In this session from Hashtag Sports 2017, leading executives from the world of sports business, consumer brands, media and technology engage in a lively debate on whether the industry will deliver on its $1B promise or, as some predict, will prove to be a false dawn for the sector and its investors. The panel of experts discuss how the emergence of esports as a global mainstream phenomenon is driving their own strategies, be it as a marketing vehicle or an investment prospect, while also dissecting the argument of those who doubt the long-term commercial value of the esports ecosystem.

Check out the full video and transcript below!

Eben Novy-Williams: Hey guys, thanks for joining us. The topic of this panel is Esports: Big Buzz or Big Business? which I think is a great question because it’s something that a lot of people are asking whether you’re brand new to the industry or whether you’re one of these five guys who are some of the smartest in esports. They don’t need any introduction, so let’s get right into it guys.

Everybody’s talking about esports. It’s the buzziest thing going right now in sports business, tech, gaming. Lets start with you Craig, you run the largest esports company out there. Is the question now, has it shifted from what is esports to the question you’re getting to now: How do you make this a bigger and billion dollar industry?

Craig Levine: Yeah, I mean looking back, it’s a space that we’ve grown up with, Sundance was there in the early days, it used to be the human-interest novelty of “Isn’t this weird? These kids are making money playing video games.” And I think the discussion’s evolved so much more from that, driving tens of millions of people in viewership and tens of thousands of people coming out to these events now. I think the opportunities become much more apparent that there’s something going on here that everyone’s trying to understand. I think people are still trying to figure out what it is, but a lot of people are paying attention.

Novy-Williams: And is this — 2017 — feels like an inflection point a bit in esports. We have some publishers that are trying to go the franchising route, We’ve had some some big media rights deals. There’s a lot going on on the business side. For the rest of you guys, do you guys feel like this is what we’re hitting this point now where the buzz kind of has to wear off and that we have to start seeing some some returns? Or are we still kind of in the upward growth?

Sundance DiGiovanni: Well I think the key is really sustainability, right? So for operators and organizers, to be able to build businesses that can grow and can scale. I think buzz can run for quite some time. We’ve seen that before, but I think we’re at a place now where the trappings of what a company like ESL can build, and partner with publishers on those things, needs to be more than just kind of services agreements and partnerships — where they’re executing need to be opportunities for ESL to build their core business.

So being part of Activision Blizzard now after running and organizing an event for a decade plus, we see a commitment internally to creating those ecosystems around all of our titles that are applicable. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars potentially being poured into just our owned and operated IP so I think you will see the buzz continue. I think you’ll see very interesting side businesses pop out around this especially in the area of wagering, fantasy, data analytics to create enhanced experiences for the viewers at home, as well as training for players. So I don’t think we’re through the buzz phase yet. I do think though that we’re still in the early days of the building phase of, you know, in terms of building those sustainable businesses of scale.

Novy-Williams: Moritz, he mentioned gambling, he mentioned data analytics. Those are all things that you guys do. How big is the growth opportunity there?

Moritz Maurer: Yeah, exactly. All the areas that he tapped into this is what Genius Sports is doing — data and technology to rights holders and sports. On the wagering side, we’ve been pioneering the growth from the regulated markets around esports betting and it’s started two and a half years ago. Fan experience is a cool thing if you look at esports, data wise it’s not like in other sports where there’s potentially an abundance of sports, or as many methods of scheduling data. We harnessed digital nature of these games to really unlock the potential that is there, and we built a sustainable commercial framework for data in esports.

We think it can be a key part of growing the industry and delivering a commercial vehicle or an angle for rights holders or people in the space to tap into this, and we do this through our products on the betting and on the media side. Also, in return a lot of the technology that has predictive analytics that were driven by our development for the regulated betting markets, they now ultimately find applications for coaching, for finding talent, for cool fan experiences and we think it’s a really exciting space because as I said before, the data is there.

We look at games like Counter Strike where our models are choosing between Duda Cillian, that’s 1 ^ 40 permutations of how long a match can be played. That’s all possible because it’s such a granular level of data there, so that’s really what excites us, especially for me being in this place for a while.

Novy-Williams: And Moritz B., when you look at investors, you talk to a lot of them people are clamoring to get into this space. What is it that excites them the most? What are kind of the reservations that you hear? What are those conversations like?

Moritz Baier: Yeah, and also maybe to just answer the the big question up there actually, so we see viewership or buzz today growing at 20%, but monetization is actually growing at 40%. We have twice the biz growth than we have the buzz growth which is which is nice and what you want to see in a healthy industry.

In terms of investors 12 months ago, maybe esports was still a little bit on the periphery and in the broader gaming universe and now we’ve seen interest not just from big game publishers and advertisers, we see media companies who recognize esports and gaming as really at this convergence of media and fight for eyeballs, we see private equity companies and family offices who are interested in investing in this space. That has not existed, even let’s say 12 months ago.

Novy-Williams: What do you think about the traditional revenue streams for for sports and esports? Obviously media is a big one and we’ll get to that in a second. Ticket sales, maybe not as big in esports. There’s merchandising, advertising, and sponsorship’s a big one. John that’s your job, how different is this landscape that you’ve seen now versus what it was a couple years ago and how big do you think it can get?

John Seiler: I mean for us a couple years ago it really didn’t exist. It was probably on our radar, but it wasn’t something we were pumping any source money into. So we’re always, I think, as a corporate sponsor going to be, you know, a step or two behind the guys who run leagues and run teams and investing, and trying to get in those when it’s early.

So I think for us, and what we’ve seen is, we’re trying not to reinvent the wheel. I’m trying to look at it like if you, say you were you know looking at the NFL in the 90's or MLB in the 80's or when some of these leagues were really at that inflection point together subscribing for esports, what would you do with it, and how would you attack it? And so that’s what we’re trying to think through with our strategy, and why we’re pretty excited on the space right now.

Levine: I think what you’re seeing is the old cliche, revenue follows relevance, and to Moritiz’s point, it’s lagging, which is natural. It’s about figuring out sort of the business behind it so all those different pieces of tickets, merchandising, sponsorship, advertising, media rights, all sort of bundled together is how I think the business starts to work. But I think one of the biggest opportunities in esports is still the B2C side, something the game publishers are capturing really well. Digital goods, digital items, increased engagement, but then expanding that fandom to merchandise and ticket sales and virtual services I think is where a lot of the growth is is still going to come from.

