How to Solve the Live Sports FAST Monetization Problem | Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl

What FAST TV Really Is

Wall St. Week News Clip 0:52

FAST, as they call it, is something relatively new to me at least. I may not have been paying attention, but where did it come from and how fast has it grown?

Lisa Holme, Head of Content at Roku 1:00

It's been growing like game busters. And you say it's new to you, it probably isn't, because if you've been watching broadcast television, that's another version of free ad-supported television that's been around for almost 100 years. So free ad-supported television or fast is in a very snappy name that's been put on the digital delivery of a linear programming feed, much like broadcaster cable have been for years, but this is digitally delivered, so on streaming devices like Roku. And it allows consumers to watch the way they've always watched, which is to turn on the TV and see what's on.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 1:34

Keith Bedford, welcome to the State of Streaming Podcast. We're gonna talk all about fast today, free ad-supported television. We were just heard there from Miss Lisa Holmes, the Head of Content over at Roku, a definition there of fast on Wall Street Week earlier in the month. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. It's great to be here. It's gonna be a fun conversation. Wurl is really at the intersection of all things streaming television and live sport. Wurl noted this time last year that live sports made up less than 3% of all free ad-supported streaming television viewing compared to nearly 20%

Clubs And Leagues Go Direct

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 2:14

of traditional television. Have we made any progress in closing that gap over the last 12 months? Yes, there's definitely progress there.

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 2:21

And I think what we're really seeing in the marketplace is that the traditional brands that used to sell their rights completely to the TV industry are now holding back certain rights to put live tournaments out. So I've seen two launched recently, which is great. Man City have launched a channel. They're going with lots of live, and they're going to be live on match day, which is unprecedented in the UK market. They're not allowed to show actual footage because that would break the rules around the Premier League, but they are allowed to almost commentate on the game. And this is an exciting change in how I'm seeing football or soccer being shown in the UK. The other one we've seen launched recently is UEFA on Tubi. And they're going to be going with so much live content over the next year. It's really exciting. Probably where they've sold Champions League rights in, they won't be showing that live, but they will have a highlights package and a reel straight after the show. And they're also becoming maybe under 21s and women's Champions League games. So it's a really exciting and it's definitely growing. I think just going back to that first clip from Roku, let's just cover that off because we have been watching fast street advertising sporting TV forever. Uh, the thing that might maybe was missing out of that is free ad streaming television. But definitely the change is everything's becoming digitally. We can talk later on how that's changed the ad world and how programmatic has gone into that world against you know pre-sold ad slots, everything something will cover. But I think fan engagement now is so difficult. It's not just watching on game day. How do you keep that fan engaged? 365 days of the year. That's not just through live sports, that's also through shoulder content, through highlights packages. So this is all possible on fast. And I'm seeing that this is just gonna keep growing. Uh and the rights, the rights money for the top brands are still there. You know, World Cup, they're gonna sell those rights all day long. That's premium television. But when you start filtering that down into some of the smaller sports, they're not getting the money through rights anymore they used to receive from the big broadcasters. So they're gonna have to start creating their own, not just fast channels, but social media outlets, YouTube outlets. I mean, the day of one platform was gone, and everybody that owns rights or sports has to look at how they're gonna get to the sports person, the viewer, in all different ways. So fast is just one of those elements.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 4:53

It seems like fandom is that last kind of common area that we all have. Digital distribution has made it such that I can listen to the books I want or the music that I want. And that might be different than what you watch or listen to, Keith. But sport is this one place that we all kind of come together. How do you see the the unit economics of that changing? We see so much about the rights specifically. How is it that teams are are looking at this? Is it derivative products? Is it monetizing other pieces of the footprint that they that they have that were previously unused? What do you see? How do you

Rights Strategy And New Economics

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 5:30

see those dynamics shifting?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 5:32

