UP402 Next Level Storytelling: How biometric data changed the game

Performance data has long played a role in the way sport is presented on television. From football to formula one, we’re familiar with commentators referencing statistics to help explain what we’re watching.  

But increasingly, the most sought after data points are those that exist within the body of the athlete. 

Heart rate and other biometric data is fast becoming a storytelling device to illuminate and augment what we see on our screen. But how does it work? Who is it really aimed at? How much does it cost and who’s paying? 

To answer these and many other questions we’ve put together the supply chain of the key players who are charged with delivering next generation sports coverage, and who are telling stories that deliver biometric data of athletes in real time. 
Guests:
James Haigh is co-CEO and co-Founder of We Are Sweet, a technology company servicing many leading sports rights holders with content-driven digital platforms. 

Barry Flanigan is chief strategy officer at Aurora Media Worldwide, sports production company.

Sam Renouf is CEO of PTO, the Professional Triathletes Organisation

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Transcript

0:00

Hello. And welcome to Unofficial part of the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. Data as long played a role in the way sport is presented on television from football to formula one and tennis and cricket. We're very familiar with commentators referencing statistics. To help explain what we're watching. But increasingly the most sought after data points are those that exist within the body of the athlete. Heart rate and other biometric data is fast becoming a storytelling device in its own, right. To eliminate an augment. What we see on our screens. But how does it work? Who is it really aimed at? How much does it cost? And who's paying. to answer. These are many other questions. We put together a supply chain of key players who are charged with delivering the next generation of sports coverage. Organizations that are telling stories that deliver biometric data. Of athletes. To the viewers in real time. James Hague is co CEO and co-founder of, we are sweet technology company, servicing many leading sports rights holders with content driven digital platforms. Barry Flanagan is chief strategy officer or raw media worldwide. The sports production company, and Sam Renouf is CEO of PTO, the professional triathletes organization.,

Sam Renouf: 1:10

So for us as a member of the T100 tour, as a member of the PTO and then racing in the T100, you signed an agreement that we're allowed to use your data to be contextually relevant and we're quite specific on how it's used, right? So although it's heart rate, we're actually sort of a bit gun shy on showing literally the heart rate, right? We want to show things like your percentage of strain or your effort level, because we think a It's a bit better to the athletes themselves because it's a bit less personal, but actually it's probably also more Contextually relevant to your comment Richard of you as the casual fan you seeing that one athlete's got I don't know 180 heart rate and others got 140 That doesn't necessarily mean anything right if they're going 90 Versus 80 that does mean something so I don't think this necessarily becomes as personal as sharing an individual's biometric data It's more about us as a rights holder and the partners within the supply chain being able to Have the rights to use it to be able to tell a story You And that can be done in a way that still makes athletes comfortable with how their performances are being shown.

Richard Gillis UP: 2:07

Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. And you can join our community of tens of thousands of people. By signing up to our weekly newsletter on sub stack, which goes out every Thursday. Or find us in the usual places, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tik, TOK, and Instagram on Unofficial Partner. under the headline of real time storytelling, I've been trying to think of when I last experienced it. As a viewer, I am a punter in this conversation and I'm trying to get to, okay, yeah, that was an example of what we're going to be talking about. So what I'm after from, from one or a few of you is what do we mean by real time storytelling? can we give it a definition, but also just give me an example or two of. where this has worked brilliantly.

3:00

James Hague. We are sweet.

James Haigh: 3:03

For me, it's about using live data to create engaging stories for fans. So it's about understanding what's happening at a point in time within a race. So that's taking all of those inputs. So like with PTO, we've got chip timing, right? We've got the speed of the athlete, points scored both in this race and previous races and biometrics. where we're improving every time, right? So we've got heart rate and we've got things like power output on the bike and it's taking all of that information in real time. And understanding all of the micro and macro moments that are happening within a race. So an example of a macro moment could be, in the San Francisco men's race, right? Sprint finish, Kyle Smith vomited as soon as he went across the line, Van Riel still won about a couple of seconds in front. But I, I have a theory that there are thousands of micro moments happening throughout these races. There could be an athlete in 9th position that no one's focusing on, cameras aren't on them, but they just run their fastest minute ever in a pro race. The athlete might not even know that that's just happened, the fans certainly don't know, the commentators don't know, but that's a really great moment that should be celebrated. And I believe live data through what we're doing with PTO can surface more of those stories and keep fans engaged.

Richard Gillis UP: 4:15

Okay. All right. So it's, there's the data question and we'll get onto that in terms of where it comes from, who owns it,

James Haigh: 4:22

Yeah.

Richard Gillis UP: 4:23

you do with it. There's the, we'll get into the weeds of that. Sam, where does this fit into, take us to the sort of top of the funnel for PTO? So people will have heard You talk about PTO and you've been on this podcast and we talked about the business of triathlon and again, you know, lots of investment money flowing into the sport at the top end. Where does this bit of the conversation, this, and we're talking here about how it's covered, and there's a question later on in terms of, we've got an Olympics coming up, is there a difference in terms of how I'm going to engage with the sport there than I would on the PTO Broadcast or any of that, but let's just take us position this in the scheme of things, how, what's going on and why is this an important conversation?

