In short
How sport rights holders and advertisers navigate the creator economy—especially YouTube—amid platform battles for premium ad money, audience fragmentation, and “leakage” of sports IP value (piracy, betting, unofficial fandom). Guests argue for an ecosystem mindset rather than treating each platform as an end point.
Guests (backgrounds)
- Jen Topping: Media veteran; started at BBC, worked at Channel 4 and Xbox interactive TV. Managed Channel4.com, helped launch 4OD (2006), launched social/YouTube channels, and has consulted for 10+ years (e.g., Creative Scotland, Channel 4 Emerging Indie Fund; Booker Prize reimagining).
- Joe Redfern: 20 years managing IP in kids media; involved in launching Peppa Pig. Worked at BBC Children’s, then moved to a startup building kids IP for YouTube/Roblox/gaming. Pivoted into sport using the same fandom/IP principles.
Key claims
- “Leakage” isn’t always purely bad; some can function as brand building if handled strategically.
- Rights holders should “step into” where fans already are (including unofficial spaces) rather than only policing.
- YouTube is essential for younger fans but monetization and premium-ad value are weaker than TV; YouTube also wants to position as “TV.”
- Audience portability between platforms is often overstated; view metrics aren’t comparable across platforms.
Notable examples
- Channel 4’s 4OD: piracy dropped once content became accessible without paid barriers.
- Roblox: takedowns of fan-made anime/My Hero Academia communities led to negative review-bombing of the official game.
- Netflix and Squid Game: unofficial Roblox games reportedly helped drive viewers to the official show.
- YouTube vs Netflix portability: MrBeast Beast Games, Sidemen “Inside,” Pop the Balloon, Amazing Digital Circus (acquisition) used to question portability assumptions.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSetting the Scene for Discussion
0:45 to 1:56
Overview of the challenges and dynamics between traditional media and new platforms.
Introducing Guests Jen Topping and Jo Redfern
1:56 to 2:32
Hosts introduce guests and their backgrounds in media and sports.
“Jen, can you just explain who you are, what you do all day?”
Jen Topping's Background and Insights
2:32 to 5:28
Jen discusses her extensive experience in media, content creation, and consulting.
“So I guess the background is I work, I've always worked in the media.”
Jo Redfern's Experience in Kids Media
5:28 to 8:19
Jo shares her journey in kids media and the transition to the sports sector.
“And having observed how a lot of the kids media, the BBC children's audience was moving to YouTube and into social gaming and Minecraft and then this Roblox platform, decided I needed to go and get involved there.”
Understanding Fandom in Youth Sports
8:19 to 12:39
Discussion on how to engage young audiences and the significance of early fandom.
“So when Two Circles released that report that said fan by 14, and you've got to think about how you instill fandom by 14, I'd argue it's even earlier than that.”
Tribalism in Sports and Young Audiences
12:39 to 14:00
Exploration of tribalism within sports communities and its impact on youth engagement.
The Impact of Tribalism on Sports
14:00 to 15:43
Explore the relationship between tribalism, fan behavior, and content access.
The Economics of Sports IP and Piracy
15:43 to 18:41
Discuss the valuation of sports IP and the implications of piracy on revenue.
Gambling and IP Leakage: Defining Relationships
18:41 to 23:04
Examine the complex relationship between gambling, IP leakage, and audience monetization.
“I think probably, so firstly, a quick question just on the point around gambling.”
Navigating the Sports Business Landscape
23:04 to 27:31
Understand the challenges faced by sports rights holders in adapting to audience demands.
“You know, you're hedging the whole time.”
Show all 27 chapters
Trends in Sports Rights and Distribution
27:31 to 28:00
Analyze current trends in sports rights distribution and their strategic implications.
Exploring YouTube's Role in Sports Media
28:00 to 29:30
The discussion introduces strategic trends in sports media, focusing on the shift towards direct-to-consumer models via platforms like YouTube.
The Power of YouTube for Young Audiences
29:30 to 31:20
The speakers discuss YouTube's dominance as a video platform for younger audiences and its potential for sports rights holders.
Challenges and Opportunities in YouTube Monetization
31:20 to 35:50
The conversation covers the challenges of monetizing content on YouTube while highlighting its vast reach and the need for sports organizations to adapt.
“I mean, it's where they go, which kind of means that you've got to be there if you're trying to reach those audiences.”
Navigating the Complexities of Audience Relationships
35:50 to 40:10
The hosts discuss the importance of owning relationships with audiences across various platforms and the fluidity of fan engagement.
“So I think the answer isn't completely straightforward.”
The Evolving Nature of Content Platforms
40:10 to 42:00
The segment concludes with insights on the changing landscape of content platforms and the necessity for adaptability among creators.
“There's Nebula, which is one that is owned by creators and you can go there for packages of premium content from creators with an ad-free existence.”
The Evolving Landscape of Audience Engagement
42:00 to 44:25
Discussion on adapting to changing platforms and audience behaviors.
“and now they've pivoted and there goes my business.”
Understanding Audience Portability and Metrics
44:25 to 46:46
Exploration of audience behaviors across platforms and the importance of accurate metrics.
“there's nothing worse than someone sitting on a podcast going, well, that didn't work, did it?”
Production Quality and Content Adaptation
46:46 to 49:14
Insights on the importance of production values when adapting content for different platforms.
Challenges of Content Creation in a Saturated Market
49:14 to 54:45
Discussion on the saturation of content on platforms and the need for innovation and quality.
“The game either looks a little bit blocky and lo-fi or the production quality is not what I was brought up on.”
Implications of Changing Content Monetization Models
54:45 to 56:00
Exploration of the impact of monetization strategies on content creation in various platforms.
The Value of Sports Rights and Platforms
56:00 to 58:08
Explore the differences between how platforms value sports content and the monetization strategies involved.
Understanding Audience Experience in Sports
58:08 to 1:02:45
Learn about the nuances of audience engagement across different platforms and the importance of targeted advertising.
“I think that it comes back to the age-old question of audience experience and who you're targeting versus advertisers.”
The Challenge of Creator-Led Leagues
1:02:45 to 1:04:08
Discuss the emergence of creator-led leagues and the potential pitfalls of relying solely on creators for success.
“The value in those archives that can be sweated and poured through and reclipped and recompilated or compiled into whole new ways, means and forms onto all of these platforms is highly lucrative part of the forest.”
Fan-Centric Approaches in Sports
1:04:08 to 1:10:03
Examine the importance of maintaining a genuine relationship with fans in sports marketing and content creation.
The Challenge of Creating New Formats
1:10:03 to 1:11:00
Explore the difficulties in developing new game and sports formats.
Fan-Centric Models and Digital Engagement
1:11:01 to 1:12:08
Learn about the importance of fan engagement in sports and entertainment.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Jen Topping:Hi there, Richard Gillis here and welcome to another episode of Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Today we're looking at that messy, sort of fascinating collision, is that the word, between traditional media and the creator economy and where sport plays in that world. We've got two experts to talk to us. We've got Jo Redfern and Jen Topping. Both are broader than sport and come from a different background and I think are all the better for it. I'd point you if you want more Jen and Joe content, a couple of things I'd recommend. Jen Topping's Business of YouTube Substack newsletter is really good, as is Joe's Kids Media Club podcast.