I think an interesting case study on this is the Bundesliga, which is the main German league. And what they've done is they've got they've sold their Saturday rights to Comcast, which is Sky, and they're still traditionally being shown over the weekend. But they've kept back a Friday night game for Samsung TV. They're really a great company for how they're going to innovate their rights going forwards. They they still see that the main platforms as their you know, as their bread and butter, really. They're gonna get most of the revenue there. But they are diversifying their revenue going into something like Samsung TV Plus. And they're really, really great case study on how I see things shifting. They have to make money on all different platforms, as I said earlier. And the HOVs for those channels have been excellent. So I think when we get back to the ad models later on, we'll start talking about how that needs to evolve because there needs to be more investment in how we get ads live, which we're all doing. So something we can talk about going forward. But from a strategy point of view of how people are cutting out their content, certainly they're holding back some from main broadcasts, but also testing it out on the streaming platforms. But then, really, if you look at some of the big shifts that happen in streaming right now, DAZN, which is a name that will become familiar in the US, have just bought a company there. They're looking at how they can do NFL rights, they're looking at local sports rights. The investment they're making is huge. And uh, we work with DZone with the FIFA channel, so we we know them quite well. But they're really going for it, and I think that's where some of these big broadcast rights are going to go into streaming and the zone approving that's possible.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 7:10

I think that's a big acquisition. DAZN acquiring Ever Pass Media earlier this month, which will give them essentially they're the geek keeper now on all NFL distribution in bars and restaurants. Is that a correct understanding of that deal?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 7:24

Yeah. I mean, uh, you know the US market better than me, but that's my understanding from what I'm seeing. And DAZN, you know, are big in in Italy here. They run Serie R, they're big in Germany as well, they run Bundesliga too. But in the UK, we know them through boxing mainly. So, but they're their their distribution worldwide is is really growing. So definitely uh somebody to watch and uh definitely watch.

Ads That Actually Fund Live Sports

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 7:50

Recently we caught up with three-time NFL All Pro and streaming TV executive Shawne Merriman, who runs Lights Out Sports TV. He launched a fight promotion in 2019 to fill a gap for Fox when UFC left Fox and has really poured into expanding Lights Out Sports TV with things like Glory Kickboxing and American Sevens football. One of the questions that we asked him was, how do we pay for it? Where does the ad revenue come from? And he kind of said the quiet part out loud for us, which is that programmatic open auction ad demand is like that's a last thought. This is really being driven by direct relationships and going out and finding sponsors and people who believe in it and want to be a part of it. What are you seeing in terms of the ad monetization aspect for the expansion of live sports onto free streaming?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 8:42

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And I just want to roll back to FAST and its, you know, its growth over the last, let's say, five years. Five years ago, traditionally, FAST it was really a platform for entertainment companies that had a back catalogue they wanted to put out on a streaming service to see if they could earn some extra revenue. So that's sort of really where it started. And then what we've seen now is some of the bigger brands uh are launching first window content on FAST. And if I'm looking at a US, I mean, just take my view, I'm I'm running Europe and EMEA, but uh obviously very close to the US business. And you know, AE, AMC, BBC all have fast channels that are doing particularly well. So when you get better content, you get better advertising money. So obviously, those two have to work in tandem. The better content that becomes on the streaming platforms, the more programmatic advertising you're potentially going to earn. If I take sports as an example right now, is that there needs to be investment in how we do live, and I think this is something the world have been working on because you can see right now that there's a lot of pre-sold ads in the big sponsorship games, like you said, and that is still a key for them to have sponsorship, break bumpers, maybe a screen shrinking with L bars and advertising around that, which we're seeing in fast, but also the programmatic angle has to grow, and the reason that that's gonna grow in the fact that there is technology now where we can actually put live markers in in the programmatic bid stream to say here's a live event, this is the event, this is live right now, so that revenue can go, and the CPM for that revenue can be higher. Because right now, if you're uh you know bidding on programmatic ads and you don't know it's live, it's just gonna put a normal bid in. So there has to be technology that helps build up the live bid stream and and put more advertising. So that's definitely happening. When I speak to the zone about what they did for the FIFA um Club Cup, they did have to have a mixture of programmatic and pre-sold ads, which is totally understandable. So at the moment it's a bit of a stitching, and I think until the programmatic problem is solved and gets higher from live midstream, then there's gonna be have to be a mixture of pre-sold ads and programmatic. But again, as I say, the better the content, the more revenue it's gonna earn. So as you're seeing more and more decent content coming on fast through streaming, the advertising revenue potential is gonna go up. So that but they have to grow in tandem. We all know the content drives money and revenue, and that's still the case. If you're putting out you know medium content, you're gonna get medium advertising revenue. If you're putting out high-end content, the revenue is gonna go up. And there's other issues there as well that at the moment there's lots of different platforms where you can get the channels, and they all have different programmatic advertising pods. So if you're on LG or Roku or Samsung, you've got to go through them to get the ad and the data back. So there's no big collaboration right now on how to hit all platforms at once. I mean, obviously, as a as well works with all the suppliers, there is that ability, but you're limited on what data you can pass back to the bidders. So there's issues there that need to be solved around how some of the big brands collaborate and get bigger advertising. Because if you're an ad agency right now, you've got to go through lots of different people to get ads in different platforms. This needs to be made easier to make more money in the revenue stream. So it's a problem that we're all working on. It's something that we talk to regularly about, all of our platforms, but you know, a lot of them are closed wall because they it's their data, they see the streaming, they want to put their revenue in, and obviously they want to maximize the amount of revenue they can get from having that game, and they might have even paid minimum guarantees. But, you know, if you're an advertiser and you want to spread your advertising across multiple CTV platforms, then you want an easier way to do it. So it is something we're working on with all of the supply chain.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 12:43