Sam Renouf: 5:08

So I think it applies in, in two ways. the second way is the same across all sports, which is you need The data to understand what's happening, to be able to, you know, engage with the product. And you could be tennis, Formula One, sailing, any other sports. And we can talk about how some of those are way, way ahead of where we are. And triathlon just needs to catch up with that. However, specifically to triathlon, one of the interesting dynamics is that because you're combining three sports, you're really getting the best of the best and it's, you know, we, we would describe the triathletes as the ultimate athletes. And so. It's just even more important to be able to understand contextually what the athletes are doing because this isn't a skilled sports and I always use that that phrase carefully, right? But the classic definition within sports, right? This is not hockey or a tennis where you can immediately tell an incredible shot. You might not necessarily know the example we just referenced before that Kyle or Martin Van Riel are running at Two minutes, 55 per kilometers is absolutely phenomenal. But on the screen, if you just see runners, unless you're a super fan, you don't necessarily understand. So for us, it's around contextualizing what a superhuman is. There's a fancy phrase.

Richard Gillis UP: 6:13

Right. Okay. I like that. And there's a question for Barry. So Aurora, you're a TV production. company. Is triathlon difficult or easy when in terms of your job? So bringing it to screen.

Barry Flaingan: 6:27

yeah. And I'd, I'd phrase us as we're a sports production company that makes everything from TV through to digital and social and brand sponsorship integration, et cetera, which is relevant to the answer to that question. Because all sports have data. Some sports have masses amount of data and triathlon would certainly, and the great work that the guys in the call are doing is. Making that data readily available. Not all data is relevant to a viewer. Not all data is relevant to a fan. If it's unstructured, if it's not got a creative process behind how we're using the data, it just becomes noise. It might be incredibly useful to teams, or it might be incredibly useful to engineers, for example, in formula one, but it's not that interesting to a viewer. So what we as creative producers. Do with the rights owners that we work with, such as E one and Formula E, et cetera. We spend a lot of time just just thinking, okay, how do we use this data that's available to tell real time narratives? As the guys were just saying, it's about enhancing what you're seeing on screen in the live event. And helping viewers understand what's going on, but more than that, it's kind of dramatizing it. So it's the moments of an overtake or the predicted, the predicted winner of a race, or the heat map that you would see has now become a sort of standard part of watching football. And so it's these moments that, You create a narrative from it using the data and then the absolute goal is that that data and that narrative gets shared and talked about beyond the live broadcast. So that's what really creates fandom, is when you get these like moments that come supported by the data that then get shared widely on second screen or WhatsApp or Discord or and then become part of the, the, the fan culture around a sport. And you've got perfect examples of that in Formula One and football. And it's, it's, it's also a really interesting element for new emerging sports that we, we do a lot of like E1 and Extreme E, et cetera. It's how to, so again, echoing what, what Sam and James was saying, It's about storytelling using the data that enhances the drama and the entertainment for a viewer that's watching and it turns them into fans.

Sam Renouf: 8:49

And you could be slightly controversial and say something that like, if you don't have that in a sport and a broadcast, all of it is boring. It takes something amazing like Formula One, right? That's obviously got, you know, billions of fans engaged around the world, but if that broadcast of two or three hours didn't have the data to show where the drivers were at any given time, it would just be cars going around the circuit. And frankly, that's where. Triathlon and to a certain extent endurance sports were or are until we and a couple of other groups have come along with We Are Sweet to sort of change that and it's just been a really interesting journey, which, you know, we're only halfway through.

James Haigh: 9:21

there's a real element as well of what's going to keep the viewer hooked for the next 5, 10, 15 minutes and prevent them reaching for their phone and going on TikTok, right? If there's an athlete gaining on another athlete, we can know how hard they're pushing, what their past performance was, what's likely to happen, is an overtake likely to happen in the next couple of minutes? And can we generate excitement about the moment that might happen?

Richard Gillis UP: 9:43

Went to Formula One in terms of, well, okay, I've been to a race. I'm not a Formula One fan specifically, but it does help me. I do need a lot of help. So, but I'm not an avid So I'm, there's a question here and it might be a Sam question in terms of the importance of this strategically. Is it for someone like me, you need, you want to bring in as a sort of casual fan, you know, viewer, or is it for the sort of super fans who want their experience enhanced?

Sam Renouf: 10:11

yeah, or is it even further, which is, is it actually just supporting the production to be able to make the broadcast work better? And it's ultimately the, the answers in three different places and three different usages. So if I if I include one as an example, so this is not a sport that takes place in a stadium, obviously it's not even a sport that takes place within a track. So these athletes might be 30, 40 kilometers across an area, which is incredibly difficult from a production perspective to capture that story. So to use the example that Barry mentioned before, and just being able to know what's going on. We had this in Singapore, which is the second stage of the T100 this year. And Sam Long, who's the world number one, came last out of the water and finished second overall. And because we had the data, the production team were able to follow that and make sure the cameras are in the right locations and follow the journey. And without the data, we wouldn't be able to do that. So that's probably the first reason is nothing to do with what you just said. It's more production side. But then you get into the, how are you engaging the superfan, which is very much for us around the second screen environment, which we've been building out with We Are Sweet. So those who are incredibly engaged about every single athlete and want to know their heart rates and the amount of times they've taken over and the rest. But that's far more detailed than you're ever going to use for, say, someone who's just casually tuning in like yourself to use that example. And that's data that ultimately gets fed into the broadcast. And that's the director's choice to say, let's not overload the casual fan. That might be channel surfing through or have come across it because of a TikTok reel. You've got to give them enough to make it contextually relevant that, Wow, these athletes are going incredibly quickly and what does that mean? You know, so heart rate is to us a really obvious one because hopefully everybody watching one has got a heart rate so we can all relate to it, you know? But other data beyond that isn't going to be as relevant and you don't want to overload them.

