Netflix’s 41 million boxing breakthrough: What it means for live sports

20:51Chris Stone:million of revenue right for the year again assuming static which is not accurate because it's growing but just just for argument's sake well the number that they've developed the number the number that they've created now with a million followers at around 15 euros a month with a promo and stuff in place adds up to the exact same number for revenue that the zone would have on the, on a static, as a static measure. So I think it's just quite funny and perhaps interesting just to see that despite the number being over double, well, actually let's go back to basic economics here.

21:26Nick Meacham:Okay.

21:26Chris Stone:Economics shows that if you sell something for cheaper, but you should get more subscribers. Not a huge shock there. The question is, can they keep that momentum to a place that is significant enough? Like you said, that million was the report of the goal they went for. I am sure that they went for a conservative number in public because they have got so much grief over the last couple of years. There's no way they would have set a goal publicly that was high and they probably controlled the narrative on that a little bit. so my guess is that they wanted to they maybe had expectations that it would they have requirements that it needs to go higher that's for sure because the gap between what they were expected to be earning a few years ago to now and that even the disown deal is still quite significant right so it's it's good momentum 72 percent people signing up for the full season package is also positive People just making the long-term commitment to the platform.

22:24Chris Stone:But it's still really early days to say like, oh, Ligoon is out of hot water because it's going to be clubs undergoing huge financial pressure over the next coming years because they haven't got the media revenues coming as they expected.

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23:35Nick Meacham:Well, let me try to keep spinning this, Nick, in the positive. Like, you know, we spoke with Paul O'Donovan, a media kind, and I'm going to talk about piracy game, Nick, because you know I love it. And one of the things you talk about when it comes to piracy So you have to convince the user of the value with which they're paying. So I might even spin it to say, Nick, hey, maybe they aren't making any more money than what they made last year. But the fact that they have more users is actually a positive simply because, you know, more first party data or less people accessing your content via piracy.

24:05Nick Meacham:You know, have they found more of a middle point or we could go way back in the time machine to one of our favorite podcasts. I think it was David versus Goliath was the name of the podcast where we talked about Pauk FC. The too-long-didn't-read story on that is Greek Football Club fails to get broadcast deals, so launches their own OTT platform. Twelve months later, broadcaster comes back in and offers them more money than they made the year before. Maybe Ligon, if they can drive the numbers up, maybe they don't make more money, but they say here's a subscriber base, and maybe Canal Plus does come back to the table.

24:39Nick Meacham:That's just me, Nick, trying to just to give it that positive spin. Yeah.

24:44Chris Stone:I mean, that's definitely a viable play here. I think that would be a great outcome for them. Let's be clear on the DAZN situation is they were making way more money out of the DAZN relationship,

24:54Nick Meacham:but DAZN wasn't making enough money to justify their investment in the media rights.

24:59Chris Stone:And that was the predicament why DAZN made the unprecedented move of pulling out of their deal so early. Now, what I think is really important about this moment in time is that having the price so low allows them to try to break consumer behavior of taking the pirated approach and going for something that, look, it's so cheap at 15 a month. I can actually pay that. I'm okay with it. But when it's at the higher price point of 30 or 30 plus, at one stage, if you put all the offers together, it was over 80 or odd euros a month that people would have had to pay to watch all the matches. But just for DAZNs alone, that's enough of a tipping point that consumers say, no, screw you, I'm going to find it by other means.

25:47Chris Stone:So hopefully for their benefit, having this low price point will start to shift what is a very piracy-centric market into being more comfortable with paying for access to these rights and for this content. And then down the line, they'll probably start to push up, like we saw with all streamers, if they keep continuing with streaming it themselves and distributing it through carriers, is pushing up that price gradually over time. But one step at a time. And let's see how far they can get by the end of the season. Hopefully they can keep some momentum up.

26:20Nick Meacham:Like I said, we'll continue to follow it. It's a story that won't go away, Nick. It stays near and dear to our hearts. I'm sure we'll continue to cover it. But next one, flipping back across the pond, starting from 2026 within the U.S., Amazon Prime will now stream the Masters. This is going to complement some of the coverage from ESPN and CBS as well. Paramount Plus is also being involved. Paramount Plus seeming to be everywhere. But Nick, this seems like to me another example of Amazon doing largely what Amazon does, which is being very selective about picking certain events, never maybe necessarily taking the lion's share of something, but just picking and choosing the right moments that they want to try different things.