Novy-Williams: Craig, I read a really crazy stat the other day correct me if it’s wrong, but that ESL sponsors were told by Nielsen that they were getting 50 times return on their investment versus what they were putting in. If that’s right, what gives? Why are you guys not charging more? Why is it not more profitable for you guys? How do you gotta balance those two things?

Levine: We’ve been fortunate of really pioneering a lot of this, and going back to that point it’s still very misunderstood. So you know there’s massive reach, but there’s unfamiliarity. I think in a lot of the brand’s side and you’re starting to see now that those investments are following so it’s just starting to take a little bit of time to come through there. But yeah I mean typically on a Repucom sort of valuation, or Nielsen now, sort of a four to five x type of price point or return that you see off of an investment and our big events are doing 50 plus so hopefully that’s something that the gap will start to shrink over time as bigger brands start to understand this and how to activate the community. But you know it’s an encouraging point and certainly a sign that makes us excited for the future.

Novy-Williams: Sure, and is that something that all you guys are dealing with in some capacity today? Obviously, the esports audience is there. The numbers, we’ve all seen the numbers. They’re fantastic. Is it more about kind of getting the next step, the monetization piece?

Maurer: I think one challenge here certainly is this definition problem. If you look at esports, or we had a panel yesterday on esports, and it was purely on sports games which is just one part of esports. You look at a collection of different games developed by different publishers, these are communities that don’t necessarily intersect, and that’s something we analyze a lot to see which demographic groups or which culture and regional preferences apply to certain games, to certain game genres to certain platforms (console, tablet, PC) and I think as a brand or an investor going into the space, understanding that you tap into a whole field of sports and multiple communities is a key factor.

Baier: I think one important thing to highlight too with regards to how do you actually monetize all these eyeballs is, it’s a common misconception that those who love to watch esports don’t like to spend too. Today, we’re at levels where we the esports enthusiasts, if you want to call it such, spends about four dollars a year on average — that’s obviously widely distributed — versus you know twenty, forty, sixty dollars per fan per year in other sports.

We will see that rise over time, but I think it’s important to know that those who love to watch esports are actually above average earners in the US, are more likely to have a full-time job — so they’re not the ones that you know sit sit downstairs playing PC all day — they love to spend on mobile, they love to spend on hardware, they love to spend on consumer goods even outside of technology and gaming — so there’s there’s a lot to “harvest.”

DiGiovanni: One of the things that we’ve seen is moving esports from a marketing function, or thought of as a marketing activity at Activision Blizzard, to individual businesses has allowed us to track revenues a little bit more directly. For example, if we have in game items or crates or loot that can be earned and people are buying opportunities to get access to that, that revenue is now being allocated differently — it’s not just under the umbrella of the game. And I think you’re going to see more and more of that as we get a fuller view of what the the true fan experience is for esports.

I think we have a massive advantage because we can get away with a lot of things that traditional sports owners would love to. We don’t need a 70,000 seat arena in order to get 70,000 people into a virtual room watching something. We can charge tickets for that and have people tuned in from all around the globe. Now we can also sell out 70,000 seat arenas. Craig’s been doing it for quite a few years.

And every now and then, you want that moment because the in the room, the experience of esports is tremendous. So I think that with some thoughtfulness and with really understanding the value proposition to that fan, that esports fan, across all the titles that we operate because we have our titles that we would classify as esports titles touch about a hundred million people a month — all in we touch about 400 million players a month across Activision Blizzard games.

So it’s 100 million people who’ve shown an affinity towards Activision Blizzard Esports. And if we can think about each of those fans and the group — so the Overwatch fans, the Hearthstone fans and the Starcraft fans — and create some kind of unified experience across all those games for a viewer, for fantasy, for wagering, for an opportunity to unlock things within the game while they’re watching one of our events, that unlocks the business that we’re talking about for us, and also we believe for our partners.

Seiler: Yeah, I’ll add that the source of some of that monetization, we have to sort of figure out where’s that center of gravity? What’s going to give us enough scale with authenticity that’s going to help us sell a few more beers next year? Since we’re an emerging platforms and an emerging space, we’re still fighting for dollars year-over-year. For us, it’s about making that case that we’re gonna be able to deliver scale like the NBA has, like the NFL has, and also be able to actually sell a beer there.

Novy-Williams: And how vulnerable is esports as an industry? I mean I felt a couple years ago daily fantasy was the big buzz in the tech and sports space and I sat on a few panels and we talked about these billion dollar companies and what the future looked like for them.

Then things came crashing down and obviously that was a mix of business decisions and some legal trouble, but you could see a future for esports where a major match fixing scandal or some kind of digital cheating or hacking. Is it vulnerable in this young stage to losing a lot of its credibility with a few kind of missteps from the industry or are we past that?

Levine: There has already been steps for self-regulation. There’s a group called the Esports Integrity Coalition that’s spearheading a lot of this, certainly working with underlying data providers to help spot trends and flag instances of suspicious activity. I think it’s early and vulnerable from the credibility perspective so the industry is already again starting to self-regulate and take it seriously. I think that’s one of the early steps that in terms of vulnerability that other business feels, is it buzz or real you know, and I think it’s undeniable when you really start to look at some of the data not just about where it is today, but extrapolate where it’s going. You look at the profile of fans, when you look at the more macro changes that are just going on with entertainment, with media, with consumption, the digitalization and democratization of content — esports finds itself at sort of the epicenter of that all.

So I think for us at least there’s always going to be ups and downs, but we believe that where it’s going certainly is something that’s very very real and taking the steps today to preserve that integrity to ensure that there aren’t issues like match fixing or cheating or things like scandals that can impact it long term.

Novy-Williams: John, how does that fit into your calculus? I mean, I’m sure if a major college basketball team was caught point-shaving you guys wouldn’t stop advertising in college basketball,and if the NBA player was caught doping it wouldn’t change the way that you guys approach that sport…

Levine: If?

