UP436 The Bundle Live @ Sportel Monaco

A special live episode recorded on stage at Sportel Monaco, the global sports television and technology convention.

Guests:

Glen Killane, Executive Director of Sport, European Broadcast Union, the EBU.

Claire Kelly, Managing Director of Gemba Europe and Middle East.

Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at OneFootball.

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Transcript

0:00

my feeling is that there's one overriding sensation that I have when I look at the sports media market at the moment. And if I were looking at it as a fan, I'd say, at what point did you guys forget about me? I think he's got a point don't you. That was Glenn Kalane executive director of sport at European broadcast union. The EBU. One of our guests on this special alive edition of Unofficial Partner. Recorded onstage at sport El Monaco, the global sports television and technology. Convention joining myself and Glen were Yanik Aramco, general manager of OTT at one football. And obviously. Uh, bundle regular cohost and Claire Kelly and other. Regular visitor to a Unofficial Partner, managing director of Gamba, Europe, and middle east. Welcome. This is Unofficial Partner is a sport business podcast, and I can see in the audience already people Who are avid listeners, I recognize them. We track you on a daily basis, with our data cleverness. But if you don't listen, if you happen to be in the small minority of people that don't listen, then give us a listen unofficial partner. Just search it in Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your. Now, the bundle is our regular series on this world, sort of sportel world, media, rights, streaming and myself and Yannick Ramke. I've created a monster, a brand Yannick, he goes around these places, people sort of look at him and ask him very detailed questions about the media market. There is a whole series of conversations that we've been having over the course of five or six years which talk very directly to the room today and one of the questions that we were wondering is is what are people worried about as they come down to Sportel this year? What's on their mind as they fly into Nice airport and get the expensive taxi over? What is it that they are thinking about, concerned about, and How does this world look to a sports fan? What is this world and this marketplace? How is it presented to what we might call real people? Out there beyond the Grimaldi Center. So those are the sort, some of the themes that we get into. And over the course of the year, you sort of start to notice that there's a lot of deals that get done and we start to sort of dissect them and start to ask what the meaning of those deals is and project onto those. And that's what we'll try and do today. So we're gonna try and sort of second guess some of the conversations that are gonna take place this week. Before we get into that, we're gonna very quickly. 30 second intro from each of my esteemed panelists. Claire Kelly, can we kick off with you? Sure. Thanks Richard. I'm Claire Kelly. I'm the managing director of Gemba in Europe and the Middle East. Gemba is a strategy and insight agency for the sports and entertainment industry. And our core tenant is if you understand your fan, understand your audience, Deeply, then you can commercialize them more effectively and you can drive better participation outcomes. So we work with brands and rights holders to do just that. Uh, hello everybody. Glenn Klan. I'm Executive Director of Sport at the European Broadcasting Union. So we by media rights on behalf of our members who are the public media organizations across we, we are rights holders for events such as the Olympic Games from. 26 to 32. We just announced last week that we've renewed our deal for Tour de France, just launched a new streaming platform called Eurovision Sport, which is, is there to complement our members output which will ensure that, uh, the public retain free access to sports across, across Europe and further afield, and also critically, That we gather data for our partners and our federation partners and something that I'm sure we could I could talk further with Claire about We will be getting into that. Don't worry about that. Yannick Yeah, good morning everybody Thanks for having me having us. Yes, my name is Yannick Ramke general manager OTT at OneFootball so Probably one question is what is OTT, but I'd leave this for the panel afterwards. Uh, what do we actually consider and I think what it is, but, uh, OneFootball is a global digital football media platform, which ultimately its job or our mandate that we define for ourselves is to connect Those who have products, services, content in the football media space with those who are seeking those products, services, and content. So, working together with club, leagues, federations, broadcasters out there, who are doing a tremendous job of storytelling, creating content, but then seeking an audience, which we think we have on the other side, so that we ultimately build, one and all experience for the digital, uh, football fan from, uh, News, stats, live streams, highlights, podcasts, all in one place, and that, I guess, the name is the game I'm trying to generally manage, so