The NFL’s next play: From primetime to YouTube with MrBeast and IShowSpeed

0:04Nick Meacham:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone. I'm the community lead, joined as always by our co-host, Nick Meacham. Now, Nick, if anyone out there can hear the extra pep in my step, it's because we're recording this on Friday morning. The NFL is back on. Despite DAZN failing to renew my subscription for the last three weeks on renewal, intentionally, Nick, because if you remember, I had some payment issues a couple years back. Yes. So I moved it from my credit card, my subscription, to my Monzo card, which never has money on it, so I could pay it when I want to pay it.

0:37Nick Meacham:Genius. But I did pay it this morning, so I could watch the ad-free replay of the Cowboys-Eagles. I feel like the Cowboys let themselves down. But anyways, Nick, football season is back. So what do you watch it as? Do you watch it as the 40-minute? I think it's a 40-minute version. Is that the one that you watch? So there's multiple versions. Now, if I'm coming into the office, I will download the 40-minute version so I can watch it underground on the tube because I obviously don't have any service down there. This morning, I was watching it from home. Dog usually wakes up about 7 a.m. So they do two full replays, one with adverts and then one without adverts.

1:12Nick Meacham:I don't know why anyone watched the version with adverts. But basically, yeah, you can watch the whole game without adverts. I think it cuts it down to about two hours. So Dog wakes up about 7. I get up. you know i can pretty much just watch the whole game by the time it's work um so yeah it kind of depends nick where am i at watching it from but that is one of the reasons why i'm willing to pay the subscription is to have all those different options depending on you know where i'm at in the world where i'm traveling to and how i want to re-watch that's really interesting so for those that aren't familiar with it so my experience of it is like you know a game takes around what four hours roughly give or take depending on what's happening um and so there is a variety of different formats the the no ads no ads down to two hours yeah is that just shows how many ad breaks there are how many stoppages there are i guess that's obviously the four hours includes the half-time breaks and all the quarter time breaks that they remove as well i used to

2:09Chris Stone:watch quite often they're 40 minute versions so which is basically just all the plays which i is good for time but actually you do lose quite a lot of the character of the the commentary and stuff in between the plays that i think is really does add a lot more than i expected maybe that's why they pay all those commentators such extraordinary salaries but um and then one of the versions underneath that there's a there's a fair highlights yeah there's a 15 minute

2:36Nick Meacham:highlights which is usually what's posted on youtube and they have like a short highlights which is like scoring plays turnovers it's about three four minutes sort of thing so they do break it down and to your point yeah like i watched the 40 minute version it's not my preference because even to your point like if they're always cutting it like there might have been a big play or there might have been a turnover or there was something where a referee had to make an explanation you don't get that context you just kind of get that 10 seconds at a time so it's good for when you need it but yeah to your point it's not my preference but i'm glad that i had the option should i want to yeah i i have watched a few times where something's happened and you they they start breaking it down what's happened and they cut to the next play and you really feel like you're missing out but overall the fact that they're able to do so many different versions of

3:18Chris Stone:the same game is is pretty cool and i was trying to think are there any other sports that have a similar breadth of options of watching it after and the hot and the highlights and the like and i can't really think of that many i've seen the nba has uh you know a condensed version a pretty standardized one but i can't think anything to that extent where you can watch a full game experience condensed down because obviously in things like in football you have match of the day extended highlights which are about 20 minutes or 10 really 10 minutes yeah yeah 10 minutes about that usually

3:49Nick Meacham:about 20 minutes per game but that's partly broken down by the the analysis as well afterwards yeah yeah what sport would play baseball that yeah that would be much better think about all the changes between all the innings and stuff like that i'll need to do it because um the the folks that only actually gifted me a season pass for the video subscription which was actually a gift for my parents my parents love baseball um they sit out in the barn and watch all 162 games um so i've not necessarily gone and watched because most baseball games are on by the time i'm in bed but i'll need to go ask them um if they do a condensed feature um after the games with baseball i think would be perfect for just with you know the fact that they're changing every half inning in i wonder because of the like for people over in in europe like we are well you sort of are yeah let's open up that can of worms again um who does it appeal to that so does it get a lot of

