Making YouTube Pay: The Strategy Behind CazeTV’s 100M+ Fan Growth

0:04Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Streamtime Sports. I'm your host Nick Meacham, CEO at SportsPro. Now today's episode is the start of a new series I'm launching, which I'm going to call Making YouTube Pay. The goal here is to speak to people who are using YouTube as a key part of their main media strategy. and then to understand more about their journey, their approach, and how they are turning it into a platform of real value for their organization. Now, there is no better case study in the industry right now than Kaze TV. And I got the chance to speak with the CEO and co-founder, Sergio Lopez, the creators of the platform, and who has been actually on the podcast previously, and where he talked in detail about the journey of Kaze TV and to what it is today.

0:53Now, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, you've heard us talk about them quite a bit of late. And you should have heard Sergio before. If not, go check out that podcast because there's a lot more detail on the Kazi TV journey and what they have built up until this point. But now today's episode is more of an update of their current state of play and a deeper look into how they're growing and ultimately driving greater audiences and commercialization across the platform as a result of using YouTube. This episode is an absolute must listen for anyone interested in YouTube as a core platform.

1:32And hint, there's a little exclusive dropped in the podcast, which will be a headline grabber when it comes out. So that's enough of an intro now. It's time for me to hand over to me speaking with Sergio Lopez of Live Mode.

1:49So Sergio, as you know, we've been following the Kazo TV journey for quite some time now, and you have been one of the hottest topics here in Madrid. You mentioned in my presentation to begin with, and also in a few other panels and conversations as well. And you're on stage shortly as we're recording this. Just give us a bit of an update. Where is, firstly, Kazay TV in terms of its journey and the rides? I've seen a few announcements recently in terms of new rides packages that you've acquired as well. Okay, sure. No, first, thanks so much for having us here. Yeah, we are quite honored to be mentioned so much on the first day of the Madrid event.

2:27Here is what's happening with us since we last spoke. We had just aired the Olympics. And if I'm not mistaken, also the first NFL game in Brazil. We had done both of those games streamed on KZTV. And since then, we have secured together with YouTube, this is interesting, after that period, YouTube bought the rights for one game per round of the Brazilian Championship Serie A, co-exclusive with the Free2Air channel. And they chose us to be airing that together with the Paulista, which is a regional championship in Brazil. So we're doing both of those on YouTube exclusive with them. which is interesting because it's a platform YouTube acquiring the rights and choosing us to be the partner to not only air but also to commercialize the inventory for those with them so it's pretty interesting now we're full into the Serie A Brazilian football which is pretty interesting and it proves the point that we made all along which is we have a complimentary audience to the TV audience.

3:35So what happens to this game is you have another audience following it on Free2Air and we do the young audience engagement with all our Casete TV model and toning manner of doing things. After that we also secured the rights for the 2025 Club World Cup. We did that also co-exclusive with a Free2Air TV, the main Free2Air TV in Brazil, which was fantastic because we really got high engagement of the audience in Brazil, the older audience on Free2Ware TV, and us bringing a totally different atmosphere to the games. This was quite interesting because we pushed a little bit the boundaries with FIFA as well, but in a very aligned manner.

4:24We brought a lot of influencers to the fields and to the interviewing zones, and we switched around the model of just using journalists to interview the players. We brought influencers and also former players that had just recently stopped playing to connect with the current players. So we're able to drive an enormous amount of engagement because we were showing a different side of the whole competition on Kazetv. Just to give you some numbers from that. So the Olympics, we reached 43 million unique devices in our stream. And then on the Club World Cup, the 2025 Club World Cup, it was 51 million devices.

5:10So we went up quite significantly in number of devices that we reached. And again, Olympics was over 100 million accounts on Instagram. We reached also on the Club World Cup 100 million accounts on Instagram. So we keep the engagement going very strongly. And recently, we had two important announcements. The first announcement was the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America is going to have all of the matches streamed on Gazette TV. But for the first time, Free2Air TV will have only half of the matches. So we are going to be the only place where you can watch 100 % of the matches of the FIFA 2026 World Cup.

