UP524 Sleepwalking to Irrelevance: Content and fandom in the age of the For You algorithm

0:00Hello there, welcome. It's Richard Gillis here and you're listening to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Podcast. Today we're talking about the 4U algorithm and its impact on how sports organisations reach their audiences. The social media platforms have shifted from follower-based to interest-based algorithms, fundamentally changing sports content strategy. TikTok pioneered the approach now adopted across all of the major social platforms, meaning that subscriber counts no longer guarantee reach. This creates both a threat and an opportunity. Niche sports can now reach audiences who never followed them, provided they can create content worth saving and sharing.

0:41And you'll hear us referring to a report that's been done by WSC Sports, which is the generational fan study for 2025 and 26. I'll put a link to that in the show notes and it's a report that quantifies how different generations find, engage with and value sports content. I've got two people who know this world very well. Damien Broenick, he's Vice President of Account Management for WSC Sports and Rich Johnson is co-founder of End Product Consultancy. He's a digital strategist formerly of Man United New Balance and Social Chain, diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett's company. And if you like listening to podcasts like this one, you'll like the Unofficial Partner newsletter, which goes out on Substack every Thursday.

1:28So to get that, just search Unofficial Partner and we will pop up, look for the yellow box and you will find us there or sign up via unofficialpartner.com.

1:47Damien, can you just kick us off? Because WSC is an organization I know, and I know they're prominent, but I just need a bit of context in terms of where they fit into the landscape. So we tend to break it into four pillars. The first pillar is the content itself, where we help our partners to create better content. The second pillar is where we help our partners to create better experiences based on the content that we help them to create. The third is around fan data and how we help them to tailor the content and the experiences to their fans. clients and of course the last part but the most important one is how we help them to commercialize and monetize the entire ecosystem okay right so that's really good and you mentioned partners a few times we better name a few because they're big names nba nfl la liga ea and so on and so forth so more than 650 clients global so it's substantial and it's big and broad is that is the point rich same question again a veteran of unofficial partner podcast now uh yeah well i think i think it's my third appearance by the way i recognize your sweater i've got that that is a callaway sweater i've got one of those i got one of good we last time i saw you we were at um the open championship and it was a callaway we did the callaway event didn't we you know what i saw one of the guys there wearing it might have been one of the um probably wasn't me was it i wouldn't have been msq guys it wasn't you but it would have influenced me just the same and i thought i like that so i think a couple of hours later i'd uh again for people who are listening and not watching the uh the clip that it is a particular i think it's a sort of korean it's their korean market jumper i think i i probably almost got certainly got that wrong but yeah so i wasn't well i'm a sort of anti-influencer they were they gave it to me and i they told me not to wear it it influenced me so yeah i interrupted you sorry yeah rich johnson sports marketing strategy so we work directly with brands and rise holders on uh mainly commercial storytelling branded content and sponsorship activation and yeah then branding content strategy i always put you into a sort of bracket you've got a particular specialism about athlete content and stephen bartlett is someone i always think of when he pops up on my algorithm on a very regular basis I always think of you why is that well well I used to work uh I was pretty early doors at social chain which was Steve's agency uh that uh that he founded and had and you know this is 10 years ago now it's quite interesting I was at New Balance before New Balance Manchester United before but I was at New Balance and uh and I sort of saw this like scrappy style agency of a load of kids uh in manchester and there was something about it i just thought was really interesting and people like what are you doing why are you moving from new balance to this agency that no one's heard of and but there was something there you know and i was actually uh even i was a few years older so i was sort of the dad of the agency for the first couple of years which was uh quite strange considering i was only about 28 and yeah steve did a great job there and then obviously now he's i think like found even more of his uh his specialism which is media and uh and investing so yeah that's why and then yeah the athlete stuff I'm just fascinated I sort of categorize it as like the new breed of athlete creator I think it's parts of this proving to be true but you know he's gonna be uh pretty significant over the next decade in terms of some of these athletes going from just household names and stars to creators and entrepreneurs yeah I agree and it's it's sort of inarguable now isn't it it's something I used to argue about you know just for the sake of it but now it's it's even I can't stand in the way of that trend but I've got a load of questions and it's a question of where we are in relation to the sort of algorithm or the algorithms and where companies are.

