Yahoo’s Big Sports Play

0:04Congratulations! You made the Varsity, the podcast. My name is John Arand and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. Ryan Spoon is the president of Yahoo Media Group and he's here today to break some news. You see, Yahoo Sports and C15 Studio are launching the Yahoo Sports Network today. That's an ad-supported streaming TV channel that's going to feature shows like the Ariel Hawane Show, Inside Coverage hosted by Andrew Siciliano, Josh Pate's College Football Show, the Kevin O 'Connor Show, and Network with Rich Kleiman. It's going to be a fast channel available on services like Samsung TV +, Fire TV, Fubo, LG Channels, Prime Video, the Roku channel, all that stuff.

0:51We're going to spend a lot of time talking about why Ryan is launching this now and how the overall market is evolving so that this is the right time for him to do this. But before we get to Ryan, today is Wednesday, August 20th, and here's what I'm watching. Tomorrow is going to be one of the most important days in modern sports media history. Seriously, I'm not kidding. ESPN and Fox are launching their direct-to-consumer services tomorrow. And that means you're going to be able to see ESPN and FS1 programming without needing to subscribe to a cable bundle. Now, this is such a big moment to me because ESPN and Fox were the last two media companies to fully support the cable bundle.

1:41Until tomorrow, you weren't able to watch any of ESPN's college football schedule without a subscription to a cable or satellite service. Same for baseball playoff games that were relegated to FS1. Now, that strategy stood in marked contrast to CBS, which screened most of its sports on Paramount Plus, or to NBC, which put its sports on the Peacock service. Seeing Fox and ESPN embrace direct-to-consumer really highlights the move from linear TV to streaming more than anything else I can think of. Now, importantly, ESPN and Fox still support that bundle. It still provides billions of dollars in revenue to those media companies each month.

2:25The high cost of the ESPN app and Fox Sports 1 should ensure that most bundled subscribers keep their subscriptions. That, plus the fact that most of the bundled subscribers will have access to the ESPN app as part of their overall subscription. But there is an aspect to this week that I find particularly fascinating. You see, Fox and ESPN are bitter rivals. They've spent decades competing with each other for viewers, for advertisers, on-air talent, sports rights, you name it. But in this new streaming world, those two companies are now partners. They've agreed to provide a discount to anyone who buys both streaming services, sort of a streaming bundle.

3:10Look, Fox and ESPN, they still compete. But now they have a common enemy in the new digital guys, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube. It's the enemy of my enemy concept. and how this partnership develops and who else joins that type of bundle with ESPN and Fox is really going to be one of the biggest storylines to watch going forward. Now, let's get to Ryan Spoon. Well, I am excited to have somebody who I've known for a long time on the pod, Ryan Spoon. I got to know when you were just a kid over at ESPN, Ryan, and now you're basically running the business. Very gray. No kid. You know, you're not gray.

3:57It's salt and pepper. It looks good. My first question to you, I just kind of want you to step back because we're going to get into the idea that you're, you know, launching a fast channel, which sounds fascinating. We're going to dive into that. You're investing heavily into college sports, bringing over like people like Josh Pate, Andy Staples, Ross Dellinger, Yahoo Sports Daily. Billy, you're launching as well. Step back and help me out. Before we started to get into everything, what does this all mean? What's sort of the overall strategy that you're employing here from all these different moves?

4:37First of all, thanks for including me and hosting. Yes, it's been well over 10 years. It's probably longer than that. What's the strategy? The strategy starts really simply with comprehensive, smart content for sports fans. And there's lots of ways to attack that. And we try, even if you go all the way back to Yahoo's kind of founding, which is 30 years. That's incredible. It is. What was Yahoo originally? It was showing you the best stuff on the internet each day, each moment. That's kind of still our approach to all our different verticals. And so on the sports side, we have great pride in the quality and in the voices and the talent, sport by sport, and I can talk about that, that we create.