that's my role, in addition to what Richard and I have come up a few years back with the bundle. So, I think we start with the audience, and you've all mentioned there, we've got some words that I go deaf to, things like data, OTT insight, all of that stuff. I need you to explain to me what's happening. And I hear a lot of people around the room in this auditorium saying that they're offering a one to one relationship with me. I don't know how many one to one relationships I want with sports governing bodies, frankly, or media entities. Let's just talk about that for a minute. What's this world look like to normal fans? Glenn, let's start with you. What do you think that A normal person would look at in terms of, well, what is this marketplace selling and do they want to buy it ultimately? Well, I'd like to simplify things because I just can't get my head around really complex ideas. I'm with you on that one. Um, So my feeling is that there's one overriding sensation that I have when I look at the sports media market at the moment. And if I were looking at it as a fan, I'd say, at what point did you guys forget about me? At what point did you, did I become unimportant in this whole matrix? And, you know, you know, we're all rushing around with all these different OTT apps, different channels, pay, you know, paying multiple kind of subscriptions. You know, it's an absolutely horrific landscape for a, for a sports fan. I mean, I'm contextualizing this. It's horrific in the space of sport, right? It's not horrific in life, but it's horrific in, in sports terms. You know, we've created an ecosystem that is horrific for the consumer. So what's gone wrong and how can it be fixed? It would be one big question I would have this week. And how do you look at, you did a fantastic podcast recently, Richard. I don't want to be blowing smoke here, but it was the, it was called, it was entitled the squeezed middle. And I'm kind of obsessed with that space at the moment. We do a lot of business with the squeezed middle, but basically we do a lot of business with football, but we do a lot of business with sports that are not football and they have a, they have a really tough challenge on their hands. But I suppose, you know, we had a great Olympic Games in Paris. Is there an opportunity to kick on from that? But, for me, that back question, what about the fan, what about the viewer, what about the consumer? Because it doesn't seem to be set up at all. Yeah, right. Claire, I'm going to bring you in there because, and what Claire didn't mention, is her background is not this world, it's in retail, and I find that interesting for lots of reasons. I don't know what re I'm interested in what retailers and the platforms know about me compared to what I tell people when they come and ask me questions in market research, etc. But let's just talk about this audience thing and his point there about when did we forget about marketing. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I would say, I don't think the sport's ever forgotten about the fan. It's just, it's typically not had to work that hard to drive loyalty and to engage passion. Like, I'm still incredibly bullish about the sport. The sports industry about the product of sport versus other industries out there, because we work a lot on the brand side and the passion and that desire to be there and support your club, support your team. It's so much stronger than so many other industries out there. If you are a sponsor and you wanna get involved in that, you know, I was at Sainsbury's, and I've talked about this with you before, Richard. You would do anything to try and lock in the level of loyalty that sport elicits in the fan base. I think the reality is because of that historically and because it's perhaps been an easier industry to kind of discover in terms of availability of content because it hasn't been so fragmented, sports just not had to work that hard and that's fine. But I think the times are changing, you know, as Glenn said, it is a harder experience, probably not if you're one of those. Tier one, really premium properties, your MBAs, your NFLs, your IPLs, your formula ones, your premier leagues. But if you're not in that top five group, yeah, I mean, you probably are over the next five years going to have to work a lot harder, not just to retain your existing audience in terms of the share of attention you've got from them, but there's so many new formats of sport. There's so many new sports altogether. How are they going to win that passion when you've got such limited ceiling on time and on wallet? And I think that's the, it's both an opportunity, but it's also the challenge for sport is to rise above not just existing sports that are doing brilliantly, but other entertainment products that are out there that are constantly competing. And that's why it's so, so important to understand the fan now because stuff's just being thrown at them and you've got to be relevant, you've got to cut through. And I think if you're not. chasing that, you're going to get left behind. Do we think then, it's interesting, the, the point about marketing, and the I wonder whether it it's not so much they forgot marketing but they didn't ever need to do it and