0:38Jen Topping:Check both of those out. I think there's really interesting stuff here that we get to, which talks not just about sport, which is quite often the, you know, what sport should do in relation to the platforms, but actually the battles being waged between the platforms for premium advertising as they try and sort of convince the advertising markets that they are television effectively for purposes of nicking their ad clients we also reference a really good piece again i'd point you in the direction of a sub stack by the entertainment strategy guy that's his title not somewhere i'm just describing and he wrote a piece called the taylor swift data fallacy which we reference a bit as we get there because we're talking about the issue of portability as in do the audience travel with the creators because again that's one of the underlying assumptions and I think it's useful every now and then I've written this in the newsletter a few times which is to just critique some of the arguments that are performing quite often self-serving arguments by people who are putting forward a point of view and those arguments then get sort of locked into received wisdoms and you hear them being passed around and sometimes it's just interesting fun to question them um if you're a pain in the arse like myself anyway enough of that so welcome and enjoy jen topping and joe redfern so jen let's start hello first of all hello both of you thank you for both for coming on i'm really chuffed because i'm a big fan of both of your stuff you're like interpreters of a world that i sort of know a bit of but you're really deep into it and I really value the stuff that you do.
2:21Jen Topping:So thanks for coming on. Jen, can you just explain who you are, what you do all day? Because this is the same question will come to Jo as well. But just give us, the listener, a sense of what a day looks like.
2:31Jo Redfern:Wrangling my children, getting them to school. No, that's too much detail. So I guess the background is I work, I've always worked in the media. I started as a journalist working for the BBC. And then I was at places like Channel 4, Xbox doing interactive TV. and mainly in that edge between where technology sits and where content and TV is. So it's always just on that edge. So I manage Channel4.com. I helped launch 4OD back in the day in 2006, launched social media channels, launched YouTube channels for Channel 4 and various other organisations. So I've been consulting for over a decade now and in general, my consulting work sort of fits into two buckets.
3:11Jo Redfern:one is either production company businesses creators etc wanting business planning strategic strategic advice in general in a widest possible sense so I work with organizations like Creative Scotland or Channel 4's Emerging Indie Fund helping on that sort of business planning where are you going what's your ambition and then the second half is more about okay how do you crack the internet and so that that sort of fits with brands like I worked at Bino Studios when I was imagining what would the B &O be if it was going to launch today? Well, you probably wouldn't start with the comic, but it would include the comic.
3:44Jo Redfern:So what does that look like? Similarly, I was at the Booker Prize for three years as a consultant there, sort of reimagining what the Booker looks like for a younger, wider global audience, which was a brilliant project to work on. And then increasingly, these two worlds have come together. So it's both the TV side, the film side, the creative side, and the larger media organisations both want to know, okay, in this converged world what are we actually supposed to do and then this is very long isn't
4:10Jen Topping:it so no no it's interesting it sort of stores up questions for later on i've got i've already got
4:16Jo Redfern:a question like i just yeah love the bino a year ago i sort of more than a year ago a year and a couple of months ago basically i just talked so much to production companies and to tv producers and they're going how do you just know all this stuff and i'm like well basically i have a social media addiction and that's really what this is about and I just read a lot and consume a lot of media and they're like well I don't have time for that because of course they don't because they're too busy running production companies and producing work and I realized that there is quite a lot of noise out there from their perspective so I'm specifically talking to producers and so I just thought I want to help them shortcut their knowledge so it's not this is everything that's going on in the media every single you know sparrows fart it's not that it is i think if you are a tv producer running a tv production company and you are looking at our market right now and trying to plan for the next year two years five years this is what i think you need to know and there's also an element of me bringing my background to the table to say well this is everything i've learned in 25 plus years of working in the media just shortcut your knowledge because you don't need to make the same mistakes that i've made yeah just like know this bit and then
5:27Jen Topping:you can speed up and get where you need to be faster right brilliant okay so joe again you've been on you're a veteran of unofficial partner and and you say we've done a couple of things together live events together what's is your is it yeah give us let's answer that your first question first what what the what do you do all day type question well there's similarities with
5:49Jo Redfern:Jen actually which probably explains why I love what she does and who she is but yeah having spent with a slightly different angle but having spent 20 years managing IP and kids media which yeah I was there when Peppa Pig was born I was one of the people that sat around the boardroom table when this little pilot of a pig jumping up and down in a muddy puddle in Wellington's was brought in and the the MD said it's got something hasn't it shall we invest and we all know just yeah it's
6:15Jen Topping:Do you still got a percentage of Peppa Pig?
6:18Jo Redfern:Oh, my goodness, no. If only. If only. So, but really, that is to say that was, looking back in my, you know, older years now with a bit of wisdom, that was really my obsession with the start of what makes IP, whether it's a pig, whether it's PSP, what makes it so compelling that that fandom and fans are galvanised to turn up week after week in the rain or to watch an episode over and over again to insist on only going to bed in peppa pig pajamas i mean really that album has always fascinated me so i spent a long time doing that was at bbc children's looking after cbbs there for a long time and then having observed this shift because i've said it before and i'll say it again i'm sure working in kids media puts you in the future business because they're already the ones that are driving the platform shit.
7:12Jo Redfern:And having observed how a lot of the kids media, the BBC children's audience was moving to YouTube and into social gaming and Minecraft and then this Roblox platform, decided I needed to go and get involved there. But a public service broadcaster like the BBC, very trepidatious, prevented in some cases from activating on those platforms because the charter. So I left there and joined a startup that was basically trying to create the new Peppa Pig, but on YouTube and Roblox and gaming first. So I kind of hopped over to the other side and I've never really gone back. And my pivot into sport, really driven by the same principles, the same curiosity, the same obsession with the alchemy, but how does it need applying to sport?
7:54Jo Redfern:Because I had sport in my life from being a girl. I did gymnastics up to British squad level when I was a teen. My two kids are, my husband's sporting, my two kids are sporting. I can't imagine kids not having sport in their lives as much as the business of sport needs kids and future fans for its sustainability and i kind of spotted that there was a gap there and someone like me might be able to fill that gap and so
8:19Jen Topping:here i am that's what i'm doing the journey i like this the journey to unofficial partner i quite like this like it's a there's a children and ip i mean you all there's a phd in its own right i'm not going to ask that question but we are you know and again i used i was a teacher you know i'm a recovered teacher and it was a sort of every every conversation about education turns into autobiography within a sentence or so so and it's the same of i you know that relationship that we have before we called it ip and whatever it's just it's there's something there isn't it there's something fundamental there in terms of that relationship that devotion all of the things that we want that that bit at the center and then everything else has been everything since mr ben has been a sort of poor imitation basically I think.
9:06Jo Redfern:But you know there are there are developmental stages in kids and I won't go too far into it and I don't profess to be an expert but you're dealing a lot with educational consultants and people like that when you're at BBC Children's. There are developmental stages that stay consistent over time over hundreds of years it's just the the context around it changes so actually those seeds of fandom when you think about and your parents so you know when you start leaving that preschool age and you start pushing out and you get a sense of self very often called the yo-yo age you start going out and you start aligning yourselves with things you start literally badging if it's in the case of sport but also yes wanting to carry the lunch bag or the backpack and wear the pajamas and then you might kind of retreat back into what's familiar.
9:56Jo Redfern:But those are the very seeds of fandom. So when Two Circles released that report that said fan by 14, and you've got to think about how you instill fandom by 14, I'd argue it's even earlier than that. It's kind of 10 or 11, but very difficult to monetize 10 and 11 year olds. I think it's a can rather too easily click down the road by a lot of leagues and rights owners until they become partially or fully monetizable adults. But I think you've missed the boat then yeah yeah I think that's so interesting because that's I mean bearing in mind I only worked in kids only at the Beano so that is my limited kids experience I'll defer to Jo's knowledge but the bits that I took away from that that was so interesting was how you know Beano is targeting what eight to twelve you know seven to eleven that's a pre-high school age and the difference between that demographic and those preschool kids that are buying lunchboxes and duvet covers and backpacks, that group already, it was harder to create merch for that demographic relative to that younger group, the bluey group, the Peppa Pigs.
11:03Jo Redfern:And then from that group as well is how fickle their interests are, how they're already sorting themselves out into different interest groups, whether it's Minecraft on one side or probably right now it would be K-pop for a different group and maybe there's a crossover but it might not be that strong. And then suddenly you end up then getting them ageing up. And then so then my next bit was when I was working at Channel 4 and they had this whole program called Tribes. They still release some of it every so often. It's not as frequent as it used to be. It's absolutely brilliant because you could look, it's basically looking at sub-tribes within a teen, older teen market.