5:56This is news that has come out already, but it's pretty significant. And in this case, we're building this model fully aligned with YouTube, which is very, very interesting. We're getting full support from them. We're entering in this journey together with them now. So we found a very healthy model to be aligned to them. and in this case we went for having exclusive games because not only our audience was showing an enormous amount of engagement and growing amount of engagement but the advertisers are looking at us and seeing that the dollar that they put on advertising with us on Gazette TV returns to them more strongly than it does a dollar put on regular TV.

6:49So we are able to get confidence on this in going for having the entire World Cup exclusive on Gazette TV, which is going to be massive. It's going to be a major point of inflection in the market. It's the first time where we're going to see digital and streaming bigger than free-to-air TV. and then we announced we just recently announced in 2027 the FIFA Women's World Cup in Brazil we also going to do all of the matches co-exclusive with Free2R TV so a lot of excitement ahead we're doing over 1000 live events per year on Kazete TV so it has become a very big media company we've structured a lot of what has been going on from behind the scenes is we've structured a lot the company behind the scenes.

7:41We're already ready from a technological standpoint, but now in terms of management, people, et cetera, we're pretty ready for the big events. That is pretty incredible growth and pretty incredible development since when we spoke and since I've been following your journey a couple of years ago, and it was all sort of a proof case getting built out, and now here you are. Well, so many things I want to ask you. Firstly, let's go on the relationship with YouTube. I've spoken to YouTube a bunch of times, and I've spoken to other rights owners who work with them as well. And they seem to be playing a really important role themselves in facilitating the relationships that you're building and others that are building.

8:20Just can you give a bit of an insight into how YouTube helps some of those deals and relationships for you? Are they giving you insight into projections of audience and so forth that can help you make more informed decisions? Obviously, they're helping sometimes on the commercial side with the Serie A side by investing into those rights as well. What is that relationship like? Okay. So we're growing our relationship with YouTube and we're fully aligned with them. We became a very important partner for them. And they are a key partner for us too. So this is a very good relationship that we have built.

8:58But going back to understand how we see this is what we see in this journey going forward is that in this was spoken here at the media sports pro conference yesterday. YouTube is the real winner of the free to watch, let's call it going forward. So as a platform being free to watch, I think YouTube is the one that has the biggest chance in the world to being this reference. And we've recognized that a few years ago. So we've taken the risk of slowly bringing more and more important rights to YouTube. And together with them, we measured what was the result of that. And we were able to do two things when we did this with YouTube.

9:54First, we have really impacted the audience watching, consuming YouTube on connected TVs, which is a very important measurement for them and also for us. So our watch time on connected TVs is higher than the average YouTube watch time, which means that live sports is preferably watched on a big screen. and that has an impact on the platform. So if you bring live sports to the platform, you're bringing more people to watch YouTube on a bigger screen. So this is the first place that we impact them and we're very aligned. The second place is we have been able to shift TV dollars over to YouTube, especially on sports.

10:38And this is something that is talked about on their earnings calls frequently. So we've been able to do that. Sports is an incredible destination for advertising money, and we've been able to do that with them. So these two aspects really align us with them, and we've grown the partnership to a point where we are together looking at rights and together looking at how to monetize rights. And we see this as a very healthy partnership going forward. They help us a lot with data. So they have a lot of data on what we do together. And we bring a lot of the advertising market vision outside of the regular sale of the inventory through auction.

11:27We bring more of the vision of how advertisers look at sports to build brands, how advertisers like integrated advertising into sports, which is something that we do a lot, and it really impacts brands. So doing branded content, doing testimonials, getting the casting involved with the brand. This is something that we bring over to the platform, which is not native to them. So it's a very complementary relationship that's going very well. And we're looking at doing more things around that, even outside of Brazil. I want to move the conversation on shortly, but that relationship with advertisers now, Now, I'm guessing a couple of years ago was a more difficult conversation to have to try and get people to understand that opportunity.