actually, they've relied on, you know, tribalism and, you know, myself and my business partner Sean, we're Spurs fans We're idiots. You know, we will, we'll take anything that they give us. They don't need to market it to us. But now we're saying, okay, well now you need to now segment and do all the things that Sainsbury's have always done. And I wonder if that's a skill set that actually isn't isn't there. And when you talk, when you look at the sort of relative revenue of, of marketing spend of a sports governing body, it is incredibly low. It's less than, quite often less than 5%, quite often less than 10 percent of total spend. So you can't expect anything else. Yannick, what's your, your view on this topic? I mean, I think as an end consumer, and this is what also came through a little bit, is that I think the end consumer is in there for a good time ahead, because Sports slowly but surely starts to realize that they have to work for both attention and, uh, yeah, uh, discretionary income from the end consumer because there are more parties than ever fighting for a share of time and attention. And it may have taken a little bit of time to come to that realization, but I think sports is, uh, slowly but surely getting there. And I think this also reflects a little bit how The power has shifted along the sports media value chain. I think at the beginning, broadcasters were in a tremendous position because they gave visibility to sports in the first place, then sports recognized and maybe starts to also reflect that things are changing that, look, this is super available programming and IP. And you talked about what are the benefits of sports. There are a lot of built in benefits, including. Guaranteed audiences, you mentioned you and Sean. I mean, if I give you a Liverpool match, it's not a substitute for you. It's like unsubstitutable that you get the content from the one club that you are favoring. But I think ultimately the end consumer is in a good position because things are changing and the power is more and more with the end consumer because this is what everybody wants to get a piece of. One of the questions, sorry, you're gonna say something. I was gonna say I hope it's going to get better for the end consumer, and I really want to believe that. The only challenge to that is the fragmented landscape of access to sport, and the more and more that's behind a paywall, you know, generations coming through, that, you know, we know the economy is squeezing people's ability to spend on discretionary items. Like, that is a challenge. It's harder and harder and harder to be a sports fan than it ever has been. And that's from a monetary perspective as much as just a complexity. So No, I think you're right about the marketing piece, but I think you need to I think we need to kind of sit down together with some of these rights holders and say, You need a distribution strategy before you start your marketing strategy. You need to understand how the consumer is going to get to your content and find it. And, and ease, and make that as easy a process as, as humanly possible. And then market the hell out of it. Because I think distribution is, is a little bit lost in this mix. Because it's that, it's exactly Clare's point. That fragmented landscape has turned it into a horror, a horrorscape for, for fans. Yannick mentioned Liverpool and, and yesterday Liverpool were playing Arsenal. And the, the, one of the conversations we were having on the way down is trying to watch this thing. So there's a, you know, it's a popular football match. It's not a game that I have got skin in the game, but I'm interested in watching it now. You try and find that game between here, London and Nice and around here, it's difficult and you go the legal routes. I'm a Sky subscriber, you can't do, you won't get it here because they won't allow it. So I'm on my phone, Other people, not me, other people are looking at more illicit means of, of trying to get hold of this content. They're driving to that, to, to piracy, that's why piracy, you know, the feedback from the piracy, data, is that it's about money, but it's also about confusion. I want, just give me one thing. In the end, I think sod it, I'll, Spotify. And Spotify does everything I need it to do for a, a tenner a month, okay, fine. There might be something in that. What do you think? I think, I think it's particularly difficult when the Irish bar is shut on a Sunday. Cause that's, you know, maybe it's symptomatic of being Gen, Gen X. You go, you go to the Irish bar and it's normally there, but it was shut yesterday. So, I had a real conundrum as well trying to watch the game. But it was on in my hotel room, so it was fine. I do think that's a really interesting point. So, a problem? You know, Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, you're used to be able to go onto one platform and just get pretty much anything you want in one place. You pay your fee and you know, you know that you're going to be able to consume all the content that you want, particularly on Spotify. It's just absolutely incredible. I was having a conversation yesterday. Imagine 20 years ago being told you could access the world's most Complete music library for one fee. Yeah. Anytime you