27:06Nick Meacham:Is there any reason that shouldn't be the interpretation of this move?

27:11Chris Stone:Well, I think it's really interesting because the Masters are actually quite well known in the industry for taking a very unique approach and how they approach their media rights. For example, they actually leave a lot of money on the table for the media rights deals. Instead of getting the best deal possible, they've been very focused on keeping the control over what is done with those rights rather than a broadcaster paying a premium and then letting them do what they want to do with it. So they have been very good at dictating to CBS how they want the broadcast production delivered, all the little subtle nuances that come with how advertising served during the broadcast they keep a huge amount of control on that they've got a long-standing relationship with CBS and indeed Paramount that's been very successful and lauded for the high quality experience that the Masters does deliver from a broadcasting perspective and so they haven't gone and sought out numerous media rights partners in the US anyway for quite a long time.

28:15Chris Stone:And so the fact that they are taking this big step with Amazon is, I think, pretty significant as, again, another example or another moment where you start to see these streamers become more legitimized, even in the most traditional forms of broadcasting relationships like the masters used to have. And this will give the masters again more visibility so what was historically a fairly undercovered uh set of days on the on the thursday and friday of the tournament will now be visible to to fans so i'm very intrigued that why you at the masters decided to go with prime video because quite frankly i think everyone would have been pretty keen to get a piece of those rights if they were up for it and whether there was a significant media rights check attached to it, given they haven't really sought that out from the relationship they have had with CBS.

29:11Chris Stone:So it's just a very interesting, unique situation that is pretty much an anomaly for the industry to see someone so protective. It is a little bit Wimbledon-esque, I suppose, but even more, even more so.

29:25Nick Meacham:Well, you know, the one thing you have to respect about Augusta and the Masters, and it's just me, if someone likes to eat food you know they're there's all they're notorious for the fact that they've never raised like their food prices you know very from what i've been told and once you get there and it's a not as expensive experience you mean like you go to most ballparks in america you're paying like 18 for a beer or something like that or whatever concessions so apparently it's not just the media rights it's the concessions uh and to your point as well about the cbs stuff like i can just hear the the masters on cbs like i can just hear the little jingle play in my head because i've heard it for 35 years now it's very um i can't think of the masters without the you know that cbs little song jingle that they play every time that you know we're

30:07Chris Stone:getting to that time of year yeah look they've done a great job with it the masters are happy with it and augusta national which is the golf club basically they play it at owns that competition as far as i understand they have they have no need to really try and squeeze every dollar out of the rights. They'd rather keep control, make sure that their tournament continues to be the most prestigious in golf. And because of that, they are sitting in the box seat in terms of that position. It's unquestionable that tournament is the most, what would you call it, most influential in the marketplace. And they're in a great position as a result of that.

30:46Chris Stone:One thing I would say is that does get a lot of coverage, the pricing of the food. But do you know how much it costs to get a ticket? to the masters itself so yeah it's uh basically it's almost money can't buy it but you can buy your way in um so uh yeah maybe it doesn't cost you an arm and leg when you're on the ground

31:04Nick Meacham:but you've probably spent an arm and leg to get there to get there yeah well just some quick facts for those out there you talk about the expanded coverage um historically it's been because of the new streaming deal um used to be 18 hours of coverage now 27 hours that's an increase in 50 percent um so that's not an insignificant number um you know we talked about you know sky adding more and more coverage with football and things like that. So it's not a small number that they're adding. And then just for reference, last year's Masters, they set a record. Now, obviously, that is always going to depend on who's in the finals, how close is it, things like that.

31:37Nick Meacham:But it is certainly a growing commodity. We've talked several times about sort of the PGA's resurgence and how much of that can potentially be on personalities, jumping into the YouTube space, growing it. But it is a property overall that seems to be growing, and they're going to be offering more coverage. So just, like I said, add some statistical context to some of this as well.

31:59Chris Stone:Well, it feels mad, right, that the prospect, if they hadn't done this deal, is that there would be a huge chunk of the Masters not really available to watch.

32:08Nick Meacham:Yeah.

