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00:00I'm Cynthia Littleton, co-editor-in-chief, and I am also, I think, I'm our sports fan-in-chief,
00:05although there are some on staff that rival me, but I'd like to think of myself as our
00:09sports fan-in-chief.
00:11Thank you all.
00:12We have a terrific panel here today of representatives of all the top platforms that are presenting
00:18sports and getting sports out into the ecosystem that is metastasizing as we speak.
00:25There's probably a new platform we'll launch by the end of the day that will be added to
00:29next year when we're talking about all this, but anyway, I do very much appreciate folks
00:34coming out and spending time with us, especially after last night's ESPYs, which was, again,
00:39a really good time, and I'll start here introducing Burke Magnus, president of content for ESPN.
00:47Thank you for joining us here on the far end, and again, congratulations on a great night.
00:51Great night for sports.
00:52Next to Burke, this is testing me here.
00:54Next to Burke is David Eilenberg, head of content for Roku Media.
00:59Thanks so much for joining us.
01:00Roku is one of the platforms that is experimenting a lot.
01:02We're going to talk about that, experimenting a lot with the way that sports can be presented.
01:07Next to David is Craig Barry, executive vice president, chief content officer for TNT Sports.
01:14Next to Craig is Stacey Rosenson, head of U.S. sports marketing for Amazon Prime Video.
01:21Next to Stacey is Lori Conkling, global head of TV, film, and sports partnerships for YouTube.
01:29Next to Lori is Shannon Willett, chief marketing officer of Peacock, which has a little thing
01:34called the Olympics coming in just about two weeks, so, you know, she's not a busy person
01:38or anything, so, again, deeply appreciate it.
01:40We know it's a crazy time in the ecosystem, a lot going on in media, a lot going on in
01:44the M&A world, a few things going on in sports rights, but we are really, I really was excited
01:50to do this because it's a great cross-section of folks, and I really am so interested in
01:55the state of the art of the presentation of live sports.
01:59We'll talk a little bit about other forms of sports programming, but kind of want to
02:02put the focus on live sports.
02:04I'm going to put a little pressure on Burke and Shannon and a few others to talk about,
02:11I'd love to start with like just a great anecdotal example that you can offer of one aspect,
02:17I know there are many, but something that stands out in your mind as super significant,
02:22one aspect of technology or innovation or expanded distribution that has allowed, that
02:28has greatly enhanced the presentation of live sports, something that can be from the last
02:3410 years, 20 years, something you think is really game-changing, I'd love for, to start
02:39with Burke, and if you could give us an example, and I think that'll kind of spark conversation
02:43of just about how the state of the art is changing in the presentation of sports.
02:48Sure, happy to be here.
02:51After a long night, I'm serving up the first question, I'm just mean, but thank you, Burke.
02:55I'll start by saying I went to the post-party, but not the post-post-party, so I actually
03:00feel pretty good, it was a good night, Serena crushed it, and it was a good show, so.
03:06In terms of your question, I think, I won't go back nearly as far as 10 or 20 years, but
03:11I think, you know, one of the areas that we've, we dove into a couple years back and has been
03:17fertile for us in terms of the presentation, especially of, you know, the jewel-level live
03:23events is all of the alternative presentations that we do, from the Manning cast on Monday
03:29Night Football, which is kind of simple and rudimentary, just two brothers talking about
03:34football who happen to be ones in the Hall of Fame, Eli, my quarterback, New York Giants,
03:38is going to be in the Hall of Fame, I maintain, but, you know, Manning cast on Monday Night
03:44Football, things like our volumetric presentations, we did a Toy Story application of an NFL game
03:53called Sunday, Fun Day Football, we did a Big City Greens, which is a Disney show, animated
03:59show, a presentation of an NHL game, just different ways you can get people excited
04:04about a particular live event, or attract audiences that are specific to that presentation,
04:11and I think has elevated live sports across platforms and across networks, and really
04:18provides the opportunity to also maximize the rights that you've purchased by providing
04:22different presentations to attract audiences, so I'd put that out as our example.
04:29Some really good ones.
04:30David, Roku, you have so many, you know, you have so many different avenues for people
04:35to come in and find content, whether it's live sports or some of the shoulder programming,
04:40can you talk about, you know, where Roku finds that sweet spot of grabbing the sports
04:46fan with something that maybe they can't find on another platform?
04:49Sure, I mean, I think our first role is to serve the viewer and getting them to their
04:55sports, whoever is carrying it, right, so as a platform, what we want to do is make
05:00it easy for them to find their sports.