4:46Chris Stone:traction actually in the u.s or is it really a big commodity for those that obviously the timings are pretty off like i think it started here 220 or something in the morning and i'm like what was I actually woke up and I think it was up at like five and the game was still still running and I

5:00Nick Meacham:wondered about logging on well you know what Nick this segues into a story we were going to talk about today it wasn't going to be the one we're going to lead off with but it just feeds nicely which is the NFL's expanded coverage in the UK those that aren't aware within the UK Sky have expanded their coverage Sky used to have I believe two games they had one game which would be the 1 p.m. kickoff and then one game that would be the kickoff for the 4 p.m. games if we're talking stateside and i think they did the late night game but like that's just so late over here i think it might just been a straight rebroadcast as opposed to having any analysis they're now expanding that to six games every sunday i believe they're going to have three each time slot yep that's what i've seen the news and then channel five going to be the free to air broadcaster is going to have two games um they're also going to have the super bowl they're going to have the international series in london um and i believe there's one other set of rights although they have the thanksgiving games i believe which is going to bring it to free to air so the coverage of the NFL in the UK massively expanding if you're just going on a percentage basis of how many games will be available both behind the paywall with Sky but also free to air which I love but Nick had raised the question for me is if there's that much NFL on is it still worth me paying 170 pounds for NFL game pass because I'm getting a lot of football because I have Sky I've got channel 5 obviously with my TV license I had to ask myself is the 170 pounds still worth it now yes because i don't for me personally i don't know if the bangles are always going to be selected and also those other feet that expanded coverage does not include what we just talked about with being able to watch the thursday night game on friday morning or the sunday game monday morning vice versa etc etc so i'd have that question i think actually the the nfl uk gm henry hodges even mentioned like this is not going to cannibalize nfl game passes the people that actually won nfl game pass they're the hard course they're going to get it anyway so that's sort of me so we're going to talk about this new story anyway but it does come up like is it even worth me to pay for with how much stuff is up there yeah it's a great question

6:56Chris Stone:and i think that's where the it's reinforcing the importance of having a platform that offers more than just a straight live feed of content and the nfl's game pass even before the zone took it i think is where the value was i would subscribe to it because of all the other features because i didn't watch that many live games um but because of the time zone difference maybe a bit here and a bit there but it was on an ad hoc basis but when you've got different types of features i know that the zone's adding a multi-view experience now as well um yeah it's it is a platform that is only targeted at diehards or t1 fans but that's what most otg platforms are basically targeted if they are of that sort of price point um so i just think it makes such a lot of sense for them to strike those deals if they were there to be made and i think it is a bit of a what would you call like a litmus test but also a signal that maybe the nfl's uh fandom and momentum is growing in the uk to a point now where there's so many broadcasters interested in having those games i will flip that though and i'll say that well we do know that live sports in general has a lot of momentum because of from an advertising perspective because it's live and people definitely need to tune in for that um the time zone that this is playing the time window that for these matches are playing is probably a pretty weak time for these broadcasters.

8:16Chris Stone:So something that's live gives them another serious asset to sell to advertisers. And now that maybe fandom is at a decent enough level, now's the time to strike and, and to really lean into that. But I don't think they could really strike any more deals in market outside of what they've got today. And because wrapping more and making more visible, even in the zone, isn't going to give them that visibility because it's behind gating and, And the game, you know, obviously DAZN have that free to access component now that they've started to build. It just gives them another real serious access to a very important market for them.

8:52Chris Stone:They've been focused on for a long time. So I think it's a huge win for the NFL.

8:56Nick Meacham:Yeah. And I think, again, to flip it the other way, like, yes, Sunday evening might not be prime time. But the other way I'd frame it as well is there's no Premier League on at that time. No. It's a clear window. Premier League, yeah, plays 4.30 to 6.30. There's occasionally, if the schedule's really condensed, a late Sunday game. But there almost never is a Premier League game in that window. We're also going to talk about the zone in college football later. Again, Premier League coverage usually ends around 7.30, 8 o 'clock over here. So you've got all that there. So I do think it helps with that sense that it may not be the prime slot, but it's not necessarily, I think, competing against a bunch either.