want. And it's so different to what the sports offer is today, and it's also changed the beha in my taste. It's changed my behavior. I've, you know, I'm, I'm a very mean person. I have a very narrow sort of group of CDs on my shelf like everyone else did, and in the car. And now I've got access to everything. And I'm a, I like to think I'm a better person because of it. I'm a broader person. Yanik. I mean, let's not forget that the music industry had to go through some rough times to end up where they are today. Well, I mean, you say rough times is a lovely euphemism. It was a complete collapse of the economy. So, I mean, is this market, is there a Spotify for sport out there? Is that where it's going? That's the question that we have to get to. The question is, can sports get ahead of times and realize before you have the declines in revenues that the music industry observed? I think right now it's more like flat. Is this big enough of a signal for the industry to take change? Because I think you alluded to the two challenges. There's the information challenge to just navigate this fractured marketplace, and there's an accessibility challenge. If you answer the information challenge to know where to go. It's only half of the equation. The other thing is accessibilities, affordability, etc. And then it goes back to, okay, has actually piracy, so, solved for those two problems. Is piracy or like the product that they put out from a consumer perspective product market fit what we would need, but that is an, okay, sports has benefited from that revenue engine medium. We have built up a huge cost base, especially in the tier 1 of the rights pyramid. Can we afford to maybe put, uh, push pause or to take a step back to then re accelerate? And I think this is where there's a lot of trade offs and tension. What to do next? Because you need to finance the operations, player salaries, everything. Yeah, I mean that Say what you like about the Pirates, they're really good marketers, aren't they? They, you know, they really know what they're doing and their customer service is absolutely fantastic. You know, when it goes down, you've got another, Amazon Fire Stick waiting to fill the gap. So, if we get to a sort of level that is a bit more granular, I think one of the most interesting things I saw this year in the last few months is the Women's Super League in the UK. Moving from the FA player onto YouTube. And that's the direction that they're going. I found that interesting because I've been to Sportel and we have a podcast and we listen to people talking about how do we engage now and YouTube and the platforms were the enemy. We need to grow our own. We need to be able to have our own relationship, a one to one relationship. We need the personal data and we're going to sacrifice. discoverability and reach. So we have our own walled garden. Where are we in that argument? I think there has to be shades of grey in this, so I hate shades of grey, I like binary, black, white, that's just I'm the same, I'm from Yorkshire, I'm very, very black and white normally, but in this I think you need to have, Nuance. Nuance. And the reality is for the WSL is that discoverability, access, awareness is absolutely critical to them. They're not ready to go into an owned and operated platform, which is really hard to find. They need to take their product to the masses. They've got a great product, but at the moment they need to market it effectively. Obviously, they'd want the revenue from the product. Sky or whoever, media rights deal that they're, they're chasing and you'd hope they'll, they'll get that in that next cycle, but in the meantime, it's a very sensible strategy because they've got to go where their audience is, not try and bring their audience to them, but that's not to say that that won't work for other properties. I think you have to work out where you are in that journey, what you're trying to achieve at the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. You know, owned and operated platforms are for your core committed audience who already understand What you are and love you for that and are prepared to come to you and that's great But we all know that you're only really using 10 apps per day in your life regularly, habitually. So you've really got to make that top 10, top 15, which is hard. You know, if you support, as we know, people are passionate about a minimum of sort of three, four, five sports, you know, to be in that real top of mind. That's why I talk about those tier one, top five properties of beyond that. It's probably harder to get into that habitual usage every day, but for that core audience, I think it's still very powerful. And of course it opens up commercial opportunities, which when. Broadcast rights are flatlining, like, you know, properties do need to find other commercial revenue streams. But it won't work for everyone and you sort of have to work out where you are on that maturity curve. Yeah, and I think there's a solid role for an owned and operated from top to bottom of the, uh, of the market, but for most it's a superfan product, right? It's like the diehards that are addressed and the diehards are Whatever they need to do in order to find, uh, pay, whatever, they will find