Richard Gillis UP: 11:47

So Barry, editorially, you've got a, there's a, there's sort of real time decisions being taken in terms of how much of this stuff you can, you want to use, because as I say, it could get very confusing very quickly, and the whole point then sort of dissipates, I guess.

Barry Flaingan: 11:59

yeah, absolutely. And to echo what Sam was saying, that, that is a key part of the, the value that a company like Aurora would bring. And obviously we, we don't, Just turn up on the day and then hope for the best in terms of you know, what data we get and what graphics we put on screen. There's a lot of work that goes on way before we even actually start to look at the data. So when we're working with a sport, particularly a new emerging sport, E1 series is a great example, electric powerboat racing. We're in the first season, first three events of that. So way before we, we actually look at, The granularity of the data and the graphics that go on screen. We work with the client to get under the skin of what the sport is, like, how do the rules work? What target audiences are they going for? Uh, what do core avid fans think and feel? What does the casual fan that they might be going after think and feel? So we make sure we understand that. Then we look at what data is available. And almost always, there's a vast amount of data available, more than what we would want to put on screen. because there's usually, particularly in motorsports series, there's an incredible amount of data that comes from the sensors, et cetera, and the track cameras, et cetera. So our job then, as creators, is to match that. Brand understanding with the way that we use some of the data. And then the next step of it is then how do we make that look on the screen, which is a really important element. It's the making sure that the data that we're presenting not only tells a story or helps a casual fan, but it, it, it looks appropriate. And it, it enhances what you're watching in screen rather than getting in the way of what you're watching on screen. So, so there's a lot of prep work that goes in. Working with the rights owner, working with the data specialists like James and other companies involved in, in the, being experts on what data is available. And also working with brand sponsors and teams and individual athletes just to understand how the sport works. and how we get that narrative across to an audience. Yeah, and that, that's, that's our role. And what we're discussing today is, is to be the creative storytelling experts. And then the final point is the director who would be directing the live broadcast is intimately involved in that process all the way through in the run up. So that we, you know, our live team who are in the gallery have gone through all that working, gone through all that understanding of how we're going to use the data and for series like E1 and Xtreme A, we talk about the director cuts scenes so rather than a director's cutting the live sport and then the data's getting cut, laid onto that, the data is part of the scene, so they're visualizing how it's going to look with data and sporting action combined, and then their skill in a live environment is to direct that in an engaging way for the viewers.

Richard Gillis UP: 14:53

Okay, so I'm just, there's a sort of supply chain emerging that I just want to, you know, clarify, because as I say, these things get complicated. So I'm trying to get Sam and me, I guess, is the, is the journey. So you've got the event holder and the rights owner. you've got production, so Aurora, you know, or a sports production company, you've got the sort of retail end of the broadcast supply chain. So you've got Sky Television or BT or TNT or whoever it is. And then you've got me and then James, I'm trying to work out where this bit fits into that. So in terms of, of there's the sourcing of the information, the data, you know, so heart rate data, I imagine there's monitors or whatever, but where you fit into that basic sort of scheme of supply chain.

James Haigh: 15:41

I think we fit in between the athlete and the,

Richard Gillis UP: 15:45

I missed out the, athlete, They're easy to forget.

James Haigh: 15:47

Yeah, I think that's a really important place to start. So we've been between the athlete and the data going into, into production. So we've got our own, what we think is a seven step supply chain. We don't actually handle any of what we're calling the inputs ourselves. With PTO, we have partners that provide the sensors that provide the chip timing, but. Those partners show up, they put sensors on athletes, they put maps down on the floor for athletes to run over. Now all that data is being collected and it needs a provider to pick that data up. So we consume inputs, sometimes 60 plus athletes at once for a race if there's men and women racing at once, plus all of those timing maps, we take all that data in. And we believe there's, there's seven steps into processing this data. You've got the inputs, then you've got to clean it, you've got to identify which athlete you're getting data for, you've got to compare it with previous results, and then you get into the fun stuff, right? The last three are curate, visualize, and output. You create, curate stories, you visualize them, which could be on a second screen, which we provide to PTO, but it also could be on broadcast graphics, which we can help with, but it also could be other outputs. It could be outputs directly to a, I don't know, a commentary interface or to other graphics providers. So we saw in there, in making sure the data coming in makes sense, and there's a lot of that, when I say makes sense, there's a lot you need to do, right? Because even with heart rate sensors, you can get false positives. You could have an athlete running along at 160 for 3 minutes, and then suddenly they drop down to 70. That's not because they've had to sit down. That's just because there's some dodgy data come in.

Richard Gillis UP: 17:24

It reminds me of a question. So do you need a sort of sporting expertise to tell you to decipher at that point? So I had the analogy here. I was listening to another part of the rest is entertainment with, you know, which is one of my favorite podcasts. And it had, uh, Richard Osman and we talked about, he was talking about the darts and they've got. Old players in the TV booth saying, right, okay, he's going to go for triple 17, triple 19 here. You know, so the camera is lined up. So I'm just trying to think is there some sporting expertise in this process Identifies what is important?

James Haigh: 17:59

there is, but I think you need, you need to get the previous steps, right? Which is more tech expertise, right? You need to get the inputs. You need it cleaned. You need to deal with dropouts. You need to deal with. Bad GPS signal in, let's say Singapore, when it's just bouncing off all the buildings. You need to deal with all that because if any of that fails, then you can't curate stories because you're almost operating blind. But then yeah, the final three steps curate, visualize, and output that I think is where the sporting expertise really comes in. And then you can use the data to create an even better product.