9:33No, and look, a little bit of competition wouldn't hurt them that much anyway. where I think there's obviously some major crossover with Premier League audiences, but also if the game they have on a Sunday afternoon isn't a big matchup, a big draw card, then I don't think you'll have too much competition. But the other thing I would add to this type of deal is a lot of people might think, oh, DAZN might not be happy about this. The fact that a pretty key market is now going to have more games available to the point you raised about, is it going to be less likely that someone's going to sign up to Game Pass?

10:01My view on that is this is a huge win for DAZN because it's more people to view and start watching content.

10:07Chris Stone:If they want to upgrade their experience, maybe progress up to being a tier one fan, they are the perfect platform for that. But this means they don't have to make huge investments in marketing and have this huge gap and chasm in between someone who wants to casually watch it through free-to-air and someone who's going to pay a pretty big sum for accessing a big subscription.

10:28Nick Meacham:And for what it's worth, you know, this is, I would argue, more coverage than you would get in the u.s and like i always talk about how much i love free to air in the u.s but typically in the u.s like there's usually on free to air only one game available um typically from cbs and then one game available from fox at both of those time slots and then if you wanted more you'd have to go to um oh gosh i forgot on the the youtube version what have they just bought the nfl sunday ticket so realistically like if you think that between channel 5 and sky granted one of those behind a paywall there's gonna be two games actually take that back i said there's gonna be like three or four games in each of those time slots actually there's more available without having to pay for the premium product in the uk but then again we say there's more premierly games available in the u.s than there are in the uk but actually like in that sense like there's as much stuff on without having to go to the premium product um the uk than there's in the u.s at this moment that is interesting i hadn't thought about about it that way i just had thought about the fact that there's a game available in each slot on different channels and platforms that they've done those deals with but it is it is interesting to think about the fact that so the little of it is actually available nationally unless you pay for the premium product even in the u.s so um i guess in some instances you could say the uk is mirroring uh a little bit the the model of the u.s in in a way by by having that big gap between what's available on free-to-wear and then the premium paid uh offering so very very interesting to see and uh i wonder whether you could see a series of other further deals being done now by the nfl in other markets now they've got games in so many different countries now um will they continue to lean into getting expanded visibility on free-to-wear um because if if they do then i'm really intrigued to see where the nfl can get from a fandom perspective over the next few years yeah well one of the things we were talking about advertising so again nick we're going to keep not going in the order we talked about, but the things just keep segwaying so naturally, is talking about how big of a deal advertising is.

12:28Nick Meacham:And there's a story that came out, or two stories that came out this week that are both wrapped around advertising, one of them more controversial than the other. Sort of the first one more objectively, NBC is going to be the broadcasters for the Super Bowl this year. They've come out and said they've already sold 90 % of their regular season inventory, and they've already sold out their Super Bowl advertisements. and we're talking nearly five months in advance. And for context, Fox charged$8 million for a 30-second ad spot last year for the Super Bowl. We just talked about how much you can reduce the game with an ad-free version.

13:02Nick Meacham:There's going to be a lot of 30-second commercials in that Super Bowl mix. So they've already managed to sell out pretty much all their inventory spots, which I suppose isn't a surprise, but it just goes to show the power of advertising and the Super Bowl itself just being the pinnacle, I think, of all advertising. in well like i was saying before i really feel that everything i'm hearing and seeing is that there's even more inertia than ever around advertising in live sports events and live

13:28Chris Stone:sports events that matter i think particularly when with netflix and these other streamers going into amazon as well so heavily it's democratized and broken down some of those barriers that were still existing around this so for the fact that they've announced it i mean They always like to announce and create some goodwill about how they're selling. But 90 % before the season even begins sounds pretty impressive, pretty impressive numbers given the amount of inventory. Slight segue. Have we talked much about upfronts before? I'm not sure if we have.

14:00Nick Meacham:No, not really well for me. Are you familiar with upfront? No.

