SHOW ME THE MONEY! Why are investors so interested in sports media?

20:01Chris Stone:So I learned a lot about, and there's more I learned, which I could go on about, but probably not the right platform for it. But basically, we could see a real influx of investment coming soon. But then you have this other layer and the layer being an investment being in teams and leagues, but also in media platforms and service providers and basically every corner of the industry could really pick up momentum. But then you couple that with a global uncertainty about, are we going to be in a global war soon? Are we, what's happening with the US and interest rates and the Trump effect and all these things and this layer of uncertainty has a massive impact on what investors, serious investors, are looking at doing with their money.

20:45Chris Stone:So, you have this real tension point. Now, it's a bit of a, I think it sounds like and feels like, no one said this, but it felt like there's a bit of a calm before the storm. So, there's a little bit of uncertainty. Everyone's trying to work out where we're going and they're providing a world war doesn't break out and the like and further uncertainty doesn't come, you could inspect a real influx of deals coming to the market right across the industry. So that was the feel I got from some conversations, but also there could be some oh shit moments coming as in basically organizations that have been invested in haven't paid up or haven't delivered results.

21:22Chris Stone:What's going to happen in those instances? You could see investors basically wanting their returns and money back earlier because nothing's been happening. What does that lead to? Lots of weird uncertainty and question marks. But I do feel like it's a bit of a calm before the storm. I'm glad we can be a bit more closer to it, a bit more a part of it.

21:41Nick Meacham:I love a little bit of gossip, love a little bit of tea. So we'll definitely keep following that up. But kind of shifting gears towards my session, I managed to have a pretty diverse group of panelists. Like I said, the session was titled something beyond the pitch, driving media values and sports content. So I try to drive the session a little bit away from necessarily specifically the live rights because there's so much content that exists beyond there. And I had four panelists, one from Overtime. If you're not familiar with Overtime, massive platform at this stage in terms of their growth over the last five years.

22:14Nick Meacham:We've been fortunate enough to have Dan Porter be a part of a couple of our events. Lots driven around. They talk quite a bit around community, UGC. They've even been so successful now, they've set up their own IP. They have two of their own basketball leagues in a seven-on-seven league. It was one of the great examples where he listed off two of the teams in the OTE basketball league, asking if anyone had heard of them before the event. And of the 200 people, I think three raised their hands. He's like, well, if you go to TikTok, they're both in the top 10 most followed teams. You can put Real Madrid, Dallas Cowboys, whoever's up there.

22:44Nick Meacham:But just to kind of give you an idea, like we're doing really good in this space of what we do. So their view on content is going to be completely different based on sort of, they're not competing for traditional live rights. They're largely doing it on their own while also creating some live content themselves with their own IP. Also, go ahead, Nick.

23:04Chris Stone:I was just going to say, I think before we go the full speed, I think let's talk about those companies, I think, before we go to some of the stuff that covered. Because what was great is, again, sometimes we talk about theory and stuff at these events. But actually here, they talked a bit to numbers. They shared a bit more context to give the scale and understanding. And Zach, who's the co-founder, alongside Dan, was very impressive in how he talked about their approach. They're actively fundraising at the moment, but they've raised a load of money. I think he said they turned over around$100 million in revenue now, which is now it's getting significant because I wasn't sure where they got to.

23:43Chris Stone:but he was really great just explaining not only how well they're doing but what their challenges in the market and i thought that was really good context before we move on to the others and i wrote some notes down on that i think it was interesting to hear that what they find is still really difficult the example you shared of him like hey only two of you out of 200 people plus know what these two brands are yet they're the two most followed clubs in the world they were talking about the fact that a don't believe everything you hear about the difficulties of monetizing short form content and even mid form content, they're generating tens of millions just from those alone.

24:18Chris Stone:And they're able to generate tens of millions out of merchandise sales off the back of that visibility on short form. So their thesis or their message is actually they're already doing it. And that's the underlying challenge the whole industry is telling you. They're growing audiences, but they can't turn it into anything. Well, actually they have found the right approach there. So I just thought that was interesting. And then to couple that, but their challenge then is to turn that even into further revenue because they have to do this whole education piece. To explain, you can't just say trust us.

24:51Chris Stone:We've got two of the best 10 clubs that you've never, ever heard of that are doing well. And they have to go through this whole education process of educating the B2B part of the industry on who they are, why it's significant, the numbers are legit, here's the proof of concept here. And that just takes a lot of time when you're trying to raise investment, you're trying to drive, get significant commercial partnerships, et cetera. And I just thought that was a really good reflection because I think typically when we talk about sports and sports media, we all as an industry rely and talk about the more incumbents, the traditionals, the traditional channels.

25:26Chris Stone:And here's someone who has a quasi-traditional approach, but they are doing it so uniquely, they still have to do a load of education despite the fact they're generating$100 million in revenue through the year. So I thought that was a really interesting example of the challenge and opportunity that is still facing sports all wrapped together in one with overtime.

25:46Nick Meacham:Well, the question that led to that was basically, and he raised this point, the average user on overtime is roughly 20, 21 years old. Whereas if you look at the average investor, you're probably talking 40s, 50s. And to your point, how do you communicate the value of that? Because like I said, when no one actually is aware of two of your biggest assets, do investors look at you the way you think they should based on what those properties have? And I think to your point, he said, yeah, it is difficult because they're not familiar with that. You tell them Dallas Cowboys, they get that, but they don't realize that Dallas Cowboys have less TikTok followers.