Barry Flaingan: 18:29

Yeah, and just to add to that I agree, James, like that, and you're absolutely right, Richard, that sporting expert who understands the data, And a live environment and what it actually means is really crucial for the likes of Aurora or the production company that's sort of working upstream from the process that, that, that James described, because we, we would use sporting experts um, pick an example, uh, we, Hexagon Cup, which was a new, innovative paddle tournament in Madrid that we produced at the start of the year. And Having a PADL expert that's part of the team that's worked with us on the graphics that understands the data that's coming on court, but then having that person able to advise the live gallery and tell the live gallery what's going on is hugely important because then you're not just Simply relying on a TV director or a live producer to understand every granular piece of the sport and triathlon. We work with SuperTri, who Sam will know well. And, you know, again, really important in SuperTri's production is that we have, uh, the expertise, the sporting expertise, who's analyzing the data. Predicting what that's likely to mean, advising the commentators on what that means, and also advising the live gallery. So yeah, the darts example is a brilliant one that you came up with. Spotters, I think they're called. And it's a brilliant role. There's a documentary all on its own about spotters, I think, and the role they play in sporting broadcast.

Richard Gillis UP: 20:01

There's a, so Sam take me through the economics of this because it sounds Expensive this, it sounds like it's adding cost to the broadcast and it's making it better. I'm just trying to weigh up how much is too much, how much you invest in this, who is paying for it, I guess is a question. And I can see it as sort of a wondering if it's the broadcasters are paying in their rights fee or whether there's a sort of sponsorship category that is being carved out that deals with this.

Sam Renouf: 20:32

So I think you hit on it in both ways. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as adding to the broadcast cost. This is just fundamental to what the broadcast is, right? And that's partly because you know, triathlon is a, is a new sport. Any, like any of the other ones that Barry mentioned of like new sports coming to market, the competition isn't the other triathletes, sorry, the other triathlon productions. The competition is the other sports that obviously have this level of engagement and data. So I think having it and the start sort of starting point. Baseline, you just need it to make your TV engaging or your broadcast engaging I should say rather than TV and eventually that might turn in but you monetize that whatever way the business model works Which in our case isn't necessarily about media rights There's other ways of doing it, but you need it to have your broadcast engaging Once it gets a bit more mature, I think there is a direct monetization potential from the data, and we're beginning to see this in the most mature sports. So in Formula One, as an example, and um, CLGP, they're monetizing this, the graphics in real time, right? I think I'm fairly sure it's Oracle and CLGP is slapped all over there pretty fast because they're the partner that are help monetize helping creating the data. And so it's a natural sort of. But for us, like we just look at it as fundamental, fundamentally needed for the sport to become engaging because And to your, to your last part of the question, like who's paying for it in our case, you know, This is a venture venture capital backed business model and that we're investing in triathlon to take it where we think it can go And we're getting as as you've talked about in your podcast a lot of interest in triathlon over the last sort of three to five Years mainly because look it's such an incredibly valuable demographic of a sport. It's global It's growing fast and yet it's completely under commercialized for all of this kind of stuff and so that's a very natural place for a You For a VC to go and say, look, if we invest in the product and take it further than where the sport's been previously, and that's not necessarily just triathlon, like all endurance sports aren't particularly built for television until someone's come along and changed that. And hopefully there's a rather large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the VCs to go and get their hands on.

Richard Gillis UP: 22:25

there's a whole sort of genre around the tech, the data partner in sport and the way in which they're choosing to market themselves. Isn't it? I mean, you. There is a sort of branding on screen branding that's creeping further forward. And we're talking, I think, for here, from a UK perspective, because actually probably I imagine in America, it's much more overt in terms of the way in which that role, you know, you've got the sort of, this, this segment is brought to you by our data, you know, there's that sort of. Language that is different in the States. It's more commercially obvious. I was thinking, I was looking, watching the rugby the other day and Sage were doing something similar that they were sort of talking, you know, Maggie Alphonse was sort of analyzing in the ad breaks, which I think I'd never seen before. It was quite, it was interesting and odd at the same time, but that, that the way in which they're dealing with that commercially and from a marketing perspective is sort of, it's almost shifting, isn't it? It's evolving.

Barry Flaingan: 23:17

Yeah, hugely, and Sage is a, yeah, I was going to mention Sage and, and, and Rugby, and that's a good example. You know, Google are a sponsor of Formula E as the cloud partner, but again, they want to tell stories about the technology and its ways that that can be integrated into the, the broadcasting digital content, AWS, obviously in Formula One are the underlying engine, uh, for a lot of the, the, the, the data flows that are going on. But again, what's really interesting is that they, they're not simply wanting to be behind the scenes. They want to be part of the, the storytelling as well. So I think, I think you're right. The data partner of sporting events or the tech partner of sporting events actually becomes part of the creative content around the sporting event in the same way that the kit sponsor. Makes content, and that's part of football fandom, for example, is the kit launch for Nike or Adidas. You're starting to see the tech partners thinking the same way. How can they, how can they create storytelling around their involvement? And it's particularly prevalent in things like Formula One or Formula E, where there's such a strong overlap of technology and that's one of the things that fans like about the sport is that technology story.