5:56And we're in this period of almost super abundance is a polite way of putting it, but it could be overwhelm. We're bombarded with content and a few questions to ask about who's winning at the moment and what works now in terms of the way in which we relate and work with the platforms and specifically the algorithms. I sort of find myself second guessing why I'm being served content of various types. so it's a sort of almost like a meta game no pun intended but there's a sort of game within a game where i don't know football cricket golf american sport and then there's randoms like volleyball or but and i start i think i wonder why i've been getting that some of it is obvious and then some of it is really isn't obvious but i'm just interested in what's going on and where it's headed damian give me a sense because wsc i've just done a report on on this sort of thing Give me a sense of the sort of top line here.

6:56But there's a question about what are the characteristics of winning now in this world, sort of algorithm driven content? I think before answering who's winning, let's try to understand who's playing. Yeah. You have the millennials, you have the Gen Z, right? And I think out of these, we need to understand what are the differences? because winning can be winning revenues or winning the fandom. And these are two different things at the moment. Now, the question is maybe back to you. Why are you getting the relevant content pieces or the snacks or the bites? And I think it starts with targeting you as probably the commercial core rather than someone else that is trying to get pulled into the fandom.

7:52Overall, I think, and this is also what we ask ourselves as part of the research is, what is the current status of the fandom and where is this going? We're entering in 2026 and we try to help our partners in really steering the way. And I think it is clear that while AI was used in the last couple of years, different clients, different people within the industry to create more content, we probably now understand that it's not just for that. And we need to think if we want to win, how not only to create the content, but to create the relevant content. So winning in that sense means to create the relevant content for the relevant people, be it millennials, be it Gen Z.

8:43So let's push that stage further then, because you've made that distinction between millennials. I mean, how old are millennials now? I'm not one. I'm Gen X. I know. You're Gen X. Incredible to even think about that. but what um what is it how old are millennials now i mean i and and i'm trying to i sort of lose track because i used to take the piss out of millennials and now i take the piss out of gen z and it sort of evolves over time but millennials are now what and and i guess my question is what's what's the difference in their behavior and whether demographics is the differentiator So in general, I can say that the difference lies in the habits and how they consume.

9:24And based on the report, you can see that the millennials, 49 % of them mentioned that they will watch sports daily and they will subscribe to different OTT subscriptions. And at the same time, they also have the expectation to get everything more personalized. So we're talking about a high churn, if they don't get it, of 56%. So it sounds like they're still spending money, the millennials. They are, yeah, they are the core of all the commercials. While the Gen Z are coming back to what you guys talked about is the athlete first rather than the club or the team. Or it's really more focused on the athlete itself.

10:12Now, I'm not sure if you feel the same, but from what we've learned through the report is pretty substantial. The fact that you need to bring the commercial aspect to the millennials while trying to lure in and bring Gen Z with the snacks. And actually, when we felt that the Gen Z used to have the highlights as the appetizer, this now became the main dish. This is what they are having for lunch. It's not only as an appetizer. And the worry is obviously that it's interesting you say the millennials are still paying for stuff, because, again, going back to my previous point about, you know, if you hang around long enough, I can create.

10:52There are sort of stereotypes that we used to have about millennials that appear to be sort of shifting because we used to worry that they're not going to spend any money. And now we're saying, actually, they're the center of this. They are paying for subs. And we've moved our focus on to Gen Z. Rich, there's a few things there. I've got this question, which is how much agency I have over what the algorithm serves me. So, again, it's not all about me, but I like talking about me. So it's just as a route into conversations. But one, maybe just some definitions. So we are all aligned. So the Gen X is more the 45 to 60.

