The truth behind the Premier League's DTC launch

0:04Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone, the community lead, joined as always by our CEO, Nick Meacham. Now, Nick, I sent you a tweet last week that was incredibly difficult. We are going to expand on it a little bit, but basically, Nick, I sent you a tweet from a guy named Sam Block. His Twitter is at the Block Spot, and I've seen he's done a couple of these now, but this was the first one I saw. He listed out 12 sporting events. You got to keep three of them and you had to cut nine of them. The events listed off were NCAA March Madness, NBA playoffs, WNBA playoffs, Stanley Cup playoffs, which is the NHL, college football playoffs, NFL playoffs, MLB postseason, the college baseball World Series, which for those that aren't American might not get this, but is incredible television.

0:48um Wimbledon the World Cup the Olympics and the Masters now Nick what I will say is that's a very U.S. focused list so I think we agreed we'd expand it a little bit um based on all those they're either postseason tournaments or kind of major events so you couldn't just throw in the Premier League but I figured you could do Champions League you could say knockout onwards knockout onwards of the Champions League I'm gonna throw in the darts because I love the darts um I knew that was going to get in there and there's no cricket nick so i don't know if you want to include the ashes as an aussie or if there's another cricket event you prefer over that but i will leave that to you and i say instead of picking three of 12 we'll say keep four of 15 with that added list but i'll let you clarify which cricket event you want placed in there so keeping you say keeping four of the 15 correct yeah tough tough i would say oh that's a very good question i would say ashes is probably the one to have in there well that's a no-brainer like for any cricketing fan to say no to i was going to say the ipl because that's quite seasonal yeah as well um and that's more of a balancing act i think i'd love to go to it but there's a lot of events i'd like to go to if i didn't get to pick pick a handful so i'll throw that in the mix so how are we doing this exactly i've got a raffle off what are we doing we go one by one or sure let's go one by one i mean for me first and foremost i'll keep it easy i'm an nfl guy i'm sticking with the nfl playoffs i want the super bowl at the end um it's also an annual event which not all these necessarily in here are annual except i guess the olympics is the one but i'm gonna start at the nfl playoffs nick are you keeping that or you're not prioritizing it well i'm gonna not prioritize it i think there's too many unique events in that list that i would actually fair it's just too much travel you know fly all the way around the u.s for the whole thing for the playoffs it was the super bowl only i put the super bowl with the playoffs i'm i'm yeah and i'm a pretty big nfl fan yeah there's a lot there's a lot in there that you've listed i think i'll have to keep my keep my cards like keep my options open for now all right so so pick one where do you want to start off with all right let's do let's do the nba playoffs then just while keeping on the american sports theme since you've picked the nfl what about the nba you know i'll i'll be honest you and i are actually gonna do a podcast on this we've spoken about this, whether or not we have long-term concerns about the NBA and its current product.

3:11I personally don't want to watch SGA flop around on the court. I'm not particularly happy with the on-court product right now. So the NBA playoffs is, I think, all playoff sports are better than what they are in the regular season. But I'll be honest, I just don't watch as much NBA as I used to with the time difference. But I don't like what I'm seeing on the court right now from the bits that I do see. Well, the thing with all this is, when I'm looking at these as events, they're not just one-off. There's a lot going on. With the NBA, and I think I'd say the same now for the MLB, there's just so many games that happen.

3:45I know there's a lot of excitement that builds up to these, but there's a lot of my attention needed to enjoy these events, whereas I kind of like the concentration of some of the others, which I think is going to skew my vote a little bit as we go. So I'm going to leave out of the NBA as well. All right. I guess for me, my second one, like we were already i'm picking the darts i love the darts it's just incredible um a it's i think it's great television i also have been in person best sporting event ever been to in person i get that won't be for everybody but like if i only get to pick four like the world darts championship is up there for me i've never been and i think i know everyone everyone i know who's based in the uk or in london is pretty much gone at some stage and it's like a i don't know a rite of passage to go into the darts, the Ali Pali event each year, but I've never been.