26:26Nick Meacham:And then how do you equate that with a dollar amount for investment. But yeah, he said it is difficult trying to explain to 40, 50-year-olds why something that 20-year-olds are into is a valuable commodity.

26:37Chris Stone:Hey, well, I'm in my 40s and I have no problem understanding. Thank you very much. No, but it is an interesting point, right? There is that knowledge and understanding gap. And I'd be shocked in this day and age though, if you're talking to a middle-aged investor and they don't understand that they don't understand that there's a knowledge that they have to overcome. If they don't, that's a pretty ignorant way to look at this space, in my view. So, that's not a knock on Overtime. That's more a knock on the investment world, which I'm sure there are people like that who think they know it all and the reality is they don't have a clue.

27:10Chris Stone:Now, I mean, look, Overtime has now been in the market for like a decade now. It's been around for so long. I think they still have the line that he used is something like 5 % of the NBA's active players are invested in the league. Now, I wonder if that's one of those situations where how real is that investment? How much is invested? Is it significant? Is it anecdotal? I don't know. And my guessing is it's more anecdotal because I like to be able to say that. But nevertheless, you still have to get them to commit to it. And that's still a challenge in itself. So anyway, it's not just about overtime, but I just thought theirs is a really good example.

27:45Chris Stone:I want to read through the transcript and actually watch it back. There was so much stuff in there. We'll dig into that a bit more. I want to keep going. There's a few other interesting parts to it, but it was really interesting because all of them talked numbers a little bit more, which was nice and refreshing.

27:59Nick Meacham:Well, just before you talk about investors, one of the questions, how do we raise investment? And Zach gave the answer. Our first investor was David Stern. That sort of helps. That kind of helps when your first investor is the commissioner of the NBA. And it's not to say that they haven't had struggles or how to do more of it. And you made the point about 5 % of NBA players.

28:20Chris Stone:But they're like, when your first investor is David Stern, it certainly helps with the leeway of getting other people on board to say, hey, David Stern's into this.

28:30Nick Meacham:You should probably be considering it too.

28:32Chris Stone:WSC was similar. I think David Stern was one of the ones. And then they used that story throughout. And it clearly works. I mean, if you look at the cap table that Overtime has, and they rattled off some of the names, and they are ridiculous. Like Liberty Global, Andreessen Horowitz, 5 % of the NBA. I think Jeff Bezos is in there somewhere at some level around. It is ridiculous who's who. And he was basically saying, quite frankly, if you get good names, they do follow each other. And that is people want a piece of the action effectively. That's what it's all about because investment is a bit of a gamble.

29:07Chris Stone:and you trust other people's names who are investing and you don't want to miss out if one of your competitors is probably successful. So that was an interesting anecdote, but not surprising, but just interesting to be called out like that, I think was interesting nonetheless.

29:21Nick Meacham:Yeah. Well, the other one was Dream Sport. And we spoke about it on the last podcast. Those that aren't familiar, Dream Sport being based in India, have a heavy presence with cricket. We just talked about the just incredible numbers that are taking place in India. And one of the quotes he had, one of the statistics he had, which he mentioned in our pre-meeting and then brought it up. In India, I believe he said there are 18 million people per year that are turning 18 years old. Yeah.

29:50Chris Stone:I think it was about 18 million now, which is like, that's almost the size of Australia. Like 75 % of the entire country is turning. What was the age window? Sorry?

30:00Nick Meacham:18. 18. Yeah.

30:01Chris Stone:Wow.

30:02Nick Meacham:Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're just talking about growing audiences, one of their big things with Dream Sport is Dream 11, which is a fantasy sports and fan code. 18, kind of getting that fantasy sports. So they're just talking about just the sheer size of India already that they have to work with. And the fact that every single year, an Australia-sized portion of the population is coming into an age range with which they can target. It's quite a phenomenal statistic.

30:33Chris Stone:Yeah, actually Australia's probably not a good example. Probably the Nordics. Let's go with the Nordics. It's probably closer to the mark of Sweden 10, Norway about 5. Yeah, we'll go with a bit of the Nordic region. But yeah, those are bonkers numbers, right? So if you've got a product that is purpose-built for younger audiences, you're in a great place. What was the other study used? Like 10 – they have on Google search, they have 10 times the amount of searches for fantasy sports, 10 times more for Dream 11 than they do fantasy sports as a search term. basically showing, coining that they all have cornered the market for fantasy sports in that space.

31:09Chris Stone:Now, what was the guy's name from Dream Sports? He was great. I thought he was really impressive. Raj, yeah. He was really on it and very clear. They really seemed to be on it with their approach. And we talked about them previously in recent episodes around their investment into Flow Sports. I love the anecdote he gave about that. But there were three things he talked about when they're looking for an investment because it's really interesting to see an Indian-based platform, a media company, diversifying and investing outside of India. You haven't seen a lot of the examples of that of late. But there were three things that he said to their approach.

31:46Chris Stone:One was that they have to be adding value to their existing audience in India. They have to think they can add real value to their investment. In the case of Flow Sports, that was definitely part of that. And there was a third, which I can't remember what it was. I was meaning to look at the transcript before this, but I didn't have time. But he talked about that marriage between they've been all focused on product for so long, which means they've got a really good product and platform, but less about the community aspects. And that's what Flow Sports have really done. And they saw that as a really good marriage of their tech expertise and their ability to build and harness an audience in a different way was, I thought, an interesting approach.