11:31These are more the anchored traditionalist, live first, loyalty teams, routine driven. The millennials are the 30 to 44. These are really the commercial core. They want to see streaming first. They have different subscription and they will probably most likely be converted in more commercially. And then you have the Gen Z, which is the 18 to 29. they are focused on athlete first short form creator influence you spoke about it previously about the creators they want to consume the sport through the creators this is part of their expectation and this is not a nice to have okay so you both are millennials aren't you i can that's we can make that assumption is that right again you're not is that right rich you're a millennial absolutely i'm not even going to question which end of the millennial it's because of the house

12:26i think i'm slap bang in the middle so what do you think about this so i mean one of the main principles that i think is super important to understand and hopefully from a strategic level when you're talking about algorithms and to your you know quest in this this answer for why you get serve certain things there's almost been like quest it's like yeah yeah sure we will we will find your uh pot of gold by the end of this conversation the you know we've sort of gone through like two phases of of social and algorithms and what you get served like from what like 2010 to 2021 it was very much like you got served based on who you followed and that's great it's particularly within sports it's fantastic because obviously we have one of the advantages we have an in-built fandom and then the room on your feed is basically filled with you know as a fan or a viewer whatever The room on your feed is then filled with the clubs, the teams, the sports, you know, all those kind of periphery interests that you might have.

13:26Now, TikTok really kind of like changed the game on that. So say when that really kind of came to prominence 2020, 2021, where effectively we're now in this, we are now firmly in this interest based algorithm era. And that effectively means that, you know, who you follow is more redundant than it used to be. and it's why you know you can actually you may have a ton of interests or so you've previously followed on your instagram youtube whatever and you may just like never see them at all because ultimately you know now all the platforms use this model now like every single one and that and you know by and large they're very good at identifying things that they think you would like there is certain sort of like overpowered metrics now that will affect the behavior like saves and shares on again all platforms even screenshots now you know like i don't know if you have a screenshot on that linkedin but it pops up it's pretty much all i did there are some days i don't do anything else well that's again like another great signal i like i'm i've yeah you've got this interest-based algorithm and essentially you're looking at the for you sort of thing here aren't we rather than so it used to be again i sound like my granddad here but i remember you know when you go back to the sort of early iteration of social media the argument was that you can curate your own feed and you would then follow your own interests well it's just stuff that i really like and i'm following these people that i really like and actually you're not getting the stuff you don't care about and the argument against that was that it's the newspaper argument and I'm an old journalist, is that, oh, you don't, there's happenstance.

15:13You don't bump into things you don't know about, or you don't want to know about, or you didn't know you didn't know. Whereas in a newspaper, you would flip through and say, okay, well, here's some foreign news, then it's filtering into my world. Whereas the argument against social media was, no, you don't get any of that. And I'm now completely personalizing my feed. We've now gone away from that, haven't we? So we're not in that world anymore. Your feed is being personalized. It's just by retention and it's obviously how long you're spending to consume or you know each video or obviously you know a signal a signal of positive intent like you're swiping through a carousel or something like that or saving it or sharing it so it's very much still being personalized it's just you're you you've lost an element of the control not true you had the option to control i think yeah maybe you had the feeling that you're controlling something but well i mean and it's such like that there's a great like live case study is you know ronaldo launching his youtube channel so great sort of fanfare at the start of the year 70 million subscribers overnight etc etc but now he won't even though he has all those subscribers he's you can tell by his views he's not appearing on the feeds of um all those followers and fans just because of the views and because of elements of his content strategy.

16:37So, you know, that is, and there's plenty of examples of it, but that is it in action. Now, there is a flip side to this, which is the opportunity for anyone to get eyeballs is there. And that's for any athlete. It's for any rights holder because you can now actually get served on feed without someone even being aware of your existence before. So that's where there is actually also an amazing opportunity in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's more to it, if I may, but I think the fact that currently views are being counted, I mean, on the basic layer is you can stare for a second on your screen and this will be counted as a view, while in the past you had to spend five, six, seven seconds in order for it to be counted as a view.