4:32So for everything I've heard and seen, it sounds like something that is too good to miss, but I am going to leave it off by this still. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. So what is one you do want to keep then? I'm definitely going to go with the Masters. I think there's too much behind the Masters there. All the stories you hear about that experience, it feels like it's almost an out-of-body experience you'll have if you're a golf fan going to an event like that and just the way they manage the experience and the prestige of it all so i think that's going to be my must-have in the list yeah maybe next year when i've this because this will be my second year of like golfing maybe i'll feel different but nick i will say like i wouldn't let me throw a curve i wouldn't mind going to the waste management open that seems like basically if you took golf and darts and put it together have you seen the the there's a live golf event they run in adelaide in australia it's almost as wild as the waste management open now it's like i don't want to call the poor man's version but it's definitely the southern hemisphere's version of that there's a there's there's shots on if you look online where people like players i hit a drive and then they'll be throwing beers from the crowd onto the the tea box and it's full of australians which you know the the variabilities of what aussies can do is is pretty is pretty out there i mean americans give them a good run for their money as well so uh that's not the waste management open level was at the 17th hole i think it's got all the craziness that goes on well there's another hole where the caddies race each other which is great really yeah they race each other down the fairway carrying the bags it's great oh i love that i just love when they try something do something but different breaks that tightness that comes out yeah is manifested around golf which is nice to see so i'm all for yeah the masters is my go-to there so that's the first one on my list fair and then between the two football we got the world cup and the champions league knockout um this is interesting because i know the world cup is the big one my challenge is it's only once every four years whereas i get you know champions league every year um the quality of football we don't watch the world cup for the quality of football right nick like we we understand we're not going to get the best of the best um uh i'm gonna go clearly the world cup i think it's just that again i'm looking for the highs and and when i've been to those types of sporting events that nationalized they just sort of transcend the sport a little bit.

6:49It's about the culture, their positive energy around it. Now, granted, they can go quite negative if things go pear-shaped, but generally there's such a good aura around those major events that I think I'd have to do the World Cup, although I will not be going out there. I hadn't even considered going out there for the U.S. version of it, but I think they would be up there as being part of the whole atmosphere. It's like almost the main part of that is almost what's happened between the matches as much as the match itself, I think. Yeah, it is a big party. You're not going to get that with Champions League.

7:18Maybe if you're just going to watch, but if you're for the whole event, you probably are right. One place I will disagree with you on, Nick, and this is just me being a biased American, I think Major League Baseball playoffs are incredible because every pitch, the strategy behind it is just so cranked up on steroids. um now granted my Cincinnati Reds have not been good I don't think they've won a playoff series since the year I was born in 1990 um very similar to my my Cincinnati Bengals but I I think playoff baseball is just incredible but again that might be the purest in me uh but I yeah I can watch it's one of the few times like I to this day will stay up and watch live baseball I think it's I think it's incredible I think because the season's so freaking long yeah season it for me it's made the season basically almost redundant as an existence.

8:12But then the playoffs come, and I've heard this from a lot of people, that they say the postseason is a whole different environment. It's the best of all of those experiences in terms of all the other major leagues and in terms of the importance of the playoffs relative to the main season. So I definitely can understand that. I think these events, they're just still so long for me. If it was like, what's the world? If it was the World Series. Yeah, true. Then I'd be like, yeah, sign me up. but the postseason is quite long. It is. Well, Nick, I've come to my four. I've got the darts. I've got the NFL playoffs.

8:44I've got the MLB postseason, and I've got the World Cup. So those are my four. At the moment, you've got the Masters and the World Cup. You've still got two more to pick off. I've tried to keep my options open. Now I've left myself in a bit of a hole. The easy ones to say is the Olympics. I think I've enjoyed so much going to London 2012, and I wish I'd gone to even the Lama Cortina and done a Winter Olympics. I think the Winter Olympics would be a really cool experience as well. If it has to be from the list, I actually probably would bring the NFL final playoffs back into it. I think that's probably what I'd list off as my form.