32:24Chris Stone:The other thing I love from the Dream Sports side is something I bang on a little bit, which is a bit more controversial to some people, is they are actively not interested in a five-year business plan. He basically said, we only look at the next 12 months. We want to be as accurate as we can over the next 12 months with our planning and projections and aren't too focused on longer term. They're more worried around direction of travel and momentum and being accurate in the next four months rather than that longer cycle. And that's something I say a lot in the business because I've seen too many people talk about five-year plans or even three-year plans.

32:59Chris Stone:And we had that last year in our business where we had a great year, our best year, and it happened completely differently even then to what we had projected. So getting too far ahead of yourself in this world is a risky game to play. but I like the fact that they were advocating that, but they don't look at it for their investments or for themselves.

33:20Nick Meacham:Yeah. And I mean, DreamSport, they, you know, he talked about they did their own investment round. I think maybe it was 2021, 2022, massively successful, continuing to grow, you know, year and year. And I think to the point, maybe some of the differences and you kind of touched on what their flow sports stuff is, unlike some of those other businesses up there, they're actually actively investing. So they've almost gone from the point of, you know, seeking investments and now they've been so big, so successful. they're on the other side looking for things. And you mentioned it, you know, talking about the community side, but even they reference like the niche sports is something, you know, that they want to be able to tap more into.

33:51Nick Meacham:And that's where Flow Sports is really good at it. And, you know, we were speaking to Mark, you know, it's not necessarily because I think India is interested in, you know, college wrestling or college athletics, but it's more, what are the products you're delivering? And Mark spoke about that quite a bit of Flow Sports is we just have to build a product that is so damn good that like people are willing to pay the price for getting some of those niche sports. And that's what they spoke about at Dream was, there was a community piece, but also they want to do better at tapping into sports beyond cricket.

34:20Nick Meacham:There's more for them that they need to be able to go after. And yeah, they seem to be doing okay for themselves.

34:27Chris Stone:Yeah, they're in a good place. And there is definitely a thesis, a bit like the Dine model of serving, servicing, or surfacing, servicing and servicing. I'm going to start that again. Again, surfacing and servicing, I can't say that 10 times fast, that underserved audience and underserved sport is such an opportunity if done right, if executed well, if the costs are low. And if you can get the top of the funnel really nailed on, then I think you've got something to work on. But obviously, Dine's done that well. Flow Sports has done that well. And they're getting some scale. They're not in the billion-dollar game yet, but at least they've proven out the model and should be scalable the more sports you find.

35:15Chris Stone:And I imagine in India, talking about the growth of the audience there, I could just see that in a few years that the NBA gets a bigger foothold. That's a great and obvious sport where it could ride those coattails of audience growth and younger demographics through to something quite meaningful for a media partner.

35:36Nick Meacham:Well, between you and I, Nick, I spoke to Raj after where I was like, we need to get someone on just to talk about the Indian marketplace for us because it's just, it's phenomenal. So whether it's him, whether it's someone else in the business, we're going to get someone in here to just talk to us about those absolutely just bonkers numbers and like what that means for everybody else, potentially those on the outside trying to figure out how I get a piece of that cake.

35:54Chris Stone:Oh, absolutely. I mean, our last guest who was covering the Indian markets now being promoted to chief, or not promoted, but taking on the job of chief executive of cricket internationally. So So fair play to Sanjog Gupta, who's taken on that role. He's an impressive guy and has a big responsibility now, which is much more diverse, I would say. I mean, he had a pretty big role trying to manage the broadcast of the biggest sport in India to hundreds and hundreds of millions. But now he's got to deal with all the political aspects of cricket to come. So good luck to him.

36:28Nick Meacham:Good luck to him. The next guest we had on that panel was Sam Sadie, who's CEO at LiveScore. and they're interesting. They're 26 years in the business. So they are still going through their funding rounds. I think their most recent one, I think he said they raised around 100 million back in around 2022. I think that's what the numbers he said ended up being around.

36:47Chris Stone:Oh, I've got a lot of numbers in my head. I've got different numbers I've written down. So I heard something about they raised maybe 50 million at a half billion valuation at some stage, but maybe it was 100 million. It might've been 100 across all the raises and maybe 50 million was the last raise perhaps. Yeah. It was a lot of money nonetheless. But yeah, he was impressive and very forthright about what works and what doesn't. And he's hard to argue with. I think he's got some really good points about the sports media landscape.

37:17Nick Meacham:Yeah. Well, I think the point is, I was trying to make there, they're 26 years into the game. So they're not someone like overtime who kind of picking things up quite quickly. They've been around for quite a bit, but the business has had to evolve in some of the new things that it offers. and I think probably one of those bigger spaces is they've now got into some live streaming. They've been very specific about what things they choose. They talked about Ireland as a specific example. We actually did a podcast with Sam and we talked quite a bit about that one. If you really want to go through the archives, I'm talking about sort of how they've managed to attract a lower level, I don't want to say lower tier property.

37:54Nick Meacham:I mean, UEFA is still UEFA, but there's no Irish teams in the Champions League. but it was specifically my understanding, Nick, was the streaming rights for it.

38:01Chris Stone:Well, it was basically the broadcast rights. There was just no competition in the market. There was just no appetite for someone to go and buy the rights. A bit, sort of a bit like France to some extent, in terms of only a couple of viable bidders for it. There was no one really actively going after them. So they wanted to prove the case at that time, which is we can broadcast this for free on our platforms and still turn that into revenue through marketing and advertising and betting, which is their lifeblood and their backbone is driving revenues through those other means. I've talked to Sam a few times and the feedback is that worked.