05:02You have navigation.
05:03Yeah, I mean, this is a fun panel for me, because everybody on the stage is our partner,
05:07and so our role, first and foremost, is to get all of our streamers to their sports wherever
05:12they may lie.
05:13We are doing some of our own, which I'm happy to talk about, but first and foremost, it's
05:17the power of the platform, and just making it a seamless experience to find the sports
05:21that you want to watch.
05:23Craig?
05:24Same question.
05:25I mean, similar to Burke and what ESPN is doing, I think the ability to reach incremental
05:36audiences through various platforms and the way we approach sports has been important,
05:42but I think for us, even more importantly, we've kind of changed our philosophy on our
05:47primary traditional presentation.
05:50I think we understand our obligation to the hardcore fan, but we understand our equal
05:55obligation to the casual fan, and I think this idea of having other platforms to extend
06:02to incremental audiences, whether they're die-hard sports fans for a specific sport,
06:06or we had a baseball cast that catered to a Latin American audience, and I think we
06:15are able to kind of lean into the casual fan and create a more, a presentation that sits
06:23more in the intersection of sports and culture, without alienating the hardcore fan.
06:30So I think this idea of choice and making sure the consumer has choice has been something
06:37that has really worked for us, and of course, we have the traditional cable networks, but
06:41now we have Macs, and so we have a direct-to-consumer product, and we can have multiple choices
06:46and multiple streams, much like Amazon and other products and YouTube.
06:51So we're just starting to experiment with how to serve the various audiences to the
06:57best way possible.
06:59That's interesting.
07:00Stacey, obviously, Amazon has gone very big in a short time into some of the top leagues.
07:07Can you talk about sort of how you conceive reaching fans that may not, still not automatically
07:15think of Prime Video as a platform for baseball or football?
07:19Yeah, we reach our fans, obviously the content we have, like we've invested in women's sports
07:25and trying to get our audiences, grow our content to get different audiences in, and
07:31we really try to meet our fans where they're at, whether, and similarly, we have our Allcasts,
07:36we have our Black Friday football game, which is also geared towards a more casual viewer,
07:44people shopping, it's a different time of day, where we've really tried to integrate
07:49special offers, unique things that we can do only from Amazon during that time.
07:56Lori, YouTube has, you know, all kinds of augmented ways that you can enjoy games.
08:03Yeah, so with YouTube, the main app is obviously the core service for our company, and YouTube
08:13reaches over 2 billion monthly active users around the world.
08:18So people come to YouTube, and they might, you know, come looking for a clip or a highlight
08:23from a particular sport, but we can use that affinity for a particular sport to say, did
08:30you know that this is also available on YouTube, and it could be additional advertising-supported
08:36sports content, it could be something that's available on a subscription video-on-demand
08:40service through our channel store, it could be live programming through YouTube TV, whatever
08:46business model and whatever format they want to consume sports under, we offer, and we
08:52want to make sure that that viewing experience always super-serves someone who has expressed
08:58an affinity to see sports.
09:03And Shannon, Peacock and NBCUniversal are about to take live sports content, the presentation
09:09of live sports, to literally, I believe, unprecedented heights.
09:13You're two weeks out from the Olympics, which is so much anticipation and so much goodwill
09:18that I picked up last night at the ESPYs for it.
09:20I think that America is rooting for this to be a really strong Olympics.
09:26You're two weeks out.
09:28How do you feel?
09:29And can you talk about, I know there are many things that you're doing differently, but
09:33are there one or two things, especially like on the technology, on the presentation side
09:37that excite you?
09:38Yeah, absolutely.
09:39So opening ceremonies are two weeks from today, and I think we are excited and anxious
09:44for Peacock.
09:45This is really the first time that we're going to have everything.
09:48It's every moment, every medal will be running on Peacock.
09:51It's over 5,000 hours of live programming plus replays, 329 medal events.
09:58And what we've done is really thought about how do we allow people to control their journey?
10:03How do you navigate that much content over 17 days?
10:06And using our tech to build product features that will let people navigate that and explore
10:12it from the casual fan to the avid fan.
10:15And so a few examples that we've announced recently include for that avid fan, a discovery
10:20multi-view where you can watch four screens at once and then jump into anything live and
10:25kind of go deeper into it if you want to.
10:27And then we also have an interactive schedule.
10:29Our hub actually launched yesterday, so you can go on to Peacock now and click into the
10:33Olympics hub and start searching for the athletes that you want to watch, start looking
10:37at the interactive schedule, adding stuff to your My Stuff list that you can be reminded
10:42when it's coming.