9:16Bring it back in. Yeah. Well, if I had to go for any others, I mean, tennis is, tennis is good. I'm a, I actually love tennis most of my life, but I've been to Wimbledon. Wimbledon's got an aura about it, but actually, yeah, I'm not, it doesn't not like the the the energy has to be the right game i don't think any experience but i haven't been let down by a couple of games i think it's probably why i've been unsure about it so let's let's go the nfl because it's all all sudden death matches you know last man standing best team wins all that jazz i think i like that versus the other ones that are just a little bit too too long for me too much of a commitment of my my time in this day and age that's fair well everybody like i said i might put the tweet in the uh in the description of the podcast go find let us know which events you would choose is yours or feel free to add in some european events because like i said it is a bit of a an american-centric list you did leave off the ashes nick it's not on your to-do list um you had the ability to do so but you know oh should have had that there instead i would have had that instead of the nfl but then i looked at looking at my list i'm like it's also very old white dude basically uh yeah old white brit aussie you know like he's got something different in there the nfl that's so different yeah tell us of what you think ashes i would definitely put in there if i did the list again but here we go so nick the nature of covering news is depending on when you record sometimes news comes afterwards and last week we recorded and then the news broke that we were going to get uh we'll call it prem flicks for now however you want to go about it with the premier league launching a ddc platform in singapore now there's a there's a whole sort of set of criteria with that um i'm going to start on the other end of things nick before we specifically look at the singapore side of things I saw an interesting post, and I apologize if I butchered his name, but Daniel Heragie at our Friends at Ampere Analysis did a post, and I think what's worth looking at is everyone's like, oh, is this a precursor to getting a D2C platform in the UK?

11:17Everyone's sort of, you know, is this them lining it up? Well, they did a bit of a look into things, looking at League One, going direct to consumer in France as a bit of a comparison. At the moment, they've got it as the Premier League generates It's$1.6 billion per season from its domestic right partners in Sky Sports and TNT Sports. So any direct-to-consumer platform, Nick, we would assume at minimum they have to make$1.6 billion back. Otherwise, what's the point? The second part of that is they reckon there's a unique subscriber base for Sky Sports and TNT Sports. It's between$4 million to$5 million for their linear channels and OTT is sort of where they're going with that.

11:55for context there it's going to cost you around 45 50 pounds a month to do all those packages and they had some other stats in there about how many people are subscribing to those packages whether or not they're sports fans different things like that but basically the the final number that he got to in order for sky sports to be able to kind of or sorry not sky sports the premier league to make their money back a monthly subscription would have to cost 40 quid a month which I personally think would probably be a little bit higher, Nick, because I feel like if they're going to go D to C, their goal wouldn't be to just make the same amount of money by doing three times as much work because they would have to do the marketing, they'd have to build the platform, they'd have to have the customer service.

12:35I don't think they're doing that move unless they're trying to significantly go above their broadcast numbers. So I thought it was interesting, Nick, and we've heard the Simon Jordan quote numerous times that, hey, if you just charge everybody 10 quid a month, you'd make$3 billion, whatever it is. I just don't think it's happening, Nick. So I guess before we get into the Singapore side of things, just talking specifically, I guess a question off the Singapore thing. Do you think this actually means that we're going to see D2C in the UK with the Premier League? I think if you were going to see it, you would see a similar model of where it would be in partnership with Sky.

13:10I don't think you would see Premier League going completely alone just because they would be biting the hand that feeds them right now. and I still think they're too far away from that. Now, if Sky starts to say, look, we're actually going to need to massively decrease our investment into the rights that we're spending with you, that might force their hand, but I don't think that's going to happen at any time soon. I think that Sky needs the Premier League and the Premier League needs Sky and those will find a way of working together in some fashion to create some sort of DTC proposition if the market opportunity presented itself or they sorted out the 3pm blackout, etc., etc.

13:48I just can't see them cutting Sky's grass, basically. At least not this cycle. Maybe in the future. I think they're a few years away from really considering this seriously. But now that they have the flexibility with managing production, more of the production in-house, although Sky does their live broadcast production for them, the bulk of it. Yeah, I think they're a few years away before they would seriously consider doing something in the UK. So sorry to Simon Jordan. And apologies, I've put the proverbial horse in front of the cart. But you know, I just felt like, you know, before we go into it, let's just clear things up.