38:41Chris Stone:There was a successful approach. They were able to monetize it effectively. But then it wasn't worth them continuing to buy those rights because it was a marketing play, right? It's a marketing play to get people to use the platform. and LiveScore is really a global platform. For those that aren't familiar with LiveScore, it's more of a, I mean, it's got a lot of layers to it, but how would you describe it, Chris? It's probably more like a, it's got all the information you need. It's not about the live rights. It's not about highlights. It's about all the content that happens around the sport.

39:11Chris Stone:Think maybe ESPN's app or OneFootball probably is a good example of it. Yeah, that's where I was going to go with it. Yeah, that type of platform where it's a mix of interesting football and other sports-related content, not just about live or non-live sports, but they have different layers to it. And one of the main ways they've been driving revenue, and they have betting valuable on the platform, if I remember correctly, as well in certain markets, is through betting. And they're very good at monetizing that. And Sam would argue that they're the best in the business at turning audiences on their platform into revenue for the company, which has made them so successful.

39:47Nick Meacham:Yeah. And I thought actually one of the most interesting comments he had wasn't even necessarily around life score. One of the questions that came in from the audience was, I work in an Olympic sport, well-established, but I'm struggling to create any value from it. How do I create high value assets? And, you know, Zach gave a probably a bit more of a political answer about, you know, kind of the way you target things, the type of audiences, platform, stuff like that. And Sam was just really blunt. And he's like, you can't, you won't. And sort of his argument was, you need to be really honest with yourself.

40:17if you have an existing asset that isn't producing, you're not going to be able to just magically make it valuable.

40:22Nick Meacham:And, you know, you made the point of you got to look at yourself and how do you change things. And it was interesting having dream sport. There's so much value around cricket. You know, the perfect example there is going from test match to T20. And he's like, you know, that's actually what you want to do to produce value. And I think that it was a good segue in the conversation because, you know, there's people like, how do I become more valuable? And he's like, yeah, you're not going to at least not doing the same thing you are doing. And I just, when he said it, I was like, oh, that's a punchy comment.

40:47Nick Meacham:But then I was like, actually, it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

40:50Chris Stone:I think it makes a lot of sense because anyone who's trying to like turn an Olympic sport but use the same approach or try and wrap something with a sheep in wolves clothes or whatever the saying is. Is that the right thing? Sheep in wolves clothing, yeah. Yeah, wolves clothing is basically that it won't work unless you really reinvent your offering. There was another line he used which was similar, but referencing his own organization, which was that he has to make sure his engineers numb their feelings when it comes to what good looks like with a platform. And I think that's a good sort of sentiment for the sports industry as well.

41:28Chris Stone:It's like numb your feelings about the sport and what looks good. Just look at what works instead and try and focus on playing that game, which I thought was an interesting approach. But they seem to be in a good position. they've raised a lot of revenue raised a lot of investment and what it was interesting about his thesis around that is again my point about dream is that not about the five-year plan they were more about or sam was talking more about hey here's what we've done here's our pedigree and track record trust us back us and that's their main thesis less about they're going to grow this enormous business 10 years from now just trust us to keep growing and heading in the right direction because we are doing so already.

42:11Chris Stone:Which again, it just shows that track record counts probably more than I think people most expect, particularly at this sort of scale. And he was talking about the fact that they're now at a certain level where they're almost like too big to just be mocked up and acquired by anyone. And it sounds like they might be actually looking to make some acquisitions themselves to keep growing the business from what I heard. So very interesting business. One of those companies that is actually quite significant in scale, probably not given the amount of visibility or awareness it deserves, given its audience reach, its revenue generation, the fact it's done it through mainly non-live rights, and it's done it through betting in a very complex landscape.

42:55Chris Stone:like betting is the most complex market of all to turn into hard revenue. So he's always impressive to listen to. And I think they're an interesting journey to follow. Yeah.

43:06Nick Meacham:Well, like you said, shameless plug, go search LiveScore. When you go on Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we'll have a get more in-depth conversation from Sam. And then the last one we had was Dougal McDonald, who you had the chance to speak with at SportsProLive, CEO, co-founder at Sportable. And I think the interesting part for them, A, they're probably not nearly as far along in their investment journey as some of those other businesses. But I think the other interesting side of them is they probably are a tech first business in terms of what the product actually is and where they initially started selling their product to teams, trying to know here's tracking data, using it for performance.

43:44Nick Meacham:But what we've started to see in recent years is that actually becomes super interesting data from a media perspective. When you think about people like myself who are super into fantasy sports, want every particular piece of data that I can find. How fast is the pitch spinning out of the pitcher's hands? What's the exit velocity? There's a ton of stuff that people actually want. And data itself is becoming more and more valuable. So I think they set an interesting spot that they might start off as a performance tech business. but they're actually slowly finding out there's a lot of value from a media perspective when people are now trying to acquire data rights.

44:20Chris Stone:Yeah. They are basically, they are a tech business. I think he said they spent four years in R &D before launching, which is an extraordinary amount. But if you spend that much time on it, you come up with a really good product and they've raised something like 25 million to back them. So, they're not on a shoestring. They have invested and looking to continue to grow, continue to raise and continue to scale. But yeah, the way he talks about it i think it's really good he talks about basically talks about the business and use cases of the data which is clearly there is appetite for data we all i think everyone understands that the educational aspects of understanding a sport better and just also feeding more people at the the pointier end to give them more content to consume um i mean think about golf as an example i know by the way you haven't talked about my pictures behind me yet uh finally got my setup here got tiger woods here one of the first covers of sports pro and my old hero greg norman in the corner there um the great white shark um but on the golf side there's a whole host of data points now that are actually become part of the conversation both at a leisure level and an elite level you know things like club speed ball speeds through spins revolutions etc that sort of stuff all the tracking data that comes with that that just did not exist five to ten years ago now is people know what is a good club head speed and what isn't and the impact it has and it blows my mind right from all the years i've been playing golf now and i'm trying to get my head around it but my point is the depth it adds is really interesting when it i think when it transcends watching sport at an elite level to give you great understanding like in the case of f1 and all the data you can get around pit pit changes and uh on track performance to when it impacts the user, the customer on a personal level and the way they participate in sport.