5:38We have really, I think we've done pretty phenomenal work with partners and been forging partnerships that are all very different from someone like Ariel Hawani and an Uncrowned to a OneFootball to a Motorsport. And I can keep going there. And then we have hundreds of different publishers that fill out, that come and work with Yahoo on distribution, monetization, and also fill out personalization. you're a very vocal Orioles fan. We are going to create really good stuff for you as you play the Red Sox. And with the Kooligans and Jake Mintz and Jordan, who do phenomenal work. We have partnerships with MLB to fill that out.

6:31We have fantastic fantasy experience, which improves day by day at this point. But we also then have a whole long list of partners that will help build what we believe is the most comprehensive offering there. And we are really unique in doing that because we just have a different model. And we've always been very open to working with the rest of the Internet. And that's part of our ethos. That's also, as we talk about fast, that's part of that goes both ways. Right. We pull in and we push out as opposed to saying we need to create everything ourselves. or we need to own everything ourselves. And that's what you mean by a different model then.

7:12Like you're willing to take in other publishers and publish it under Yahoo. I think that's a very core part of what we do. And if you think about it from a pyramid, obviously we create on a scale less, but that is the bulk of our consumption. But it's surrounded by tons and tons of, or tonnage that fills out variety and partnerships. And we look at certain verticals and we say, where do we need to be stronger? And so there are verticals like soccer, where we have great writers, but not the scale. And so we work with one football to be the U.S. arm, and they have a ton of scale. We work with The Athletic and The New York Times to build a women's sports hub.

7:59We obviously do great work. They do excellent work, too. together we can create a more robust destination how do we cover motorsport with motorsport because we just don't have the scale to do that ourselves we want to work with leading folks and build something that's really robust there and again we've gone down that vertical by vertical we'll continue and there are other instances where we look at something like MMA and I've known Ariel for as long as I've known you and think he's remarkable and amazing and the voice of MMA, that's a different structure. We launched Uncrowned together and that's filmed out of our office in New York.

8:41But really, that's a partnership with Ariel, right? It's just a different form of a partnership. Then there's sports like college football, where that's another really good example because you have a bunch of things happening to all combine to be something special. Ross Dellinger is the best in the business and amazing. We have our own talent and shows with the college football inquirer. You had Josh Pate last week. That's a really unique example. That's also part of the relationship that we have with on three, which is part of a history and relationship that we have with rivals that they acquired.

9:19All those things combined, Andy, Ross, Josh, on three, create a really robust college experience for our side that we think is unique. And each of those arrangements are created in unique ways. And that's fun. That's great. You don't have the scale, but you're partnering and being so you're so broad. It's almost like everything for everybody. Like if you're interested in sports, there's going to be something on Yahoo that you're going to be interested in. Who would you say you compete with? I don't think about competitors. And I'm being honest. Like we play a different game than ESPN, which is just obviously a different scale.

10:09But we have huge scale. We have on sports 100 million plus uniques a month. It's large. Fantasy is enormous and growing. Yahoo itself on a given month in the U.S. Comscore is the second or third biggest website. And then if you go down property by property, sports is number two. Finance is number one. mail has tens and tens and tens of millions of people every day you have yahoo news is number one at news there's real scale there the most important part that we've spent time with is on sports what do we want to be what's our mission our mission is comprehensive smart sports uh content, make you a smarter sports fan, make you more engaged sports fan, and figure out what we can do in areas that are just different than others, because we're playing a different game.

11:14And so I don't think a lot about competitors, other than one area, which is fantasy, because in fantasy, getting you to play your league on Yahoo versus others matters a great deal. And getting you to play your next league or your next format or your next so forth. I think that is a more directly connected piece. But for everything else, look, I still use parts of ESPN. I use parts of other folks. And I spend a lot of time on Yahoo too. All can coexist. I didn't know I was going to go here, but I got to talk about fantasy. I'm in a league, 26 year of this league with a bunch of high school friends.