17:31Now, let's ask ourselves why. And the answer is, this is how the platforms can generate more revenues. Yeah. Yeah. Right? I mean, as long as you can count more views, you can generate more revenues. And I think what we need to look into is two things. One is something that I read this morning is that in Australia, I think they're going to ban access to social platforms from the age of below 16. Right. which will have a huge impact on sports if this goes now globally because many organizations are spending time and effort to go out and they use these, let's say, hooks in different social channels to bring fans.

18:14And as Rich said, now being athlete-driven, and Ronaldo is a good example, the fact that so many people left Juventus and moved to Ronaldo and his new team means that in his next stop in his journey fans will follow as well right and if the club is not able to convert these fandom into their fandom then it means that they will lose the game we quite often focus on Ronaldo and we focus on the big players one of the questions that you quite often get when people you know on podcasts like this people come on and they're worried about discoverability as this you know that's in a world of abundance and enormous amounts of content in loads of different spheres not just in sport you've got individual organizations that aren't the premier league that aren't the nfl but the nba and they're saying what do we do here what's the game for us so it's not the absolute elite because they're always going to be okay it's always going And they're going to have millions and millions of people that are in their orbit.

19:23It's the ones that are just below that which are really worried about this world. Yeah, that's my point. It's actually the best time for that. And in fact, niche is good. Niche is very good in this world. And niche also doesn't have to mean then that you ultimately need the scale that perhaps you needed before. if you can find, and I think there are a lot of very interesting ways that you can monetize audiences and fandom now and monetizing online communities. But niche is great, because now again, you can hit feeds that you just weren't possible before because people weren't following. So actually to link to the WSC report that rightly highlights in terms of the power of athletes, that is where one of the biggest opportunities lie.

20:14Just so clear, Rich, you're talking there about the, so if I am a cricket board or a football, you know, governing body or a swimming governing body, it's trying to work out who is going to pop for me, for my sport. So you're using the individual athlete as a sort of Trojan horse into an audience. In the same way that, okay, I'm going to use another top-tier example here, so do apologize, but it's just a great case study. You know, Lona Mayer and the cut-through that she's had is almost could and should have been orchestrated by women's court rugby, but it wasn't. They just sort of lucked out.

20:54She's done the job for them. And that is the great case study in terms of what is possible. And listen, how did she do it? well she did it through like this body confidence get ready with me style videos that just actually pulled through the fact that she is also a a women's rugby player and only some i mean again she's it is an interesting case study because again damien is i'm not a women's rugby fan okay i'm not i've got nothing against it but i don't it's not something i watch but i do get serviced a lot of of women's rugby so and she is very has been doing something right as rich says but it doesn't only some of it is about rugby so there is something here about the sort of genres that she's appearing in or you're broadening away from the core performance of the sport into other adjacencies the question for me is how relevant was it for you because i feel that sometimes you're being swamped with so much content that i assume is not relevant yeah i would say not very And maybe, maybe exactly right.