46:13Chris Stone:And that seems to be where Sportable is coming to life here is like creating products, creating content that aid performance at a personal level, but also it's stuff that you can use both in content and to make your performance better as an elite athlete. And I think that's a really interesting spot to, if you can get that right, sort of apex, that right, I know triangle, triangulation of data, which obviously they're very much focused on ball tracking and the like is a really cool place to bring to life. Yeah.

46:41Nick Meacham:Well, one of the questions I asked him and asked the group more generally, be curious your take on this as well, Nick, is it felt like, and this is just outsider's opinion, there used to be a lot of talk about investing in that unicorn tech business that was going to take you to the moon, stuff like that, buying Apple before it's Apple. But it does seem like in recent years, and perhaps this is because it's people like Barcelona pulling whatever levers they can to stay afloat. It does seem like there's more investment in media rights than maybe there was in that same timeframe. And whether they felt as a tech business, but also doing some media stuff, whether they thought investors viewed media more attractive than it used to be, how it compares to tech investment.

47:26Nick Meacham:And I'd be just curious your opinion, Nick, just sort of what you see on the outside, what you think that sort of relationship is, where the differences are between tech investment versus media investment?

47:36Chris Stone:Well, it seems like I feel like media is in a bit of a crossroads with that. I feel like actually, I asked one of the questions you asked the audience, the panelists, which was the one around the value of media businesses, because my theory is that they're actually undervalued. If you incorporate not just the hard returns that a media business generates, but also the influence and impact. I've got some personal examples I can share about what happens when we publish things, if it's in the right place or positioned the wrong way, the impact it can have positively and negatively to someone's business.

48:11Chris Stone:Media has this extra layer of influence that I think is sometimes lost on some people. So it's important, like we heard about the Streamtime Connect event came up quite a bit, is the importance of basically having more than one way of driving value out of that content, i.e. not just through programmatic ad revenue. Can you achieve an objective or another revenue stream off the back of that same piece of content to make it worthwhile doing? And I still think media is now fall into this little dip of being undervalued in terms of its impact. And if sports is in a place where the theory is that sports is just going to work out how to drive more value to it through direct-to-consumer technology advances, the media should be the same.

48:59Chris Stone:Now, I'd say that the catalyst or the challenge there is that, all right, but then you've got the creator economy coming, you've got YouTube democratizing everything, maybe it's at a crossroads. But I just feel like the media industry will work out how to address that problem in the same way, perhaps, like, you know, maybe podcasts were being positioned as independent titles, but we're being wrapped together in wider media outlets. Maybe there's some way that that's going to come to the fore rather than a lot of independent outlets. But as a lot of media has got a lot more legs in it. Tech's value for decades has been probably over the odds.

49:37Chris Stone:And actually what you hear, I think the number I heard from someone was like 90 % of startups, particularly tech startups, fail. I mean, so that tells you something, right? When particularly expectations are not married up with realistic revenues or realistic projections that more businesses fail than not. So yeah, maybe valuations are higher in tech, but the risk for failure is much, much higher.

49:56Nick Meacham:Yeah. And those guys are all obviously very optimistic. You know, Zach, you know, from an overtime perspective, you know, they're continuing to grow their own IP, you know, and just where they think that business will go as it grows up, you know, things like LiveScore, you know, it's really crazy. But like I was talking about this with Sam, like betting is still not even legal, like in all 50 states in the US. And that's not even including some of the big ones, like, you know, like Texas, California, stuff like that. And even though we've talked about the impact it's already had, it still potentially could just be scratching the surface there.

50:25Nick Meacham:India talked about how many people are entering an age with which they're more likely to have income to spend on sports. And then we're just talking about all the stuff with data from a performance side, people wanting more of that. They're all very optimistic. They're headed in the right place.

50:39Chris Stone:And betting is still illegal in India. So imagine if that opens up the floodgates. Gosh, could you imagine the influx there of excitement from the industry if that ever changes? We're interested to see that journey. So look, I'm still buoyed about where media businesses can go, how they can drive value. But we all, as an eye-runner media business, although much smaller in scale than some of these organizations, we all have to keep innovating and finding new ways to approach it. And almost every single organization we've talked about today and everyone we talk about on our channels has had to pivot or change approach because of dynamics within audiences, because of macro changes, et cetera.

51:20Chris Stone:You can't just play the same playbook and expect it to magically work. So, as long as media keeps evolving, keeps finding different ways to approach it, keeps balancing the right diversification plus doubling down on certain areas that are working, then I think it's got a really rosy future. But it's not as black and white as perhaps some think about that. There's all doom and gloom for media. I think there's plenty of runway still in it.