Richard Gillis UP: 24:31

It's also, it's, it's quite useful to know what they do. Cause obviously a tech partner can mean absolutely anything. It's such a broad word and data is the same. It's just this sort of huge abstract noun that can mean anything. So actually putting, this is what it looks like. You know, and, and from their point of view is I think quite useful just to say, okay, well, I get it now. I sort of understand how, why I would benefit from you being a tech partner. There is a sort of granularity to the story, which I can see

Barry Flaingan: 25:04

Yeah, exactly. I mean, a good, a good example of that actually is NFL and their partnership with AWS. They've created you know, effectively a product, I think, called Next Gen Stats. It's using player tracking technology, providing real time data on player speed, acceleration, distance traveled, etc. You know, Past completion, probability. So these are all great elements that then come into the broadcast or the digital content that that helps new, you know, non NFL fans actually understand the sport more, but the, the. What I like about that is it's actually made its way then into beyond the broadcast. It's now there's in the NFL end of seasons awards. There's a moment of the year award that's powered by AWS. They sponsor it, but it's using those next gen stats. So it's taking the stats beyond the broadcast and it's actually making them part of something that drives broader fan culture. To go back to that

Richard Gillis UP: 26:01

Well, it's, it's, it's like sort of XG in football, isn't it? It's become a sort of almost like a cult, you know, as there's a book on it, it's a book called XG, you know, there's a, there's a whole, it's grown, uh, it's so it's own life.

Barry Flaingan: 26:12

Exactly. And that's the goal. I think, you know, if you're pardon the pun, that that these data points actually take on a life beyond the sport and become part of meme culture. You know, the fact, sadly, that Scotland had an XG against Germany in the Euros of zero, I think it was, because we were so awful in the first game. That just gets spread widely. around the internet or around whatsapp and and became just part of the banter and part of the the fan fun around the tournament

Richard Gillis UP: 26:39

sort of slight build, James, a question for you then is when there's so much different information, is there a sort of XG like thing? Is there a priority? A data point that you think is more important than the others currently, or something that you think, okay, well, that's, that's my go to I've got to have that one and then the rest we can build around.

James Haigh: 26:57

I think it depends on the sport, but we keep having conversations at the moment about heart rate. That seems to be an underlying thing that is going on within all sports, particularly racing and PTO where, where it is, it is a really. Good indicator of how hard an athlete is pushing and then from that, you can understand what's, what's likely to happen. It's interesting, Barry, that you mentioned about moment of the year, and I was talking earlier about micro moments and macro moments. The heart rate enables you to understand when a moment has happened or is about to happen. So an example of that is in the women's race in Singapore earlier this year. On the bike Lucy Buckingham was leading with 98 percent heart rate, but four seconds behind was Lucy Charles Barkley with an 86 percent heart rate. So wait a minute, you've got somebody four seconds behind with a heart rate 12 percent lower than the person in front. What's about to happen? Something's probably about to happen here. So I think heart rate is, is really underutilized and can be used to tell a lot of stories and generate a lot of moments.

Richard Gillis UP: 28:00

So it's a question I asked Johnny Brownlee, actually, I did a panel with him recently and, and. It was who owns it and does he want to own it? And does he want to monetize it? It's personal data. You know, there's no more personal data than your heart rate. So that biometric sort of category. I'm wondering how, if I'm an agent or if I'm a player. And this is not specific to triathlon, but just across the board. I just think, well, okay, you're making money out of this. Why can't I? Where's that going to go? Heart

Sam Renouf: 28:30

Yeah, like it's a complicated area. Like in our case, we are the athlete body. So the athletes work with us to provide access to their biometric data, to tell their stories, to make it engaging. And it ultimately creates a flywheel effect that they get paid. But as the, as the assets become more valuable, it becomes more complicated. Right, for sure. And we're seeing that in certainly in the US sports where it's, it's unionized in a very big way about the usage of that data is becoming, this is an asset class in itself. There's no longer the official data partner of a sport. There's probably 15 different data partners that have been cut and sliced and diced.

Richard Gillis UP: 29:02

rate partner.

Sam Renouf: 29:04

Right, exactly.

Richard Gillis UP: 29:05

just on that, Sam, just a, just a, so they sign that up when they sign up to be a PTO athlete. When they then go to the Olympics, do they sign a similar, do they have to sign the same sort of thing to the IOC? Do they then own their data?

Sam Renouf: 29:18

don't know about the IOC. That's really, it's an interesting question. So for us as a member of the T100 tour, as a member of the PTO and then racing in the T100, you signed an agreement that we're allowed to use your data to be contextually relevant and we're quite specific on how it's used, right? So although it's heart rate, as James has described, we're actually sort of a bit gun shy on showing literally the heart rate, right? We want to show things like your percentage of strain or your, or your, your effort level, because we think a It's a bit better to the athletes themselves because it's a bit less personal, but actually it's probably also more Contextually relevant to your comment Richard of you as the casual fan You know you seeing that one athlete's got I don't know 180 heart rate and others got 140 That doesn't necessarily mean anything right if they're going 90 Versus 80 that does mean something so I don't think this necessarily becomes as personal as sharing an individual's biometric data It's more about us as a rights holder and the partners within the supply chain being able to Have the rights to use it to be able to tell a story You And that can be done in a way that still makes athletes comfortable with how their performances are being shown.

Barry Flaingan: 30:19

Yeah, and listening to that, Sam, it's, it's almost echoes of what is standard in motorsport, for example, where there's lots and lots of data. Some of that, you know, that's used by the engineers of the motorsport teams, but a lot of that is proprietary. A lot of that is, belongs to the team and does not make its way into public broadcast or into the public. So I think you just, you start, you will start or. To have layers of data and some data is proprietary and uh, not for distribution and other parts of the data chain are for distribution and are for enhancing broadcast. So, yeah, it will keep the lawyers happy just to be carving up different data rights for different purposes.

James Haigh: 31:03

And what we're exploring as well, like if we're collecting all of this data, some of it goes to broadcast, some of it goes to commentary, but what about the data that actually goes back to the athlete to increase their buy in on the whole process?