22:00So I think the problem here is not the fact that, you know, fans are drowning in content, but rather they're drowning in irrelevant content. Yeah. And then you get bored and maybe you click on it and maybe it's, you know, a good hook and then you'll spend more time. But I tend to believe that you will not spend money on this kind of content. while if they're able to create content that will be tailored for you this might change although you're part of the traditionalist uh well you're making a heck of an assumption there damien about you know my yeah i mean it's a it's sort of i get you come down to you got the doom scroll scenario where you know you're just going through something will stick every now and then but you're just you know and we've all been in that thing and we're trying to fight it and we see our kids doing it and we there's a bit of it which is you know to the australian case study trying to legislate against it or whatever and we all know it's not good for us but we do it anyway so it's an addiction at the center of it but then that's the world now there's a question about how much again agency i've got over that but there's also a bit on the other side of saying well how do i go about being relevant in that you're saying about we're overwhelmed with irrelevant content and i agree with you and it's trying to work out what relevance is because i've seen sort of you know strategy decks where people say we have to be in genres that are adjacent and we're going to be on you know we're going to take rugby into cooking we're going to take it into you know street art we're going to take it into various other places all of which makes sense and the hope is that people who are interested in cooking will levitate back towards rugby in some shape or form but actually the risk is irrelevant isn't it you're thinking well why am i got rugby in mind i'm a cooking fan i mean i'm here for the baking and now i've got ilona maya popping up and cooking the question is how do they monetize right so if we're talking about getting more eyeballs and in that case let's pray and pray yeah then you have more eyeballs which means that with a sponsor you can generate more revenues that's one way of monetizing the fandom i tend to believe that this will not generate enough revenues while the second part of what you said partnering with adjacent industries this is where probably you tap into new fandoms you are able to bring more people to watch the sport but at the same time i mean you bring also sponsors that can relate more to what you're offering and what you're presenting so i think it's probably a win-win in that yeah yeah there's a couple of things that again pop out of the report is that one is the the difference in the algorithm again i we talk about the algorithm but actually it's a variety of them And I'm wondering if, do we know the difference between, say, you know, what the rewards that are given by TikTok or YouTube or Instagram and are there the nuances there?

25:15You know, the word algorithm has become this monolith. So it's trying to sort of break that and say, well, actually, am I rewarded and punished on TikTok differently than I am on LinkedIn or, you know, other algorithms? Do we know much about the difference between them? I mean, there's certainly a difference between the short form video platforms and LinkedIn. I'd say the biggest difference is the short form ones, which is obviously Instagram, but specifically obviously Reels, which is now sort of the main currency there. Obviously TikTok and then YouTube Shorts. They sort of behave in a similar way.

25:51Obviously YouTube, in terms of main feed, again, is really an outlier based on it being around long form. And again, that's shifting and evolving in real time. If you take the average watch time across YouTube or something on a video, it's something like 11 minutes or something. The key trait that obviously they all share is rewarding content that encourages more time spent on app. So that means for short form, it means obviously completion. For YouTube long form, it means completion, but it also means session time beyond that. So, you know, has one video led you to another, led you to another?

26:30For LinkedIn, which I think a lot of people are having many bugbears with at the moment around the algorithm platform, my interpretation and belief on that is it's down to value and second party connections, not first party connections. How many second party connections can you reach? And that's probably also an interesting point in terms of when you go into analytics of a lot of these platforms and and youtube is and tiktok are very good in terms of their in terms of their analytics it will give you how many non-subscribers or non-followers are viewing your content and often you'll find that's more than the the percentage is higher than the people who are actually following and again like the higher that percentage the more likely it's going to be served to more feeds that are that are inherently similar to you so they are different there is nuances but then it really comes down to kind of format in terms of a lot of way in regards to how they behave.

27:26And I think I want to make a distinction on YouTube versus the others. I think YouTube has cracked the algorithm in that sense. They're able to offer short form, but also long form. And we also saw it in the report. This is really the first place to do both in a good way. The other unique thing about YouTube, just in terms of on the short form platforms, historic content is just like just like never comes up you know there's a real shelf life on content of like weeks youtube is really the only one which will happily pull up a video from you know a couple of couple a couple of years ago uh it also does videos that you may have watched like 10 years ago which i think is great because you know you just want to dip back into it and and again that's where where it is relatively unique in that sense and again for the sports industry is i think interesting for us whereas you know where you can sort of play a legacy role content complete yeah i'm never quite sure and this might be about linkedin but it's also the others as well about the punishing of linking out of the platform which is really annoying because i started you know this is a long time ago before we started did the podcast i ran a blog and that was all about this is almost pre-twitter this is how old i am but the sort of blog was all about links and comments and links and you would send people away and we all you know and some of them would come back some of them wouldn't but that's there's been a wall put around that sort of thing or you're punished a lot for doing that and it's interesting substack has emerged doesn't it over the last sort of couple of years i've been on substack a couple of years and their notes product i'm never completely sure where i am with it and it sort of feels like a bit of a hybrid and you know i saw keir starmer appear on it i thought you know fucking no it's what that's that's the end of that then yeah don't bother getting to you know and you sort of think well i don't you're sort of second guessing unless you're very sophisticated like you guys you don't i don't have a very sophisticated idea of what i should be doing on each platform which i guess is what digital strategy is now but it's quite frustrating isn't it sort of navigating the different incentive sets of each of those algorithms that's exactly that and i think in terms of the content you should create per platform.