51:46Nick Meacham:So you just referenced in your answer there, Nick, our Streamtime Connect event. And for us, we maybe give a little spiel on Streamtime. If you're listening to the podcast, hopefully this isn't the first one you've listened to. We're very quickly coming up to 200 episodes, which is mind-blowing, Nick. But we have built a community off the back of that, Nick. But maybe let's highlight the 200 episodes, Nick. I see you just want to celebrate that moment with

52:08Chris Stone:me when you told me that the other day i had lost track completely about where we were and um the show's evolved a lot of it's over time um it's been a really fun ride i don't want to get too nostalgic because we'll probably get nostalgic for the 200 episodes but i think it's really cool that we're now in a place where we can expand uh what we talk about um on this podcast but also still have a lot of value to the audience we're attempting to serve with this content you know we're not trying to serve everyone we're trying to serve people who work in sports media uh and And it's really cool that we're able to bring that to life as part of this new membership community that we're really excited about.

52:44Chris Stone:We actually want to keep building and expanding that. At the moment, it's very much focused on these different types of events-based activations that we're doing. I'm really keen to try and focus on what else we can do from a content perspective. So if anyone does have any ideas of things that they think that we should do, whether it's just more exclusive content, more of the same, whether it's something else that you think is underserved or undercovered in the industry, we'd love to know what you think from a content perspective that is missing from our industry. But it's really cool that we can bring these types of people together at events like the Streamtime Sports Connect event.

53:20Chris Stone:And we've got a couple more coming up that I'm really excited about as well.

53:23Nick Meacham:For those of you who didn't see on LinkedIn, we got to host our first one at Snap. Absolutely incredible offices. Got the chance to try on some of their AR goggles. I've not really got to wear anything like that before. I think it's still the case of we're really interested to see where that goes in the future, what sort of abilities those have. But it was a really great place to host. The venue was lovely, well catered to what we wanted to do. Some breakout rooms, had a number of different broadcasters there, leagues, teams. But one of the things we focused on, Nick, or primarily focused on, given we were at Snap's offices, was around non-live content specifically.

53:53Nick Meacham:And you and I got to moderate some of those tables. And that was really the key point of the conversation. As you mentioned, we'll do different content at different events, focus on different things. But what were some of your key takeaways, Nick, from your group with the conversation around non-live content? Because like we said, we quite frequently always talk about the live rights. It's the sexy topic because it's got the most zeros and most commas in the title. But we would argue, at least the example I made of my group, I'll watch six hours of NFL on Sunday, but I'll watch 30 hours of content on YouTube or social media.

54:26Nick Meacham:There's a huge gap that's not really properly, I think in my opinion, being monetized by all those organizations at this stage.

54:32Chris Stone:Yeah, it was super interesting conversation because we had so many different streaming platforms and rights owners there, alongside some of the tech companies as well, who support the delivery of that content, both live and non-live. And the theory or there is a definitive consistent thread which is it's really important to have all this non-live content and this engagement on channels. It's really hard to drive it into meaningful revenue still. And this is from some of the most mature media platforms in the industry. I keep being a little bit coy because I don't want to share overshare, but given it's more of a private setting, but there were some key themes and things that really came out.

55:14Chris Stone:One of the interesting points that were made, and everyone was very vocal of supporting this was that the non-live content just doesn't work in driving subscriptions to a platform. So if you run docuseries content, if you run other sorts of magazine shows and the like, it doesn't do much. Even if it gets good engagement on the platforms themselves, does not drive subscriptions for the organization. And therefore, a lot of investment that went into that non-live side, trying to mimic Drive to Survive, another docuseries, has been nowhere near as valuable to those organizations as expected in spite of heavy investment in production efforts there.

55:55So that was an interesting point of how black and white it is that non-live is not

56:00Chris Stone:driving subscriptions. It is still live that moves the needle there. And the other point that I think was raised by one of the members was that basically you have to have that secondary reason. I think I briefly said this before, secondary way of getting value out of it. Now that doesn't always mean getting value out of direct revenue. It could be, all right, we want to engage our audience and engagement and just get lots of eyeballs, provide more value for people who are following us. But what else can we give them? So can this be a piece of content that really drives better understanding or better appreciation of the athletes or the sports rules or is something that we can monetize through sponsorship if it's substantial enough in its impact.

56:49Chris Stone:There's got to be like multiple layers of value being generated out of one piece of content if it's non-live related for it to be worth doing. Otherwise, it's really difficult to justify its purpose. So I thought that was a couple of interesting points around the non-live of bit um the other thing that was a stand out we talked about what platforms to use you know with snap as an example snap is both a platform and an ar business so i've got a better feel now it's really good to actually be there and talk to callan mccauley who um is head of sports partnerships there to get a better sense and animal ultra and malhotra who um is um the global head to get a sense of where the business is at because i just kind of mainly i knew they were a bit in ar i wasn't sure to what level, getting a touch and feel the product was really interesting, hearing and seeing that I didn't realize how much of their AR technology has been used in Stadia right across the US, which was very cool to see.

57:44Chris Stone:I didn't realize that was them who were doing all that. So just, I thought that was interesting. We can jump into that back into that a second. But the question was really about platforms, which ones are the ones to focus on. It was consistent that everyone is focused on YouTube as the number one standout. The reasons were to do with monetization mainly. The reason being basically that they can not only drive revenue directly from ad programmatic and using the traditional means from that sense, but they have also the capability of selling their advertising partners directly onto YouTube's channels in a much more streamlined way than you can anywhere else.

58:22Chris Stone:And that allows them to monetize that content much more effectively than you can on any other big tech platform. So I thought that was a very simple point. We hear a lot of that YouTube. We talk about positivity of YouTube, but that kind of gives the extra business reason, the commercial case of getting value out of it other than just get lots of eyeballs on it through the world's biggest consumption platform and then you'll be able to monetize it other ways. Well, actually, they are able to turn that into something right now.