Richard Gillis UP: 31:14

Is there a link? So again, one of the, there's, there's a couple of questions I've got is one is I, I, and I think most people have a propensity to over or sort of, I think the data is further advanced. I, I, I'm sometimes disappointed when tech, like a good example would be, you know, you know, I, The, the stuff you put on your face, you know, the

Barry Flaingan: 31:33

Apple Vision

Richard Gillis UP: 31:34

exactly. So in my imagination, I'm thinking this is going to be fantastic. You put it on and then after a while you think, okay, it's, it's all right, but it's not, it's not changing my life. And it's been, this has been a conversation for 20 years. I'm just wondering, it's my expectations are the problem and they're almost limitless and you're servicing them. And you're also promising me various things. I'm not talking about you as a group, but I'm talking about the industry really. And you've got that. You know, the sport and tech sort of industry, which is constantly moving things forward, promising the next thing. I wonder what the, what the outcome of that is. And the danger is that again, my expectations are just so high all the time and I get bored quickly. Oh my God, it's, you know, it's, you know, they're giving me bloody biometric data, you know, heart rate. Data now, you know, and I, okay, I've done that. I want to do something else. How is it going to evolve? How's it, is it just, is it just an arms race that is just going to keep on whirring, it's just part of life.

Barry Flaingan: 32:33

Yeah. So it's a great point. And I think data. In sports, or any form of content, to be honest, or any form of entertainment, data and tech innovation, just for the sake of the data and tech, never works, and it goes back to that point that I was saying earlier, that you've gotta, you've gotta think about what's the purpose of this data point that's being displayed. Or this technology experience that's been put in front of of the viewer or the fan and, and what's the, what's the story that you're trying to tell around it? And, and although that sounds basic, it takes, it's the combination of the art and the science. You've got to be thinking like we're all human beings as sports fans. Nobody is walking around saying, I wish, I wish. Sports rights owners were pushing more data to me. Nobody thinks like that. But what we do respond to is immersive experiences that get us deeper into the sport. And if you want the perfect example of the trajectory of travel with younger audiences who will become older audiences in sport and how they are consuming not just sport, but broader forms of entertainment. including eSports and gaming. Just take a look at the way that data is used on YouTube and Twitch broadcasts for example. There's a tournament going on down at the Copper Box in London, in the Olympic Park. Rocket League, which you may or may not know, is an eSports tournament. Rocket League is owned by Epic Games. They've sold out the Copper Box for the weekend. It's live streamed on YouTube and Twitch. It's basically rocket powered cars and eSports. with a big football and they're competing, you know, Adidas are involved, Puma are involved, Nike are involved and just take a look at the broadcasts of that tournament on YouTube and Twitch and the way that data is presented and the way it's not done getting in the way of that young audience that's watching it. It's an integral part of the viewing experience and that is how that audience is is growing up used to consuming. A form of entertainment and sport is just another form of entertainment for that audience. So it's, it's the trajectory of travel where that's just the expectation of how our sports will look.

James Haigh: 34:47

totally agree. Those younger fans if we want to turn them into sports fans, we're competing against gaming, we're competing against TikTok, you know, on Fortnite and so on. You've got tracker network, you've got all of these things where they can go and compare themselves against the pros and the data is just there because of course it's there. And I think that's going to be the feeling in sport like, well, of course it should be there.

Richard Gillis UP: 35:07

And that's the, it gets to the Peloton question and, you know, specific to bits of triathlon, which is the sort of link between the home and what we're watching on the telly and where that, how that's going to evolve. Because I was talking to someone the other day about verticals, pyramid verticals. Sorry, Nick Coward, who's got many hats here across sport. But he was on the podcast talking about the sort of flawed idea of thinking about all sports as just a vertical pyramid. But actually in this case, I can see a link via You know, the, the sort of what I'm doing at home with what I'm watching, and it feels like there's a tangible link. Is that part of the excitement, Sam of the investment community into Triathlon that, that connection?

Sam Renouf: 35:53

So I think one of the reasons why, and this is slightly different direction to answer your question, but one of the reasons why triathlon has attracted so much investment interest, not just with us, but with others, with SuperTri as an example, is that this is a sport that's not necessarily building itself on media rights. Because we all know how challenging that macro environment is at the moment. These are sports that are underpinned by participation. They're just fragmented from a content perspective. So if you've, you've got this huge, you know, millions and millions of people participating in your sport, but they're naturally fragmented because there's no product that brings them all together. If you can, Confirming you can solve that with data and the various things we're talking about. That's a really interesting proposition, right? You literally, you don't just take it into someone's home when they're watching, you take it into their lives on an everyday basis. And so I think that's something we'll see beyond triathlon moving forward as the media rights model in sport becomes increasingly more challenged. Participation is going to step up, right? It's either you're spectating or you're participating. Those are sort of the three different ways you're, you're engaging with a sport. And so, data can underpin all of that.

Richard Gillis UP: 36:50

It's interesting that you and Barry, your gaming analogy is really interesting. And I, we. I'm obviously not a gamer, but we went to we we've been to a few recently as you know, doing podcasts and it was really interesting how integral that, you know, the, the data is almost the product, isn't it? It's, you know, that's, that's what they're. Talking about is what they're competing about and it's what there's a sort of direct aspiration to copy the what's going on on the stage.