10:44And then through that, you'll be able to also, for the more casual fan as an example, we
10:50announced a Your Daily Recap.
10:52It's a new, never-before-done use of AI.
10:57We worked with Al Michaels, the legendary sports announcer, and he lent his voice to
11:01this.
11:03And we trained some AI models to work with his voice so that every morning, if you want
11:08to, you can go into Peacock starting on July 27th, sign up, put in your name, tell us which
11:13sports you're most interested in, what kinds of moments you're most interested in.
11:17Is it the viral moments?
11:19Is it a gold medal win?
11:20Is it the behind-the-scenes stuff?
11:22And then each morning, you'll come in and you will get a 10-minute recap of what happened
11:26the day prior with Al Michaels narrating it for you.
11:30You'll see those highlights.
11:32You'll be able to click through and watch the full coverage of that highlight if you
11:35want to or skip through to the next thing.
11:37And then everyone will get a recap of the biggest moments so that you don't miss anything.
11:41And you'll also be able to, at the end of that, Al will give everybody a heads-up of
11:45what's coming that day and the next day, and you can go ahead and add that to your My Stuff
11:50so that you can figure out what you're going to watch the next day.
11:53So it's a very cool use of AI technology.
11:56We're really excited about it.
11:58And so that's another way that we'll be able to give both avid and casual fans a way to
12:02interact with the platform.
12:04So we've got a number of different features to help people kind of get through that, and
12:07I think that technology and that way of letting people not just watch their sports but actually
12:12engage with it, control it, and kind of get into their fandom a little bit more is really
12:15exciting for us.
12:16I can only imagine it's going to be fascinating for you to, you know, when all is said and
12:21done, look at the engagement level of AI Al Michaels.
12:25I think it sounds akin to what Spotify has, an AI voice that will create its own playlist.
12:31We're starting to see the inch by inch, starting to see the actual use cases for AI and media,
12:39and it's very interesting.
12:40I'm sure just a wealth of information is going to come into you from that viewing, should
12:46be very interesting.
12:47It's interesting that folks have been talking about, of course, the balancing act of the
12:51casual and the rabid fan.
12:53The rabid fan is going to know that the game is on at 8 o'clock on ESPN on that night.
12:59They're going to be there at 7.55.
13:01How do you measure in the effort to bring in, you know, make things accessible to casual
13:07fans, and this I throw out to everybody, how do you measure afterwards?
13:11How do you measure long term?
13:13Do you know, have you overall brought more fans to a sport, to a particular team, to
13:20particular, you know, rivalries?
13:22Can you actually sort of measure over time that efforts to kind of promote or expand
13:28the base?
13:29You know, can you see progress in that form?
13:32I would love to know, Burke, I'm sure that's a real focus for you to, you know, measure
13:38how the level of fandom that's coming in and how often they're coming back.
13:42Yeah, we have a bunch of tools that help us be informed in that way.
13:48WNBA is probably a great example in this current moment of something that has gone, you know,
13:56where it was traditionally, and we were a charter partner of the WNBA, so we're 26 or
14:0227 years into this at this point, and obviously today is much different than what it's been
14:07historically.
14:10Social activity gives us a great barometer in terms of what is going on, you know, with
14:16people's fandom.
14:18And by the way, like, you know, we look at casual is like, casual is the win.
14:24Casual is like how you win, because the avids are going to be there.
14:29And so you have to, it's obviously a balance in your presentation in terms of how you appeal
14:33to both of those groups.
14:35But the business runs on the casual fan, and that's all the upside, right?
14:40So you know, when something like that, like what's happening in the WNBA, where, you know,
14:45we have new superstars coming into the league who we've awfully experienced, like their
14:50rise in women's college basketball, and it's sort of a seamless transition.
14:56Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were in the final four, and like literally like three
15:00weeks later, they're playing in the WNBA, there was almost no gap.
15:04And so that was a huge opportunity.
15:07And they've, they obviously have lifted, you know, the audience, but people have become
15:12much more aware of the stars that were already there, and have already been playing and becoming
15:17familiar with the brands.
15:19But we track on our own research efforts with fans directly.
15:23We monitor social activity.
15:26We obviously take direct feedback from experts and our commentators in terms of making us
15:32as informed as possible.
15:34But we're on a constant quest for the casual fan, because that's really where the business
15:39is.
15:40And while we're talking about WNBA, can I press you a little bit, Burke?