What I hear you describing, Keith, is it almost sounds like building a bridge from both sides. We need to have better content, which is that's one job to be done. And simultaneously to that, we're solving some of the programmatic, the technical workflows, signal, passing some of that back. Is that is that an area that maybe we could spend a few more minutes on? I think the workflow is is really interesting and valuable to our audience and understanding. Hey, well, I want to advertise programmatically on live sports, but I think you just articulated some of it. These are the challenges. This is why you can't necessarily just easily activate on all the sports with the click of a button. Can you can you give us a little bit more of that?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 13:23

Yeah, sure. I I think probably a good idea to sort of run through where world sit in this marketplace at this point. So I think it's a great, great place to start.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 13:31

Yes. Who is Whirl and what problem do

Why Programmatic Struggles Across Platforms

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 13:33

you solve?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 13:34

Yeah. So Wurl are a technical platform, basically. And you know, our original days is we started building channels for content owners, building that channel stream in a playout system and delivering into all the platforms. So over the years, we've built up multiple platforms, delivering in all the major platforms in the US and the world, working with some big major companies. One of the things we've also done is had an ad platform called AdPool, but that has now grown and developed where we are now not just putting in ads in in the bid streams for the channels, but working with the suppliers as well. So working for all the top companies like Roku and Samsung. So we're seeing it's quite nice because we're in every sort of single part of the distribution chain from the play out of the content to the actual advertising. So it gives us a good position to look at the market. And if I take sports as a great example, early days we launched some sports channels without live, so they were quite easy just to distribute. And now when you're seeing more and more live content coming in, there's a number of things that we have to do in streaming, which has been done in traditional broadcasts forever, i.e., when does the ad break go in? So you know, still things like that need to be solved. We are doing some using AI in a way, so we we know when the game should start and finish, we might put an ad break in the middle, but that's taking a bit of a risk because obviously if it's live sports and it overruns. So we have to look at models where we're using the human to press a button because how about that? So all this technology and all this stream in the world, we're still saying the best way to do it is somebody's literally got to press the ad button. So there's investment that the world put into that to put the ad breaks in the right place. This also gives the opportunity to put more ad breaks in. And then what I said earlier about is how do we then deliver that to the market and say, here's a live event at this time with sets of metadata. So we've created a system where we say this is a Bundesliga's game, this is Brian Munich Cologne, this is soccer, this is football, more, and we have the ability to have more metadata down to send in to the bid stream to say, here's a live event, here's all the metadata. And this gives everybody, and we can pre-set send the event IDs to say this is what's coming up in the next month. So it's about actually saying, here's all the live events are coming on the day, here's the bid streams, here's all the metadata, let's try and increase the revenue. So this is a problem we're looking to solve with world technology, and we're launching this very soon, it's something we've been working on for most of the year, and and that will go live. And I think this is just one way of trying to make sure we're looking at how streaming integrates into the the traditional broadcast market that we're all used to. But as I say, it's it's grown because when we go back five years, we were just sending streaming channels to a platform with no live. So live is a game change. I think I did say once I was never going to go back into live TV streaming, and here we are. I'm back in the marketplace.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 16:38