11:40Jo Redfern:So you can almost see there was a gap in my experience that then went from Bino to this sub-tribe group, you know, these sub-tribe groups are sort of 16 plus. and you can see all these different fragmented audiences that then carry forward to adulthood and chopping and changing you know it's it's the goths of old or you know whatever emo doesn't really matter and and i think that's that classic thing for sports organization is is how how do you get to them when they're young especially if it's not necessarily being handed down by parents so maybe a sport that their parents aren't interested in what comes through the playground and then on top of that if frankly a lot of the rights are locked away behind paywalls which you may or may not have access to well you can imagine in a world where kids sort of don't watch sport in that they play it but they don't necessarily watch and engage in it as a as a spectator emotional experience unless there are there are very specific circumstances for that environment to be created and if if i was in the grown-up chair at a league they want to give me a call i'm here but if i was i would be i'd be quite attuned to that that feels yeah that feels that feels that feels existentialist slightly i mean that's probably stating it too strongly but there's
12:56Jen Topping:there's something going on there is definitely and yeah we're sort of dancing around identity aren't we as a as a the central bit of it and whether or not the the sort of it's something which is innate or learnt and there is a question of what we want to present to the world versus what we want i think it's fascinating because if you convert it into the sort of micro of the sports fan experience and everybody you know we're on a whatsapp group this morning where people are talking about the sort of rider cup and the fandom and america tribalism where did it come from why you know is it a trump thing all of these things which i don't agree with as in the trump thing because i think it's always there and it's been there for a long time but it's fascinating it's it's that bit of sort of social science where it meets the sport and then you've got the platforms in the middle where who really know stuff so i think you know everyone else is sort of guessing aren't they it always feels to me it feels a little bit like that it's interesting
13:56Jo Redfern:that when i was reading the chat on the whatsapp group this morning richard about that you know is what happened at the rider cup a reflection of what's happening in the u.s and i i take your point that tribalism's always existed as as has if you call it bad bad sporting behavior yeah really I guess the only point where I think it maybe has been facilitated is just it feels like there's permission to do that now with without much fear of repercussion yeah but in a way that started me thinking about again we look at I know again coming back to young people young people want content they still have the capacity to be fans they still love sport arguably they love it and show their love for it in a different way but if it's if rights are locked away and access is restricted by default then there are things that will happen as in piracy there are people that will facilitate that and they'll do it much like people felt emboldened at best age to you know let their tribalism bubble over even though it's always been there same with young people if you are going to insist if you're a young fan somebody once told me if you're a young fan of rugby to to consume all of the rugby that's available you need six different subscriptions that total you know 67 pounds a month that's only if you like rugby what if you happen to like tennis and something else really when that when all of those rights and that content is locked away then piracy becomes that default behavior yeah let's not demonize young people saying they don't
15:38Jen Topping:want to pay for anything right i'm going to use this joe this is the perfect and we're nearly we're 15 minutes in and i'm going to ask my first question oh i knew this was going to happen but and it's not the first question i thought of it's a question that has just appeared to me so you mentioned two circles i've just come off a call with sam sadie chief executive of live score betting sport and betting they've done a deal with x so musk and you know to to get sentiment in in around betting so this is just all context for this question two circles had a data point i was at their summit last week or the week before and the data point was the value and we talked about the value of ip sports ip and you can total it up and you get to you know tens of billions hundreds of billions and now the question is leakage which you touched on there and they've put a data point on it saying and you know their big their clients are the big rights holders you know the fifas uefas champions premier leagues wimbledons no you name them they you know they're on their list now one of the questions was for every dollar that sports ip the official rights holder captures another 95 cents leaks okay so you it's sort of nearly one-to-one and the leaks are exactly as you say there is piracy being a big one betting the reason i mentioned it is another one and by leakage they're talking about money that is being made from the ip but not from the ip rights holder now and gareth balch on this podcast will put this out two circles is line is that that's a bad thing they want to reduce that number to zero i.e capture all of the the value that's out there sam sadie coming from a betting company says the number should be far far higher and it's his job to drive that number higher because you can then you're you're almost working as a marketing arm for the premier league if you then take fantasy premier league blow it up into this enormous thing into much more of a market an audience for it so that's i think what we a lot of what i hear you two talking about is really interesting on that question in terms of where and how rights holders can step into these audience where to what extent are they generating the audience themselves to what extent are they leaning into creators or third parties on youtube or whatever to generate interest in their thing in which case they gotta let it go monetizing the audience let's put the monetizing question to to one side for a minute and we'll come back to it because it's a business podcast but just i'm Just floating that as an idea.
18:34Jen Topping:What do we think about that relationship between official IP and what two circles are defining as unofficial IP? And here we are on the unofficial podcast. I didn't do that on purpose.
18:46Jo Redfern:Jen, have you got thoughts? I have thoughts, but I don't want to. I think probably, so firstly, a quick question just on the point around gambling. Can you just clarify exactly how they're defining that? Are they just defining leakage as being any gambling that they'd get no value back from? Or is there something more specific in that?
19:05Jen Topping:Premier League match, Spurs versus Arsenal on a Sunday. The IP, the monetisable IP would be things like Sky has paid for the rights, sponsorship, etc. Merchandise, tickets, all of that stuff is captured. Betting, there are millions and millions of people betting on it, which the money doesn't go to the official rights holder. it goes to flutter or to and yeah okay it's a peculiar relationship betting because obviously there is a sort of tax that they take on that via sponsorship and official partnership yeah increasingly there's any official data feed that they pay so there are ways of capturing some of it at some point and some bits of the world but i think just beyond the technicalities of it it's actually quite an interesting question as to what the relationship is or should be because there's a sort of control versus chaos question yes and i think that's probably why i'm
20:02Jo Redfern:asking is because to me i would view the question around piracy slightly differently from so the definition of leakage i'm not sure it's a bucket some of it i think is healthy leakage and some is unhealthy leakage and that just sounds really biological yeah but my issue is this one thing i I think the issue of piracy, I'm not in favour of piracy. I don't go, yay, piracy. But at the same time, you know, Joe and I spoke previously about this. When back in the day, when I was at Channel 4 and we had, we launched 4OD, but it was a subscription service. You had to buy an episode. It wasn't a free streaming platform.
20:38Jo Redfern:And what you saw in all the streaming, you know, the LimeWires and all of these BitTorrent sites is every day, because I had alerts set up, it would just be a flood of all of the programs that were on Channel 4 yesterday. that were made available. And it would be things like, how clean is your house? How to look good naked? Yesterday's episode of Countdown. I mean, really? But seemingly, yes. There was quite a sizable demand for that type of content. Once 4OD became available to watch with no subscription and no paid barrier in front of it, all of those BitTorrents just dropped down to a tiny trickle to being just a handful of titles that were desirable enough for someone to bother to do that behaviour.
21:20Jo Redfern:So there's a thing around if you create barriers, then people will want to get around them and because of the internet and how it functions and that's just going to be a necessary part, natural part of the internet. I'm going to park gambling for a second because I think that's different. The bit that I think is always interesting to me is what you count as leakage and what you count as brand building and what you count as audience delighting. And audience delighting, that's a terrible phrase, But being where your audience is, I think that all of these rights owners, IP owners, instead of looking at their core central proposition, which is how do I make money out of my assets, this is how I monetize them.