[Laughter]

Novy-Williams: How different do you guys view esports? Is it more tenuous or is it something that you’re a little more concerned about?

Seiler: No, I don’t think it’s more tenuous for that reason. I think it’s just emerging, and it’s just something that you know nobody assumes the beginning of the year that we’re gonna invest in esports the way they you know we do for baseball or football like said anything else. We’ve run into you know, we’ve been investing in sports for 40 or more years from an official corporate sponsorship standpoint, so we’ve seen everything.

There’s nothing that hasn’t happened in that time that would really scare us off at least for that reason. Now, if it turns out it doesn’t sell beer then you know, we have a problem. But I don’t think the integrity or anything like that is in question for us at this point.

Maurer: And maybe to add on the integrity side, we did a little work on that on that side. We support efforts like from key stakeholders like MLG or ESL to explore opportunities of opening up esports to wagering in a regulated manner when it’s done right as an engagement drive and it’s a positive part of the sport and part of the fan experience.

I think wagering on esports came to its biggest prominence as a completely unregulated industry in the form of skin gambling. For anybody here definition wise it’s just wagering with in-game items at completely unregulated operators where no player identification or any measures to protect anybody really in the space was employed, and ultimately that spiraled into several match fixing incidents that were motivated by liquidity on these platforms.

We did a lot of work together as well like, really increasing the public scrutiny and providing visibility for stakeholders over the sheer size of the market there. That being said, you look at the key stakeholders, the leagues and they already have a drive to basically impose the right code of conduct, to write rules, work of bodies who can help to provide data and give you an idea of what’s going on. We don’t see integrity as a risk and we see betting as a key commercial driver for the growth of these going forward.

Novy-Williams: Craig and Sundance, to expand on gambling for a second, the traditional sports commissioners have spent decades fighting tooth and nail against a more widespread legalized sports gambling in America as operators of two of the bigger league operators out there, what is your stance on on what you think the ideal kind of path forward is for gambling in the US?

DiGiovanni: Well you know our point of view as a publisher that invests hundreds of millions of dollars into our games is, we want to try and extract as much value as possible. Wagering is going to happen. We have to figure out how we’re gonna make sure that it happens in a fair and balanced way and participate in that. Because again, we were looking at this and seeing a lot of the things that the traditional sports leagues have had their arms around or rejected and trying to say ok “This is new. This is a new era. We know this is going to happen.”

People are already wagering on our events and we’re not participating so at some point in time we need to get to a place where there’s protection in place for our player base, there’s tools in place for us to make sure that it’s fair and balanced, and there’s a revenue stream so it’s in our discussion for our long-term plan.

Levine: And I think to add off that right, to Sundance’s point, it’s happening and you’re seeing just the traditional sports leagues now, even their approach is differing. Adam Silver certainly much more progressive on the NBA side right, they’ve even taken stakes and some of the daily fantasy companies so to the extent I think, the number one thing is our fans want it. So it’s about providing the right environment that exists to safely protect players, protect fans, and then participate, so it’s just about how we do that, rather than if.

Novy-Williams: That seems like one area where esports is a bit more progressive than your traditional sports, and there are a number of others. I mean we’ve talked about a few esports teams that have entire business ecosystems around themselves. I’m thinking of groups like Ninjas in Pajamas that sell their own hardware and have their own merchandise line. And we’re kind of starting to see that in traditional sports.

You know you’re seeing incubators, tech incubators pop up with teams and teams kind of putting their their own brand at the center of a much bigger content/tech/media play. What are some other kind of lessons you think that the NFL teams, NBA teams, NHL teams can learn from the way that esports has has grown business wise?

Levine: I think the easiest one is the social media approach of big leagues, like an NFL is an example, right? There’s so much disrupt there with big business I think they’re a little apprehensive to some of the bigger technology and cultural things that are going on and for us, we’re starting off much more with a blank slate.

I think there’s a lot of different blueprints that are out there, so we’ve got the benefit of drawing best practices. But I think across the board there’s not one there’s not one blueprint that exists where we go that’s the one that we follow. It’s going to be sort of a combination of all of them. A couple of new things out there to really cater to a global digital audience for the first time that other sports haven’t really dealt with.

Novy-Williams: John, speaking of social media, you guys have a Bud Light Esports Twitter handle, right? That doesn’t exist for the NFL or the NBA or any other partners. How different is the social media aspect for you guys?

Seiler: Yeah exactly, I mean I think that’s huge. What I was gonna add from our standpoint is access to players is the biggest thing that we really can’t do with many of our other sports leagues — certain ones we can with golf, NASCAR — but the other large leagues we really can’t touch active players except on some very limited exceptions so being able to go direct to the fan in the voice of a professional athlete or esports player is absolutely huge for us. I would love to see some progress from the larger leagues on that front.

And then from a brand standpoint, we have a distinct Bud Light Esports voice which is totally unique to esports for us. We don’t do that with other other properties. So we’ve accepted that it’s a different world, it’s a different consumer that we don’t typically target quite as well with our other sports properties. So it’s been socially a very interesting case study for us, and we’re learning a lot about our own brand and what people want from it.

Novy-Williams: Moritz B., what’s the biggest mistake investors are making right now as they clamor to get into esports?

Baier: Yes, I mean I think first of all they don’t spend enough time really understanding the ecosystem and all the players that are involved because there’s so many ways to invest. I think most are just thinking about teams and then owning a team, but really there’s a much broader universe of players here. You have the game publishers, you know large cap game publishers, but also smaller studios so they’re entering esports and you have the teams and team owners. Some are thinking about creating new teams. You have the pure-play organizers like an ESL for example, MLG, but there’s also an interesting tech deck here.

There are tech startups that focus specifically on esports, for example, providing better training for esports athletes and those that want to become those, communication among esports athletes, so there’s a lot more here than just investing in teams.

And teams today are certainly a rather volatile investment. It’s an ecosystem that’s still very much dominated by the game publishers, and one where the game publishers can exercise a lot of control. But I think tech startups and organizers have a real place in it as long as they can operate across publishers because they can offer experience that no single publisher can give.

Novy-Williams: If teams are so volatile, why are we seeing so many of the big name investors getting involved in that avenue?