Barry Flaingan: 37:21

Exactly. And, and, you know, we, we are already seeing play out back in the sports world and, you know, there's, there's been lots written and talked about, uh, the Kings league as an example. So PQs, uh, Barcelona legends seven aside tournament that, that is just. You know, it's taken off massively, it's like, you know, I think more than 1 million viewers per match I think 13, 14, 15 million subscribers in its first season, 150 million video views, and that's a sporting tournament that, doesn't, hasn't gone down a broadcast route. They're not selling any media rights. They've built that audience by cleverly creating a format that leans into all the way that, that younger audiences in particular are used to consuming e sports, but they've taken that into a football format and then very cleverly lent into the fact that it's influencers and creators in that world of Twitch and YouTube, et cetera, that are that have their own audiences and bring an audience with them. So you combine influencers, creators with ex pros and, and football stars, create a format that is fun and exciting and engaging, present it in a way where the graphics feel really intuitive and fresh and the data that's in there. And you know, and because they've, they're not starting from, an established sport, they've got the luxury of creating format points in the sport that come from the data, you know, so the secret weapons and things like that, that again are much more like esports and a twitch stream you know, so leaning into these platforms and then off the back of that they've got a huge audience, they just raised 60 million euros investment I think to expand internationally and they have brands Clambering over themselves to be involved in sponsorship and integration because they've got that level of engagement. And I think, you know, really interesting just to look at something that's come out of nowhere, sort of leveraging a traditional sport, but doing it in a very, very different way and, and growing so rapidly in the space of a year.

Richard Gillis UP: 39:24

The other bundle is interesting. Sam, you mentioned there about the, you know, the media bundle not being the, you know, being the ultimate goal. The other bundle is betting. Is there any, is there a betting market around this? Cause obviously once you get sport, once you've got data at the center of it. You start, you, you know, we've all had conversations with investor types or private equity, see that as a very much part of the flywheel sport going forward. And we know all of the challenges and all of the, you know, the, the issues that come with it, but is there a marketplace for that? Is that part of the picture?

Sam Renouf: 39:59

Absolutely. So look, you can already take a bet on Skybet and various other sites on the T100 already, even in our nascent sort of stage of the first year. And I think it just shows that as this becomes more prevalent, as the data becomes more relevant to make it more interesting to be engaged in that way, you're obviously going to go The step from engagement to betting or sorry, I shouldn't say that engagement to monetization, which is the probably the logical way of putting it. But you've got to have this stuff as this is table stakes, right? To your comment before earlier, is it an arms race? I think it genuinely is as a sports industry, not internally against different rights holders. It's to compete with the e sports and all the other things that are going along and you compete for people's discretionary time at the end of the day. And so you've got to be keeping up with this momentum.

Barry Flaingan: 40:41

Yeah. And just to add some. I think adjacent to betting, if that's the right way to phrase it, massive opportunity in fantasy games and fantasy gaming in ways, you know, it opens up new monetization streams for rights owners to, to move fans into a sort of deeper relationship. And obviously that's a well trodden path in, you know, the bigger sports and, you know, fantasy football, et cetera. I think it's really interesting with, with sort of smaller emerging sports and the extent to which they, that those sports can move fans into that sort of deeper level of engagement through fantasy gaming and the data plays a massive part in that it plays on, you know, understanding who you pick in your fantasy team. And, and, and watching the live game or live match and knowing how your fantasy stats are performing is just, is, is such an important part of football now. And yeah, I think we'll, we'll see more and more of that across other sports as well.

Sam Renouf: 41:36

And I think it's a validation actually, interestingly, even so we're three races into the T100 and already betting has come from independent betting providers, obviously, but also fantasy. So there are fantasy triathlon solutions now that are nothing to do with the PTO that are referenced. The entertainment and that just shows that there is a market here and there's a technology driven market. It's just good. It's got to come from the content being available and being able to understood and that's, that's the data.

Richard Gillis UP: 41:58

The fantasy is almost a cultural phenomenon, isn't it? It's just, it's sort of in plain sight, but then you see the size and scale of it and the level of just the, the conversation you're right in terms of the way in which it's changed the way people just watch a football match. It's the same way as, you know, if you've got, it's, there's the tribal element to it, okay. I want Spurs to win. You know, whatever, there's betting people have, you know, there's a stake in it. And then the fantasy thing is fascinating how it's,

Barry Flaingan: 42:29

Yeah,

Richard Gillis UP: 42:29

know, and move from FIFA gaming to into fantasy and this sort of kids have just can reel off the sort of attributes of any particular player in, you know, some Spanish right back.

Barry Flaingan: 42:43

No, absolutely. And, you know, I've, I've got teenage kids and, you know, their experience of the Euros at the moment is that they've got this encyclopedic knowledge of, uh, like all teams of all these obscure players throughout Europe, like Turkey's left back or whatever, and, you know, way beyond what I know. And I would consider myself a passionate football fan. And it all comes from, you know, playing EFC and fantasy football. And it's like they've just got a, you know, it's just such a natural part of their enjoyment of sport. And then again, it's all the stuff on second screen and what's up and discord for, for younger audiences. Where. All of those, the banter and the fan culture around those stats is getting shared in real time while a game is on. And yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating. And, you know, as content storytellers, we look at around sports, some of these points outside of the live. So for example, in football, a key moment is when the team lineups are announced because everybody's rushing into the game. their fantasy app or other live sports apps that use Opta like, you know, FopMob or OneFootball etc. And checking the stats and the team lineups because they're then picking their fantasy team and so you see this spike in traffic and for brands and content creators that's really interesting because it's like, okay, how can we lean into that behavior? How can we create pieces of content? Or how can we going back into the core broadcast, how can we mirror some of that content that then makes its way into the live broadcast? So you kind of come full circle where the TV product has been influenced by the stuff that's happening on second screen.

