4 p.m then 7 p.m then 10 p.m like they were only within an hour but like i always had to check because it wasn't the same time every single day so i agree that was i get international audiences and stuff but uh i agree i found it i don't know just inconvenient whereas i know the nfl it's going to kick off at 1 p.m it's going to kick off at 4 or 5 p.m and then i know the late game is going to kick off at 8 30 i don't even need to look it up i just know that those are the times it's the same thing with the premier league i know there's a 12 30 kickoff 3 p.m kickoff and 5 30 p.m kickoff on a saturday like i do think that that matters and i agree with you it's it's not the end of the world but like it's definitely not been an ideal viewing experience just when i think about other things that i do watch yeah and the other thing that i think i would have liked to have seen is that the games were half were half an hour closer to each other when they were back to back yeah because i feel like they're just far enough apart that i have to leave watching and try and come back later and a couple times i'm like oh if the match was coming up within 30 minutes after the other match would happen i would definitely watch that but now i'm gonna go and do something else and see if i'm gonna find time to come back but that's probably a bit of a selfish thing it probably works better for them for various reasons but i would love them just to be a little bit closer together so you basically just you're hooked for five hours straight yeah now a question i kind of want to ask nick more on a i guess holistic level the live content that i have watched i it's on a smart tv so i'm watching either via bbc iplayer or i believe it's ITVX is the name of their streaming platform.

15:55You know, when I said I was at home, everything was YouTube TV via streaming. I'm watching the replays via streaming. And even some of the data and statistics that are coming out of the US. I mean, I think there were some numbers around streaming audiences on Telemundo and Peacock within the US are up 251 % from 2022. Now, some of that will be because it's, you know, the time zone might be a little bit more convenient, But nonetheless, that is an absolutely massive jump that can't all just be attributed to time zones. But even my own personal experience and just some of the data, there's more and more streaming that seems to be taking place as opposed to just the traditional TV.

16:35So could we make an argument that this is perhaps really the first streaming World Cup? Because I think the other thing as well, Nick, we've seen some other numbers. You know, our friend Dan Rayburn has been posting statistics and figures around viewing numbers. even we're seeing more and more broadcasters they don't just say these were our numbers they say these were our combined numbers which include both the streaming and the traditional tv that does it feel like this world cup maybe i'm overstating it because those are the numbers that everyone wants to throw at you but does it feel a little bit like streaming is taking a more prominent role in this world cup yeah absolutely i kind of think that though i've not seen anything that's been a major step change it's just been a gradual progression and the difference is now that it's available on both places quite universally.

17:22And so therefore, audiences are driving to both. But what most of those platforms aren't doing is showing their full deck of cards, showing how much of an audience is being driven on free-to-air and how much is on streaming, at least from the numbers I've seen anyway. So it's a distribution channel ultimately, right? And we're going to see in four years' time and the next major World Cup comes along, it will just be further down the line and 3-2-0 will gradually be dipping, dipping, dipping, dipping, not dripping, but dipping. And streaming will play a more and more prominent role as they take more and more market share.

17:54But yeah, I'm not surprised. And it feels like the Foxes, from all accounts, seems to have been very successful with their use of the World Cup as a catalyst for their launch of Fox 1. It appears to have been cashing in well from an advertising front as well from all the numbers I've reported. So it's definitely working for them there. and they seem to have gotten to a point of maturity around the advertising market. They're getting the support that they need to fund streaming efforts with premium rights investments. So yeah, all systems go on streaming, that's for sure. Yeah. Now two questions I'll talk about a little bit from a viewership perspective.

18:30The US managed to break their world viewership. I don't want to say world. The US broke their own domestic viewership records for most watched football games. The initial match they played against Paraguay had, I believe, just over 24 million viewers. And then the game that they lost against Belgium had over 30 million viewers. So two of those games managed to break their own individual records for most watch football games. And I guess the question is, Nick, whether or not, you know, there's always been this question, you know, will the U.S. finally ever buy into soccer? And there's some other numbers around sort of what the average numbers have been around other group games that didn't include the U.S., which are basically they've got it on the English languages.

19:115.1 million viewers which is up 92 percent from the 2022 world cup which again how much of that has to do with guitar in the time zone and games being played in mid-morning you know how much is that impact versus also being the host nation but i guess nick and i can tell you some of my anecdotal experiences in america and maybe i can start with that whether or not does this actually mean that soccer football has arrived in the uk or how much of this has to do with the fact that it's a global or a set of circumstances that include time zones include being the host nations that's more convenient than necessarily the fact that the u.s is now suddenly a soccer or a football country i'll ask you i'll give you an answer in a second but i'm gonna ask you a question what other sporting events are happening in the u.s currently sporting what's happening there in terms of leagues and competitions um might get uh an explicit rating for on spotify for that fuck all nick that's what else is happening in sports right now in america um we refer to this Well, I hope we do get a rating just because I think we're overdue.

20:13I've been told I don't swear much these days. I need to ramp up my connection with explicit words like that, Chris. No, but I think that's part of the thing, right? For starters, the Qatar World Cup last year, the last time around was also happening a different time of year when there was a lot of other events happening. I think being the host nation plays a massive role there as well. I think there's a lot of patriotism being supported by it, and people are leaning into it more than I actually probably did expect. But when you pair it up with the fact that the only thing they competed with was the NBA draft and free agencies in terms of a storyline happening, they've got a lot of opportunity to grab a whole lot of attention right now.

20:53So I think the timing's excellent for them. And yeah, they've been cashing in. Whether it leads to football or soccer being mainstream in the future, i mean that's the that's the billion dollar question ultimately that's what a lot of people are banking on and hoping for but that is easier said than done and basically they've got a major event on and they've got the the host country yeah doing pretty well up until getting knocked out and a lot of a lot of excitement around and buzz around that i'm not surprised the numbers were great but doesn't mean you're going to win over all these people um you know for the mls next year as a result of that.