Baier: High risk, high returns, right? So I think that I look at team investments as venture capital, something that for example private equity or family offices would certainly shy away from. That’s where the most money can be made today in esports, I believe are team investments, but the most likely return on a team investment is probably zero.

Levine: I think it’s also high familiarity of what is team is very tangible versus trying to figure out what a tech stack looks like for a startup in a space that you don’t really even understand. So I think that’s also been one of the magnets towards it.

Baier: And just one small thing on skin gambling, I mean we talk about this industry and what’s the size of the industry? And I think you know there are kind of numbers floating around, but I guess the most common one is that roughly a billion starting in like 2019, around that ballpark for esports as a market size.

Then you have adjacency, like skin gambling, which was estimated to be a five billion dollar market last year. So how does that get factored into the one billion? I think there’s so much more there that isn’t recognized and in this market which again, makes me bullish about the industry and the growth of the monetization as well.

Novy-Williams: One of the problems that I have as a journalist covering esports is, I feel like there’s so much misinformation there. I don’t know what numbers to trust. I don’t know what projections are realistic, and how some projections are either too bullish or too bearish. Is that something that you guys encounter on a daily basis, on a weekly basis? How much misinformation do you see out there, and is it frustrating?

DiGiovanni: We’ve seen it. It’s also what are the right numbers, right? So for a long time in esports growth there were some vanity metrics that organizations would use like concurrent viewers. It didn’t matter if you had 300,000 people and that was your peak concurrent; it doesn’t matter if they’re all there for one second, but that’s the number you’re touting, right? So I think as we’ve gotten smarter about engagement, we’ve been able to see people come into the space and help measure.

People like Nielsen, you know, who can come up with a report and say Craig, you’re under-charging, charge more. That’s fantastic news because for us what we need is kind of a unified approach to say alright we’re there. What’s the real value proposition for a brand that’s going to come in and sponsor a series of events or a one-off event or a special engagement? So the issue of the numbers is that until they’re verifiable, you gotta ask yourself “How do I slice this? How do I dice it? What can I actually verify?” If there’s nothing then what we typically do is we just ignore it. We’re a public company so everything we put out we have to be able to stand by.

That’s the other thing. Our announcements look much different now than they did when we were an independent company. When MLG was independent, it was the Wild West. We’re like alright, we beat them, they beat us, we beat them. It was whoever had the most viewers at that time. But now it actually comes down to those important conversion funnels: how we’re getting people to spend in our games, how we’re getting people to buy our games, and it’s interesting.

Novy-Williams: By the way. We made it almost 30 minutes into the panel before Wild West.

[Laughter]

Levine: And I think the other point in the numbers is, there’s two parts just to Sundance’s point. It’s the engagement of viewership is something just again with digital platforms, I think all sports and entertainment are now kind of wrestling with them. What’s a view or what’s the value? How does Twitter or Facebook measure versus a YouTube or Twitch? So as an industry that’s going on, and then in terms of market size and dollars and breakdowns, there’s certainly not one clear answer, but there’s certain, I think, general ranges that are sort of accepted through there, so the answer is big.

Novy-Williams: One of the concerns that I have in terms of the growth of esports is just that as monetization continues to evolve, esports in some ways needs to buck the traditions that made it so popular, originally. I mean if your guys are gonna profit off of media contracts, that kind of flies in the face of the of the Democratic free-for-all, free-to-view business model that kind of built the back of esports.

Do you think that the traditional esports viewers are kind of ready for the massive changes that we’re gonna start seeing in the next couple years where games might not be always free to stream on Twitch or Facebook or YouTube, they may start having to pay for pay for that?

DiGiovanni: I think it’s gonna be a case-by-case basis. You saw an announcement recently came out where Blizzard partnered with Twitch for all of our content and esports outside of Overwatch League. The landscape has changed so much that Twitch is no longer the startup that can’t afford to pay media rights, they can now and they are.

Now having said that, that deal means they get everything that’s not on Blizzard’s site. So we know that our fans who are used to seeing us on YouTube or Facebook may be upset, so we need to think about how we’re going to program those channels as well. You have to start somewhere.

Again, the key to turning this into a business is unlocking opportunities like that where you know a platform like Twitch will pay you a hefty sum for exclusivity — for third party exclusivity — meaning that you know it’s on our sites and theirs. If the content is good, and if we reinvest that money into the product and create better experiences around the product, over time the fans will come to accept it. Even though they’re a very vocal fanbase, quality wins out over time, in my opinion.

Novy-Williams: We’ve reached this point with teams — that are largely not profitable from what I understand — at what point do team owners who I think for now are happy to see the growth and understand that they’re in this for the long term and that those profits will come eventually, at what point do they stop saying “I’m happy to see this grow and stretch” to “I need to see return on my investment. I need to see start making profit now?”

Levine: I think it’s too early still. I think it’s all about growth equity at this point, much like traditional sports. I mean valuations are driven by the other revenue, the opportunity that exists. I think esports is so nascent still as the business is being figured out like we’ve been discussing, that if there’s investors out there in it looking for cash flow return, they’re probably going to be disappointed. But as the globalization continues to happen and as infrastructure starts to be put in place and protections and revenue sharing and all these things start to get unlocked, the opportunity there to Moritz’s point is huge. So I think that’s how they’re going to see it

Novy-Williams: If you follow the trend of traditional sports in terms of player rights or obviously in a very nascent stage in esports, and at some point as the money continues to grow that’s going to become a bigger part of the conversation as well. Is there room — as teams obviously need to turn a profit and players are gonna eventually have a larger say and in revenue sharing, is there room for those three groups — the team’s, publishers and players — in terms of, is there enough money eventually out there to make that all work?

Levine: Absolutely, and I think that’s going to be the key, figuring out the framework between all the stakeholders in there and that’s then what’s going to further accelerate clearer definition, clearer structure, clearer brand investment opportunities, better fan engagement. That’s going to be a driver for it all.

But certainly there’s a lot of money in the ecosystem now. You know, top esports players today are making seven figures. That’s not bad so I struggle a little bit to say you know, there’s the underserved part. I mean certainly there’s a big discrepancy between top earners and the bottom so that parity will start to happen again as more sharing happens within it.