Sam Renouf: 44:21

the user behaviors are changing. Anyone who says that the younger generation doesn't engage with sport just doesn't get it. They just engage differently. It's not sitting down and watching a long form show for three hours, but it's, it's actually everything you just described, right? It's, it's it's fantasy and data and the

Richard Gillis UP: 44:35

it does. You're so right. It just drives me nuts when they're, you know, the, and the other bit to it. And you see these things, obviously, when you've got a podcast, you talk to lots of different people and they, you feel, you hear sort of ideas over time become sort of almost industry received wisdoms, you know, and they become trotted out as though they're fact, you know, and the shortening of sport. Is one that again is, always say, right, okay, let's talk about specificity, you know, people go to the IPL or 2020 cricket, we need a 2020 cricket. It's the same as we need a drive to survive documentary series, because that works over that, you know, over there, there's no guarantee that it's going to work for you. And this premise that kids can't, don't like Complexity or they resist complexity or they resist length, you know, concentration. I just think it's just so nonsensical, but it just, again, it's just becomes an easy thing to say. And then over time people start to make very expensive decision, make, you know, decisions and investment decisions based on that sort of Intel.

Barry Flaingan: 45:36

yeah, absolutely. And you know, that, that sort of myth that younger sports fans or younger audiences only want to consume short form content. Of course, short form content is a massively important part of fandom now, but again, if you've got to look beyond sports, using the example of my kids again, but you know, my, my youngest son will spend three hours in Battle Royale and Fortnite. on a Saturday afternoon, unless I tell him to get off his screen. So he does not have a short attention span. He's just, he's spending time there in different ways with his mates who are all kind of like playing in the same thing. And, and again, sports just needs to, to, to lean into that and think, okay, well, how can we craft content experiences that maybe cross different platforms? And I think a really interesting metric that we'll start to see in sport beyond sort of live viewership of a match is. What's the time spent per fan or per viewer over the course of a week? So how much time is a fan spending with the sport across different platforms and different forms of con content? And if you looked at the metrics in that way, you'd come up with quite a different set of, uh, uh, conclusions, fandom works today. It's

Richard Gillis UP: 46:54

yeah. It's like a sort of, You know, my mom never used to come in and say, get, get away from that test match. You know, I mean, she'd be quite happy to sit in front of that for, you know, five days. Whereas, you know, this sort of moral panic about gaming, I know there are differences and whatever, but it was, it was, I found it fascinating. Again, the, just the, just the flawed decisions or decision making or just the way in which, you know, things are viewed. James, I just want to ask you a quick question about, just to finish this off really, in terms of what the challenges are, because I can see the potential of this, and I can, you know, I feel like I'm being pulled into this story, but what are the problems, how that you can see, as we're painting this picture of, you know, how the market's going to take place, and data is so central to it, but just give us a sense of what keeps you up at night.

James Haigh: 47:46

Well, I can speak as a tech provider and say it's really bloody hard, right? There's a lot that you've got to get right. And if any part of the supply chain goes wrong, then you've got people like Barry and Sam shouting at you that they haven't got the data they need for their

Richard Gillis UP: 48:02

yeah, you get the dark side of Barry and Sam, don't you?

James Haigh: 48:06

Yeah. And you never, never want to be on the dark side of Barry or Sam. I'm sure Sam can talk to some of the operational challenges being at the races, you know, but some of the things I've heard is like, you, you've got to find time to get these things actually attached to the athletes and explain to the athletes what it's for and how it works. You've got to run connectivity tests out there. You know, as we're talking about the T100, these are, these are races that happen. All over the world in, in various different, in different climates, in different zones of connectivity so that there could be places where there's. Really poor GPS signal, really poor 3G signal. So as a tech provider, what do we do if there are intermittent connections or connection dropouts? How do we make sure that we're not completely cutting off the data but still using what we've got? Or applying calculations on what we've had to determine what might be happening? So as a tech provider, there's just so much that can go wrong in that pipeline of just getting the data to us, let alone what we then do. which is processing it and serving out on second screen broadcast and so on. But yeah, Sam, I'm sure you're able to talk about some of the operational challenges of actually getting this up and running for a race.

Sam Renouf: 49:14

won't bore everyone with quite how complicated it gets other than to say that, look, it's, it's both resource and capitally, or sorry, both from a capital perspective and a resource perspective, way more intensive than I think we thought when we got into this. And this is why we were with folks like, like we are sweet to be able to deliver it. But the good thing, or the reason why we do it and reinvest in it is that The end result is we can take the sport to the heights of the other rights holders. We referenced like sales GP, like formula one that have done this really well. And for an investor, those are some of the assets that are worth more than, than anything out there, right? Like look at motor GP just traded for a phenomenal multiple formula. One is worth 20 billion. It's worth, we think it's worth the time and the effort because that's what the outcome will be, but obviously there's a lot of work to go into it to make it all happen.

Richard Gillis UP: 49:54

Okay. Well, listen, I think we've got there. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed that conversation and it's trying to as I say, what I like about it is that it pulls in lots of different strands into a specific case study. You know what I mean? So it's quite, quite often you can, you can have a bit of it, whether it's an investment conversation or a marketing conversation or a product format differentiation type thing, or it might be about audience, but this bit feels central to all of those. So it just depends on which direction you, you get into, but listen, thanks so much for your time. So James, Sam, Barry, really appreciate it.

Barry Flaingan: 50:29

No, really great. Thank you so much. Enjoyable chat.

James Haigh: 50:32

Thanks very much.