SME#51: Your French Reporters At Sportspro Madrid '23
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy (SME). I’m Marion & this is your 5-min read to get a European take on the Global Streaming Video Business.
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Enjoy today’s read.
For this week’s piece, I teamed up with a fantastic contributor who also attended Sportspro Madrid 2023.
Introducing Sébastien Audoux.
For those of you who don’t know Sébastien, he’s a Sports Media expert with an insane track-record at Canal+. I had to know what grabbed his attention during the event.
Join us as we report back from Madrid.
Let’s dig in:
For those who are not familiar with this industry event, it’s organised by Sportspromedia.com, a media launched in 2008 to connect and inspire the business world of sport.
Over the course of 3 days, 850+ industry executives gathered in Madrid to discuss the latest trends in OTT & Sports. They also celebrated the best companies and services operating in the space with the OTT Awards but more on that later.
My main takeaways:
Storytelling and brand building
Ben Morel, CEO LFP Media, took the stage and couldn’t escape questions around the failed rights tender for Ligue 1/Ligue 2 rights in France.
But this is not what stuck with me.
What did then?
He admitted they have a storytelling issue and that they have been passive on the direct to consumer front.
To me, it means they operated business as usual while the world of sports (and how fans engage with sports) was changing.
Sounds familiar?
A multi-faceted strategy with a strong storytelling is a must have to stay relevant.
In a similar line of thought, Javier Tebas, Former President La Liga, commented on the Saudi League and said that players come and go meaning you don’t build a league on Tier 1 players alone.
The League must grow its own brand and its clubs in a sustainable way, not just get the big fancy players.
Throwing money at things isn’t enough?! Bubble burst ☺️
Beyond video and subscription
Alice Mascia, CEO DAZN DACH and Group CMO, spoke about DAZN’s ambition to become the destination for all things sports.
DAZN is often called the Netflix of Sports but this is more reductive than ever as the company works hard to offer more than streaming video.
Aggregation (with an add-on strategy embodied with their NFL Game Pass partnership), betting, merchandising, ticketing are some of the key focus areas.
On aggregation, they have a major competitor (but now partner too): Amazon who, according to Alex Green, Head of Sports, cannot afford to bundle all sports (if they can’t, who can?) but want all the add ons possible.
Last but not least, DAZN plans on going freemium in DACH in the coming weeks. It would make sense for them to bake the FAST channels they syndicated to 3rd-party platforms plus give access to additional on demand programming carefully chosen (e.g. Women’s Champions League being one).
Free Streaming TV & Sports
I was lucky to spend time with Aarti Dabas (Formula E), Cristian Livadiotti (Backlight) and Laura Lopez (Rakuten TV) to discuss how FAST fits in their companies’ strategies.
3 companies = 3 angles.
For Backlight, it is a great new tool in the toolbox needed to grow platform engagement and deepen fan engagement.
For Rakuten TV, it’s about offering brands the power to associate with content their 24M sports fans love, creating meaningful connections and working hard on engagement across 43 European markets.
As for Formula E, they are focused on growing a recent sport with a young and female skewed audience. Relying on Broadcast TV alone would be madness. Hence why they shopped for a digital platform to complement their existing partnership with CBS.
Starting 2024, CBS and The Roku Channel will share the Formula E season in the US.
A new recipe: Broadcast Free TV + Free Streaming TV.
This recipe fits the journey of the sport (9 years old) and their number one goal today: grow the reach of Formula E (and mirrors the same strategy chosen by DAZN for Women’s Football).
Formula E will adapt to local dynamics and will replicate the model where it makes sense. Outside of the top 10 markets, they may experiment with different models including Pay TV.
What about going D2C?
Honesty in D2C
Formula E has no plan to go direct to consumer whether it is via a micro-subscription (à la F1 TV) or via a branded FAST Channel.
I find this fascinating as Dabas is going against the trend (hype?) here.
She said in a recent podcast with the Sportspro team that you have to be honest about your D2C chances. Do you have the fans? Are they willing to pay? Do you have the big runway needed? If not, then forget about it.
Now it’s Sébastien’s turn. Here goes:
From seller/buyers relationship to partners
During his session, Shay Segev, CEO of DAZN highlighted the global deal he has with the NFL for the Game Pass as a game changer. Why? Because it’s really a partnership instead of the old school relationship between someone selling rights and another acquiring it. This is really a big trend to follow in the industry as market for media rights is getting tougher.
Exclusivity used to be a must, it’s not anymore
Javier Tebas mentioned non exclusive media deals at the new normal. It’s a dramatic shift from the old days where traditional media company felt they needed exclusivity to maximize subscriptions revenues. Now in a more fragmented ecosystem (with many different options to consume sports), it’s not a must anymore and it actually allows for D2C offerings to live alongside traditional media deals.
Niche sports are the new power players
Listening to the Cowboys Channel story during the last panel of the event was really eye opening. The rapid growth, levels of engagements and overall potential would make jealous any established brand and it’s something to consider in a market where profitability has always been an issue.
That’s it for today.
Before you go, check out the OTT Awards winners including my client, Tennis Channel, who won “Best Sports FAST Channel” 🎉
They had serious competition: DAZN, MTRSPT1, NFL Channel, Pac-12 Insider, Women’s Sport Network.
Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
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