15:44Has there been, as a fan, a longtime fan, I feel like, I mean, the presence is much
15:49greater, but I do feel like on ESPN proper, I'm seeing, I don't know if games are more
15:53prominent or they're more prominent, it's not the last five minutes of SportsCenter.
15:57Often it's the opening five minutes of SportsCenter, which is, I mean, just all kinds of awesome.
16:03But has there been a conscious on the heels of this incredible NCAA tournament, has there
16:08been a conscious effort within ESPN to platform WNBA more?
16:12Of course, yeah.
16:13I mean, no doubt.
16:14I mean, there's two things that you mentioned there, which are very different, right?
16:17There's the presentation of games, and then there's the coverage of the sport.
16:22The presentation of the games, I refer to as a 25-year overnight success, like we've
16:27been at this for a while, right?
16:30And really, and I think across our platform, whether in women's sports generally, not just
16:35basketball, not just WNBA, but in women's sports generally, it has been a focus for
16:39ESPN for many, many years, the presentation of games.
16:42What's catching up, and frankly, what has been lagging industry-wide, us included, is
16:48the coverage of the sport, right?
16:50And I think that's where we have, we and the industry, frankly, has let down women's sports
16:55over the years.
16:57And so, what I'm really excited about is actually being able to push that forward and make strides
17:03there.
17:04You mentioned SportsCenter, like where does it air?
17:06How much does it air?
17:07Like, you know, what does coverage look like across, and not just on television, television's
17:12a great validation for sports, but it's way beyond that.
17:15It's multi-platform.
17:16It's what are we doing on our app?
17:17What are we doing on ESPN.com?
17:19What are we doing on our branded social handles?
17:21And that's a real focus of ours, because I think the upside here for us, with women's
17:25sports, for everybody, is the coverage of the sport, making that more regular, more
17:31consistent.
17:32Well, the other night after an Aces game, you went right into an Asia Wilson right from
17:36the court.
17:37Like, that didn't happen a couple of years ago.
17:39No.
17:40It was great.
17:41And she's awesome.
17:42She's awesome.
17:43She is awesome.
17:44I would be curious for other folks, especially those, you know, at TNT and Roku and YouTube,
17:49ESPN is all about sports, but other platforms use sports, obviously, to amass an audience,
17:56to bring people in, to expose them to other things.
17:58I'd love to hear from folks about, you know, whether algorithmic data helps you in figuring
18:05it, you know, I mean, I'm guessing there's some insights there, but how do you use that,
18:09the bubble that comes in for sports often, then to, you know, help you get sampling for
18:16other shows, just to fulfill other goals for your networks?
18:20For the longest time, there was often, the feeling was that sports was a, could often
18:24be a rented audience, and they just very often wouldn't stick around, but I'm wondering if
18:29that has changed in the, you know, in the on-demand, in the streaming era.
18:33We're definitely seeing that change on the Peacock side.
18:36It's interesting, what we're seeing with our sports audiences is that actually 90% of what
18:40they watch on platform, 90% of the time spent watching is with non-sports content, so they
18:45come in and they stick around and they watch a ton of other entertainment content, and
18:49so I think for us, it's been understanding different sports audiences and viewers and
18:54not thinking that there's just one sports audience, right?
18:56There's people that really like different kinds of sports, different fandoms.
19:00For us, we have everything from motocross, right, to the NFL, to the Olympics, and we've
19:05had a huge focus on women's sports, you know, following the Caitlin Clarke rise and having
19:09that game on Peacock when she broke the record, and so it's really thinking about that on-boarding
19:14experience as people come onto the platform, we ask them questions about what else they're
19:18interested in, and then we do use data to figure out what might over-index to make sure
19:22that we're personalizing that and helping them, but then also just kind of, how do you
19:26bulk together big sports moments and big content moments?
19:30We did that with the NFL wildcard game back in January, where we had the game exclusively
19:34on Peacock, and we had our show Ted.
19:36It was a Bills game, so I definitely watched it.
19:39We had the game on Peacock, and then we had Ted and the Traders, so a scripted show and
19:43an unscripted show, and those both landed in the top 10 on Nielsen because we had just
19:47so many people come in, and we were able to engage them in the content, and we're thinking
19:50about that again.
19:52We have an exclusive NFL game in September, and it'll be coming live from Brazil.
19:56It's a Friday night game for the first time in 50 years, and we'll have all of NFL kickoff
20:02weekend on NBC and Peacock tied together with that game exclusively on Peacock, and
20:05we're going to have a show called Fight Night with Kevin Hart and Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji
20:09P. Henson, Don Cheadle, massive cast that will also launch in that window.