22:01Jo Redfern:And then everything else is either marketing or is like P &L type activity, distribution type activity that can be individually monetized. And then often has like, oh, we're on TikTok. Well, I might have a little P &L around that TikTok activity. or that becomes marketing and then it's again treated slightly differently that's not how your audience sees it so being in places leakage you may define it as you actually have a huge power to control that within that environment if you create content experiences interactions anything and it can be delights your audience and really powerful and so my question then is instead of looking at it as leakage is step into these places that's where i'm pausing gambling because i have a feeling there might be very complex regulatory issues let's say gambling as as an idea rather
22:51Jen Topping:than it be you know you're right it gets to a legal tedious legal conversation quite quickly
22:56Jo Redfern:yeah but i think if you're treating it for many fans in these spaces they they don't see i'm not being marketed to here and then i am going to go along the you know user experience and buy a ticket or buy a piece of merchandise or take out a subscription that might be their sole interaction with that brand, that club, that emotional connection that might repay you in bucket loads. So rather than individually seeing core revenue stream, marketing, individual little activities over here that create additional revenues back or marketing back to the core, is actually to adopt this multi-platform mindset where you see where all your fans are and you appreciate that you've got a whole host of activities going around that may not immediately bring you money back, but are actually, you know, like they're hedges.
23:46Jo Redfern:You know, you're hedging the whole time. Where are these audiences going? That's kind of an anathema in sport. Certainly in my observation, I've been focusing on sport for a little over 12 months. And there is much more of an approach in sport to needing to control and own those transaction opportunities. And to some extent, harking back to my old world of managing kids IP, there's been an acknowledgement that actually you do kind of want to let that leakage happen. Back to Peppa Pig again. Peppa Pig was one of the most pirated kids shows on YouTube, but it would not, and it was being pirated prolifically from relatively early on, but it got to such a scale, it was supporting the rest of Hasbro's business.
24:35Jo Redfern:You know, it's a$4 billion IP. I mean, and a more recent example is on Roblox. Anime is huge on Roblox. And anime, you might call it copyright infringement. You might just call it fandom. But a lot of anime characters and IP pop up in different games and guises on Roblox. My Hero Academia, big, big anime IP. Sony, who owned Crunchyroll, the anime streamer, decided they wanted to do a My Hero Academia game on Roblox. So instead of approaching all of those that had borrowed from the IP, but the fans that had built a big community, and yes, they were monetizing, but built big communities there, instead of actually maybe going and talking to them about making the relationship official, they basically sent out takedown notices and shut down these games that had communities in that had been in it for years and they'd really built up their characters and their story and then it got taken offline guess what happened to the official my hero academia game when it launched like within 24 hours they all basically negative review bombed it gave it down votes killed it killed it stone dead that's the power of fandom so in a way you think about what is leakage or what's unofficial or things that you can't control and monetize there is still a value to them but you've just got to reframe them because in a way same with squid game netflix own squid game there are two or three hundred rip-off squid game games on robots but netflix let them continue because it pushes viewers to squid game yeah yeah yeah we even said that that's the case and also i don't want to misrepresent
26:20Jen Topping:you know gareth portz because i think his his line is you you have to know the number you don't have to map the world you know they're data people they they want to map the world they want to know what it is that is leaking yeah you may or may not be able to do it much about it it may actually be a you know as you say a good thing it's quite i mean it's i think it's a careful
26:39Jo Redfern:dance isn't it you know like if you look if you think of something like not to keep going back to 4od because it makes me sound ancient because it was rebredged about 10 years ago but but that's I mean, yeah, but it's on something like 20-something platforms, you know, so you're everywhere where you can imagine these people are going to be. Well, that runs a little counter to IP rights holding for sports, doesn't it? Because you are, you know, that's what these new deals that have been done where rights have been signed with, you know, like for the Bundesliga or whatever with traditional broadcaster cable subscription or whatever.
27:13Jo Redfern:and then these handful of deals that have gone to video podcasts or to a YouTuber or whatever, it's the beginning of that. But actually there is something inherent in the business model that makes that challenging, whereas you want to be everywhere where your fans are except your entire business model is not based on that. It's based on being with someone. So there is, I can imagine if I, again, sitting in those hot seats and making these decisions, that's an incredibly challenging space to be in to preserve your existing revenue while also seeing that the world because of convergence and fragmentation around you is changing slash has changed that you are caught in a space and so these evolutionary steps that you need to make to be where your fans are and to be where these audiences are while also not you know just throwing it all out in the air and saying oh goodness what are we going to do it isn't as it isn't
28:04Jen Topping:straightforward let's put it that way and okay i'm gonna just sort of throw in a couple of questions which so you can imagine so we've been going five or six years i've been following the sports business for you know much longer than that for my sins and one of the i sounded really resigned
28:21Jo Redfern:i didn't i'm really enjoying it i'm still here you need help let me out of this box there's a
28:29Jen Topping:there's a question so my point being you can see sort of strategic fashions come and go let's put that way and the sort of build a walled garden go direct to consumer if you know this this conversation always ends with the premier league and prem flicks taking out the intermediaries who are paying them billions and billions and go direct to consumer that's the sort of almost the cliche end point but every sports governing body and rights holder is looking at this question where in you know it could be a geographical thing or it could be just different products that they got under the same bonnet whatever it is you know the story and there is a been a sort of no you need to own your own data you don't you know i'm a spurs fan and the cliche was you know i could go into the stadium and they don't know who i am so you don't know who your fans are you've devolved that for money that's fine you've made a fortune out of that and now that's not going to work anymore so i'm just going to throw some youtube related questions out to you too because you're the experts and i'm i'm you know what they what they are but some of them are okay what where is that argument now what is it that what happens what's the difference so between the platforms why youtube and why not the others that's another question but might be something else there's the sort of are is the audience real which would get to the you know the dead internet and all of that but just take me into where you think because i i buy the youtube thing people i mean i sometimes i write in the newsletter and talk about on podcasts i just question that that there's a cross linkedin for example is there's a wealth of people selling youtube as a as the answer to all ills and the journalist in me just has to counter you know against that so one of the questions well what is the critique of the youtube position if i'm if i'm a rights holder and it will be different for if you're top table and mid mid squeeze middle and all those things but give me a sense of how you would critique your own arguments does that sound interesting right
30:38Jo Redfern:let's let's go who wants to go first i'll jump in with youtube because i guess i am one of those evangelists although i am quite pragmatic about the challenges of of monetizing on youtube but let's start with the positives youtube for me so again you we think i always come at it from the lens of the younger fan that that's the audience i know best and i've spent all of my career working for them youtube is their very first port of call for video and it's their search engine too so they'll go there when they want to know how to boil an egg tie a school tie or is Mark Goldbridge doing an old commentary on Bundesliga this Friday?
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31:23Jo Redfern:I mean, it's where they go, which kind of means that you've got to be there if you're trying to reach those audiences. So how do you show up there? Well, it will not be a replacement for media rights. It's not like for like. Monetization there is hard, as you know, although the tools are getting better. But interestingly, YouTube, I mean, YouTube makes$35 billion annually on ad revenues. I've heard it's successful. Yeah, they're pretty good at it. Anything outside of ad revenues, there's not really a motivation for them to improve them. But they're beginning to feel the pressure from creators.
32:00Jo Redfern:And if they do want the NFLs and the Premier Leagues to embrace it more significantly, they do have to improve their creator tools. And in this sense, creators is equally a Premier League team as it is Mark Goldbridge. So they are working on it. But when you've got$35 billion just coming in from ads, there's no real urgency. But that said, what it also allows, which I think is a positive, is you've got 110 million YouTube channels. Jen mentioned niche earlier. You know, my 16-year-old, he doesn't hear a commentary on BBC and chime with that commentator. They don't speak his language. They don't talk like he does.