29:55LinkedIn in that case is less relevant for the sports organizations. But I think overall, it's exactly that. How to tailor per platform, but not only per platform, but per the user segment. That's another step forward. And what happens with the private network? So again, the sort of behavior has shifted from What I used to go on Twitter for, I now have my own WhatsApp group. I sort of share things and you get that impulse that has been trained into me now for 20 years of I see something or take a photo of something or screenshot something. I want to share it with people. And now I'm doing that on WhatsApp rather than doing it on Twitter because Twitter has been sort of weaponized in a way that I don't like.

30:40OK, you know, we can argue the toss about X, but I used to really like it. I don't like it anymore. But I now push that into private networks. How does that play? Again, this is a sort of a micro example of a bigger question for the sports industry in terms of how they play. They've just got to take on trust that their stuff's good enough to get shared on private networks. But I don't quite know how you would do that. It feels like a different question. Well, that's it. That's where I mentioned the point before. And we make a big point of it to talk about it regularly is you've got to make content that's saveable and shareable.

31:14it is a really overpowered metric both for your main feed because it your private communities are very are the most high trust communities that you have whatsapp groups and instagram messenger or anything like that it's it's the most high trust community you have because what you're sharing richard is a personal recommendation from you that the unofficial partner group or you know a friend or someone in a rights holder will trust your opinion and trust what you have to say and also that you're not going to be like, oh, that's shit. Yeah, yeah. What you're talking about. You know, it's a super high signal.

31:49And I think, you know, there's a lot of sports activity now happening on WhatsApp through communities. And I was having a chat with Rob Pilgrim, who's just moved from YouTube to WhatsApp, sorry, YouTube to Meta a couple of weeks ago. And he was saying, it's really interesting. You've got like, you know, Ennio Luko's got a private community on there. And she's really active there because it's more of a safe space than social for her, which I think, which, which I kind of, you get that community and I hadn't really kind of registered that. And I thought, oh, that's actually, that's actually great because again, you're not creating something new or something different.

32:24So there's like two factors at play there. You've got the, again, you've got this like high trust signal of intent and statement that people take from just like dropping something in there. And then you've actually got it as this like place of community. I'm not sure they fully kind of personal opinion. I don't know if they fully nailed the community product yet, but I think it's going to be a really key piece of the inventory. What all this doesn't do is solve this constant battle that we have in the industry of like own platform and owning data and all sort of stuff. It's still just like hanging in there to be kind of relevant.

32:58But, you know, there's certainly no excuse to say that the tools aren't there. and actually arguably the tools are getting better, so what you will about, yeah, algorithm or things changing constantly. Don't you think, Rich, that this is another step towards the own and operated or the fan communities that sport organizations can foster around their product? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, you know, again, the pieces are all there in terms of separately, like you take, again, what we were talking about there about WhatsApp. well everyone wants community and everyone's talked about community everyone wants ways for people to engage like online and in private spaces well you have that in its like silo everyone wants a way to serve and be distributed content okay we just spoke before we're not really necessarily always in control of that but we have large distribution scale uh opportunities even things like actually when you talk about substack like obviously you know some of these like new newsletter platforms and you know email and newsletter has been dying for 20 years uh you know um and and uh sorry richard but it's not no i know i say it's a bit like you know but you get the data from that television and cinema have been dying for 50 years and books and it's crazy and and actually the beauty the beauty of those which you know you experienced richard is obviously they're totally algorithm free so that's really cool and i think that's why a lot of people are bullish on on things like substack or using a platform like beehive or something like that because again you come with the data play and then you can start to arguably get sophisticated about how you can monetize audience direct to source.