20:13So thinking about how to make these bigger cultural moments versus just a sports moment
20:17or just an entertainment moment.
20:21One thing that we've found to work well, going back to the casual fan, is we can bring casual
20:27fans to a sport or introduce potential fans to a sport through our creators, and we found
20:34this works really, really well with the younger audience and with the female audience because
20:39they might be watching creator content, and if that creator has access to a sport, and
20:44we did this a lot with the NFL, and we just started doing it with the NBA as well, where
20:50that creator is at the draft or they have exclusive access to a sport, they bring their
20:57entire audience with them, and it creates engagement and affinity, and there's this
21:04real opportunity, I think, for all of us, and we've worked with many of the companies
21:09represented here, to really join hands and collectively grow the sports audience through,
21:17again, direct integrations into games and events, but also there's the shoulder programming
21:23where we can use a food creator to say, how do you do the best tailgate that leads into
21:30a sporting event, and so there's just a lot of opportunity for us to grow the audience
21:34by thinking outside the box.
21:37Stacey, obviously, the entrance into live sports has been a significant cost to Amazon,
21:46and it's such a high profile that you are obviously going to draw subscribers, but do
21:51you see it, back to the casual fan, has it been, do you see the presence of sports brings
21:58you a level of sign-up that you just don't see at other times when you're not having
22:04those kinds of sports?
22:05Yeah, I mean, I would say that Amazon has 200 million customers on Prime Video, so we
22:11have a lot of scale.
22:11You have a pretty good customer base.
22:12But we do see live sports certainly drive Prime membership and are important for us,
22:20but much like Shannon and others were saying, it does fuel our other shows.
22:24We are able to show a game, bring Alan from Reacher in, put program Reacher in an appropriate
22:31way, and use our investment in sports to really fuel the rest of our shows in Flywheel, and
22:37it's a very similar trend.
22:39Our customers come in, they see the game, they may be watching one of our other shows
22:45we're advertising and trying to pull them back into the game.
22:48So very similar trends and very important for us.
22:52I mean, I guess I would say similar to what Burke was talking about, like the coverage
22:56at the core, sports is match-up driven.
22:59So teams and players and superstars are always going to be the biggest driver, but how you
23:05differentiate yourself is really the adjacent content that sits around those match-ups.
23:12So for us, because we're not a full-time sports network, those pre-game, half-time,
23:17post-game shows become a very, very important part of connecting with a casual fan and keeping
23:22them informed and entertained.
23:25Whether it's NHL or MLB or NBA, those shows kind of define our approach to our audience.
23:34And then we're able to kind of pepper, even though the coverage is more traditional and
23:38paramount, we're able to kind of pepper that DNA across the shows.
23:45And we feel like that those shows have really kind of sent the benchmark to kind of reach
23:52and connect and engage the casual fan.
23:54And the last thing I would say, we have the luxury of Bleacher Report, who can kind of
23:59let us see the swell before the wave crashes.
24:03So we have tons of insight from Bleacher Report and them being such a highly engaged
24:08platform.
24:09The data that comes from them to let us know what's the important, what the sports fan
24:15and specifically the casual sports fan is important to them and what they're talking
24:19about.
24:20And we work very closely with them both ways.
24:23But I would venture to say that they're more impactful to us than we are to them.
24:29The value of knowing what that conversation is.
24:31Absolutely.
24:32And David, I know Roku has been slowly investing in some sports of its own.
24:38Can you talk about sort of the, I mean, we know the motivation beyond that, but how you
24:42are capitalizing on that?
24:43Sure.
24:43I mean, under the leadership of Joe Franz at our terrific head of sports, we've built
24:48out zones in conjunction with, at this point, the NBA, the NFL, MLB.
24:53We have a great women's sports zone.
24:54We're going to continue to build those platform aggregation experiences.
24:58And then we do have some of our own sports.
25:00We have the Rich Eisen Show on every day.
25:02We have a handful of sports docs that we've done.
25:05But I think, you know, for us, what we observe is that sports is uniquely good at creating
25:11mass reach moments on the one hand, and then reaching certain audiences really consistently
25:16on the other.
25:17And those are both things that are really important to advertisers, which is something
25:20as an AVOD we've been worrying about for a long time.
25:23And now everybody is worrying about.
25:25You teed up my next question just delightfully.