12:16Now, is it pretty straightforward in terms of you don't have to do as much education on the differences, say, between a traditional linear broadcaster and yourselves? And people get it and you can show the numbers. Or is it still taking a lot of work? I'm trying to get a feel of how commercially, how's the commercial appetite in market for those things, if that makes sense. It's important to remember that we have started live mode before Gazette TV at the end of 2017. So we've been on this journey of understanding how sports was going to perform on digital, being OTT, being YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

12:58We did the first ever sports stream on TikTok in 2019, I think, 2020. So we've been testing a lot with that. And together with that, we've been testing the advertising market appetite for that. And we've been building this together with the market. So it was not something that we switched on and it went. And recently, what we found out, especially with Gazette TV, which was when we were able to bring a native tone and manner of the social media and couple it with live sports, when we did that, what we found out, and brands really helped us understand this, was that the impact that we caused on brands was much greater than the impact that you could predict from just seeing an audience number.

13:50In other words, one person watching a brand being aired on TV on a 30-second commercial is very different from what the brands get when they are a part of a Gazette TV stream. In essence, what the brands tell us and what we've been digging to understand better is that when the brands show up in our environment, they are seen as part of a community. They are seen as being part of a group of friends that really enjoy sports and that live sports. So we impact awareness. We impact willingness to buy. We impact even sentiment for the brand. So brands are seen as being more lovable when they're with us than when they are in other platforms.

14:44So this is what really made a difference. And then brands are results. At the end, it's all about results. And Brandstar results, so they have been going strongly after us saying, okay, you guys deliver results. It's a very deep impact that you have on us, and this makes a big difference. So quickly, just what are some of the specific examples that you can give on how you're integrating advertisers into the platform? You've talked about the community and so forth. Just give us some specific examples, what range of stuff you're typically using. Okay, we try to do a lot of different formats, but in essence, when a brand comes to sponsor one of our advertising packages, which is around a tournament, a competition, we get a briefing from the brand of what they need.

15:35And we take it to our casting and to our creators and say, what would you do with this? How would this be part of your life? so for example we have brands that people actually do love and consume as individuals we get those individuals to talk and interact with the brands a lot of the stuff that we've been doing has to do for example with food delivery because influencers creators they use a lot of food delivery everyone loves food so it's very easy for us to do stuff with food delivery because we are really real about what we do there. Same thing with even car brands. We had one of our announcers who needed to, he was going to buy a new car.

16:27So we got a car brand to actually get him involved in choosing his new car. And it was genuine. It was original. It was. So you're getting advertisers integrated that way, which makes a load of sense, particularly in the creator world. Are you leaning into general just advertising as well alongside just general, very static, could be using dynamic ad insertion or using YouTube's array of just standard programmatic advertising as well? Yeah, we're doing both. We do both. So we do pre-rolls and DAIs and we do integrated advertising. Can you give us an insight like roughly which of those, where's the majority of the revenue coming from for you?

17:05Is it the integrated? The integrated advertising is where most of the revenue comes from. No response to that. But the other part of the advertising, although it doesn't generate direct revenue for us, it is important because then the advertiser can use all of the YouTube's other tools for retargeting, for mapping the audience, and trying to reach that audience with the other tools that Google and YouTube have. So it's an interesting piece of the whole equation. Do they ever give you insight into how that pays off for them, the brands, or they like to keep those things close to their chest? Well, it's hard to get it out of them, but some of them share with us, which is really interesting.