14:23Like, I don't think this story necessarily means what some people may hope it means. So maybe Nick, now we can talk a little bit specifically about what it is that kicked this all off or sort of reinvigorated this conversation, because I saw a bunch of tweets being like, Oh, Premier League is going DTC. And I was like, you are not reading the fine print. So maybe just give a little bit, Nick, what's actually taking place in Singapore? What is significant about it? but then perhaps maybe we can elaborate a little bit when we just talk about what's maybe misunderstood about it. I'm sure. So Premier League is launching a product called Premier League Plus.

14:56It is going to be in partnership with the current main in-market rights holder, StarHub. So it's not completely standalone. It is a partnership. It is an extension of the current partnership. So it wasn't existing rights in the existing agreement. Now, the Premier League previous cycle before this agreement with StarHub was in place for just being more of a traditional rights deal, they were threatening or there was a rumor that they were looking to launch back then and launch a DTC proposition in market before a last minute deal was hashed out. But the difference from then to now is basically Premier League has been building to this moment with lots of little moves they've made.

15:36They've lined up Mediakind as one of their major OTT partners and platforms to help all of that ecosystem work happen, which you need if you want to go take OTT seriously. They've launched it in partnership with Starhub. They've got the production of content in-house now so they can manage that appropriately to make sure they're delivering the right type of experience on platform. So they've been intentional at taking their time because they've been exploding their media rights, international media rights, whilst everyone else has struggled. But now it's added on as an extension, not necessarily as a competitor to the current marketplace.

16:13Now, could they in the future say to Star Hub, well, if you don't buy this sort of package of rights, including Premier League Plus, will we do it ourselves? Absolutely. But for now, it's a lovely bolt-on for them to be able to offer. And it aligns with what we've talked a little bit about over the last year or two, this idea of these aggregation players basically buying deals deals which incorporate also the ott offering we talked about apple and f1 that's part of the package they bought in the us it's also what the nba has done with their deal with amazon where and even to some extent the nfl deal with disown although it's a little bit different but basically allows the partner to get people from even if they are coming into just the live experience to then try and funnel them into the more premium ott product which obviously drives up the revenue they are generating from each of those users now gives them more upside basically on each and every customer they're bringing into their ecosystem so look it's it's something it's a great marketplace for them to launch because of the connectivity of Singapore the size of the marketplace won't put a lot of pressure on the launch and getting things wrong it just makes a lot of sense to test in a market like this and I think it is just going to be the beginning for them depending on what strategy they ultimately do take yeah that's what i agree with nick i think people got really excited they saw premier league they saw d2c and they jumped on it now i don't think that's necessarily been the industry conclusion but i think that's what the conclusion has been for consumers who might not necessarily be in the know or understand the the market specifics or things like that but i think i feel like most people in the industry kind of get what it is but i'm not entirely sure if that stops some of the the waves of excitement i'm not sure i think a lot of people in the industry also don't quite understand i get excited and read the headlines but i think the premier league have been the standouts with their media rights approach for some time and what they've been able to do building their international rights partnerships and building the revenue blows everyone out the water when it comes to the scale of the revenues they generate ultimately more and more than their local market which is the only sport that does that it was the deal we talked about recently which was there was in latin yeah 600 million yeah i mean just those numbers are unbelievable when you think about the scale of the market the the relative value of the media rights market in those places and they're able to just keep growing the pie for themselves so i think they'll be smart about their approach here they will probably be a little bit more bullish perhaps on some of their negotiations with some people but they're not going to bite the hands that are feeding them and they've got a lot of big investors into their rights and the premier league's in pole position in almost every way the NFL gets a lot of coverage because if it's a hundred you know 110 billion dollar rights deal and it should but I think the best approach and I think if you link it with how they've marketed and grown the brand of the clubs and the league itself the premier league is a standout for sure just wait till we have that conversation about why the premier league would be better off as a closed league and not a promotion or allegation, but I will save that for another time, Nick, to get people fired up.