your service. The small little problem in this whole equation is that there's a limited number of those diehards. And once you want to go through this glass ceiling on however high or low it is, depends on the property that we are talking about, you need to expand. You need to have distribution vehicles that get you more into this causal audience. And, uh, I always think in Content and distribution. If you have top tier content, probably you can limit distribution somewhat because people will come and find and will be willing to pay. If you talk about either the squeeze middle or like bottom of the, uh, market properties, then you rely even more on vehicles that bring you in front of the mind of the end consumer, because you need to minimize consumption barriers. Discovery, affordability, et cetera. And there YouTube obviously takes many, if not all, and I don't think they are taking all, but many of the boxes that for WSL, at this stage of its development, where sponsorship monies, for example, is more relevant than media rights fee, might be, at least short to midterm, the more effective or efficient approach. Yeah, I, I, I think YouTube is fine. I think, I think it's, I don't think it's a long term strategy. I think it's, it's filling a gap. There's a, there's a, there's a market failure argument here. And Yannick's spot on, you know, the, the diehards will seek you out wherever, you know, the, you know, and YouTube provides that and does a fantastic job, don't get me wrong. But as a long term strategy for, WSL, I don't see it as a, a runner. For me, if you look beyond the UK market for WSL, you know, you've got, you know, the Premier League have been probably the most successful of all brands in terms of internationalization. You know, WSL, if they're looking beyond the UK, you know, I think it has to be about aggregation. It has to be about working with others. Stand alone platforms, I, I feel stand alone platforms for singular sports don't necessarily work. So, so they have to look at aggregation. They have to look at a bigger play. But YouTube works fine for now, but, but what are they getting out of it? Are they, are they getting the data that they need? Are they getting the, are they getting the buy in from sponsors that they, that they really need? But they're serving their core fans, which is absolutely critical where there's no taker in the market. So we've got the, the funnel, the marketing funnel as the sort of, get them in at the top and you move them to action at the bottom. Glenn, there is an, the Olympic question, I guess, is, is we've just got the greatest funnel in sport, was the Olympics just happened this summer, where people get turned on to everything from, you know, horse jumping to, to whatever. And then what is always the question? We ask it every four years What do we know? Did we learn anything from this year's Olympics about how things are going to move on? Because a lot of the, you mentioned the squeeze middle, a lot of those individual IAFs and governing bodies are in that world. And they, you know, they've got people like me who think, oh yeah, that's nice, I watch the telly, and then I'm not going to pay for anything. Well, I mean, those sports just simply are not pay properties. So I think, I think what we learned from the Olympics from my perspective is that it's back to that old principle of fewer, bigger, better, you know, you, you, you bring these sports together and they work marvelously well. There are lots of examples of it. We had our European championships, our kind of combined European championships in 2022 in Munich, you know, and you saw numbers go up for these sports, you know, sports like rowing, sports like sport climbing. You know, all performed well above average. Average for the standalone events by bringing them together in this kind of big, you know, pe people like these big events. You know, and you've gotta work harder and harder for, for, for audiences. So there is a market for these sports. I mean, it's the same for, for women's football. You know, the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was a huge success. And then just, boom, you know, you fall off a cliff, uh, thereafter. So, there, there, you know, the governing bodies need to take, take responsibility for this, and devise strategies on marketing, on distribution for their sports, and, and, and, and take hold of it. I firmly believe that aggregation is the key. We've just launched a platform which is about underpinning our own, our, our sports, our, our federations, and trying to make sure that they, those sports remain visible and present. Throughout, you know, the, the Olympic cycle between the games. So, you know, there, there is a solution and there are things that work. There is hope. I mean, I, I think one of the great examples last summer was the European Athletics Championships in Rome. Traditionally, traditionally, the European Athletics Championships in an Olympic year was absolutely died of death. This year. They got it right. We, you know, the audiences were right in line with, with, uh, the, the European champs that happened in non Olympic years, which is, you know, kind of a doubling of, of audiences. And what, what they did right was they, they, they