17:47Let's talk more about, okay, I mean, this is going incredibly well. You guys keep growing things. What is on Live Mode's radar or Kazee TV's radar from here? Where are you taking things? What's next? Okay, yeah. It's important for us to talk about Live Mode because, you know, Kazee TV exists as a consequence of Live Mode trying to find a way to be on digital with a very native, genuine tone and manner language. So from a live mode perspective, I think there are a couple of things that are happening that's very interesting to point out. First thing is we continue to be an agency representing the sports bodies and developing with them strategies for windowing rights, commercializing rights, and reaching the young audience with part of those rights, which is exactly what Gazette TV does.

18:37This is the first thing. The second thing that's important is we've been representing more sports organizations. So, for example, the King's League Nations Cup that's going to happen in Brazil early next year, we are commercializing all of their sponsorship in Brazil. And we're also going to air it so we can offer sponsors the chance to be a sponsor of the event. but also of the stream that we're going to do. The other thing that's very important from a live mode perspective is that we're moving forward now more diligently with our plan of being IP investors in sports properties that are global and that we can impact them with our flywheel.

19:28We can help them win the rights. We can help them develop a distribution strategy. And we can use the Cassette TV kind of model to connect the sports with the young audience. We have the backing of General Atlantic, which is our main investor. It's a very well-known private equity firm from the U.S. So we are actively looking and discussing opportunities with some global sports leagues for that matter, which we think is very interesting. So this is the first thing. The second thing that's happening with live mode also is that we are looking at markets outside of Brazil to replicate the Gazette TV model.

20:13And this is the news that we're going to break here is that we are ready to make our first move outside of Brazil. We are announcing that we have acquired the rights for the 2026 FIFA World Cup for Portugal and we're going to set up in Portugal a Cazé TV kind of an operation. It's going to be called Live Mode TV because Cazé is a figure specific of Brazil. And we're going to be forming a group of local influencers, creators that are going to be airing in Portugal the World Cup with a very digital slash Portuguese flavor. And this is our test to see how the model is going to go there. Fascinating.

21:05So you are basically going into this new opportunity, building it from scratch a little bit, because obviously when you did the Cars ATV relationship, Casimiro was already in motion. You're bringing these different people. Obviously existing audiences and personalities and people behind them, but kind of building it from scratch. How different a journey is that going to be from what you did with CASE? It's a different journey, but we have learned a lot from what we've done with CASE. So what we've tried to do during these past months is try to understand exactly what were the key points that made us successful in our journey in Brazil.

21:44And it essentially comes out to having significant sports rights that can be a destination, especially for the young audience. And the second point is having native digital creators that like sports genuinely, that can really relate to sports, that will tell the story of those competitions in a native way for the Gen Z, essentially. So this is what we're after. And we see there are many creators around the world in every market that love sports and they probably lack the rights and the know-how of how to build this whole flywheel. We have that. So if we find them and they see an opportunity in us of connecting with major live sports rights, I think we have a great combination.

22:34How did you come to the decision to basically decide that this Portugal was the opportunity you were going to go after out of all the other markets you potentially could look at? Well, we had a lot of debate around that. But essentially, Portugal is a country where the language is not a barrier, which for us is good at least for a start. And we wanted to try the concept in a smaller market that would give us a lot of learnings for maybe moving to other markets as well. So it was very simple. It's like, you know, this is a market where we can learn. And if it goes well, great. We have a basis to move to other places.

23:14If it doesn't go well, it's okay. Yeah. And so, again, that relationship, that next step for you, is that something you've had to work very closely with YouTube again to come up with the right approach? And they've supported you there as well. Absolutely. Again, we have a very close relationship with YouTube. I think YouTube see in us a great opportunity to bring more sports to the platform. And that's exactly what we do. and we've seen them a great partner to do more and more and really get the audience to consume YouTube on a connected TV on a larger screen which has great benefits for everyone.

23:51Well, I could keep talking to you for quite a while, Sergio, if I had more time but that is all we've got time for today. I look forward to following the journey over the coming next 12 months and seeing how things play out both for Cars Day TV and also Live Mode TV. But thanks so much for joining us here. Well, thank you, Nick. Great talking to you. Thank you.