32:43Jo Redfern:Yet Mark Goldbridge or Manny or SV2 might do. Now, you've got the ability as someone like the Premier League there to maybe have four or five different creators creating content around your product, whether it's an alt commentary or some shoulder content. but they will create it they you've got the ability to have lots of different terms of voices different languages different ways and styles that's going to supersize your ability to reach and resonate with younger audiences so surely that's a positive yeah absolutely i can see that again yeah so what where to start it depends on how you view youtube so there's one bit which is exactly what joe's talked about so i won't duplicate there that ability to reach new audiences, that ability to be part of something, especially for younger audiences or specific niches and demographics.
33:34Jo Redfern:I think there's just a little thing around YouTube. So although we know that in the UK anyway, I think it's like 87 % of viewing on YouTube on the television, crucial dimension, is from like 25 % of the audience. And that's also a really young demographic. So you've got a young demographic of very heavy users. So we've just got to be really careful when we consider what what do we mean by YouTube and the assumption that it's everyone is equally on these platforms which I don't think is true but I do really echo what Joe said about you know being young people in their first port of call if you look at it from others if there's so many other people in the mix if you look at it from an advertising perspective yes that's a big chunk of change you've just described but actually YouTube is desperately trying to position itself as television because it wants more of the premium advertising money which is much more lucrative with the broadcasters have that the streamers are now getting into.
34:28Jo Redfern:You know, you look at Amazon's play around advertising. They flipped all of their subscription base into their ad tier. They didn't ask people to opt in. They just dumped them all into that tier purely so that they can try and scoop up as much of the global premium, which YouTube isn't, I'm afraid, the premium ad market money, which is competing with Netflix and competing with all the broadcasters. that's why Channel 4, Sky and ITV came together to create this new premium video ad marketplace, basically to try and cross sell across broadcast and across video on demand to say we are the premium players with television or audio visual content that's premium in nature, to put it separately to YouTube, which is yes, does have premium content on there.
35:14Jo Redfern:It's also got high quality creators. But equally, YouTube itself says 30 % of logged in viewing on the platform is live streaming now what is that live streaming is that people chatting is it this is it people shooting the breeze or is it live sports or live news channels well again with youtube it's a mix of everything so i think when you look at it stuff too yeah and i think that's where you start to see as much as youtube is a compelling space to be in it's like two things can be true at once it is as the world is here on youtube what an amazing platform what an amazing set of tools and monetization and community at the same time it you know it's it's return on how much you get from advertising on that platform is significantly lower than you would get on tv it's also if you're an advertiser well the audience is massively fragmented so it's hard to pull people together in the same way as you can do in other media types because all the eyeballs are on lots and lots of different channels rather than like everyone's watching great british bake-off or whatever it happens to be that you can reach via a coherent advertising campaign.
36:17Jo Redfern:So I think the answer isn't completely straightforward. The other bit that I would add in is that there's so many battles. This has marked my interest. There's so many battles going on all around us that we're not quite sure of. So I've mentioned one, which is advertising. That's raging. That's why YouTube says we're TV is because they're trying to take that premium split. Then you've got battles around you know cloud computing and amazon web services and who's going to distribute this content because amazon like 75 something like that 60 to 75 of amazon's profits come from amazon web services which is the cdn and the content distribution off guess what most of the video on demand platforms excluding you know youtube and netflix who have their own distribution platforms so there's this battle raging there then you've got all these other battles which is spotify and netflix and YouTube battling it out on, you know, games and podcasts and as well as eyeballs and content.
37:14Jo Redfern:So there's a whole host of stuff going on underneath the surface where I'm, I think on an individual organisational level, I think everyone, producers especially, should be on YouTube because otherwise it's the world's audiovisual storytelling platform. your audiovisual storytellers sports is an audiovisual experience you sort of have to be there because that's what it is equally you're basically in a way giving the platform that would like to take your entire lunch money you're giving them your your lunch so that's that's the challenge I think it's a really it's a really good point that you make because what I think is on occasion we tend to think we talk about direct to consumer but then you talk about for premflix but direct to consumer is youtube it's spotify i mean it's more about direct to your fan owning the relationship with the audience because if we're going to say d to c has to be owning the pipes then we might as well all go home like jen said amazon owns a ton of the pipes so do youtube and netflix has got their own but really there are a few people who control the pipes.
38:30Jo Redfern:So if we start thinking about it as owning the relationship with the audience and acknowledging that one of those or a few of those relationships will be on other people through other people's pipes, but we're going to be okay with that. We're going to be quite sanguine because actually we're thinking about this in terms of our IP. We're thinking about ecosystems. And the other thing is we tend to think in terms of each pipe or each platform as being an end point. And we reach them there and we figure out how we advertise to them or we monetize them there. But if we ever think about them as end points, we take away those bridges that we're trying to build between platforms.
39:10Jo Redfern:If we're talking about fandom and IP fandom, it's okay to have some Premier League fans that are only going to be on YouTube. And yes, they'll be quite difficult to monetize there, but there might be voracious fans. They might be sharing and creating content, spinning that flywheel of fandom. You might have a smaller number of more lucrative fans on PremFlix. But you know what? I think if we can get comfortable with knowing that that's fine and actually we can have a little bit of fluidity between those two, but getting comfortable with these different strata of fans, different types of fan, we tend to, I mean, I'm railing against funnels at the moment.
39:47Jo Redfern:You might have seen online on LinkedIn. because that encourages just thinking that there's only one direction of travel and you've got to try and stop everybody down that funnel and actually what if we said do you know what no it's fine we're not going to think in terms of funnels anymore we are going to think in terms of those ecosystems and to Jen mentioned it earlier you can have a mini funnel for your YouTube fans have a mini funnel or a plan or a strategy for them over on Netflix and then in gaming and on mobile and on the website but actually if you think about it as more of owning your relationship with your audience wherever they may be and optimizing that experience there then that starts to relieve the pressure it's had it's have revenue on on an algorithm driven platform like youtube and you can i add one yes sorry go on yeah i was just going to add one thing in it's also not everything's forever like it's a lot of this is about trying you know this is a completely fluid world we're working in now where things are chopping and changing what's true yesterday is not going to be true tomorrow and and so you try it out so if i just could go back to youtube youtube channel 4 signed its first deal with youtube in 2009 and put its entire archive catch up everything onto youtube in 2010 to 2014 then for whatever reason one assumes financial they decided to focus on their own platforms and they took all that content down and now they've decided to put it back onto the platform and who knows maybe it will come off the platform again in the future but but this is happening all the time so so if you look at creators for example some of the biggest creators who made their fame and fortune on youtube are now launching their own platforms so you've got dude perfect have their own streaming platform which is a subscription service their whole cell is you know child friendly family friendly content so you can pay them monthly and you you know you're not going to run the risk of anything dodgy within the platform but there's tons of them there's Sidemen have one, Dropout have one.
41:40Jo Redfern:There's Nebula, which is one that is owned by creators and you can go there for packages of premium content from creators with an ad-free existence. And that's about owning, you know, being less dependent on YouTube and less dependent on that ecosystem in case, because, you know, tech companies, heaven forfend, they pivot. So you may go, oh, goodness, I've invested everything into YouTube and now they've pivoted and there goes my business. Yeah. So this is a moving, shaping, changeable feast, and you don't have to say, oh, goodness, we have to be on TikTok from now until the end of time. It's actually you go into this and you test, you learn, you duck, you dive, you try things out, and then you may hit some rich scene.