34:33So once you build together all of those components, my personal belief is for a lot of rights holders, and again, Richard, you spoke earlier around talking about the tier two, or kind of blow with the gross respect. That's probably the most sensible components to build and construct an ecosystem and have belief in an ecosystem around those pieces rather than try and like go it alone because i think we know how how difficult uh that can be to actually prove the model and monetize and you know have all the fun that comes with it you know it's it's i think the pieces are there and and taking richard what you said about the algorithms i think the whatsapp groups and the telegram groups are cleaning the noise of the algorithms where you feel that you trust the the person that shared because you're part of the group and you do it voluntarily right and you say i'm now part of this group because i'm interested and therefore i want to listen to what he or she shares this ties in with the athlete or the creator but what it also means it means that they can monetize it and the direct sponsorship will probably be much more valuable there because of the focus that this has in this group versus using it on the algorithms yeah and i think this is the change in mindset and this is probably just a step towards the own and operated where this will be then brought into the ecosystem of the sports be it a niche sport or tier one it sort of it feels like it always comes back to brand in the end do i trust them is there anything there at the center of it and now whether that's a superstar athlete or a creator or it's a football team or it's a league or a body there has to be something gravitate around and then around which you can then start to then sort of play in these different communities i mean you won't be surprised that you know once you've got a podcast which reaches a certain level of prominence you're not short of advice from people who are sort of you know saying you should grow this do that and if we'd have taken all the advice we've been given over the last six years you know and the platforms shift over time but essentially what they're all saying is once you've got an audience there are different ways of relating to them and yeah monetizing it and the question you said early on damien about the measurement of engagement of views and that's where again it's always happened it will always happen people will always try and over claim their audience and they will always try over claim engagement and the platforms are very cynical about servicing that need and so you get a bigger and bigger number and i think we're all addicted to massive numbers people want to hear just as a sort of hygiene factor and almost absurdly massive number because it means that okay you're of a certain scale but actually what they want is the detail of the engagement and i think we're sort of between those two we can't wean ourselves off the huge number at the top end you know and the funnel metric encourages that sort of the idea that you need this enormous number at the top the platforms are more than happy to sort of provide that illusion and i think this is exactly where instead of creating more content just for the sake of creating the content and bringing eyeballs one should focus on creating relevant content and personalized content because at the end of the day you can generate revenues through quality and not quantity in most cases.

38:18And that's, I think, a shift in the mindset of different sports organizations. In the last couple of years, the belief or the hope was we can grow, we can bring more eyeballs, we can go global. And we see it with the different changes now with Ligue 1, with the MLS, with so many of the really the amazing sports organizations they need to somehow generate revenues in order for them to to make a living and it's going global and it has probably a ceiling and it's hard and you need the creators and you need the athletes and you need to create relevant content and not just content it's that time of year where you get trends reports in but quite a few of them in are talking about more is more you know we we just need to generate more and more content and everything has to be sort of supercharged and again it's balancing that with you know this idea of scarcity and creating value from again that might be a sort of old marketing trope now i don't know where we are with that but you sort of sense there is still something in that in terms of creating something of value that is not everywhere and that you know you you are pulling people in rather than just delivering everything to everyone all the time it's the sort of challenge of our age i guess because i think there is so many examples now of where you just if we take our core sport product of sports and many examples of this but where like there's just total oversaturation of the physical on pitch product football being a great example and the issues that come with that is then like how do you thread the story how do you tell the story how do you then like produce depth around it which is also inherently what drives a lot of what drives a lot of this and one of the main things you should be striving for is is depth so you've got like that aspect in terms of the core the core product then the challenge is balancing that with well if you've got a global product how do you enable more people around the world to perhaps experience it and i think you know something like formula one obviously tackles this like on a on basis in terms of filling its calendar and that sort of stuff but i i like the job that that they do in terms of as many people do in terms of creating this like truly global sport that a lot of people can feel and touch and hear and and really kind of experience it as far as like it comes to them when you when you channel that down to to content you're at the end of the day the you know you you basically have this this window to work with that's not going to change the window of the sort of mobile phone screen that's not going to change that is a zero-sum space so it doesn't always necessarily come down to more but it's again you you mentioned the word before earlier richard it's like how can you make more content with relevance be more relevant how can you know like exactly who you're targeting i think that's one thing we've often struggle with in sports is like the icp and who is that and probably because there's multiple many many more multiple icps that perhaps exist in ideal customer profile target audience right it's arguably many more than than exist within some more like traditional areas of brand and content marketing there's a certain element of reps that you have to do through content to actually understand what's going on and what content works and what hits and what's working on feed at the moment but then And equally, yeah, I think the most important thing is actually relevance.