25:28My question is that obviously sports is a big mass, one of the last reliable big mass
25:33aggregators that obviously makes it attractive to advertisers.
25:37You've all talked about creative integrations, whether they were creative or advertising.
25:41What are the limits of those kinds of things?
25:45There's got to be, you know, probably not so fine a line to annoying the, you know,
25:50the rabid fan of a team when there's too many, you know, characters dancing around the field
25:54or whatever it might be.
25:55Not to suggest that that has happened, but there must be a line that you have in your
26:01minds about the limit to what kind of an integration, the limit to how much can be
26:07put even on the screen.
26:08Sometimes, you know, the screen looks very cluttered.
26:10I'd love to think about, like, at the, I'd love to hear anecdotes about sort of at the
26:15point that we say, like, wait a minute, we're getting too much into the actual game here.
26:20Do you have those conversations internally?
26:23You're looking at me now, right?
26:25It's a jump ball.
26:26I've put so much, I've put a lot of pressure on you, Burke.
26:28How come I have to answer first all the time?
26:32It's, it's, there's a, it's an aesthetic, you know, it's subjective, you know, talk about
26:38feedback, anything you do do that, that goes over whatever this line is, or you hear about
26:44it pretty, pretty quickly from fans.
26:49You know, I think sports in general has become more commercialized over the years.
26:52I think most of the leagues tend to do it tactfully.
26:57You know, there's, there's uniform patches now, for example, when I was growing up,
27:01you know, the idea that the Yankees would have a patch on their uniform was like,
27:05unfathomable, you know, never going to happen.
27:08But here we are, you know, so I think it's just, it's the delicate balance.
27:12And by the way, the same exact dynamic, in my opinion, goes for the screen, whatever
27:17screen you're talking about, in terms of, you know, the balance between clutter and
27:23engagement and information.
27:25And so that's a constant, you know, focus for us relative to fan engagement.
27:31In terms of giving people the information they want, without distracting from the, you
27:36know, the core reason that they tuned in, in the first place, right?
27:40There's also a huge difference between avids and casuals in this regard to avids would,
27:45you know, be closer to sort of the Dick Ebersole school, which is nothing on the screen, right?
27:52And, you know, the casuals want to learn, they want to, you know, they want to find
27:56out information, they want to get, you know, sometimes personal details about stars to
28:00learn more about them, to our benefit, gets them more engaged, maybe they come back.
28:05So it's a delicate balance.
28:06But it's something both from a from a clutter perspective, presentation perspective, and
28:11a commercialization perspective that is a constant conversation for us.
28:17Yeah, I mean, if you ask the sales guys versus the content guys, you get two completely different
28:22answers.
28:23Yeah, exactly.
28:24We have the luxury of not having our sales heads up here, right?
28:27Yeah.
28:28Look, I think, to blur that line to seamlessly integrate it, where the fan might not even
28:33know that they're, you know, that a sponsorship is integrated.
28:40That's the Holy Grail.
28:41But, you know, it is a necessary evil from a content perspective.
28:45And, and I think that, you know, one of our challenges, for as long as I've been doing
28:51this, and that will continue is, how do we integrate seamlessly organically?
28:56How do we create value, not only for our sponsors and advertisers, but for the fan?
29:03And, and it's, it's a delicate balance.
29:07And it's something that, you know, I think has, you know, it's gone through crazy disruption
29:12and evolution.
29:13And, you know, now we're into augmented reality and integration onto floors.
29:21And, and, and so, but I think that's actually a more seamless opportunity than, you know,
29:31full screens and lower thirds.
29:33And so, I think we all work together to figure out what ultimately, because we all work for
29:38the fan.
29:38So, ultimately, what is best for the fan and the, and the least disruptive is, is I think
29:43the goal in the end.
29:45Well, and I just to capitalize on, on that point, we, we think the fans should choose
29:51because the definition of what is too much will differ based on the person you ask.
29:56And so, our features and functionality are subscriber initiated.
29:59And you may like to have, you know, multi-view and key stats and fan, fantasy integration
30:06and all of, you know, those features and functionalities as part of your viewing experience.
30:11And you can have that.
30:13Or you may want, you know, a more streamlined experience.
30:17And obviously, we work with all of our content partners, especially on YouTube TV, because
30:22we deliver the feed as delivered to us.
30:24But there's no limit based on the advance of technology to really putting the user experience
30:32in the hands of the fan and letting them decide, you know, what is their optimal experience.
30:38And that's what keeps everyone engaged and, you know, and delighted with how sports are
30:45being delivered today.