listened to the broadcasters, they put it in the right slot. You know, it was just between, just before the Euros happened. They, they made sure that all the top athletes were there. And, and the audience engaged in, in it because it was kind of the road to Paris. So, you know, there is hope for those sports. I think you, if you look at the world cycling championships that were held in Glasgow, the UCI world champs, again, uh, very brave move by UCI to to, to merge all of the cycling disciplines in one space. Massive increase in audiences for disciplines like mountain biking and BMX Road and Rode and Track did well as well. But, you know, looking at, you know, three times, three X audiences because they brought it all together. They were, they were clever in how they, how they did it. And I think, you know, there are lots of other examples of where it can work. But it requires strategy, it requires collaboration and partnership. You know, we work very closely with the Biathlon Union and their, their, their audiences over the last 15 to 20 years have shot up because they listen to the broadcasters, they work with the broadcasters. It's a, it's a two way street. And consequently they're getting much more airtime, it's working. You know, you had audiences for, average audiences across Europe. For the world champs in Novo Mesto in Czech Republic of 30 percent audience share. That shot up to kind of over 70 in places that are crazy like Norway. Crazy for, for Norway and Sweden was over 70 percent market share. So it can work. It takes, it takes effort and it takes collaboration and partnership. But, but for me, the lesson from the Olympics is aggregation works for these sports. Fewer, bigger, better. Keep thinking that way. Standalone events for those sports are difficult to sell now. Difficult to get into schedules in TV, traditional TV, and, so for me, go, think bigger and, and, and aggregate. But I think this is also where the promise or potential false promise of OTT comes in, because all of a sudden with, uh, being technically enabled digitization, like capture, production, distribution of content, became quote unquote dirt cheap. And, uh, I think now slowly but surely people start to realize that. Just because something is available and there's more and more content available and we're living in a world of abundance It doesn't mean automatically that people engage let alone pay for the content. And then I think it's also Properties start to realize okay Is it actually a property where people have pay value or are willing to pay for or is it rather something that? Depends on reach vehicles that they can piggyback on in order to create some form of of, uh, engagement and let alone that B2B licensing where you just sold on compared to B2C, uh, media, it's like a completely different world, different skillset also that you need in order to, uh, really yeah, realize all the opportunities that come with technology. So I think this is now, we had this hype cycle, everybody goes OTT, everybody goes, uh, single entity services, direct to consumer. And now I think we are back into a consolidation phase, which may lead to aggregation where people get together because just being available doesn't mean that people will come automatically. And technology, capturing, producing, distributing content is not cost prohibitive anymore. What becomes cost prohibitive is getting eyeballs on it, marketing and promotion, both financially but also from a skill set perspective. How do we, just finally, I'm, by the way, I'm warning you that I'm going to ask for questions in a minute. And the route to asking a question is quite, uh, is going to be quite interesting because we're, we're now the guinea pigs in this experiment that we're going to use. There is a, what are they called, those things? QR codes. QR codes. I'm on top of this. QR codes were a thing, weren't they? They're, they're the sort of MySpace of, of of printed things. Let's, I think you point at it, and then you ask a question, and it appears on a laptop over there, or an iPad, and I will get that. Failing that, and I'm not saying it is going to fail, I'm not saying that by any means, but if it does fail, then put your hand up and I'll, we'll give you a mic, and you can ask a question. But just be aware that that's what's going to happen. I'm going to just finish off, and it just rounds us off a bit, which is about, uh, the driving argument has been about the fan data, identify them, who are they, behavioral insight, rather than sort of performative, data and feedback. Claire there's a question about what happens then in terms of are sports governing bodies able to do anything with that information when they get it? I know Sainsbury's can do it and I know that TikTok can do it and I know that you know you need a lot of money and expertise to do it. I'm wondering if individual sports can do it and I suppose there might be a question about is this a pooling question? Do sports have to play together nicely and all those questions but just give us a bit on that. Yeah, so as you know, I'm a huge driver of getting more data into the industry to drive better understanding. I'll always be bullish about that. We'll always have debates about why that's important. I think