42:24Jo Redfern:But you're staying close to the numbers, staying close to what your audience is saying, staying close to change, and really being engaged rather than, frankly, signing a deal and then walking away. well that deals now signs we don't need to think about that for the next three years four years or whatever it is if this is a heavily engaged and monitoring learning curious picking up rocks what's here tight roll i've got rather than that sit back i've got a question that which builds on both of
42:49Jen Topping:those things which is about i think it's about audience portability but you know and you'll have you pointed it to me actually jen the taylor swift data fallacy which was the sort of entertainment guy it's a genius it's really interesting and so and one of the things that came out of it is so mr beast's beast games on amazon 100 million pound dollar budget question about the audiences didn't deliver massive audiences in the way that it was expected sidemen's in inside series 73 million views on youtube series one down to 2.4 so that's three percent views on netflix in series too so from one platform to the other he's lost they've lost 97 i don't know pop the balloon live 21 million on youtube 8.7 on netflix which again sounds quite good to me the amazing digital circus 896 million youtube views versus 16 on netflix so the question is is that about portability about friction between platforms is that about the audience on youtube doesn't exist in the way that we think it does it's a bot audience and or something else what's what's your read what was
43:56Jo Redfern:your reading of that my take on it was each each case is different i think what my argument for
44:02Jen Topping:all of this really can't we do away with nuance and just that's all i ever do can we just say one thing that works for everything and then you know no that's the point that's particular
44:15Jo Redfern:Yeah, exactly.
44:16Jen Topping:A little bit of an easy, I'm bloody new on.
44:17Jo Redfern:Yeah, exactly. And I think that's my problem is with all of this, it's also knowing the people involved, having been there and done this myself, there's nothing worse than someone sitting on a podcast going, well, that didn't work, did it? And it's like, thanks, I worked really hard on that. So I'm never going to dump on any of the people involved because I know that they've worked hard on it. But it's actually about an assumption. I want to be liked. No, it's about the assumption. Really, that's why I wrote that piece about this data. partly inspired by entertainment strategy guy who's basically saying we're all in this hype bubble we're hyping stuff all the time and pr and puffering going oh it's so exciting i'm in a brave new world oh actually when you look at the numbers you go really um and that and it's just about holding ourselves to account on what data's out there and i think this is where there's several things missing i think the glory days of being able to have a reliable set of data you know whether it's box office for the cinema or barb figures or nielsen in the states for television where you at least had a sort of a standard format that you could all you could compare like with like you're all within the same category even in what we've just run through of youtube performance to netflix youtube doesn't even define a view in the same way that netflix defines of you or anyone else defines of you so it's all like apples and oranges the whole time on top of that for some of those examples yes some of the their subscribers some of those views those people won't even be alive anymore because they've been the content was made sadly the content was made so long ago also then their accounts might be dead they might have moved on to other they've got other interests they've taken up knitting you know whatever so so it's an apples and orange comparison but a classic thing that tv and i think streamers do the same as going you've got a big audience online if i put your content onto my platform over here they will follow you that is the assumption that you can't rely on.
46:05Jo Redfern:They may, they may, but beyond the ones that I just mentioned in that piece where I talked about and the ones that we've just run through, I've heard anecdotally from broadcasters and commissioners going back 10 years where you're just in conversation and then you ask about a show where a creator or an influencer has featured, more often than not, they'll just interestingly say, yeah, the audience, we didn't see an uptick. And so I would just caution against assuming that it will work to the linear broadcast or to the video-on-demand broadcast, the streaming broadcast. It may give you noise in another way, which may not directly influence, I'm afraid, you know, that be comparable.
46:42Jo Redfern:Yeah. But you may see an audience impact somewhere else and that's why the one around Mr Beast, I think the issue with the Mr Beast show is, and again, I'm using Entertainment Strategy Guy's data and the piece that he wrote about it rather than my own research, so I will pay tribute to him. the the this i think the issue there was just the budget size the budget size was so massive that actually if it was a cheaper show if you look at sidemen this inside that clearly does not have a hundred million dollar budget they have made a sidemen-esque feeling show for netflix rather than a netflix-esque feeling show featuring the sidemen and so therefore the audience didn't necessarily shift in any great number but actually do you know as experimentation and i think that was worth doing same with pop the balloon because that had a live element which wasn't in the other one and the only other thing i would mention is amazing digital circus was an acquisition and so that means that netflix didn't pay for its creation they just bought it at a bargain basement price one would assume and i think while that is really compelling from a netflix perspective i would be worried from a creative production company perspective because it means that all the risk the relationship between producers and broadcast is around risk the broadcaster shares shoulders the risk yeah and now it's saying actually do you know what creators production companies you go shoulder the risk and if it works we'll lift it off your hands for a bargain placement price has been quite canny in doing that they did the same with miss rachel miss rachel one of the biggest preschool creators on youtube huge following and then when she reaches a scale then oh hey do you want to come over onto netflix again it pushes all of the risk all of the test and learn go and make your mistakes over there and when you've perfected it and you've grown your audience then then we're interested yeah that it so that netflix are particularly that that does seem to be their approach back to mr beast there's a couple of points to talk about you don't just lift and shift something on youtube and move it across to a streamer you made that point it's it's a different consumption habit it's a different need state entirely mr b very often consumed on a phone you might be walking to school you do each video in two or three bits because he's crashing a train into a ravine or he's giving away$2 million.
48:56Jo Redfern:But sitting down in front of the TV with Amazon Prime on, it's a different thing altogether. You may be on the sofa, you might have your tea on your lap. I mean, it's completely different. So you don't just change the aspect ratio and plunk it on and think it's going to work. The other thing is the value again. You can't just say it's not reaching TV numbers. it's like you know because those metrics are have been very useful to jen's point but they're existing kind of older fashion metrics it's like driving a car but only looking in the rear view mirror you can't always just judge everything with what's gone before so beast games on amazon yeah i mean i even think part of the shtick was the hundred million dollar price tag because that's what mr beast is about i spent four million dollars on this video i gave away two million quid to people who stood in a circle for 24 hours you know so him saying he put 50 million dollars of that budget in himself and it you know it's part of the shtick how important is is production
49:55Jen Topping:values now in terms of just the in that crossover because again this has an application to sport because people quite often come on and say well in their heads there's the sort of olympic presentation of sport which is top top of the shop in terms of cost premier league football on sky is as good as you know that set the standard of it and everyone then traditionally is looking up to that and can't afford it and whatever and then making compromises but now it seems to me i don't know there's an intangible in production quality i think which is quite an interesting question in terms of the what it looks like and feels like on youtube and whether or not i mean it might talk to your premium advertising battle question i think it does and i think but i
50:38Jo Redfern:think quality used to be dictated by the producer or the broadcaster now we have it flipped quality is very much much dictate beauty is in the eye of the beholder quality is in the eye of the beholder because you've got kids watching stuff on youtube or you've got them playing games on roblox and you might have seen it or heard it yourself and you you know a grown-up comes in and goes what's what the heck is that? The game either looks a little bit blocky and lo-fi or the production quality is not what I was brought up on. Doesn't mean to say that they're enjoying it any less, or the level of fandom isn't as voracious.
51:19Jo Redfern:Just this last Saturday, a game on Roblox, which if you were to look at it, you'd think it was relatively kind of, you know, 16-bit gaming console from 25 years ago, managed to corral 25 million people in the game at the same time that's levels of viewership reserved for world cup finals i don't even think you're a vision final you know so but that's 25 million users concurrently in one game all there to steal a brain rot i mean so so this just plays into that yes where there's advertising concern is concerned you want to advertise against premium but then when you think about who your audience is and who you're trying to reach, you might have different levels of quality and production levels.