14:06Chris Stone:I bamboozled you and maybe bamboozled some of our audience. Well, this is a really interesting part of the whole economy over in the U.S. around advertising. is that each major network and indeed now each of the major big tech platforms have these events called upfronts. Although I think the big tech companies use some other name, which is very similar. But basically what it is, is they basically present their wares about how great they are, what content and programming they've got coming up. And they invite loads of advertising execs and basically are selling to them in an audience. I basically invite them for a big schmoozy event, lots of probably caviar and drinks going everywhere and the majority in some sports instances and sorry some networks instances the majority of their advertising spend is actually wrapped up all in this one event and basically that is effectively the ad execs for like these certain networks or sit down with a couple of these guys like well what's it let's do a deal basically it's a bit very old school and at least how it sounds from what i've heard so that for the people that don't follow the u.s market this is what happens it's still a huge huge part of the industry and now in these up fronts most of the major networks are investing even more into it they're bringing loads of talent bringing all the personalities and athletes and influencers and hosts to like basically make a bit of a sell and a bit of a an entertaining sort of stage show basically to get people excited about the event before they then go and sit down with the table and try and strike a deal.

15:37That sort of stuff, as far as I understand, does not happen anywhere else in the world other than the U.S. And that's why the advertising economy is so massive in the U.S. versus everywhere else. The networks prioritize those events annually as big as any single thing they do for the whole year.

15:55Nick Meacham:Well, let's speak about some advertising that's not getting people fired up, Nick. We've gone a little bit more details on it now, but NFL Red Zone, I mean, we've argued on this show might be the single best sports product in the world for what it provides, what it offers. I'm with you, Nick. It's usually a second screen for me because I like to watch the full game, but what it offers is great. It was announced very subtly that they're going to be inserting advertisements into this. And if you don't know what Red Zone is, part of the big deal is the intro. Scott Hanson, every time he comes on, sort of says welcome for seven hours of commercial free football that is literally the slogan that starts off every single one um he was on the pat mcathie show i believe and he did the new intro and everyone was like something has changed um and he did acknowledge that there will be advertisements um this year within red zone which just at least i'm still on twitter x nick i told you i block anything that isn't sports related people are fired up they're like why am i paying for a premium channel if it's got advertisements and like they're all these like oh it's someone throwing a hail mary that's gonna break through commercial which are obviously not gonna do but people are really fired up about they're like why am i paying a premium price they're like this is the same thing amazon prime did where you bought a subscription but now you have to buy an extra subscription if you want the ad free version of it people are getting really upset what what's come out nick my understanding is they're gonna run four commercials over seven hours they're gonna be 15 seconds a piece and they will not cut away the video feed in terms of the full screen so there was a lot of controversy i think that controversy may have been a little dramatic you know i mean the word fan is short for fanatic but there are people that are a little concerned that like this is just the start they're just going to slowly add in ads but i would say the news that's reported this is not an espn decision because there's a lot of people being like oh espn's bought nfl red zone and they're already screwing it up my understanding is espn doesn't have control over that at least for another year and this decision is not coming from ESPN if we're trying to figure out where to lay blame but Nick I don't think you or I are probably surprised that they're going to start adding commercials I think um we think of people like our friends at transmit that you know do these add-in sort of non-disruptive models that it can work I get why people are upset Nick but I'm not surprised that's the thing is I think they could have got away with going calling it's still commercial free if they didn't stop the show and keep it those um those overlay ads and like in the corner of the screen and so forth when they break away when they show multi-viewers just have one an ad showing in the corner and at least done

18:36Chris Stone:it that way i my my guess then given if you're saying that they come out and said that espn isn't the ones dictating that my theory my conspiracy theory is that ESPN wants to bring ads when they take over yeah and they've asked the NFL to take a bit of a bullet here and take a step forward so they take bridge the gap so when ESPN do take over it's not as big a deal when they start again inching it a bit further and further along the way obviously they can't go too far because anyone who's watched the end zone product uh I'm starting to think of how to describe a better example like i guess it's you know with various football leagues across the world when they've got games going non-stop and you've got a live saturday saturday football what was the show that

19:19Nick Meacham:was on sky it was a three o 'clock saturday yeah no gillette gillette they used to call it gillette because it was sponsored by gillette gillette super saturday or soccer saturday i think it was

19:27Chris Stone:um mls have obviously got their own version and you often hear um stories or um yeah launches of this new it's red zone for this being brought to the fore and obviously it's never going to be able to compete with the actual NFL's version itself. So I reckon that's a bit of a, look, we're going to rip the bandaid off now. ESPN don't want to deal with the negative publicity when they do take over it formally. So NFL are taking a little bit of the bullet here and doing it very, very softly. So they're not going to interrupt. Okay, fine. But maybe next year, maybe they'll finally give Scott a toilet break somewhere along the way.