11:53And we started off on CBS Sportsline or whatever it was called back then. And to try to get the 10 people in this league to agree on the color of the sky is virtually impossible. So by pure inertia, we're still on CBS. How hard is it to get people to come over to use your fantasy? Because it's impossible to get us off CBS. We're used to it, and that's just what we do. So we think a lot about not necessarily moving you. I think that's hard for a bunch of reasons. There's also other things like history that are there and important. I think about getting you to play your next league on Yahoo or to play a different format or new sports.

12:45So we're seeing growth across every vector. Last year, we redesigned the app in a way that was pretty meaningful and we had to do it one i think it's better and the numbers prove that out but two um it laid out the ability for us now to be doing what we're doing which is merchandise new game formats new ways to play different sports are the folks who are now playing multiple sports as opposed to just football is up 50 year over year like huge numbers um and so getting you more engaged in different game for us we released a new game called daily draw uh around christmas we did that with mr beast um different getting you to play different games and different engagements but yes having you move nine people who've done something for 26 years uh that's probably not the easiest place to start we actually have uh talked about it on occasion you know what the one thing that cbs does it keeps us it is 25 years of records yeah no people don't want to give that up for some reason it's uh it makes me laugh funny anecdote this is our 28th year of fantasy at yahoo uh we found a press release in the original iconography it's it's uh really uh funny and great and um the gentleman who runs fantasy on our side said we're gonna launch 28 different features for our 28th year of fantasy and we kind of thought it was a joke um a month later we have a whole calendar uh today's day 16 every day we've released in august a brand new feature some really big some very just different like today um we released the ability to change your app icon on your home screen of your phone with awesome artists who you'd recognize if any any sports card collector would recognize because these are folks who've been involved in cards and collectibles and tops to going from there to different tooling, different formats, different.

14:53I think the most impactful thing we're going to launch is a new way to view your matchup every week where just every play is coming in what we call fantasy feed. It's highly visual. Every person who plays, which is millions of people, will be commenting on different plays that touch everyone, even if you don't know that person. So we're really pushing the boundaries, both in volume of what we're doing, but also some of the visuals. You said a lot of growth and fantasy outside of football. What are some of the sports that you're seeing the most growth in? NBA has been a really great success over the last year.

15:31I think we have some fun things coming planned for the upcoming season, which take a little bit of homage from what we've done in football, but with some twists specific to basketball. Baseball is doing really well. Hockey is growing. And then we introduced a new game format called Daily Draw, which is every game of the different game every day. So this weekend, it was UFC. And then it goes to MLB. And then it goes to WNBA. It can go to any you can it can apply to any sport, which is a really interesting, compelling twist on instead of season long fantasy, which we all know is great, but takes a lot of effort and work.

16:16This is something you can play at any given day and be engaged in what's the game of the night. That game might be on ESPN, might be on CBS, might be on NBC, might be in Europe somewhere. And so all those are different formats. Ryan, let me take a quick break and come back. And I want to talk about the news of the day and the Fast Channel, which I think for what you've described is fascinating to me.

16:49today on Wednesday you are launching a fast channel um why what tell me the strategy around this is this like another sort of pivot to video type thing but a different kind of pivot to video like what what I want to start with is the concept how did this concept first come up So this is very related to the discussion where we started with on the being really comprehensive on our side and pulling in other partners content. We have the same opinion as to where we need to exist, which is we need to be where all the fans are. And each person, each fan probably has a different definition of where that is.

17:35It could be the mobile app. It could be our website. It could be YouTube. It could be one of 10 different fast environments. So we think it's really important that we are where all the fans choose to make their home. This has also been two years in the making. when I got to the company a little over two years ago I think we had one show that was live and original each week and it was around fantasy which is our kind of bread and butter very good show but that was done a couple hours a week we're now at 60 hours of original live a week and notably and importantly that's not licensing games or live rights that those are our shows and so forth.

18:29So the idea was always that we wanted to build out our offering and our voices and our talent and to do that sport by sport. But we couldn't have done this a year ago. We needed to get to some scale that is meaningful to allow us to create what we're calling the Yahoo Sports Network and have that exist in a meaningful, deep way on Sling, Roku, Samsung, Amazon, etc. So this is not a new idea for us, not a new idea for others, but it's the right moment in time. It's also the right moment in time for us as it's the right ahead of football, which obviously we think we have really robust offerings around a daily show, around NFL, around college, around fantasy.