52:07Jo Redfern:And again, one size doesn't fit all. So that's another thing where we've got more nuance now. You can't just produce ones and feed it out to different platforms. You're going to have to have a different content creation strategy for each one. I think there's something in, I spend a lot of time on YouTube, especially around factual creators and looking a lot of factual creators. there is a sameness and a dare I say copycat thing going on especially around challenge especially around you know stunts that it is becoming incredibly samey and there's various reasons for that one is well who's the most successful let's copy him there's another around it's easier to do because it's a formula frankly television I mean we can go back to it's a knockout it's been a staple of television so there's an element of replicating stuff that's very successful so I think that that there will be as we're in a sort of a bubble of interest right now with a specific type of type of audience for that type of content now that may last for a while because there's a lot of people in terms of that demographic who want to watch that type of content but I think if you wanted to reach a slightly different audience older and older by that I mean like 25 and above I don't mean you know even 40 and above I mean actually just slightly outside of the kids or teens youth market then i think there is going to be that will get tiresome and i think that there will be a look for more sophisticated better class of storytelling on top of that when you imagine how much ai slop is not just on the platform already platforms it's not just a youtube problem it's everywhere we are going to just be like this with the volume of ai derivative i have no way to describe it apart from garbage and i think that creates a specific space for professional produced content including from sports brands including including including with authenticity with quality storytelling that is reliable and trustworthy that's not going to suddenly have like some random bit of nazism or something going on in the middle of it which can happen in the creator economy coming back to your questions about regulation and whatnot but that that i think that is going to be an opportunity And the only other thing that works against that is the fact that the economics of how you make money on these platforms encourages people into the samey samey, whether it's AI driven stuff or we're going to do challenge stuff or whatever it's going to be.
54:31Jo Redfern:And so the challenge is going to be for everyone is how do you how can we try and make higher quality content that meets all of the audience expectations outside of the ones who really like that stuff? because otherwise I you know there was some little interesting nugget from one of the data points in America last month which saw YouTube not continuing its upward growth it just slightly tailed down in terms of TV usage in the states yeah it's just as it's a tiny little data point you're not going to read a lot into it but it's not like that you know so it's it's the platform itself needs to get more needs to needs to more people who are producing higher quality content to targeting specific types of demographics should be on this platform and i think that's but it's about business model as well as about a whole host of other things going on there too what do you think the
55:22Jen Topping:the sort of implication i look at netflix for example actually let's start with spotify we had a conversation we had a meeting with spotify and we were talking about you know they want to turn everything into video they want to turn this you know our podcast into video podcast because because that's how they money you know it's easier for them to monetize and all of that which i get you know i understand it and then you've got netflix so when everyone is trying to be youtube what i want the risk for netflix is to be try because they're now saying like okay let's have keep it local some podcasts you know that that podcast model of a superstar you know the good hang or official partners and partners on netflix sort of becomes a just a format in and of itself which netflix is it sort of looks like it's interested i sometimes wonder whether that's the world that they should go into again back to your i think your premium advertising race i know it's not all of it but it's it feels like a sort of answer look into their soul a bit in terms of what they're trying to do because ai when everything is sort of efficient and everything is is sort of flattened by a brand is will become disproportionately more important i guess and that's always an argument that is put forward for sport you know that it has a brand it has an audience and i just want to finish off there was a question again it's one that i've been peter hutton who jen just for your but joe knows him so he was a he's he was sport he was sports guy at meta he's a he's a very experienced tv rights guy then spent a period of time at meta he came he's been on podcast you know multiple times but the last time he came on we were talking about cricket but the point of this is that he was saying that it was interesting what sport looked like when it came through meta because they didn't need to sign a big check for rights because it didn't actually do much and it's an engineering company was his phrase and all they care about is the business model and if it works you know you put the IPL up against a cat video they don't care what the what the thing is they care about what the impact is and and what happens and so the argument sports argument for getting rights fees out of you know meta which is a conversation is almost died away but it sort of wasn't there they didn't have a a concrete argument to get their high quality stuff on there but the question i've still got i can't quite work out is what's the difference between that and youtube and is it is it in the minutiae of how they the data they share or you know why put your stuff on youtube but not on meta was my question and it gets back to the sort of power of the arguments being put forward for youtube but i can't quite work out what the difference is between the platforms because i don't know enough to to get to that answer but i wonder what's the if i'm putting the premier league on meta facebook insta whatever they do a deal compared to putting it on youtube am i making more money i'm assuming and making more money on YouTube or getting more customer data or they're sharing more or they're nicer people.
58:29Jen Topping:I have no idea.
58:31Jo Redfern:I think that it comes back to the age-old question of audience experience and who you're targeting versus advertisers. So if you come at it from the audience perspective, Facebook, Facebook's reach is massive. Facebook still is a massive platform. But we don't talk about Facebook much anymore. Yeah, no one does. Everyone goes because it's like, oh, it's so boring, it's passe. say actually it's incredibly active really broad based within the wider population and it's huge for groups so it's less about your social graph now like your friends family colleagues it's really become a group platform so it's where your interest and hobbies live if you are that an older demographic not yeah older people under 25 on facebook exactly but which is why they've got instagram it's quite hard to build audiences on instagram they've got whatsapp channels on whatsapp go into the news channels on whatsapp go look at the size of the footballing channels ronaldo etc massive absolutely massive massive for organizations like the daily express it's absolutely huge so so they've got that bit going on so so you can target specific audiences through whichever bits of the ecosystem and youtube's the same and then you've got tiktok and snapchat we haven't talked about snapchat but that's it's all of these different plays that you can reach different audiences in different ways the bit where i think it's different on how you approach these from a from a rights holder perspective is about is from the advertising perspective frankly so that the buy that a brand makes are from buying ads against facebook is different in in quality and price and who you think you're reaching than youtube because of the they're both video it's so bizarre that's why youtube shorts is a competitor to instagram reels is a competitor to facebook reels which is not the same as the 16 by 9 televisual experience in the living room and it's not this that's why instagram has create is creating a version of instagram that is for the television set it's again it's not just because the audiences are there it's because the value of the advertising dollar on the 16 by 9 television set is worth so much more than on a phone an ad or an overlay over a vertical one-minute form of content.
1:00:43Jo Redfern:So it's a different play from that perspective and they're in a different market. In that sense, it's slightly different play. They're both looking to different groups, if that makes sense. And again, that plays to this difference we're talking about in unit economics. The tendency in sports is to just think, well, we used to sell our rights to Sky Sports or DAZN or whomever and we got this much for it. So therefore, if we're going on to different platforms, we've got to replicate that. And that's not going to happen. Those unit economics are different. Like I said before, YouTube is not going to be a replacement for broadcast revenues.
1:01:22Jo Redfern:But YouTube plus TikTok plus some WhatsApp channels plus some games plus all in aggregate and then moving them around that ecosystem and monetizing them as they march across bridges and merchandise and live experiences. All of that might be, but that's a completely different way of managing your rights if you're the Premier League or Bundesliga or your, you know, Club World Cup. Yeah. Then just... So I think back to that nuance again, much as you, you know... Sorry.
1:01:55Jen Topping:People want podcasts if, you know, they need nuance. Yeah.
1:02:01Jo Redfern:They need nuance. And also their need states are different. So if you're going to think about how many different things that you do in a day, in a morning you want some news and you want it in bite size because you're corralling the kids and trying to get them out the door. You want the highlights of the Ryder Cup final day yesterday. But then you've got a bit of time at lunchtime where you want a bit of a deep dive into something. And then in an evening you're sat with your feet up and you want to be entertained. It's a passive lean-back experience. All of those things can work in sport too. you just got to figure out how you create your content or package your content and distribute and monetize your content across all of those platforms where those unit economics are going to be different but just going right youtube is going to replace brought lost media revenues that's not going to happen and i think i might be a case study of one but i spend way too much my time watching old classic moments of particular sports that make me just go yeah it's amazing Kathy Freeman at the Sydney 2000s, come on.
1:02:59Jo Redfern:The value in those archives that can be sweated and poured through and reclipped and recompilated or compiled into whole new ways, means and forms onto all of these platforms is highly lucrative part of the forest. Honestly, yeah, I agree with you. I've said quite a few times, if you gave creators a package of archive rights and said, go for your life. Go nuts. You know, knock your socks off. You compile the 20 rainiest goals from Premier League 1994 and do your thing around them as a creator. That would be so popular because this is another thing about, we say young people on YouTube and TikTok, they've got no attention span.