58:50Nick Meacham:Well, Nick, you know me, I love piracy. And I will say I'm not the one that brought up piracy, but it came up from the non-live content from two perspectives. One of them was your point, which is there's not a lot of proof that this is going to, the non-live content drive subscriptions. So the argument was from a piracy perspective, why are you trying to protect that content? You're better off putting that non-live content as broadly as you can and make it as accessible as possible. So whether or not it's even worth trying to protect that content was question number one from your own platform perspective.

59:20Nick Meacham:The other part of it came from the highlights side of it, which is sports is so much about live and in the moment. And they were talking about the current broadcast deals make it really difficult for non-live content, particularly highlights where the Premier League, I think it's something like teams can't post highlights until midnight of the day of their game, or someone like BBC has paid specifically for match of the day highlights or sky gets first access for youtube highlights they said it actually creates a bit of an issue from a piracy perspective because you know people are just going to record their tv screens and post a highlight but it's so important in sports to be the first to publish something because once it goes viral they're going to go to the original source of that content and they were talking about you know we try to schedule our highlights literally the second we can legally do it because if someone gets to it before us and starts getting comments post retweets we're not going to be the ones to get it and they were just talking about that is a issue that takes place at the league and broadcaster level because they're so strict about when highlights can be shown.

1:00:19Nick Meacham:And not surprisingly, WSC used the reference of the NBA basically opening up the floodgates to allow their highlights to be seen. They viewed it as a positive to have that engagement. But it was interesting that piracy did come up. One of them, is it even worth protecting non-live content? And the second one being the structure of deals that rights holders make with the broadcast partners on the exclusivity of highlights also makes it really difficult, particularly when people can just post whatever they want on social media?

1:00:47Chris Stone:Yeah, I think highlights is a really interesting part of it. That came up a bit in ours, not the piracy bit, but the highlights side definitely did. One of the members for our stream time, I will mention some of the people. I think I could probably be more flexible than I was making up, but I think I want to protect some of the rights owners who have to be a little bit more cautious. But Spork is one of our founding members of the group, and they do remote commentary basically. And they were just talking about the now growing demand of multilingual sets of highlights. And so he painted a great picture, Michael Prendergast, I think is his name, who's the co-founder there, who basically talked about the fact that they kind of sit in a workflow now.

1:01:28Chris Stone:So where those highlights, depending on what league, different leagues have different approaches, right? But let's say they have a league, the rights get them basically distributed to them. that gets fed to different accommodators of different languages and they create dedicated commentary for those languages for those highlights so it's not just cut out of the full fee they actually are creating effectively dedicated commentary just for the highlights themselves and multitude languages and then distributing as quickly as they can and then you're working with your wscs and the like to bring that all all to life but ultimately it means that you can get way more value out of the highlights even if one provider can enable all of that and make sure that that piece of highlight content is available in a multitude of languages that gives you the mass reach and not just focusing on English alone.

1:02:19Chris Stone:So I thought that was an interesting approach to it all and that they're tasked with driving near live, right? So in many instances, not all instances, depending on rights, but so basically it's getting out the content as soon as possible once the clips are being cut. So inevitably, there's some things they're looking at from an AI perspective on some of the automated commentary, but they see that as an enabler for them, not a challenge. So that was just an interesting thing. But again, highlights, more versions, more languages, getting much more exposure, particularly for these global sports properties.

1:02:54Nick Meacham:Yeah. Well, the highlights was one part of it. And I think it was interesting. You talked about specific platforms. We talked a bit about specific formats where basically the argument was highlights, they serve one purpose, but they only serve a very shallow purpose. And that your other non-live content has to be the stuff that is going to drive people deeper. It was almost sort of like highlights grab the attention, but then the docu-series, the creator-led content, that's the stuff that's going to drive a greater affinity. Because one of the, we had someone from, you know, Team GB, you know, they're talking about one of our issues is, you know, our athletes really only compete every four years at the Olympics.

1:03:33Nick Meacham:You know, how do you, you know, build that? Because there's just simply not enough highlights to do that. And, you know, we sort of talked about the different format types and what their true purpose is. And, you know, you can't just run the same content on the same platforms for the same purposes, you know, defining what, it's almost to your point. Like every piece of content has to have multiple roles that it serves. and they sort of broke it down more about the content types and which fan that it serves and how you can potentially go about monetizing sort of each level of fandom.

1:04:03Chris Stone:Well, I think it's a tricky predicament, right? When you've seen the Olympics try to be more relevant and prevalent using the Olympic channel and other means to try and be more regularly part of the conversation rather than every couple of years for the different Olympics they run. So I know it's every four years, people, that they're two years for the winter to the summer. So just calm down if you think I'm, don't know the basics there. But for me, whether that's needed or whether that actually provides value, I don't think we've seen. We've seen probably more people take the edge off of that tentpole moment by trying to be always visible.

1:04:37Chris Stone:And sometimes it's actually better to strategize, get your ducks in a row, and then hit the market harder. I think in the example like a collective group, let's say like a team GB or anyone who's at a national governing body level, they maybe have these tentpole moments like the Olympics. my recommendation is do whatever you can to enable the athletes to get more access to that content to the share and to use because you won't be able to drive enough value for themselves but they absolutely absolutely can whether it's working with the right tech partners whether it's working the right rights owners just to make sure that you can have everyone who's within your respective stakeholder map have access to content that they can share and build the awareness that way and then you can just focus on building up for those 10-point moments every few years and maximizing it at those moments, if that makes sense.