19:26But another story, Nick, it broke, but didn't break all the way. We covered it a little bit, but then we had some follow-up news where we talked about Apple's first season with Formula One. And we talked about some of the concerns that we had based on some of the things that we saw or what we viewed as shortcomings with the partnership with MLS. And we sort of questioned, would Formula One take a different approach or would Apple take a different approach to essentially assure they wouldn't end up in a similar situation that they ended up in with that deal and one of the things we talked about is you know are there going to be potential sub licensing and you mentioned yourself Nick one of the concerns was maybe not concerns but the realities of it when you were judging success is the U.S.

20:08races need to succeed in the U.S. which is where the Apple deal is and let's be very clear about that it is a U.S. deal it's not a global deal doesn't matter what happens in the other races so long as the u.s races perform and that's where we talk about some of the sub licensing things like that and of course not too long after we recorded the episode it did come out that there are going to be some things specifically with netflix in terms of how they're gonna try to increase their scale their reach so i guess nick now that we do have that context does it change anything you said before does it validate things you said before does it make you feel better about the general approach that formula one is taking based off some of the question marks we had it makes me certain that they are listening to this podcast and reacted immediately after we shared our thoughts on it but no in all seriousness i think it's more about what apple is doing i think maybe that's why you know we heard stefano dominicali the ceo of f1 talking about how apple's this apple partnership is going to give them more reach and visibility and maybe that is the this is the cat out the rabbit out of the hat i think is the saying i'm trying to think of basically like they were knew that these sub licensing arrangements are going to come which are going to significantly and they increase their visibility and audience outside the Apple ecosystem.

21:17And if they do that and they continue to do a few more of these types of relationships, then all of a sudden, you know, F1 will be much more visible in more places than it has in the past. So I like the announcements, which was with Netflix, the Netflix getting the Canadian Grand Prix live, which will be their first time broadcasting live F1, but in return, them getting Drive to Survive. I'd love to know the economics there, whether that was just a straight little swap deal or whether there was something going either way there. But either way, it's a win-win, I think, for both sides. Netflix gets to test how the interest and uptake of an F1 race will be on the platform.

21:56And Apple also gets to see what drive to survive, how that performs on platform, which you think about that. The timing of this is very interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that Netflix aren't afraid to sub-license rights, so that could mean that they could be in for more F1 races if it goes to plan, if it goes well. But also Drive to Survive is obviously a Netflix powered and funded series, but at some stage box to box might look for a new home. Apple could be a logical next place to go for it if the F1 and Apple synergies really play out well. So they're kind of like both getting an opportunity to test the waters and potentially eat each other's lunch at some stage.

22:35But I think it's a nice test case for both of them. They're not afraid to give their toes in. But interestingly, it is the Canadian Grand Prix only, which i'm not entirely surprised by um i think that they will still end up selling the u.s rights to an espn or an nbc because those are the races that really rate well and could be a real advertising driver for those collective partners and i think apple apple may decide for year one they want to keep it on their own platforms just to see what they can bring to their own given it is free um but i think in future years you would see them putting it behind a paywall but interesting it's canadian grand prix and it's the miami grand prix that they've done a deal with yahoo on where they'll be streaming practice and qualifying sessions on the platform so they've got a few months under underneath to get underneath their belts before you start seeing these additional layers to it which i think is also a quite a smart move for them how much would you credit this to them pivoting from what they experienced with mls now granted they're different deals right because the mls deal was a global deal whereas we've mentioned this is a strictly domestic deal within the US?