1:03:43Jo Redfern:That's rubbish. It's their interest span that is shortened because there's so much content going, hey, watch me, I'm here, I'm interesting. but if you can you know if you capture that interest their attention spans are as long as ever yeah yeah you know you know try getting my kids down for tea when they're head you know head
1:04:02Jen Topping:down in a youtube video they talk about your cooking behind your back joe that's the problem right i've got one final thing i'm very conscious of your time and i've i'm being greedy but i've got there's one thing which i i must ask you about which is creator-led leagues so the this phenomena that we've seen over the last few years of that baller league kings league lots of big rights holders that are have seen the stuff that you're you talk about and write about you two and said right okay we need to put creators at the beginning the middle of this or if you're an investor saying like we need to disrupt golf we need to disrupt football we're going to we're going to start with the audience start with the sidemen hashtag bunch rather than arsenal and spurs and go from there can we just i get it intellectually and i understand it and i understand why you would go there and you know as all these things some will work some won't it doesn't matter but can you just again critique it for me can you just see what the what the stumbling blocks or what the bumps in the road might be for this because we're at the early stage of this and i receive on a very regular basis a press release for a new one so they come in with you know swimming is being disrupted and or whatever you know it's sort of giraffes in the pool or whatever it is so and i can i can be as glib as i like but i know it's a trend that is is there and real and the good ones will will work but just give me your sense of just give me a bit of perspective in terms of where you think it will work and where there's going to be a challenge i don't know whether i'm focused on sport i don't know if there are sort of parallels outside of sport you know again you talk about it's a knockout so it sort of feels a bit like celebrity it's a knockout but there's a there's a
1:05:53Jo Redfern:i don't know what do you think i think if you're thinking that you can launch a new product and you just throw a few creators on it's going to equal success because they it's back to what we saying before because they're going to bring their audiences don't don't disrespect to audiences if your product is fundamentally shit they're not going to go across they're idiots they watch everything and i'm not that's what happens on any new incumbent but it depends really the motivations for you is it really creator-led or have you just been told that you need a few creators to get the youtube kids watching and that's really my issue with it because you know it's that herd mentality something kind of half worked one time and then everybody's like okay we've cracked it we've got the formula now it's just not over to survive yes so but that said I'm being facetious because I work in that kind of creator world and I speak to creators and I look at some of the incumbent kind of sports and hybrid sports that are popping up on places like roblox and they are in tune with fans and what fans are doing you've got developers on roblox like i've said who know their audience and community so well they can corral 25 million users into their game on a saturday yeah you've got youtube creators that i've spoken to who know their audience so much better than any league or broadcaster could hope to they know them they because they've been learning about them for 13 years they might have attracted their eye when they've tried to change what they make at some points and then they retreat or they pivot their content, but they know them.
1:07:36Jo Redfern:And actually there's a nice respect. One of the things that you, again, I was talking to a guy that I know that works at Crunchyroll, the anime streamer. And that is something that underpins anime fandom, is IP owner and creator and the fan. There is a huge respect. You acknowledge the fan, you love the fan. And I do think sometimes in sport, there's a little bit of that kind of respect of the fan has been lost in lieu of a fan equals transaction opportunity.
1:08:04Jen Topping:Oh, yeah. I mean, even with absolute open contempt for the fan. It's not like, you know, it's not the same relationship at all. I mean, not all across the board, but I would say that that's one of the features of the last 20 years has been a sort of, you know, as sport has become digitized. They have not they they absolutely see them as sort of demographic segments.
1:08:25Jo Redfern:yeah so i think so in a way back to the the creator thing a fan and particularly a young fan because they have grown up with a radar that's very finely attuned to inauthenticity if they just think that you're just chucking in a few creators because it's going to make it successful they'll see right through that i don't think that really works i think that sports have always been disrupted haven't they i always come back to the creation of the one-dayer in cricket, which is what I grew up with. You know, going from the five-dayer, my dad's a massive cricket fan. I grew up in Australia. 1963, you're showing your age.
1:09:00Jo Redfern:Wasn't the one-dayer in 60.
1:09:02Jen Topping:The first one-day tournament was 1963. It was the Gillette Cup. Sorry, I'll just put, you know.
1:09:06Jo Redfern:God, really, is it that? Oh, well, to me, I'm not... And for people listening,
1:09:09Jen Topping:Jen isn't that old.
1:09:12Jo Redfern:But I really remember Merv Hughes and it on telly and Warnie and all of that stuff and the excitement as a kid of just seeing that and being allowed to stay upright and there's a run chase and it was so exciting but it wasn't but it was you know you remember it was met met with massive skepticism by the traditional cricket and traditional media organizations and even just i'm sorry to buy but there is a
1:09:33Jen Topping:i got when i was i was working for a magazine called sport business and i was the editor and so i got the pitch for 2020 cricket in 1990 90 000 and i couldn't have been more patronizing i was like you know if i'd have said if i'd have tapped him on the head and said yeah good good idea you know thanks very much and then obviously the IPL proved me wrong yet again hindsight is a
1:09:55Jo Redfern:wonderful thing I just don't so my my last point probably is number one these types of everyone's trying to reinvent the wheel a lot of the time because the formats games formats sports formats are highly lucrative right if you've got the new if you create the new version of weakest link or traitors or whatever you've got a license to print money but actually it's really hard to create that stuff if they're really really hard for every traders there is probably i don't know 500 failed shows that go beforehand i can't quite remember the metric but it's it's hard to do that and you have to be a real specialist the only other bit that i would add into what joe said is she's highlighted a team and a league in america called the savannah bananas which i just absolutely love because of how close they are and how fan-centric they are that it's family it's fans and it's they're putting on a spectacle for those people and allowing them to be as close as possible and then use all these digital platforms on the acceptance that they're going to make money somewhere somewhere in the mix they'll make money along the way rather than seeing each interaction with their fans as an opportunity to monetize and i think that is something to take great inspiration
1:11:00Jen Topping:yeah it's fascinating i remember joe when we're in lausanne so we're jen we were in you know olympic world we did a thing at in the ioc museum and i remember joe you saying that roblox was an ip generating machine and there was a you know that and it's just sort of that really stayed with me because i thought yeah i can i get that and sometimes i think why bother turning that into a live event because a lot of events are a pain in the ass they're expensive and costly and you know all of those things why just if you've got a digital audience that is you're monetizing happy days i imagine and the other the other bit is the what happens when you are sort of looking at people or looking at that audience with a just a different perspective because i think it's just a different way of of looking at it and i think there's a parallel world where where there's a gaming conversation where we have sort of gen z envy and they look at sport and say i wish we could monetize our audience in the same way as the premier league or the way in which and we're in a sport bubble and we always look at gaming music entertainment in out to out to other sort of realms but listen all but we could go on for days and come back enjoyed that enormously so thank you for having me and Jen topping so thank you so much I really enjoyed that thank you thank you
1:12:31Thank you.
From the publisher
Guests Jen Topping and Jo Redfern critique the arguments around sport’s relationship with the creator economy, the control v chaos philosophy divide inherent in digital IP monetisation and audience building, and the PR battles being waged for premium advertising among the big platforms. Plus, the Beano.
Jen Topping’s Business of TV Substack newsletter is great, as is Jo’s Kids Media Club podcast. Both are broader than sport and all the better for it.
Plus:
The "Taylor Swift Data Fallacy" - This explores how top-tier creator success (like MrBeast's) is mistaken for average outcomes when creators transition to streaming, leading to unrealistic expectations.
The Data Reliability Crisis - Addressing the fundamental problem that much online engagement isn't authentic, with nearly half of internet traffic coming from bots.
Generation Z's "Creative Maximalism" - Examining how younger audiences have developed entirely new creative frameworks that challenge traditional media production.
The D2C Imperative - Why direct-to-consumer strategies are becoming essential rather than optional for traditional producers.
Creator-Led Sports as a Microcosm - Using sports leagues as an example of broader shifts in entertainment consumption and production.
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