Novy-Williams: Awesome. I want to open it up to questions. If there’s anyone out there that has a question I believe there are mics floating around.

Okay, there’s no questions we can keep talking.

Maurer: No, there’s one there…

Audience member: As we’re seeing companies and publishers, taking more ownership with their IP whether it’s franchising or limiting third-party tournaments, how Sundance, from your perspective, do you see your organization evolving. And I would be very interested hearing Craig’s perspective as well as a third-party pure-play organizer, how do you see your role evolve as well?

DiGiovanni: So for us, it’s interesting because MLG’s been folded into this massive company, and we operate as part of Blizzard now. So when Overwatch League launches, we will be operating that, but it won’t be MLG brings you Overwatch League. And CWL which we currently run very similarly, it’s CWL and you see all the MLG personalities and Twitter feeds talking about these events, but our goal as we try to professionalize our esports efforts is for each of our games to be held out as their own when they’re big enough as a league and to focus on that. The games that need to shine through first and be the big draw.

It doesn’t mean that we won’t do interesting events that are MLG themed events, partners like Microsoft or some of the other partners that we have that are not you know Blizzard IP. For us, we believe that we kind of need to fall into the background now.

We did our effort about building the MLG brand, so that when you see an MLG event you know it’s gonna be a quality event, is established. That’ll be just underneath the surface, but it won’t be the leading narrative as we run these leagues. But that’s again because we’re inside of this organization and we’re working with hundreds of folks across the games teams to try and make each of these efforts their own distinct experience.

Levine: And for ESL, I think it’s very clear, just about adding value. So being a value add to the publishers, whether that’s our global reach, whether it’s tapping into our infrastructure events and studios, or content distribution. To Sundance’s point, I think all esports initiatives on the publisher level really start as marketing, and then as they grow and scale from there so getting in early, building the right relationships, and the real answer is people don’t know what the end model is going to be through this all.

Two of the three biggest esports titles today — Counter Strike and Dota — have a completely open ecosystem, whereas you know Riot with League and Activision Blizzard with Overwatch you’re going more of the franchise route, so it’s still early. There’s still a lot to be figured out, and for us and as a league it’s about providing value through that.

DiGiovanni: One additional thought, I think the other piece for this is that if we do what we’re trying to do properly, there’ll be opportunities to work with ESL in an environment where there piece of out of the business that we’re building together, it’s profitable for them, and it’s a growth opportunity. Because in the past what it’s been for many years independent operators basically through skin of their teeth were getting through tosome of these events. It was kind of a spending war to see who could outdo whom in terms of sets and design and everything.

Now we’re at a place where we’ve established that there is a real landscape for this, and we need all the operators to operate in a healthy manner, that’s from as a publisher and as an operator, we need to know where our strengths are, and where we need help. And we need to be able to make sure that when we go out and get help in those areas, it’s a true partnership for both sides.

Maurer: To add to that maybe, we also see there’s a consolidation happening, especially in two games that Craig mentioned. There was a time when there were more competitions than actual relevant competitors in the space. This makes it incredibly hard to create products around it, to create content around it, to get buy-in from someone who would sponsor, to get a cool data product that could run over the course of an entire year that’s on the betting end, on the media side.

So these are challenges that we overcome by partnering, but as we see more stakeholders evolving that consolidate, it’s under the umbrella, and they get more and more gravity as they move forward. This is really a factor that’s aiding esports in its growth.

This element of uncertainty made it hard for teams who sometimes didn’t know weeks ahead where their guys would compete, and also competitions who were in this Wild West really fierce competition all the time with each other. So as I see this these maturing and there’s more structural integrity to it, that’s certainly a big factor aiding esports continued growth.

Audience member: What do you make of the traditional leagues starting to invest in the space? I don’t mean the teams. I mean actually the NBA creating this 2k League and getting their traditional franchises to buy on-board?

DiGiovanni: I think, you know it’s interesting because there’s been a lot of conversation about who we’re talking to, about our Overwatch League, and about infrastructure and facilities. But I think having gotten to know some owners of traditional sports teams, this is right in line with their profile as you’re saying. They’re making speculative bets sometimes, they’re having their sons run the teams or daughters run the team because it’s something within the family.

A lot of the struggles of a traditional sports team and the information that’s been gathered in operating a traditional sports team can translate and help, but there’s a whole new set of information that needs to be applied. So that’s where we see the folks who are coming in being very thoughtful and trying to surround themselves with quality executives to help them run these initiatives. Those are the ones that we feel good about.

Then there are others where there’s more layers to it, and we think we’re trying to help and educate even if they’re not working with them directly, just as it kind of an advisory role as somebody who wants the entire space to benefit.

My concern is that when that initially started to be the way that things were shifting, some of the endemic team owners felt like they were being pinched. Now we see that now the endemic team owners are actually being bundled up into these investments at times, and the reason that’s great with a lot of the teams if is people who’ve been operating in a very lean, very mean environment to try and make their team get to a place where they had resources, now are being given resources.

I think if you can meld those two things together which is one of the things that I will tell traditional sports owners is you know “Here’s Dignitas, Here’s Liquid, here’s Fnatic.” We’re trying to introduce them to as many of the endemics as possible because we think it needs to cross-pollinate.

Seiler: I would say from from my perspective as a brand that’s heavily invested in the NBA already, I’m not convinced that we need to go buy more basketball content through something like 2k League. So what is interesting to us though are live events that may ultimately take place in NBA arenas that these guys own.

So, for example League of Legends was at the Garden a couple months back the per-caps actually fell between — for beer — a Knicks game and Rangers game. So that’s meaningful beer consumption for us, so from a live event standpoint it gets very interesting. But more basketball content, I’m not totally sold on yet.

Levine: And I think on the league side what the sports games offer is different than I think what you see with the fantasy element of League of Legends and Counter-Strike and Overwatch. So I think they’re very different. I think there’s a great opportunity for them to market their game, to grow their fan base, expand familiarity with rulesets and favorite players, but I think there’s still a huge gap and even if you look at how an EA approaches it, it’s not esports, it’s competitive gaming, a very clear distinction versus an Activision Blizzard’s approach to it.