32:09Chris Stone:Like the most prestigious tournament would not easily be accessible to fans in the US. So it does kind of feel like a deal had to be done. and now they have a really interesting mix of partners and haven't got those rights fragmented in different places. What I mean by that is there's not three different broadcasters having it on at the same time. It's all exclusive to the broadcasters in question that they're working with. I have to love their approach, but it's also very idealistic that you don't need to chase the biggest check, which is not how this industry works, fortunately or unfortunately.

32:44Nick Meacham:No, it is not. so nick we're gonna we're gonna pivot over uh josh sim on our editorial team does a frequent reoccurring article the ratings roundup where he goes through find some interesting numbers facts and figures worth knowing um so we won't go through every single figure that's in there but definitely something to keep an eye out for as you're as you're adding things to your list of how do i stay on top of the industry definitely come back and reference that article

33:10Chris Stone:i'm pretty sure it's exclusive to sports pro subscribers as well there you go a reason to

33:15Nick Meacham:go sign up um and if you need that you can talk to nick and i will we'll we'll introduce you to the right people to get you sorted so you can be the best in the business and the most informed um so yeah maybe this is exclusive coverage that you're only getting the same price as a month of subscription for la liga for league in there you go there you go get on it no excuses um so one we'll start with nick is wmba coverage and this year has and we talked about a little bit earlier in the year we saw that initial game um between the sky and the fever angel reese first caitlin clark which actually would be in the most watched game of the year 2.7 million but across the season um on espn abc the games that were publicly broadcast average 1.3 million viewers across those 25 games that's a six percent increase year on year um and across all their channels average 969 000 viewers per game um so nick numbers are going up and i think one of the other things to mention as well we we taught we asked the question at the beginning of the year how much of this was the caitlin clark effect how much was it you know similar with tiger and the pga um you know lewis hamilton formula one for a long time but actually you know one of the things is like caitlin clark i think missed like two-thirds of the season she only played um a small portion of the games i think she maybe only played 13 games across the season yeah and they were still managing to drive these numbers so there's always been talk about you know the wmba and it's a very interesting time because they're currently going through a cba where they're asking for more money so this is probably really positive for them in that conversation um to show those are growing but just overall just that the growth what that means in terms of um the fact that they are getting more coverage is this proof that you know we could say the same thing for wsl if the wsl gets more investment from sky like you know causation versus correlation um how much is it positive that it wasn't driven exclusively by caitlin clark you know just sort of the growth of what you saw this year?

35:06Chris Stone:Well, I think the fact that Ketlin Clark wasn't involved is a massive, massive moment for the WNBA because that was the criticism up until this point is that there's this incredible story around Clark and that is basically what everyone is following and the ratings did lean that way that basically her team was getting more visibility than anyone and stadiums were selling out or sorry, arenas were selling out etc. along the way as a result of that but for them to be able to then follow that up and still drive an increase in ratings after that first year success, and the numbers aren't that far away from the NBA, the optics for the WNBA look pretty good right now.

35:45Chris Stone:Now, when you correlate that with the media rights deal that they have versus what the NBA has, they are only getting a fraction of their audience. But here's where it gets really tricky for me to digest. Now, firstly, you can compare the 969 ,000 average viewers per game across ESPN, ABC, and CBS. I think about that with ESPN and ABC was 1.3 million for their channels. How much of that number is because they're on the main networks and just live sport, decent live sports in those channels would already bring that audience to the table? Because across the entire industry, there is innately a general set of growth of audiences in all live sports we're seeing, right?

36:35Chris Stone:So how much of that's driven just by being in the right place where people are consuming? And how much of it is the WNBA pushing audiences to those platforms? And that's the tricky bit we can't really answer. But nevertheless, the disparity between what they're earning versus what their ratings are, relatively speaking, is quite significant. Now, for those that will quickly point to just the disparity between the NBA and WNBA, let's remember how many extra games the NBA plays each year. 82 games plus playoffs for 32 teams is a very big, different prospect. So what is it like? I don't even know how that happens.

37:10Chris Stone:It's a very short season for the WNBA comparison. So it is night and day to compare those two properties together because of the relative scale that you can't just measure every game in isolation as it stands. Nevertheless, they have to be buoyed by that extra increase in interest and visibility.