1:05:25Chris Stone:Then you're also adding a lot more value to the athletes because one of the weaknesses of, say, the Olympic movement is that athletes haven't been able to use their rights to that sort of level, particularly around the Olympics. But if you were to give them something to use between the Olympics, then I think you'd be reaching a whole new audience set. I think it would be quite exciting and building up those athletes in between Olympics much more effectively than just having that one moment to shine.

1:05:48Nick Meacham:Yeah. And I think just to wrap this, Nick, because I thought it was an interesting point you made about Snap's business, because it came up, you know, one of the people working on the business from the sports part of our perspective was a bit like, I don't know what Snap does anymore these days, sort of who's the user base and kind of the point we made. And then that got validated because I was also speaking to Hugo Sharman, used to be the CEO of Stream AMG, super smart guy, was that Snap is a tech business. Yes, there's the B2C side that you see with the filters and the actual app, but they're also using their technology on a more B2B scale.

1:06:17Nick Meacham:And Hugo, apparently one of the companies he's now working for is a stadium-based business. And basically, Snap is taking those features that they're using on the B2C side, but now distributing them or providing them to B2B services like a stadium. And that's where some of that tech comes in. It almost leads back to that media conversation we were having before, that kind of balance between media versus tech investment. And then sometimes those two things are actually complementary of each other. So I think seeing some of that stuff in the flesh kind of gave you an idea of they don't have to be in such a one silo for those technologies to be multiple value propositions for different users.

1:06:57Chris Stone:It's interesting, Hay, their business. I feel like at one stage, we're talking about their platform, which is, let's call it a social media platform, which it basically is. And then there's this other part of the business, which does feel very separate yes there is some crossover in the use of these filters and stuff but it feels like a very separate type of business right to sell the use of um ar filters uh in stadia and alike um an interesting part of their business model is that with some of the deals they try and do with a partner let's say one of the major rights owners on platform is then they share that is a monetization share play here that they can they will actually help monetization of those rights on the platform and then do a rev share with those partners, which is obviously more interesting to some people who don't have to basically have the responsibility of trying to find a way to monetize it.

1:07:47Chris Stone:Snap will do it for you. But it does feel like basically the AR business should be just separated into something else, maybe come up with a different name or like, and just to make it more clean and clear. I mean, now some of the numbers that Callan shared in terms of audience are pretty insane. I'm just trying to look at the numbers here quickly. In 25 plus countries, they reach 90 % of the 13 to 24-year-old population and then 75 % of the 13 to 34-year-old population. That made everyone feel very old very quickly considering there was only a couple of people in the room that actually had Snap on their devices from what people put their hand up for.

1:08:26Chris Stone:And there was a bunch of other stats in there which I could go into. But I thought that was just a good eye. Again, it's a bit like the overtime point, right? It's like we sit in our bubbles, probably looking at the wrong platforms, but actually there's a whole host of activations, activity going on elsewhere that sports needs to pay greater attention to. Yeah.

1:08:43Nick Meacham:Well, as it was reflected in that podcast, Nick, we did a hell of a lot of stuff this week. Lots of really great insights, whether it's the events, we've got SportsPro AI coming up in September. If you heard about the Streamtime Connect event, we're doing one in IBC alongside our partners in Mediakind. Sports from Madrid won't be that far away now. There's all kinds of different stuff with these types of insights. I think what's really important, you mentioned about the investment in StreamTime, is the connections. We are doing more stuff to purposely build curated spaces for smaller groups because we recognize the value in those things.

1:09:16Nick Meacham:But if you've heard this podcast, this is just talking about a very small sample of the content that's actually taken place across those three days. We spoke over an hour about it. Imagine what we did if we did everything.

1:09:29Chris Stone:Well, look, I mean, the main thing I would say takeaway, and for those that aren't too active at going to events, I learn more from the offstage stuff than I do on the onstage stuff. And I learned a lot from the onstage stuff. But the nuance, the devil in the detail, the perspectives you hear from people who are actually doing and executing on this stuff is truly remarkable. It takes time to really process some of this stuff to go, okay, how do you use this and how does it help shape opinion and understanding and awareness of where we're really going. And that's part of our job is to have those conversations offline and in different calls to then be able to share that with people who are listening into this.

1:10:08Chris Stone:But our recommendation is also for those that are listening in that if you aren't able to get to those conversations and think about it as, oh, do I want to hear what that person's got to say on stage? It is just as much the offstage stuff that is where the value is really created. and I learned a huge amount both around sports media and around investment this week. So it's been a great, great few days in London.

1:10:30Nick Meacham:Absolutely. And it was always good to see you in person, Nick. You know, you came over from Sweden, got to shake hands. You know, we got to do a photo shoot, some funny faces, things like that. So it's always just, you know, it's always nice to be in person, Nick.

1:10:41Chris Stone:Absolutely. It's definitely good to be in touch and be in person and connect with yourself, Chris, but also not only the team, but indeed just across the wider industry. And obviously London's such a great hub for that. But the next, we have an event coming up also, the AI event in September, which we'll be getting together for as well. And then we'll be doing, we'll be on the road for most of it then if you think about it. We've got Madrid. We've got New York. We've got Amsterdam. We said IBC will be in Amsterdam. Amsterdam. So, lots happening across the world. So, excited about the next few months.

1:11:12Chris Stone:But it's been great.

1:11:14Nick Meacham:Absolutely. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks, everyone.

1:11:18Chris Stone: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 sports pro nick 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 thanks stream timers until next time

1:11:50gasm