So I think going back to one of the points earlier I give esports is a very big term, you got to really slice and dice and segment it to really understand what you’re talking about. When you cut through that all, I don’t know that there’s the same opportunity there for the sports games, and we’ll see if that’s successful for those leagues or not.

Novy-Williams: Got time for one more.

All right no more questions? Thank you guys. Oh, one more…

Audience member: Thank you. With colleges now investing in to esports, both providing scholarships as well as maybe scoping the industry, how do you see their involvement shaping the potential of your leagues and products?

DiGiovanni: We actually have a division called Tespa which focuses on college campus activation. So we see it as a great proving ground and kind of an opportunity to add another layer in so that you know amateurs can compete at a high level very similarly to how you think of feeder leagues or NCAA activity.

Again though, for us one of the challenges and one of the goals is to make sure that it’s managed and regulated and fair.

Mike Morhaime, who is the CEO of Blizzard, is incredibly attached to our college efforts. It’s a very personal thing for him. We’ve done Heros of the Dorm now a few times. There’s plans for more activities similar to that. It’s just all about giving out scholarships and about team versus team from college campuses.

We love sports. We love esports. We love rivalries, and we think that the college environment gives you a lot of really fertile ground for those rivalries. You can tap into pre-existing school beefs and kind of let them play out so we’re big fans of it.

Novy-Williams: Awesome! Thank you guys. Appreciate it and thank you.

Check back soon for more content from Hashtag Sports 2017. In the meantime, go ahead and grab your pass to Hashtag Sports 2018 while the going’s still good.

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Sundance DiGiovanni: Esports Has a Massive Advantage was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This diverse panel from Hashtag Sports 2017 touches on strategies in Fan Engagement both in venue and out, best efforts for capturing the attention of today’s millennials, understanding what the “new fan” wants and how they expect to consume content, as well as, the importance of having a well-defined social strategy to reach a broader and more diverse set of demographics.

Check out the full video and transcript below!

Anthony Morgante: Thank you everyone for coming, we have our illustrious panel here! We’re going to talk about some fan engagement strategies and how everybody’s dealing with them from a league perspective and a cultural perspective.

I’m going to start off by introducing Jill Gregory first. Jill is a Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer at NASCAR. She oversees all marketing efforts including brand marketing, social media, insights and analytics. Jill joined NASCAR in 2007 when she was the SVP of Motorsports Marketing at Bank of America. So thank you Jill for joining us from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jill Gregory: Thanks for having me!

Morgante: Next is Alfredo Bermejo, he is the new Head of Digital Strategy at La Liga where he leads all their efforts in developing integrated strategies across La Liga digital platforms including social media, apps, gaming and other platforms. Alfredo has over 10 years in sports experience, and he just came from leading media partnerships at Facebook. Thank you Alfredo for joining us from Madrid!

Alfredo Bermejo: Thank you!

Morgante: Next, we have Matthew Cenedella, Chief Operating Officer and treasurer from the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) where he has a multi-faceted role, including integrated marketing, digital management, strategic planning, member and member relations. Matt joined WTA in 2010 from IMG Worldwide where he was their global controller. So Matt, thank you for joining us from beautiful St. Petersburg.

Matt Cenedella: Thank you, Anthony!

Morgante: And last but definitely not least, we have Noah Garden from MLB, Major League Baseball, Executive Vice President for Business where he works directly with all the national MLB partners, oversees partnerships, corporate sales, consumer product licensing for MLB Advanced Media, MLB Properties, and MLB Network, as well as all of their commerce, ticketing, advertising, and subscription businesses. Wow, how do you have time to be here? So, Noah joined MLB in 2001 from Outpost.com where he was Director of Product Marketing and Business Development. Noah, thank you for making the far commute from Chelsea, New York.

Noah Garden: Thanks for having me!

Morgante: So our conversation today is focused on fan engagement. We would love to have your perspectives on how you guys have solved so many of the different challenges that engaging fans in today’s digital world brings to the table, and how you go about harnessing some of that fan passion that is so prevalent across sports. We’ll start off with a question for Matt and Noah. It’s essential for any sports organization to have both a digital and a social strategy. Tell us a little bit about how those are different and how you guys are approaching those from a different angle?

Cenedella: I mean for us, we’re certainly — thank you good afternoon — we’re certainly at an interesting point on the digital and social side at the WTA. You know, as the governing body we still have to report through all of our digital channels, email, .com, any of our corporate communications side.

You know the scores, the stats, and the insights that come from our 2000 matches over 300 days every year. What we find is that our social really has to somehow be able to unify our global audience and be able to provide the behind the scenes aspects that really the casual or even the diehard fan tend to gravitate towards. So for us we’re investing heavily on the social side in our content production and really trying to make sure that everything we do social eventually is driving people through the digital ecosystem.

Morgante: And how is that different in baseball, Noah? Since you have a high frequency of games…

Garden: You know, I don’t think it’s much different. I think that if you look at overall strategy, it’s part of the overall plan that you talk about each channel. Whether it’s social or traditional digital, you’re just talking to a different audience and you know the goal there is there’s some people that spend hours at a time in their social environment. And the question is, how do you reach that individual and what do you reach that individual with?

So what we try to do is just be respectful of their time that they are spending with us, and if it’s a score that they want, or if it’s a highlight from the game or something that’s happened that night we want to make sure we get it out to those folks that are on social at the right time because it could be that they never come to our site; it could be that that’s where they spend all their time increasingly.

Morgante: So social has definitely accelerated the timing of where you need to get messages out to folks. So Jill — and this is for Jill and Alfredo — nobody really likes to be targeted as a marketing — you know — well no one likes to be a fan that’s targeted from a marketing standpoint. What do you guys feel is the most effective way to get your brand across and elevate your brand and at the same time not make the fans feel like they are a target of a marketing campaign?

Gregory: Well I think the good news for all of us is that they’re fans. That means they’re fans of our sport, and our brands that come through and all of the competitive elements so if our fans come to either our digital or social channels, we want to make sure that they’re getting the content and all of the passion and the excitement of our sport. The great news is our fans are also very open to sponsorship and partnership messages so we don’t have to hit them over the head with a sponsorship or partner message.