23:39You know, how much of this is direct learnings versus they're actually completely different deals in terms of their structure that it was never going to be that similar? Yeah, that's a good question. I think in short, I think they've learned a lot. And I don't expect someone like Apple to make the same mistakes twice, particularly of that nature. They had already decided with MLS to put that in front of the paywall because they knew that that wasn't working for them either. And the relative value, I'm guessing the relative value of even building a mini subscription business is isn't enough for Apple to move the needle so why not just get more people engaged with the brand by getting as many people onto their platforms as possible so I'm not surprised that they've shifted from that point of view I do wonder whether it was it was actually an active condition that was agreed by Apple and F1 at the time because of the fear of which is the fear I've shared about that lack of visibility meaning that F1's fan growth might start to to die off or fade um but these deals aren't enough to say that's resolved now these are these are one these are two steps they've made i think they need to make another six to seven steps of these types of types of deals to create more visibility otherwise it'll it will be a bit half half half assed or half harder basically with netflix you know one grand on Netflix.

24:58Okay. Great. Yahoo having practice and qualifying. Okay. It'll help. It's a good marketing tool for that event, but it's not going to massively move the needle. Now, if that was every single race and Yahoo do great fantasy sports, they also had F1 fantasy on the platform and they were trying to create a new ecosystem of fans there. Then I'd be like, yeah, we're talking, but at the moment it's still only a bit too top level to like get too excited about it. I think. Well, who knows, Nick, they might hear this podcast and we'll get more news. Well, we're going to be in New York by the time this goes out.

25:29We might be hearing about it firsthand on site in New York. That'd be lovely.

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26:17Well, Nick, the last thing, speaking about travels, you were recently in Germany last week for the Bundesliga, the DFL's sports innovation event, which takes place every other year. I would like to go in the future at some point because I've seen footage of it, Nick, and it looks like not, sorry, it looks unlike any other industry event I can really think of in terms of the fact that they've got live football matches going on in the background, some of the live tech demonstrations. Just looks like a really cool way to spend a couple of days watching football and experiencing some things firsthand.

26:51And so I guess, Nick, maybe just you could potentially talk about sort of the role Sports Road plays with sports innovation. And that's sort of why you guys are you and I believe John and George were out there. And then just maybe some of your key takeaways that you saw from some of the sports technology that the DFL was rolling out at that event or some of the partners that were there. Yeah, absolutely. It is definitely a great event to attend. They have it as basically an invite only event, although they invite a lot of people. So I think it was around 1500 people, I think, was in attendance at the event.

27:20But it is quite German, but also has it broadened out to be much more global and European now than it ever has been. And there are loads of technology on display. They really make a commitment to having an immersive experience, a truly immersive experience. And as someone who's tried to do that before with their events, it's really tough to do. But they've made a massive commitment to it because they want to showcase and they want to showcase basically what they're investing their time and resources on as the Bundesliga. but also what they do with some of their partners so it is a bit of a commercial showcase for them but also it's a great you know they can they can put themselves at the heart of sports innovation and technology they also invest into invest innovation hubs and the like so the portland league is has been we've talked about them loads of times they've really been at the forefront of innovation across sports media broadcasting and one of the reasons they've done so well internationally with their rights is because of their investment into technology and their ability to deliver almost a very end-to-end solution for broadcast partners across the world.

28:22And the reason they're going to do it is a lot of that technology is on display at these events. They show how they bring all that to life and also show what potentially is coming next. So I really enjoyed my experience there. I got pleasure to be on stage a couple of times talking to Charlie Klassen from Sky Deutschland. And I also led on a technology panel. I think the panel's name was What technology is driving? Increasing fandom and new business models was the name of it. And so we now, no surprises to say that my panelists were all very supportive of AI and technology driving loads new revenue to us.

29:02Roman Butch, who's from UEFA, was on there. He was a little bit more pragmatic, but the others were very, very bullish on how it was going to transform all the monetization models and transform the industry. So it was an interesting chat. I enjoyed both experiences, enjoyed speaking to Charlie both on and off stage as well, hearing a bit more about his views on things. We might share some of that content on the pod in coming episodes. But what I got the feel from Charlie was basically Sky, such big partners and investors of things like the Bundesliga, but they need even more than ever to basically maximize the value of that investment and commitment.