37:26Nick Meacham:Well, this was the thing that I said I was going to come back to when we got to the ratings roundup, talking about kind of the Netflix fight and whether it's YouTube or Netflix and the positivity about it, is that we're seeing that across the board, Nick, because we're going to talk about some other statistics of this is the most watched sporting event ever. This was this, this was this. Despite the things that we've talked about in the industry being a little nervous because, you know, there's TikTok, there's Netflix, there's Amazon Prime, there's Apple TV, there's Ted Lasso, there's, you know, all these million different TV shows.

37:56Nick Meacham:I think there was perhaps a little bit of concern that you think a share of wallet and share of time, how people split those things up, you know, was this going to have an effect on live sports? But it doesn't seem like it's necessarily slowing down. There are some spots that everyone can't say it's uniform across the board. But, you know, whether this is for advertisers that, hey, this is still the premium thing to be at, it just seems like there's still a lot of stories that we keep hearing more and more about record-breaking numbers of concurrent viewers, average viewers per minute or whatever statistics they're talking about now nick there's a lot out

38:33Chris Stone:there right i think this is the tricky bit for all of us i think i saw a stat last week that youtube's consumption's gone up by i don't know another 20 of its video i can't remember that's the actual accurate number there was a pretty big one look i think this is the tricky part for all this but my point with regards to how much is the wmba driving audience to the platform and how much is the platform driving audience to wmba is we'll never really know that comfortably what that actual number is. Think about the example we gave with Netflix and the Canelo Crawford fight. They got 41 million viewers.

39:06Chris Stone:Now, what would happen if Netflix ran the fight, but they didn't give it the visibility on the homepage and the landing page and market it to the level they did? Would that number come down by 10 %? Would it come down by 20 %? Would it come down by 50 %? If they didn't make it easy to find on the platform, how much work would the audience do to find that content on the platform or is it just because it was so front and center that people clicked and watched it so there's it's so difficult to define things categorically but there is a lot of devil in the detail in some of these things i've seen certain shows that espn have broadcast the talk shows get similar numbers and they cancel them because they also cost a lot with the talent that they have on on the show as well so there's lots of difficulties just to put look at things in isolation.

39:54Chris Stone:The word nuance is something I use a lot, probably too much. I've been caught at by people. There's always devil in the detail, is my point, basically. And in this instance, there is more to it than just simply the numbers. Shorter seasons, increased visibility. And also, I do think, if you want to look more positively, I think there is a rising tide effect here with Caitlin Clark and that first season, her in the league, more of the stars in the league got more visibility and i think with that you get more people following different teams more people following different athletes so not just the caitlin clark alone was getting all the coverage uh getting all the interest from fans so inevitably i do think there's more interest in the league and it's probably more interest in some of the players and the teams that will that is sticky that will keep people coming back to the league moving

40:44Nick Meacham:forward now you know what like it just it's i think it also just shows power personalities in the sense of yeah you know there are people used to watch golf is either they love tiger they wanted to see him lose the reason why i think jake paul turned out the netflix numbers that he did is because people were hoping mike tyson were going to knock him out there's gonna be some people that love caitlin carkin there's some people that hope she's going to be proven wrong and i think there's definitely always that um hell even football i think like tim tebow there's some people love tim tebow some people hated tim tebow like i definitely think um it doesn't certainly doesn't hurt to have that polarizing figure and you don't care why they're watching as long as they're

41:20Chris Stone:watching i mean you've nailed it basically sport is entertainment and if it's there's got to be the typical classic storylines that you would see in a movie is there a hero and is there a villain here if there is you've got a good chance that you'll get more interest following that experience that event that moment rather than just someone dominating i've seen this with say formula one for a while where the staff was just leading and dominating normally we would think oh someone so dominant actually drives audience a little bit because people want to see this person do unprecedented things but if there's no rivalry with anyone else really underneath that's tangible and like legitimate even if they're dominating it just loses its fluster um i don't know if foster the right word there yeah but basically in the older days of f1 there was always a rivalry with the personalities there was a bit of hero versus villain people would go against each other i just think you just hit so much more to sports than just the sporting competition alone yeah well

42:18Nick Meacham:some more numbers from that report just to talk about um again more record-breaking numbers um amazon's thursday night football had an average of 17.76 million viewers peaking at 20.35 million um which is up 19 from last year's opening thursday night football game it does make it amazon's largest ever stream game i believe beating out last year's uh december game so granted thursday night football a little bit like boxing i haven't watched thursday night football's game which was the bills and the dolphins given how the dolphins have started the season this year i imagine they didn't come to those numbers so that those things might fluctuate but again positive for amazon week one breaking records um meanwhile uh the Super Bowl rematch between the Eagles and the Chiefs brought in 33.8 million viewers, which would be Fox's largest ever non-Super Bowl audience for a game.