We can show them the highlights of our sport and customize that based on which platform they’re on, how much time they have to Noah’s point, and the marketing message, if you will, is embedded in that content. So I don’t think it’s really an either/or where we’re targeting them with a certain message. Everything that we do is meant to drive their passion, and the marketing comes through that.

Bermejo: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. Content is the key. It’s how you are able to deliver relevant content to the relevant audience, whether you are in China, the United States, Spain and whether you follow a global competition like La Liga, NASCAR, MLB or WTA. How you can provide that real relevant content that is authentic and engage with fun? I think that’s the key to a social media strategy, for us, that is not perceived as a marketing target.

Morgante: So Jill, to add on to your point there, how do you achieve the balance then with reaching out during race weekend? Obviously everybody has a thirst or higher thirst for your content. How do you achieve the balance when it’s not race weekend, but it’s a Tuesday or Wednesday?

Gregory: So you mentioned in the intro that we have a new Analytics & Insights group — it’s not really new, it’s almost a year old though — and everything that we do is rooted in insight and what do the fans want? We listen to them both on the digital and social side each and every day after every race.

For us, we’re asking them how they felt about the competition, what happened on the racetrack and one of the things that they tell us is it’s very distinct needs and wants that they have during the course of a week. So you know Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is where we get to talk more about driver lifestyles, the back stories that fans want to know about. You try to get inside the helmet and have them learn a little bit more about the drivers and what makes them tick and the personal side…

Morgante: On the personal side?

Gregory: On the personal side, but we know that come Thursday, Friday when that action shifts to the track those fans want to know about competition, how the car is, strategy and obviously there’s a little bit of difference between our core fans — they want to know much more.

I think like all of us the core fan wants the stats, wants that inside look. But even the casual fans want to go into a race weekend knowing what they can expect, what they should see on the track, what the rivalries might be so there’s a pretty distinct shift for us midweek — that shift to the weekend that really gets into some of the deeper understanding of the sport and what’s going to happen that weekend.

Morgante: Interesting, so can you talk to a little a little bit about how NASCAR stepped up its game recently with some recent campaigns like the Ready Set Race campaign or the Hashtag 500 which was wildly successful?

Gregory: See you mentioned the split between digital and social, and for us, we know that the core fan is really very focused on our digital sites, our digital products are much more snackable, — I think that’s the term that we’ve been using. But we did a campaign about 18 months ago. We did a distinct shift from a traditional television campaign to digital and social first so we’ll always have 30-second spots. We have great TV partners in Fox and NBC that we provide content and back and forth, but we want the digital and social first strategy and really talk about driving our fans to our digital and social channels and then have kind of the television campaign as an overlay to that.

So we did a promotion called the Hashtag 500 — no relation to Hashtag Sports — where we drove fans to social media during the broadcast so it was a nice cross-pollination of those fans watching our broadcast on Fox, but we also encourage them to follow the race on Twitter.

During live racing action they could tweet, and whoever would tweet the fastest in this particular promotion would win prizes from that race — and also if you were the 500th person to tweet during the race which the Fox broadcaster’s promoted during the broadcast. The fans were engaged through that promotional concept so a really good way for us to drive the television audience but also keep our fans engaged on social as well.

Morgante: So bridging on the the array of ages from the audience that we’re trying to capture from a fan engagement standpoint. I have a question for you Alfredo, regarding the attention span of millennials.

I’ll start with a little story of my own so I have a 16 year old son and we were watching, he’s a big basketball fan, so watching the NBA Finals a few weeks back and we were out shopping for some stuff and it was like 8 o’clock and I was like “Hey, we got to get going, we got to get back for the tip-off.” He was like “That’s fine, you know we’ll watch it, we can rewind it.”

I was like “We are not going to rewind it.” So we got there and we were home for the tip-off and he’s sitting right next to me and he’s not even looking at the screen and five minutes into the game Durant makes this awesome dunk and the broadcaster’s are going crazy and I’m like “Oh you missed that,” and he’s like “Well, we’ll rewind it.’ I’m like “No, I’m not gonna rewind it. You should have been watching from the beginning!”

Garden: Tough dad…

Morgante: Yeah, so he’s sitting right next to me on his five-inch screen versus a 60-inch screen and five minutes later he’s like “Oh wow that was an awesome dunk,” and I’m like “Are you kidding me!” So the attention span of even something that he is deeply engaged in — he loves basketball, loves all the statistics around it — I still can’t get him to put the device down and just watch it with me without any interruptions. It’s just impossible, and the fact that he’s so spoiled that he can or his mentality is that we can just rewind it without having to sit there and pay attention, it’s tough for me to handle personally.

So how do you deal with millennials just having that — they don’t need to be at the start of a soccer game, they don’t need to be watching that great play right at that moment; it’s okay for them to watch the game an hour later a day later like how does that…?

Bermejo: I mean, it’s a great challenge. Everything is a challenge for all of us, I mean it’s gonna be almost 40% of the population in 2020, and they consume more than one hour. Social media means how to engage with that audience, it is not focusing on the live content, and basically I think we should think on what’s the kind of content, and how they consume that content when you want to watch it, how do you wanna watch it and on which platforms?

We had some examples in terms of TV production. We invest a lot in La Liga to have a better traditional broadcasting production and we realize that when you go to social and mobile consumption, they don’t care that matches, that qualities that highlight one specific moment are the most accurate moment related to the live game. So trying to adapt the narratives and build stories that engage that audience is a great challenge for us. But it starts by better knowing our audience.

Morgante: Do you see the trend line continuing from a mobile and digital consumption for your sports specifically or has it been staying the same what has been the trend for soccer in general?

Bermejo: I mean I see the trend line growing. We’ve seen in our media consumption in the digital platforms increasing in the recent years. It didn’t damage our TV rating. So far we are good, but we’ve seen our news consumption change in the recent five years, how the music industry’s consumption changed, so we think that will happen to sports and we will need to adapt our narratives and our content production to all platforms.

Morgante: La Liga has recently entered into a partnership with Microsoft to help with some digital transformation and address some of these challenges that you guys are facing? Can you elaborate a little bit on what your plans are from a technology standpoint or the transformational standpoint?