20:06Nick Meacham:You know what? he talks about that because he's on air for seven hours non-stop so he he talks about like there's training and things like that we're like and like how he has to prepare the day before like trying to essentially dehydrate himself like he didn't go into too many graphic details for like it's not an easy gig he's probably got the toughest job in all of like sports commentary or commentary in general i don't know anyone that goes seven hours straight without a break well i was just wondering whether he's ever been up during the night for for a midnight uh trip to the toilet or he's Probably never had that in his life if he's that well-trained.

20:38I mean, my old man, Bladikant, couldn't handle that. That's for sure. But staying hydrated, because if I don't drink water, like already we're, what, 20 minutes into this conversation. I'm already looking for where my glass of water is to try and rehydrate my mouth. So full credit to him and what he does there. But look, I think it's inevitable in every instance.

20:59Chris Stone:I think in summary, I think every proposition that exists in sports around live content has to have multiple ways of driving value and driving financial returns subscription being one bit advertising being obvious another bit it could be some sponsorship it could be other means so it was obviously inevitable it was going to get here so uh we'll see how much they disrupt the feed i think they'll take a very cautious approach in the beginning and go from there we hope you're enjoying the show i just want to give a quick shout out to one of

21:30Nick Meacham:our founding StreamTime community members, LucidLink. Distributed Teams, massive files, zero time to waste. In live sports and broadcasting, if you're waiting on files to transfer, sync, or download, you're already losing the race. LucidLink's cloud-native file system gives your team real-time access to massive media files from anywhere, say goodbye to syncing and downloading, and hello to instant collaboration with tools you use every day, like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Media Composer. Whether you're cutting high-res match footage, color grading remotely, or managing production across different time zones lucid link makes remote workflows feel like you're in the same room from espn and mclaren racing to warner brothers and paramount production teams trust lucid link to create without the weight try lucid link free today at lucidlink.com and make remote collaboration feel local so the story we were going to kick things off with nick because like i said as we're recording this this is friday morning september 5th we're going to have the youtube game being broadcasted um for i guess free to air i don't even know if you call free to air avod i guess would be the appropriate term to place it under yeah i mean uh not avod because it's live so uh i think it's what is the term for that is it free to air for streaming i should know that really free to free to free to free to streaming well i would just call it free to air i just call it free to air it's not linear like it's free to air on a different distribution model because linear it's not on a linear broadcast it's on the it's screen but it's a free to wear broadcast I'm sure someone will give us an answer I'm sure someone will be happy to tell us what the official term is if they're listening but anyways tonight is going to be the YouTube game which is going to be taking place between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers I think I've mostly called them the Los Angeles Chargers now and there was a while I was still calling them San Diego same thing with the Raiders being Oakland I think I've I think I've switched on my brain they are the la chargers now but nick a couple big things about this a it's going to be live stream for free on youtube and then the other big part of this as well is i show speed we've talked about the creator economy is also going to be doing a alternative broadcast of that on hosted on his channel and just for the numbers he has 43 million subscribers so not a small insignificant number he's not going to be the only um content creator that's going to be doing this all cast but there will he's essentially the biggest one of the group um that game is going to be hosted down in brazil friday night but you know nick the nfl they just they keep trying doing new things and you know for you we've spent quite a bit of time talking about youtube recently and where it should fit within your strategy um whether it should be your main platform a supplementary platform where should it fit the nfl you know has to deal with youtube tv but that's a completely different thing all to begin with.

24:18Nick Meacham:They've got different streaming deals with Amazon and NBC. They've got their traditional linear broadcast partners and now dipping the toe live streaming a game on YouTube. So let's take a step back quickly and remember what this deal is. They

24:29Chris Stone:paid about a hundred million US, I think, for this opportunity to take these rights, taken globally. So that's a big investment, particularly when YouTube's message has been ever since the Sunday ticket deal is we're not buying rights anymore, but they felt the need to make this investment. And the question is why? Now, my theory on that is basically they want to use this as the ultimate case study to say, look, we're going to pay a fortune for these rights. We're going to monetize them and we're going to make it worth our while to spend this money. But following this, we're not going to buy any more rights.