21:36I'm skeptical. You might see some bumps. Obviously, there's been paired with a bit of an increased viewership through Apple, through what they've done with it. But I could, even if it goes up like 10%, 20 % of audience, which would be a big jump, given the limited distribution of Apple, I think that would still mean they would have missed the boat, frankly. So we'll have to wait and see. But I'm not sold that it's going to massively transform football in the country, frankly. I wouldn't either. My two stories I got for you, Nick, we were at our local, a local bar does wings. It's a sports bar, you know, 50 TVs everywhere.

22:12It was the Brazil was playing, you know, big country. I reckon it was on maybe of the 40 TVs in there is maybe on like three different TVs. And then they always play commentary kind of over. They were just playing the commentary of the local baseball team. Yes, it's our local baseball team. But like, nonetheless, like we call this the dog days of summer. The Reds are 10 games under 500 right now. The game doesn't matter. And the fact that a major global event like the World Cup, it's still kind of secondary to some really bad local baseball. And then the other one, I went to a brewery before a Reds game just to have a couple of drinks and watch the England game because the England game is right before the Reds game.

22:52So I wanted to get down early so I could watch the game before we're going to the baseball game and not miss it in the car. There were probably 300 people in the brewery. I was legitimately, and I was conscious, I was looking around, I was legitimately the only person watching the England game. It was England versus Ghana in the group stages. So I know it wasn't a knockout game or anything like that, but I would have just assumed out of 300 people, somebody, anybody besides me, not a single person was watching. So yeah, I don't think the US is suddenly going to become a soccer football country.

23:24I kind of feel like that. I know that's interesting. and I kind of feel like if there was any team that would capture the interest of the American public, it would be the English team, mainly because the Premier League is so strong outside of the UK that people would kind of recognize some of those players and be able to have some sort of affinity with that. But if they aren't able to get it for the England team, they wouldn't get it for any other team. That's for sure. So it just doubles down on the fact that it's got a lot of work to do still to try and... well i guess you've got to ask the question that like what does success actually look like i mean true mls has been trying to fight their way up the the you know the the flagpole uh for some time trying to get more market share and um you know i think since they did that apple deal to try and cash in i i would struggle for anyone to say that that's helped grow the visibility and the interest in the league and in football as a result of it.

24:22So I don't really know how they can cut through some of that unless they really think that hockey and baseball is really going to fall off a cliff anytime soon, which I don't know. Maybe there are signs of that, but I can't imagine it. You've just talked about how strong baseball is in so many local markets like Cincinnati. I can't imagine it's going to change anytime soon. Yeah, well, the only other thing I've got for you, Nick, and we'll cover this a little bit more in a future podcast talking about the Sky and ITV merger that should come out the week after this. But interestingly, some data from our friend Dan Rayburn and other stuff that has been shared.

24:55The England game versus Congo, I believe, had around 16 million viewers, and that would make it the most watched TV show in the UK this year. So, Nick, I've always been on my high horse about not enough sports on free-to-air in the UK because there's always the chart when they release it where it's like 95 of the top 100 shows in America. It's like all football plus like the Indy 500 plus the Kentucky Derby. And then you look at the UK and it's almost never a sporting event unless it's a World Cup year or Euros year where, you know, Nick, we talked about the Champions League not being on free to air where potentially you've got to think anyone who would have watched that England game probably, even if they weren't an Arsenal fan, would have been interested in watching that final.

25:40So like I said, I'm obviously a big fan of free-to-air. We'll talk more about Sky and ITV, but I do find it very interesting that I imagine those numbers will only go up further as England goes further in the tournament with free-to-air coverage, but just continues to show what the power of reach can do, Nick. 100%. I mean, yeah, I just loved when I came to London a couple of weeks ago and arrived for one of the matches and just seeing how those events really take over the culture and take over the whole whole nation and that's why that you know you're not surprising that the numbers sound like what they are um at that level and if sky do really lean into the itv opportunity then there's a great chance that yeah they could all of a sudden see a host of top sporting events in that top 10 top 20 who knows in top 100 depending on how far they lean into into that platform so yeah the world cup is probably a great opportunity for them to plant their flag in the ground and get some visibility for football and who knows what happens next time around if uh if itv and maybe sky have rights to the world cup whether they uh dominate the headlines and the ratings then yeah we'll see about that well everyone thank you once again for joining us for this episode of stream time sports be really interested to hear about your viewing experiences if you want to drop nick or i message on linkedin let us know uh if you've had more success with the perform platforms if you were able to successfully navigate that please Let us know how that experience was.

27:05If you're tuning in from other countries outside of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, let us know how the experiences have been with that because it is such a global event. It does seem to be moving between linear and streaming and preferred platforms. We're very interested to hear some of the experiences that you guys have had, particularly, you know, depending on where your market is, you might not have been able to watch any of the games live because of the time zone. So how have your countries been handling things like that? I know with the Olympics sometimes, Nick, they won't actually record or they won't broadcast things live.

27:35They'll do it later on, depending on time zones. I know that's happened in the past. So yeah, just very curious to know how everyone else's World Cup experiences have been so far. I would love to hear that as well, actually. And particularly, you talk about the preferred platform experience you had. Definitely would be interested to hear more about people's experience with the preferred platform, both on TikTok and on YouTube, if you've had that. So please do share some insights if you've got any there. That'd be great. Awesome. Brilliant. Well, thank you once again, everybody, for joining us for this episode of Streamtime Sports.

28:02Thank you.