Well, we're glad that you're back. It it almost sounds like a sports ad TV guide

Who Wurl Is And How It Works

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 16:44

when you say it that way and you lay it out like here are all the games, and we know that these are going to be the ad opportunities. So as a media buyer, as a planner, leading a strategy team, you can really sit down and sit back and say, okay, here's where we want to be. That seems like a different way of being able to plan activation than it has in the past. Is that is that a fair summation?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 17:07

It is because with the growth of technology and APIs makes life very easy. So we can create an event API which the planners can put into their planning schedules or use it in a raw data and spreadsheets or however they want to plan their their advertising campaigns, but this will make life easier. And I think some of the problems we've had in the early days of streaming is no one even knows there's a live event coming up. So if nobody knows it's coming up, how can they bid more money on it? So all these sort of things that we're looking to try and help the marketplace place more ads. Because you know, the growth of not just world, but streaming is around getting more advertising revenue into the platforms. It's what we're all trying to work on. And these little things around sports are helping solve lots of these problems. So I think it will grow uh with the better content, the more live we have, the more data we can send to the advertising agencies, then the better the money revenue will become.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 18:04

Do you see more maybe what would have been considered to be fringe sports or up-and-coming leagues? Do you see that emerging globally? Are there are there new leagues that we will see come to LiveFAST?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 18:17

Yes, definitely. If I go back over the last four years, I go to uh uh an event called Sportel in in Monarch every year, which is you know nice name drop, lovely place to go. But all of the rights holders are there. And I think when I started about five years ago going, no one really took fast and streaming seriously. And oh, did we want to launch a fast channel? No one was really now. We had planned out meetings, everybody's talking to us. It's a great environment. I think I've done a presentation on stage for the last three years uh with Wurl Rugby, I had DAZN on with me as well, and it just shows you where that market has changed. And our diary is pretty full for scheduling meetings, and and I I look back now at the channels that we met three or four, or the rights holders, sorry, three or four years ago, they're all launching channels now, whether that's individual channels like Man City or leagues like Bundesliga, there's certainly more to come, and I can't say who because we're still working on them, but the leagues are definitely going to be launching because if I look at some of the rights that the FIFA had, uh the Women's World Cup um last year, year before, uh they didn't sell the rights in Italy or Brazil, which was completely amazing that the FIFA Women's World Cup huge football soccer countries. Yeah, and so they they showed it on FIFA Channel 3. You know, those options are there if you've got a streaming platform you can switch to. And they made some good revenue. I don't know the revenue figures completely because some, as I say, some platforms we see, some we don't. So it it really would be down to the channel, but but definitely give you more options to put your content out if you're not selling rights. So

Event Metadata For Media Buyers

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 20:01

there's an example of of how fast is helping plug that gap.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 20:06

Maybe as we as we start to to pull it back into the station here, Keith, what are the three things that you see folks get wrong? Why does it flop? Why doesn't free ad-supported TV work, or why don't live sports on fast always work?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 20:24

Well, flopping, I'm not sure is the right word anymore. I think I think the main thing is that the consumer doesn't half the time know that you've got free channels within your service. That's a great point. If I take even buying a TV now in the UK, Samsung, 300 free channels, LG, 300 free channels, then you've got the OSs like Vida and Titan, and they're all emerging um OS platforms on TV, working with people like HiSense, for instance. And I think when you buy a TV, halftime you don't realise you've got all these free channels on there. And if I go outside of my work network and speak to my friends at the weekend, and I said, Oh, did you watch Bundesliga on Friday? They might not even know it's there. So I think the the problem starts with how do these brands promote that they've got some great content on their network, and it's fine saying here it is on the home screen, but when you're actually running physical TV from day one, you need to know all the different services that you're available on that TV. And I don't think sometimes even from the start of purchasing a TV is there. And then the other problem is you know, any OS that's running on a TV, I like to use the word mum-proof. I mean, uh, so it's got to be easy to find, you've got to pick up the remote, yeah, find content from the home screen straight away. It's a proven fact that if you're advertising content on the home screen, it gets higher hours of viewing. There's absolutely no doubt. So promotion with the actual platform that you're on is key. You've got to have a marketing plan for that. Sometimes, if they've invested in that platform or that channel, sorry, they will give you good airtime on the home screen. But you have to have a strategy to say, I want to be on the home screen, I need to advertise. So that's one thing as well. So you know the TV purchase, getting on the home screen so people can find that content easy. The next thing is I don't see many brands doing cross-marketing. If you launch a channel now, I don't think you can totally rely on just people finding it anymore. You have to be using all the different media outlets, the social media outlets, the the Instagrams, the YouTubes. And I hardly see any of the brands doing a good job around cross platform marketing because You know, I have