30:46And I think we can also sometimes surprise and delight in the other direction, right?
30:50I think sports fans are used to seeing those sponsorships and integrations and advertising.
30:55And so, when we had the NFL wildcard playoff game, we actually, for the first time, did
31:00a completely ad-free fourth quarter, which hadn't been done before.
31:04It was obviously a different kind of production challenge.
31:06It was a different kind of challenge on platform.
31:08We had to talk to our ad sales team about doing that.
31:11But it was something really interesting for fans to just suddenly realize that they could
31:15watch through that and not watch all the advertising.
31:18And so, we have those integrations.
31:20I think you're right, seamless integrations and making it feel like it's authentic and
31:23additive is really important.
31:25But then sometimes you can surprise them on the other side and say, we're just going to
31:28let you watch the sport and just focus on the sport for right now.
31:30I want to be in the room when the programming team announced that to the advertising team.
31:36Definitely a conversation.
31:38But that is, I mean, in all seriousness, a balance of that fans would appreciate that.
31:44There's no question that fans would appreciate that.
31:46Oh my god, our time is, our minutes are ticking down and I have many questions.
31:50I throw this out to the group.
31:53How, there's so much going on in college sports right now between name, image, and
31:57likeness deals, between all the conferences.
31:59I could not tell you who plays for who.
32:01I just, you know, but all the conferences have been, it's been a musical chairs.
32:06How is that changing?
32:07How is that changing the presentation and the coverage of, the coverage, of course,
32:12of college sports, very personality.
32:13But the presentation of sports, are you seeing the sort of, the fact that the college players
32:19are now coming in, they're coming in as bigger stars than they ever have been before because
32:23of social media and the just increased coverage of them?
32:27Is that changing, is that changing the presentation of college sports at all?
32:31I don't think it's changing the presentation at all.
32:35You know, realignment, if you will, has been a part of the fabric of college sports now
32:39for going on two decades and really even before that.
32:42But, you know, certainly in the last 20 years, it's happened on several different occasions.
32:47You know, change is inevitable, like, like in any other place.
32:52So, and we actually haven't yet lived through a full season of the latest round,
32:56which is going to start this fall with the new additions to the SEC and the Big 10 in
33:01particular and the Big 12 and the ACC.
33:04Here we go.
33:06So, you know, the first part of your question is probably better answered a year from now
33:10to see how that, you know, the, you know, the allure of college sports for us is really
33:15powerful and it trades off of two things primarily, which is rivalries and traditions.
33:21And whenever there's movement like that, something, some things in both of those buckets
33:26are lost and some things are gained.
33:29And so you really have to see how it's going to shake out.
33:33You know, we like the dynamic that, that on an athlete level, college players are coming
33:39in more as known entities.
33:43They're also actually staying in college, oddly enough, longer because of NIL than they
33:48would have otherwise.
33:50A fringe player who might, you know, roll the dice on being in the NBA draft now decides
33:55to stay because they're actually able to monetize themselves in college.
33:59That's not a bad thing.
34:01We have more of a problem with, frankly, the transfer portal than NIL because the movement
34:06of players from team to team to team over a four or five year span is really disruptive
34:11from a fan perspective.
34:13But I put it all in the basket of like, you know, change and you have to deal with it.
34:18But college sports in particular, or college football is in actually a really healthy place
34:25from a media perspective right now.
34:26It's extremely valuable content.
34:29Absolutely.
34:29And more of it on TV than ever before.
34:33Yeah, no, I mean, I agree.
34:34Like it's going through a relatively large disruption period.
34:38But in this particular case, the evolution of the student athlete and quite frankly,
34:47the opportunity to have bigger, larger matchups and more of them are starting to come to fruition.
34:53And although the rivalries are really important in the tradition, so are the big out of conference
34:58matchups.
34:59And I think we'll see more and more of those along with, you know, this focus on some of
35:05the superstars within college sports.
35:07So I agree that, you know, this is going to take some time to kind of manifest itself.
35:13But I think it's moving in the right direction.
35:15And I think it's creating an awareness around college athletics that just hasn't been there
35:22to date.
35:23Yeah, I think absolutely.
35:25I would again, so many topics, I guess I'd like to wrap up with a talking about what
35:31we've talked about shoulder programming.
35:32And I want to talk specifically about sports related shoulder programming, whether it's
35:36a docuseries on, you know, the new college star in any given sport or, you know, somebody
35:44after they've retired, or, you know, so many different variations of programming, special
35:49series, unscripted, maybe some scripted or some scripted out there.