29:40they've got something like 560 games out of 620 it's like it's a huge number that's across both the top two tiers of the bundesliga so they're there again their success is tied together very very close to the league and the broadcaster but just they need to get closer to the action they're closer to the athletes to get more access because that is what seems to be resonating with audiences and fans now is that content that comes straight from the athlete's mouth or it gives you something you're not used to seeing is what's really opening and moving the needle so that was interesting just to hear his views on that uh yeah great experience and i would recommend if anyone gets a chance it's every two years that event at least that's what it has been i would i would warmly recommend going and attending that event it is definitely a must see i can add more about the experiences but do you want to ask anything further on that i was i was going to ask if you had a favorite exhibition piece of technology that you saw now it does not have to be media related so i actually helped some of the voting with their their innovation competition and i'll admit i was a bit um biased because some of the stuff is a bit more performance tech where i'm like not really my sweet spot um and i've always thought even with performance tech to really make it good it has to have a media application so someone like you know can you track player movement but then you turn it into consumable like fan data um so i was a little biased on that but i know they had all kinds of tech i think i saw some of the robots playing football and different things like that but was there a piece of technology oh that's really cool where you're like you went out your way to go see and like i said it doesn't have to be media related but it but it might be i don't know yeah yeah i was gonna mention the robots was quite cool watching them having a football match together on this little field they also had this synthetic ice setup which is pretty cool because you know the thought of setting up like temporary ice for rinks basically and like nhl quality rinks is feels like obviously something you wouldn't see very often because it must be very cost obtrusive but they basically were showing off how easy it is to create this synthetic ice experience that they were showing off and testing it is i'm guessing not real ice which was quite cool i saw some camera tech which is some some of the the brought when i was on stage doing the content doing the content i don't know what that means they were they were filming the match lives they have exhibition matches in the background so we're standing there in the arena doing this interview and there's a bit of a stage backdrop behind us but behind that you're sitting in the bleachers looking down there's a game going on behind and i don't know if it's under 18s or under 19s or something and constantly you could hear there's there's loads of different ai cameras being used and there's like drones flying through the air and i don't know if you watch the olympics and heard the drones sometimes on the ski you really hear them at the time they felt like it was like gonna hit me in the head it was like a room flying past my head at like a million miles an hour because they're following the game and the ball and on the action it was a bit a bit of a weird experience but really cool because then when i went inside i could see what the cameras were showing now i don't think you're going to see drones filming football matches anytime soon because of the safety aspects of it.

32:49But I don't think it's actually that far away. If you think what they've done, the Olympics and whatnot, I think it's probably closer to time than you would think. Well, I was going to ask that question because you did mention the drone pledge and how prevalent that was at the Olympics. And I think in the NFL, they call it the spider cam, which I don't think they use enough of where you get just some incredible angles. I love it when they show you the clip from where the quarterback can see. I'm like, I would love to have an option where that's the only angle I see. So I would love to just to see that be more prevalent.

33:19Again, where we talk about, you know, how do you take the same product and then redistribute it in 30 different ways? If you could give me an angle where I could just watch the NFL exclusively from behind the quarterback, where I could see like what he sees, like again, it's the same game, same set of rights. But like, I'm very interested in like, how many different ways can you give me the user get to choose my own camera angle, you know, sort of establish my own broadcast? yeah that would be so cool i think we've seen some technologies popping up recently that that using a volumetric technology which effectively can give you that but not in real time it's basically like using data and different cameras to be able to create those images and those like digital visions of that i guess i remember playing you know madden back in the day in other games where you can change the views of your camera angles for highlights and it's kind of the same principle and actually was interesting for to that point was ea was presenting that it's i missed half of it because i was about to go on stage so i only caught a bit of the action of it but it sounds like they've created basically broadcast technology that does what you've just described and they're actually pitching it to broadcasters to actually sell as a as a product called track ab i think it was called and so using this volumetric technology they'll be able to create like video game like angles for broadcasts and and different experiences and they're trying to sell that to to broadcasters is what i understood it to be so it was really cool because i do think sometimes i want to see more innovation in the broadcast product of sports i think there's reasons why it hasn't as well because they have when they do try things they normally get their hand bitten off by fans so it's a tricky balance but i think there's got to be some of that coming to play and i do think it would change even watching some of the winter olympics and with watching the drone footage and you start to see and get a better feel of like how crazy like steep some of the hills they go down and how fast they are when you get those different angles it changes your perspective on everything and you instantly start appreciating it more and the winter olympics are attributing a lot of their big numbers basically to that innovation how how much you can decide that is determine if is accurate i don't know but i think yeah look i'd say summary is great event would recommend anyone to go to it through that sports pro could be i think the term is we're a strategic partner for that event we basically helped help them come up with the shape of the event some of the marketing and strategy that goes alongside of it and help them put a few different things together along the way so we've helped them out to put that event on but it was a great piece of work by d sports and d live which is basically the city of Dusseldorf's event business by Bundesliga, who's heavily obviously a part of that as well.