19:19And our partner content, which is that kind of really kind of premier partner efforts, are part of this. Ariel Hawane is a huge part of this with Uncrowned. Really important and by far the voice of MMA. You have shows like Network with Rich Kleiman and Boardroom. And so we're going to have some pretty compelling, I think, unique content. And this is where you choose to watch it. That's awesome for us. I was a little bit snarky in my question, you know, that would bring up the pivot to video that everybody talked about. But I do have a question, like what video works? What type of video are you looking to produce?

20:04What we've had success with is on our video side, first of all, at the highest level, it is, and I think this rings true when you go sport by sport with us, smart, comprehensive analysis. And so Nate Tice, just a tremendous example of that in NFL. Justin Boone, new to the company, and Matt Harmon, example of that in fantasy. KOC, Kevin O 'Connor for NBA, awesome example of that. The Cespedes brothers for our baseball shows. Awesome example of that. So there is a thematic that's really important to us and a voice. There's multi-format. Some people choose to listen to this via audio. Some people choose to listen to this via video or watch it via video.

20:58So it's not just a pure quote-unquote pivot to video. There is also the ability to cut down into videos and into clips that then tie into what we know about you as a user or a personalized user or a fantasy player, hypothetically. And so I think right now we have a new daily show with Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz, and they go live every morning. It's a week old for a couple hours. Andrew Siciliano, who does our late show is on it right now, breaking down the news from the Cleveland Browns. And, you know, they have a lot of quarterbacks naming Flacco, so on and so forth. That will make its way.

21:42You could watch that live on video. You'll watch that tomorrow, hopefully on Yahoo Sports TV or one of our partners on Fast. You could, but that will also make its way into clips and alerts and our articles and so forth and connect the rest of the engine. So it's not just a just like we say, hey, where you want to consume this is your choice. And we want to make sure we're there to satisfy that. But also how you want to consume this, which could be a lean back experience visually. It could be audio while you're commuting or running or whatever. It could also be alongside our article on Joe Flacco today.

22:23And Caroline, Jason, and Andrew are the three to put a, you know, that three-minute clip resonates there. The fast channel strategy, it always confuses me a little bit. Will I be able to see this channel on Yahoo.com? Or is this going to be exclusively through, like, the app on the connected devices? Both. So as we've launched these partner networks on our site, we've created show pages. So starting today, we have a new video experience, which is YahooSports.TV. It's a really attractive new way to put all of our video together. That hasn't existed for us before. For the same reason that we think now is the right time to launch the channels, it's the same reason to do this as a web destination and make that a really kind of beautiful experience.

23:20points obviously content will traverse from there to other areas of yahoo sports including other areas of yahoo.com but not like that not the main channel though the the channel you can the channel will play on yahoo sports.tv okay you know with a live bug that tells you what's next and upcoming and and the next hour um and again if that's where you choose to consume it lovely amazing If you choose to consume it on your Samsung TV or LG or Sling or Roku or Amazon Fire, we want to be everywhere. I love talking to you, Ryan, because you're so strategic in terms of just the jobs that you've had. But spin this forward, I don't know, three years, five years.

24:07How do you anticipate this growing and how do you see the Yahoo Sports video application? What's it going to turn into? even though it's taken a couple years to get here from a content and a scale perspective it's the early innings for us and I think we have a chance the same way that people come to us every day and there's partner discussions every single day if there's one thing that I really strive to be it's a creative great partner for all sorts of folks and I think we have the opportunity with the video side to keep going vertical by vertical and building out our own voice and developing voices.

24:52And hopefully we measure everything on time spent, growing the eyeballs, growing the time spent. But I think we have the chance to help distribute and share other people's content too, in a way that is not at all different than how we do that on articles and so forth and news and analysis. So I'm excited about what it means from, hey, we went from two hours to 60 hours of our own stuff every week that will continue to grow. But for the same way that we over the last year have launched efforts with boardroom and motorsport and athletic and Helwani and so forth, that's going to continue. And that can take a lot of different forms from web to so forth.