the reality in sport versus Sainsbury's other industries is Frequency of data capture is always going to be different. And we've got to be realistic about that. So Sainsbury's, obviously the number of items that someone's putting in their basket, week in week out is significant. That gives you a ton of data, but I don't think that's a good enough excuse for sport to say we can't do anything with our data. And obviously digital channels will allow to allow us to understand more now about the type of content that people are engaging with, but At the moment, to your point earlier, sport is so B2B in terms of the skill sets and how it's set up that it's not thinking B2C enough, and it's therefore outsourced all of those opportunities to capture data, to broadcasters, to fanatics, to ticket master. And as a result, at the moment, it's actually an ecosystem problem to start off with, which is they're not owning their own data. They're not getting access to that data. So that's something that we've got to resolve straight away. Once you've done that, I think what you can do with data is threefold. So one, it's about understanding your fan to provide more relevant, more personalized, more interesting experiences, which reflects that value exchange back to the fan. And it doesn't have to be one to one, but by understanding what they're watching, what they're consuming, what they're engaged with, you will create. Better, more interesting two-way conversations and better content for them. That's, you know, that is an absolute given and I, you know, argue to death about, with, with someone about that. And as a result of that, that drives brand equity with those consumers because they're going. You know what? This club gets me. This is a sport for me, or this is a property for me. So that's really powerful. Second thing is, sponsors are asking more and more to have better data around their target market to understand actually are they getting the cut through for the money they're paying for. And to just achieve a level of kind of parity with your competition, I think sports properties should be thinking about. Like, am I capturing the data that ultimately my sponsors are going to need and to know that they're activating that partnership effectively. And so the value of the data alone is actually in that partnership with, with a sponsor and, and that's really important. And there's obviously just really clear commercial revenue streams that come off the back of knowing your fans better. So you can work out what your headroom is in terms of, you know, Ticket pricing. So whether it be at hospitality level, you can work out who is potentially going to be able to afford a higher rate, you could start to look at whether it'd be the right thing or not. You could look at different pricing models for different audiences. I know you've got a thought about that as it relates to Oasis, but that's just one avenue, how you set up your retail ranging and the price points around that. It's, there are some really tangible commercial outcomes from having better data and I, yeah, I think it's incredibly important. Right, okay, we have come to that moment and, oh, we've got a question. Okay. I'd like, sorry, I don't know your name. What's your name? So we're gonna, yeah, start with a I'm loud. Start with a mic. A real person. Yeah, because we've got a few questions on the platform. Please, please support us with this. And yeah, she's worked so hard on this from in front level. We'll start with the real life, a real life person. Yeah, and then we'll do the, uh, can you say your name and. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, Anil Banwari from India, indiantelevision. com. Just curious with, uh, you know, a lot of fasts coming in. What do we see happening to the subscription bundle as far as live is concerned? What do we see happening as far as live, uh, subscription bundles, uh, going forward for sport? So that's free advertised Right, free advertising supported television. Yeah. Well, that's the space we come from. I think, I think again, there is a space for that in, in certainly in Europe, uh, for the top tier events like Olympic games and world cups. A lot of that is underpinned by lists, lists of protected events, which, which helps maintain those events on free to air television. We believe that, you know, that there's a, there's a, we cover a broad panoply of sport. And I think, you know, outside of Premier League football and the ones that Claire referred to earlier, the top, top tier, you know, there's a huge amount of sports that just don't work behind a paywall. I think they get ended up and end up being kind of dumped as kind of filler material to fill it out. So they, you know, the, the, the federation gets no benefit from it because they're not generating audiences and, uh, you know, for their sponsors. and the actual pay service don't get any subscribers as a result of it. So there has to be another way The reliance on free to air television in the past, was the only home for these sports. That's getting harder and harder to justify. You know, many of these free to air, all of our free to air partners and our members at the EBU have very, very strong streaming platforms. And many of them are investing