36:06And Transform Sports also was one of the strategic partners who are based in Germany, led on the content side of things. So a nice joint approach. And yeah, thrilled we could be part of it and looking forward to hopefully being part of it for the next one. Well, to wrap things up, Nick, going off piece here, didn't give you prep for this, but you'll be ready for it. We mentioned we'll be in New York as this happens. Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to? I mean, I've got my interview session with the EVP of product at ESPN. I'm looking forward to. And I think the reason I'm looking forward to is whenever we talk about ESPN, understandably, because of the amount of zeros and commas, we always talk about the right steals, whereas she's coming from a background having previously worked at YouTube.

36:47And we're going to talk about the product. And obviously, with them launching the new D2C platform, there's some stuff I'm really interested in, like the SC4U, which is SportsCenter for you where Nick you've heard me say a million times if you can get me a custom made highlight package so there's some there's some things I want to dig into that so I'm interested to speak with Aaron because we are going to cover ESPN hopefully in a way we don't usually talk about we usually are talking about the rights deals I think you'll be talking about the product we might bring that interview to the podcast afterwards but I'm looking very much to that session although I'm very much biased well and for those listening let us know if you like hearing those those live event sessions on the on the channel because we can drop them here we can also put them in other places or we get us not do them and keep it all nice and quiet but let us know what you think i'm looking forward to so i'm on stage and picking a couple people off stage as well i've got a session with the global sport group which is the cvc sport the sports division of cvc which is investors into a dozen of the major sports properties you've got la liga league and WTA, Volleyball World.

37:48I think$14 billion is invested at the moment or is the value of their investments, which is quite an extraordinary number. They haven't done a lot of speaking publicly around their sports stuff. So I'm pretty intrigued to speak to Mark Allera, who is the chair of Global Sport Group. And he comes with an incredible background. He was the CTO and chair at BT Group in the UK, as well as EE, has worked at Sega in his previous life. So he's got a gaming background, a telco background. and now a sports media background. And he was part of the journey of launching BT Sport and TNT. That was TNT Sports before.

38:24So I've got a million and one questions for him that I'm hoping he'll answer for me. But I know obviously we announced and talked a little bit about the Equine Network purchase they've made. I think they're also on a bit of a fundraise is what I'm guessing. So lots to dig into there. And I think there's going to be interesting crossroads of that around everything to do with the sports ecosystem. but a big a big part of their thesis appears to be around owning that relationship with fans in you know from video and media channels through to live events experiences if you look at a couple of examples i'm interested to hear a little bit more about yeah their approach to all that so i look loads of good stuff talking to pete dice started to see fox one off stage as well which i'll put together an interview for and to get his views on things i'm not sure what i'll be able to speak to him about but i'm hoping i can at least get a little bit of a sense of what that venue sports experience was like which he was leading on at some stage and also just where he sees the industry going so yeah i'm looking forward to lots of that there's just so much good stuff going on i'm going to be trying to find time to watch and listen and once all amongst all the other responsibilities we have along the way there will be lots of coverage from us on that event uh how we end up dropping it all we'll need to figure it out because it'll be too much for any single episode but uh if also if you're listening and you see us in new york please do say hi you You know, I think the last time I was out in New York, had a few people come up.