24:59Chris Stone:We're going to show you how it's done because remember, YouTube's model is pretty much primarily ad funded. They, I believe, will be also selling some sponsorships and doing special advertising packages mainly on their content. I'm intrigued to see who they're using as their broadcast partner to produce the live broadcast. I'm guessing there's one of the main free-to-air partners in the US is taking that. But anyway, my point here is I think they're using this as a case study and then they're going to go walk away and go, look, we've shown you now we can generate incredible audience numbers. We've created a new way of distributing content by working with creatives to create this, all these extreme distribution channels.

25:39Chris Stone:they can basically with those relationships can scale their audience to unprecedented levels you know tapping into an eyeshow speed and all these other influences and say hey we're going to give you the rights to the nfl here in return we're going to share share ad revenue off your feed and you get the rights for free i mean how are they not going to say yes to that and instantly youtube in this instance just scales their audience to incredible incredible levels so i just think the sky is the limit for this type of model and approach i never thought about the fact that youtube might take this such heavier creator-led option i remember when they did the sunday ticket deal part of that was giving creators access to the rights in some instances to create alternative broadcasts but never at this scale this is this feels pretty

26:27Nick Meacham:massive it's not the only thing you know we talked about ishowspeed is going to be live streaming from his channel but also we got gifted something in preparation for this mr beast putting out advertisement a gimmick uh promotion whatever you want to call it you know saying he's bought the nfl and he's brought in all these um streamers i show speed one of them i mentioned to you before the show nick i'm a little upset while i understand putting him next to tyreek hill because of some of the stuff that he is technically from cincinnati ohio and is a cincinnati bangles fan but they even got mr beast trying to come in and promote this and whip this up because obviously mr beast is the king of all things youtube and you know trying to plug in with his influence as well but dick you you didn't sound like you're necessarily loving this idea uh well i think the idea i throw you under the bus well i think the idea of leaning into the creative economy is

27:25Chris Stone:absolutely genius and i think is what most sports everyone in sports should be paying so much attention to this model and to this approach i've been talking about this for years to say to people i had a conversation recently this week with a rights owner approached me to get some advice it's like think about giving some of your rights to your athletes and to your athletes and basically people who have either got a big audience or want to have a meaningful audience and have the ability to grow one and to scale it because that incentive of taking on their own rights just massively increases the scale of the audience and visibility of that that live experience and by doing so all those other levers that can be pulled in terms of not only just getting mass interest and fandom but also sponsorship obviously merchandise sales and etc can then be laid on with this huge audience that's why we've been saying for a long time you can't just take a subscription only approach right So this is just basically destroying the subscription model and saying, hey, we have a new way of working, a new way of working, which is get your rights onto YouTube.

28:31Chris Stone:You will generate revenues of we can, YouTube is saying this, we can predict what you can basically earn, not guarantee, but close to. And then you have all these other levers to expand your audience and expand your revenue. It just makes working with YouTube almost a no-brainer over time. Now, I'm saying that because which makes me probably sound like I'm selling the life out of YouTube. We did a pod on this a couple of weeks ago where we try to set the scenes of expectation here. It sounds great in theory. For anyone who's not the NFL, it's very difficult to pull some of these levers and get a I showed speed and Mr.

29:04Chris Stone:Beast to work with you. So it's not that easy for everyone. But I think relative terms, if you're a sports property that's struggling to get a rights deal, look at this type of approach to see if you can really scale your audiences using athletes and other maybe influences around your sport. And you might be shocked about the scale that you can get. Now, I would add the question about this particular campaign. what I cringed a little bit was about the whole three minute video that's being done and this whole like oh Mr. Beast has bought the league and Roger Goodell acting as like supporting cast member through the three minute pitch along all these other influencers and every that the storyline basically is he buys the league and Mr.

29:46Beast's first decision at the press conference is to make every team increase the size of their official roster from 53 to 54 and the 54th has