41:49And if I have to add to that, I would say that probably the next frontier isn't more content, but smarter content. How to create relevant content for the fans that you aim for. And the quest is personalization, isn't it? We started off with me moaning about the algorithms and what it serves up. And I don't know whether it's been oversold in the past, but this idea that I'm going to be delivered everything I need, when I need it. We're not there yet by any means. And I'm just trying to, you know, there is a sort of question about what personalization will mean in the near future, because I bought a fridge.

42:26Do you want to buy a fridge? You know, there's that sort of, you feel like the algorithm. Again, you become more sophisticated about looking at the algorithm, judging it, why it's done what it's done. Because actually it might be that I just don't like myself or my own habits. And these are just being reflected back to me. and I want to be a much better I want you know it's annoying because it's seeing me as I am rather than the sort of poser that I present to the world and so actually the you know the algorithm is really me compared to the the one that I'm presenting your thoughts as a 24 years old are quite fascinating a lot of that honestly yeah goes back to that again your feeds are personalized now i think again it's yes there's a it will get more personalized arguably but they are personalized now i think a lot of it goes back to that with the much before of like you know we are in this like zero some game and i i think of it as like a fan or like my personal like sports diet right is generally football golf darts when the time comes around what else i like watching the snooker like when that time comes around you know a bit of like winter sports and stuff like that and it's making sure that like i get served that at the right time and almost then i don't kind of like some of the more fringe again areas of like my content my sports content diet that i still get served that and they don't kind of just disappear slightly kind of over time which is something that i get conscious of in terms of what i consume myself oh well i didn't know that was happening at the weekend i just i totally missed it two-thirds of my algorithm is dogs welcoming soldiers back from war it's like a it's like a i think i must have sat through one of these things and i just am now bombarded on tiktok are they real or are they almost certainly ai they are they're just sort of to this heartbreaking music and because i'm you know i love dogs i'm an absolute sucker for dogs welcoming back their owners from the you know military but then i think it's probably less about personalization in terms of what content you want to see.

44:37It's more how can you see ads and be it as short clips and monetize it, right? It has nothing to do with the consumption of, oh, this is what I want to watch. This is, now they know me. It's basically you can talk about something and suddenly you'll be served with relevant ads or clips. But this is how they monetize. Well, listen, I will point people towards the WSC sports report. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed that chat. I know we went in strange directions. I feel like it's part strategy session for you, Richard. This is essentially what Unofficial Partner is at this point. And it's a therapy session as well.

45:26so i quite like you know it's uh now we're going to watch dogs well yeah well now i've talked to you about it you will get this stuff and you know it's uh i don't know where it started but this is what this is the fascinating thing about it it's just trying to work out why why where did it get where did it start and you know what it's like when you accidentally watch something you know and you think oh god i'm gonna get a load of that now

45:53brilliant okay rich damian thanks a lot for your time cheers thank you thanks

46:24Thank you.