in fast channels now as well. Fast is slower though. It's if you like, sorry to say that fast is slower in Europe, uh, in, in, in Europe, in Europe than it is in the U S uh, we're not there yet. Some markets like the UK and Germany are moving a bit. ahead, but by and large it's going to take time to catch up. Nothing or very few things more powerful than free. I think this will be a theme going forward, but just removing the cost barrier to consume is a big one, making the economics work, different discussion. Okay, now We have questions via, uh, the iPad, right. And we get, I, I don't, we, we don't feel obliged to everyone answer every question because it will, it will take too long, but let's just see. And this is going to test my pronunciation skills, which are, are not good, I'll warn you. So, Ken Kirschbaumer, Perfect. Kirschbauer, that is cherry tree. That's staying in the podcast, that. Uh, what is the, so Ken, and in, you know, Ken says, What is the biggest challenge in building fans under the age of 18? That is the absolute key question. I think one thing we observe in the industry is that there's no one who has a monopoly anymore on any audience. Back then it was one size fits all. If you're on linear television, you had region access to the end consumer. Nowadays, it's much more fragmented, meaning it needs to downstream and trickle down on your distribution strategy, which must be much more diverse. And there is a point of linear television going forward. Absolutely. A big point. But it's also you need to be where they are and there are many, many different places compared to the past. I think one of the questions that we didn't get to and didn't ask is a whole different panel, but it's a, is This room, I think, this industry has brought a knife to a gunfight. I think it's fighting addiction, and I think it's addiction to this, and via this, it's social media platforms. The numbers are astonishing in terms of the level of addiction, I think, in terms of, particularly under 18. So, I was talking to Peter Hutton recently, who obviously had a sojourn into meta, and he said that meta sports strategy just collapsed. Once they realized it was the scroll was the thing, not the sport, and not, they didn't need to buy rights because we're just addicted to the scroll. So I think the question then is, well what, what's this world in a world where we're just addicted to this thing? And you know, we're addicted to shopping, and we're addicted to pornography, and everything that we can get from here. That's the world that this, this is fighting. And I think, you know, the TV rights market is quite an interesting part of that. I think there are two things that aren't talked about enough as it relates to engaging that younger audience. One is user generated content. So, fans that are younger now or, you know, anyone that engages in any level of entertainment on their phone or on different platforms like Roblox, they're used to being able to be part of the conversation, to create their own versions of content and be able to serve that up to their mates. and get a response. That's the whole social media addiction, as you say, like you post something and you want a response. And sport is still so one way and until it starts to understand that that's what is just so intuitive for a younger audience, I think it's missing a trick. And then the other one is price. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Price and, and I guess whether I, they'll pay for it, the culture, that's the thing that everyone is, is, uh, questioning. I've got one more question. And this is again, it's, it's Raphael Dubé, is that right, Dubé, Dubé? Thank you, Raphael. Uh, are you afraid about the future of local sports network, networks that are facing multinational companies like Amazon, others that are buying the rights to the big leagues? So is Amazon gonna, is that the future? I'm not, I'm not afraid of it. I think there's huge opportunities to partner. I think that what I've seen so far is, is the streamers coming in. They don't necessarily want to take it all. They are looking for partnerships. There may be certain properties that they do want to try and own as a kind of a brand leader, but I think, I think them coming in, I welcome it. And they, they offer opportunities to, to partner. And I think that's what the future is about. It's going to be a, there's no, there's not one answer to this conundrum. There's several different answers, different flavors. different packaging mechanisms and different partnership, partnerships that, that, that move, uh, you know, you will need a free element, you will need a pay element, you will need a, you will need kind of a YouTube there somewhere as well. So, I, I wouldn't be afraid of it, I, embrace it, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a good thing, and I think it is an opportunity to partner. Okay, we are gonna, I'm getting this signal from, uh, Jaina, which is never good, It's never ever good. So I'm going to say round this up. Thank you. I think this work. I like this this is the future. Or it's a future. It's not a binary question and thank you to uh, Claire glenn and yannick. That's that was great. And thanks for your time and listen to unofficial partner