35:55Curious what you all see as the potential of that sort of sports related programming
36:00that is not games, but shoulder programming and how you have, you know, do you try to
36:04integrate those with games to keep the audience coming back?
36:09This at Amazon, we are very interested in sports programming, sports originals.
36:16We look for shows that are great shows, but also that are complementary to our live rights.
36:23We had two examples last season, Kelsey and Bye Bye Barry.
36:25And upcoming, we've got an Earnhardt documentary that will launch.
36:30Dale will be on our broadcast and will launch in our NASCAR feed in 2025.
36:34We also have a great show this NFL season about black quarterbacks.
36:39And we really use our live rights to get the message out about those shows and
36:44have other things for our sports customers to watch aside from live.
36:48I think for us, it's and the Olympics is probably the best example of this coming up.
36:52It's a combination of thinking about how to retain fans and keep them sort of in the ecosystem
36:57and continue engaging, but also providing different avenues for them into sports and
37:01different types of fans.
37:03So we've got three pieces of content that are additive to the Olympics.
37:09One of them is really for that avid fan.
37:11So if you're an NFL fan, you know Red Zone.
37:13We're doing the Gold Zone.
37:15And we're bringing those guys over to do a live whip around show 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
37:19every day, telling you exactly what's happening.
37:22And you can click out and watch that live when it's going on.
37:25We also have a watch with Alex Cooper, so the number one female podcaster.
37:30And she'll be doing some watch widths where she's actually sitting with friends,
37:34interacting with social audiences, and commentating on things that are going on in sports,
37:37really focused on women's sports.
37:39And then the third is really for that casual fan.
37:42And you start to think about people that just want to know kind of what's going on and top
37:46of mind.
37:47So Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson will be doing Olympic highlights, two people that know nothing
37:51about the Olympics, but are going to be awesome.
37:54They're just two of the funniest guys on the planet sitting there and telling you what's
37:57happening.
37:58And so if you remember from the 2021 games, the clip of Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg talking
38:03about equestrian.
38:04So it's going to be a show like that.
38:05Snoop is actually coming to Paris with us as a commentator for Primetime in Paris on
38:09NBC, which will be on NBC and Peacock every night.
38:11So watch out for that.
38:13But really thinking about how you get different types of fans in that want that kind of content.
38:17And so for us, it's thinking about like building out a broader audience and also retaining
38:22fans that are going to be there and kind of want that more in-depth view.
38:25And as you pointed out earlier, you have a Kevin Hart scripted show.
38:28You have Fight Night coming.
38:30So, yeah, none of it's accidental.
38:32Yeah, we love all of this activity around sports.
38:36And it's definitely part of our focus as well.
38:39I mean, live events, coverage of those live events and then original content or shoulder
38:45programming around those events.
38:47We particularly like it when others in the industry do it, too, especially when it points
38:51back to a sport that we do.
38:53You know, Netflix has done some great things in the original space, and I particularly
38:58like when they do it around a sport that drives people back to ESPN to watch the games themselves.
39:04People ask me about Drive to Survive all the time, and I say the same thing every time.
39:08I love it.
39:09I love that they're doing it, and I love that it's driven more interest in Formula
39:13One because we have every Formula One race on our platform.
39:16So I think that's actually a really positive thing for the industry.
39:20It hits on both audience expansion and innovation simultaneously.
39:24It helps build stars.
39:26And for those of us, and everyone here is invested in sports, it's a critical tool
39:31in the toolbox to drive interest and awareness and build stars.
39:35And it's obviously such a huge opportunity for athletes that are building media brands
39:39and things.
39:39Oh, sure.
39:40Everybody wants a production company.
39:41Oh, I was just going to say, I'm very glad to hear you say that because thinking about
39:44it from the other side, one of our differentiators is that we have a lot of talent.
39:50Like everything in the Roku channel, our sports docs are free.
39:53And so we think of it as a gift to fans, and in some cases, an introduction to a sport
39:59where they can go deeper.
40:00So we did a three-part doc with the UFC.
40:02Great experience for our fans.
40:04I think great experience for the people who love the sport.
40:08And if that drives some of them into the larger UFC offering on ESPN Plus on Roku, I feel
40:14like that's good for everybody.
40:16Oh, no, thank you.
40:17Sure.
40:18It remains the most potent on-ramp for the casual fan.
40:24Absolutely.
40:25On that note, I am going to end it.
40:27And thank you all so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts and insights.
40:31Really appreciate it.