Fringe Sports Find A Home

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 22:45

a household of all different ages, and we all watch content completely different ways. But we'll all go back to the life sports content on the day. But my sons will be consuming things on TikTok. I don't use TikTok, but I'll be consuming on Instagram potentially. And someone else might be consuming on Facebook. So there's three pillars there that I think every brand and every content owner needs to look at. And that's you know, you can't help sell the TV, but your content's on that TV. You've got to get the home screen right so you can find the content, and you've got to cross market. So I think these are three very important elements. And I don't see many people getting 100% right. There's some brands that are doing it better than others. But there's a lot of platforms I think why are you not cross-marketing? Because the consumer is a hard person to find now. When we had five channels, it was easy to turn on a channel and find that content. And now there's thousands, and there's YouTube, and there's lots of them. So it's it's a very difficult place to get your consumer engaged, but a very important strategy that needs to be done.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 23:51

I think those are really, really applicable points for anyone. The the the just the marketing of the hardware itself. Hey, you can watch all of this great content on this TV by this TV. I as someone who buys things, I think that that's certainly a valuable point. The cross-marketing, we just did, we relaunched our directory on state of streaming. So we did a really intense analysis of not only the streaming apps, but great companies like Wurl, data partners like Looper Insights who analyze the value of being found on the home screen, different things like that. And we ultimately settled on a little bit over 700 companies in our directory. And one of the things that stood out to us, especially on the app side, was there are clearly two tiers. There are apps and companies that understand marketing. Yes. And then there are apps and companies that completely ignore it. And there's not an in-between. There really isn't a middle ground of like, ah, kind of doing it okay. You're either doing it or you're not doing it altogether.

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 24:54

Exactly. Very interesting. And performance marketing is obviously what everybody should be looking at. And you know, we we have uh the ability to to search, you know, who's watching what content in certain regions, so we can then maybe target advertising into those uh people. So you know, all the data needs to be used effectively around okay, somebody on this this TV is watching sports, you know, it'll be an IP address potentially, but we can say here's we want to promote this sports content, we can target those people for those advertising. So you know, the great thing about streaming compared to traditional broadcasts is there's so much more data available, and uh it's just about using that data effectively to get a you know your uh spend on uh marketing and advertising back. So you're it all the tools are there to do it. It's just a matter of making sure you're working with the right people to do those searches, to place those ads and and to look at attribution, which in the mobile world has been you know good for Applovin. They they've been able to do that in their apps, it's it's in a platform that you know they can create an ad, they can send it to the user, and they can see the downloads. In TV, obviously, it's there's far many more working parts because you've got different OS systems, different TV brands, streamers

Why FAST Channels Fail Discovery

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 26:13

are watching on different channels. So effectively it's it's difficult. And plus, how do you track attribution? If you're buying something through a mobile, there's your attribution. If you're seeing an ad on a TV, how are you then gonna make sure you can work out that they bought something from your e-commerce shop? So there's lots of little different bits and pieces, but this is only gonna get more and more interesting as we go on. That really, you know, return on ad spend, targeting attribution to a product is is where really streaming can benefit massively from this.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 26:45

Keith, we're gonna have to do a follow-up because you gave us the teaser there. We're an Applovin company. There's so many more questions that we have. Obviously, the interconnected relationship between apps, television, that full funnel journey and attribution that you just pointed out there. There's a lot there, still meat on the bone that uh that we'll have to come back for. Brilliant. We'll do just that. If someone's listening right now, they want to learn more about world, they want to connect with you personally. Where should they go?

Keith Bedford, GM EMEA at Wurl 27:17

Wurl.com is a good place to start. All of our details are on that. You can find Keith Bedford on LinkedIn as well if you and you know, happy to ask any questions. We also do attend a lot of shows, both in the US and Europe. Um, Sportel for sports, Mipcom for entertainment.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 27:33

So I'll be at both coming up very soon. Brilliant. Keith, we will definitely have you back for that part two. Until then, if you found this conversation to be helpful, please share it with a colleague or a client and start a conversation yourself today. We'll see y'all next time.