43:10Nick Meacham:So early season, NFL's already going and beating records, which sometimes you just sort of like, how many times can NFL just keep beating its own records and things like that? But they keep doing it. But I think it just goes to that whole point about the positives of things that we're seeing in sports i'm going to keep rattling stuff off nick um i'm a big college football fan as well um abc averaged 12.6 million viewers for georgia versus tennessee and i still have europeans that can't wrap their mind around the fact that college sports is bringing in these sorts of numbers um you know it's ridiculous and even one of the other interesting one nicks um fivb um volleyball sport near and dear to your heart you know they put out some fifa-like numbers saying that they accumulated more than 1.1 billion views across broadcast and digital platforms in China for their world championships.

44:03Nick Meacham:Yeah, big numbers, Nick, big numbers. So all that stuff is in there. There's some more stuff about, you know, NRL coming from your world back in Australia, having 6.67 million viewers, which is, I believe, is a record viewing of the sports. So Nick, just records on records on records everywhere, just smashing it.

44:20Chris Stone:Yeah, the thing is, you always hear about the records you don't hear about all the ones that aren't hitting those records uh i mean the volleyball one doesn't surprise me too much and but see they said cumulative viewers very clear what that is that's just a cumulative audience of a number of views and content i can buy that all day saying i've reached 2.7 billion fans is a different proposition anyway i digress i digress now it is good to see actually uh and the college stuff being available in on the zone now globally uh will be interested to see how that performs um to see if they will be able to generate any interest from audiences outside of those that those americans who are maybe feeling nostalgic and want to follow their favorite college teams um but i think you're going to continue to see numbers and records being shared um the the world is the world is buying into live sports at the pointier end the favorite one underneath that top end is the ones that are struggling necessarily to get cut through but there is ultimately more consumption there's more consumption of content than ever and so those records being broken i don't think necessarily think they give us an unequivocal tick of approval that we're on this incredible path of growth i think it's just a part of this whole situation of where consumption is going up across

45:33Nick Meacham:the board yeah well at the end of the episode nick we'll give it more areas we go through um but again talking about sports for a media summit coming up in madrid um over the next month or so you're going to hear some interviews that we're going to do with some of the key speakers from that event almost as like a pre-match, pre-fight conversation, but hopefully because they'll be on the Streamtime podcast, anyone that's been to events, usually those sessions are 25, 30 minutes. We're going to get them for a much longer time. So you're going to hear from some of those key speakers. It includes Sky Deutschland, 2B, PSG, hoping to get Tim Cocker, who we referred to, getting the YouTuber who got the French rugby rights.

46:11Nick Meacham:He's tentatively said yes, but we're going to be doing more stuff and that build up to the Sports Pro Media Summit and Madrid and all these sorts of shifts, all these different changes, advertisement versus subscription, all that, will certainly be heavily covered in that event coming up. So we're just going to keep bringing things to you as we go towards that event.

46:31Chris Stone:We sure are. There's lots going on there at that event. And the more I'm really excited, actually, I'm really excited about that event because I think we made some big changes this year to make sure we went much deeper on other topics than we have traditionally. And that really seems to have been a smart move because the stuff we've been covering of late, but the stuff we've been covering of late is almost, was even way deeper going on things like YouTube and streaming than I ever thought we would to the level we have been. So excited to really attend that event. We've got some great content on stage.

47:03Chris Stone:I've been speaking to Bundesliga about their strategy, which is obviously very topical given what happens down in the UK. DAZN's CTO talking about how they delivered the Club World Cup. So I might see if I can get a few questions in there somehow, given what we did last week. But we're looking forward to that event, that's for sure.

47:20Nick Meacham:Brilliant. Awesome. And everyone, we will catch you on the next episode.