25:41But video is going to be a big component of that. We now have a big destination to play a role there. Ryan, I want to take one more quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you just about the news of the day.

26:01Ryan Spoon ran digital and social at ESPN, left ESPN back in 2020. Here we are five years past that and ESPN is launching a direct consumer app. Five years, I know, especially in digital is a generation. It's a long time ago. But could you ever have, not ever, of course, you could have seen where this was headed. But how difficult was it in your mind that to get ESPN to change its mindset from being, you know, a linear first company in terms of just the people that are working there? I remember talking to you back in the day and you're trying to do social and your boss is kind of, they always wanted to take the broadcast experience and put it on social.

27:01And it's like, no, no, you have to be native to social. You have to be native to digital. Well, now ESPN is entering a world where it's a direct-to-consumer world now. How difficult was that process in those five years in your estimation, just based on when you left? I'm going to guess that, look, the challenge I think is more on the business side and whatever that means or how that works. I think they're there from a, I think from the cultural and the people and Jimmy's fantastic and the best. Um, um, and there's a lot of people there who are just fantastic, uh, and understand and live digital every day.

27:49Um, so I think that is probably pretty natural at this point, very different than it was. Was, was it natural when you left in 2020? Yeah. Um, look, again, there's business pressure and, and, and those parts are, can be natural, unnatural and create tension and so forth. That's true for any business of just when you have to make turns, how you decide when and how to do that with being future driven and also respectful of the current business. But there was a shift somewhere in the that was very different early on. Right. And now I'm like really dating myself. But when I first got to ESPN, even within digital, there was a different mobile team versus web team.

28:42And there was a different, both of those were different than the, including content creation and programming. And that was different than the studio side. That doesn't, that broke down, you know, it wasn't instant, it wasn't easy, but that broke down certainly somewhere well before 20. And at this point now, content's content. And I think the interesting part is going to be for us all to see what the app experience is. And the same approach that I outlined with our strategy for being everywhere to everyone in whatever form and platform you want to choose, obviously we have less complicated decisions to make there.

29:32but that's the root of this is for a subset of users this will be the default usage and for a subset of users this might be a component or a supplement and for some set of users they might be totally fulfilled with what they get today and so figuring out that balance will be tricky and fascinating for us all as business but also as we're all fans and consumers of this stuff. But it's the same approach. They got to be everywhere. When you say content's content, does that mean that there is no like linear TV mindset vis-a-vis social, vis-a-vis digital? I still see them as three different buckets.

30:15Oh, there still is. And there's nuances. There's nuances to every platform, right? Like someone who's expert in YouTube will tell you the different strategies between programming to that versus TikTok. I don't just mean vertical or horizontal. There's other pieces with how you program schedule and lead-ins and how you hold the tune-in and so forth. At the end of the day, there's clearly awareness that voices are able to traverse all these if they welcome it. And I think that's very clearly working at ESPN. It's working for others. It's working for, obviously, we're very different, but talent gets it.

31:07TV gets it. The executives get it. And most importantly, what matters most is the users get it. Like the watch time is there to support all of that. What specifically should we be looking at? are you looking at to determine like whether, not just, I don't want to pick on ESPN because you work there and you still have a lot of friends there. So let's pick on Fox one, which is also launching tomorrow, but what, what is success? Is it, is it down to, to just subscribers or like how, how would you, like, what are you looking for in terms of something that's important that might be flying under the radar?

31:42So for me, it's not, look, who am I to judge subscribers? and I don't know that any of us understand what a good or bad number is. For me, it's, and this is true again of any product. It's using it, playing with it, and answering the why. Does it answer the why do I use this and why should I use this and why should I, that gets more complicated when it's hard enough to say why should I download this. Now they have a huge footprint and it's part of that. That's a huge benefit. But if I want you to play on Yahoo Fantasy I have to answer the why here versus elsewhere, why now versus a different sport.