Bermejo: Yes, basically the main goal of these partnerships is to help us to better know our audience, to know our fans, and to have one unique vision of La Liga fans and track what they want. The interaction within the multiple touch points that we have with them whether our apps, our social media or gaming platforms, have a better profile identification of those funds and being able to deal with business intelligence and analytics to providing the most relevant content and product and services.

Not just from La Liga, but from the 42 teams that form the competition. Not just as some governing body, as a group of teams and being able to keep that information, and to share with the teams that information and those strategies.

Morgante: So the teams are also pushing you for assistance there?

Bermejo: Yeah.

Morgante: Right. So they’re willing to make that investment to help grow their work?

Bermejo: We want to work closely with them to get them on board on that project and to reach and to broaden the region not just for a local competition in Spain, but so we can grow globally.

Morgante: Let’s talk a little bit further about a different type of engagement versus you know we’ve been talking about social and digital up until now. Regarding fan engagement in-venue versus out-of-venue, so just to make a clarity statement here: nobody on this panel, Major League Baseball doesn’t own a stadium, NASCAR doesn’t own a racetrack and La Liga doesn’t own a stadium, right?

So it’s not like they have a personal vested interest in making the experience in this stadium the best it can be. So these are all governing bodies from a perspective of the sport and that proposes a different challenge of what they view fan engagement to be, and what their requirements/responsibilities are.

So, for Noah and Alfredo, how is engaging fans in the venue different from how you try to engage them outside of the event? That doesn’t necessarily mean on the couch like at home, but it can obviously be outside when they’re traveling or when they’re in a college dorm, or there’s definitely differences. We would love to hear your perspective and your strategies.

Garden: We’ve invested a lot over the past few years in our technology at the stadiums. I mean if you think about it, go back five years ago, you walked into a venue the size of a baseball stadium or any of our venues, you knew you would have connectivity issues. You’d basically be without access to your phone and information for a period of time, and it’s really unacceptable in today’s environment.

So really for us it started with league-wide, we went wired in every park so we partnered with all the usual suspects and made sure that the technology within the stadiums gave you the ability to be able to pick up your phone or any device that you happen to have with you and connect with the outside world. You know, I mean forget for us [points to panel], but for our kids, not having their phone is like not having air so you know we didn’t want you to show up and….

Morgante: No pun intended?

Garden: No pun intended [laughs] You know so that was really the first step.

Then the second step for us was you know you look at these venues, and there was one person buying on average three-and-a-half tickets to an event and you knew who that person buying the ticket was, but you didn’t know who was coming with them. I mean we couldn’t have known less about our fans, and that really is unacceptable in today’s environment as well. So you know what we’ve done is we’ve created an app called the Ballpark App that our teams use and within that app, that’s where you manage your tickets.

That’s where you can forward tickets to others as well. You know, that’s increasingly how you enter a stadium, with mobile tickets, and that has allowed us to really understand the customers that are coming to the park, how many times they’re going to other parks. Combine that with some of the information we’re getting to our other platforms, and then ultimately the goal is to have a much more personalized experience when you’re in that venue.

Certainly you can send something out and say you know “Hey, there’s a sale over here or get a beer over here,” but you don’t want 40,000 people heading in one direction so it really does become more one-to-one and getting that information was really the foundation of us achieving that. It’s still a work in progress, but you know that’s where we’re headed.

Bermejo: Yeah, at La Liga, we’ve been investing a lot in the experience during the last years. We didn’t have a unified TV production and we had some some issues in terms of the facilities and through connectivity — no Wi-Fi access and so on. For the last two years, we’ve been working together with the teams to get all this sorted out — having a standard quality for the grass that is essential to play the game, having an effective action, connectivity improvement, but it’s also important for us the rest of the days between matches.

I know MLB — you have a lot of activity — but in La Liga we have seven days between, or at least three days between games so keeping the fans engaged in between matches it is such an important thing...

Morgante: Do you think and this is a question for anyone, do you think fans are expecting that kind of — MLB was one of the pioneers of using beacons in the stadium and stuff — you think fans have an expectation now, that you know when I walk through the rotunda at Citi Field that I get greeted and you know who I am? Or do you think it’s more of a big brother thing and they kind of don’t want to share where they are?

Garden: So you know some do and some don’t and I think that that’s why there has to be sort of a process for people to opt-in. I mean certainly when you’re calling somebody out for being in a certain place at a certain time — that’s creepy far as I’m concerned. But you know, some people want it, and if you raise your hand and that’s what you want, you need to be able to give them what they want.

But really the idea I guess is to enhance their experience and not really push them in one direction or another. So you take beacons for example, if you happen to walk by a place in the stadium, a certain part of the park that has historical significance or something that they may or may not know providing that information is kind of cool.

It’s a service versus what we did early on saying “Hey welcome to the park.” Like that’s something that was sort of shied away from. So it is trial and error, but I think you do have to be careful and strike that right cord.

Morgante: And how involved are the venue owners? And again, this is for anybody. Did the teams come to you and say “Hey, you know we’re looking to do this with our fans” and you take their input, and it’s just either hard to implement or too costly versus what the fans really want to experience?

Garden: I think that when we look at you know whether it was wiring the ballparks or otherwise I think the goal of MLB.com from way back when was to make sure if you’re a fan of a small market club that you had the same experience as someone from a large market club. So just because you’re in Kansas City doesn’t mean you should be treated any differently. — already you have less technology deployed in your stadium — then you know if you were in New York City.

So the idea was we’ve taken a more central role when it comes to technology and delivering that with the ballpark app in particular. I think the key to that is making sure that for us that our clubs can customize it and it can be their own, and so we’ve built them with the sort of the core functionality that exists in it, but each of the teams customize it and the app.

When you open the app, it knows what stadium you’re in and it provides an experience. That’s a little different at every place — some people might have in-seat order and other stadiums might not for the different logistical reasons. But they need to know each venue is different with fans from different parts of the country expecting different things. You need to make sure that it can be localized on the local level.

Morgante: Great, andquestion for you Matt regarding female viewers. Since your sport obviously is focused on the female athletes, how do you view the competition for those viewers on the weekend?

Cenedella: Yeah, I think what you’d probably find first is we actually in some markets skew much more even between male-female. Particularly outside the United States and parts of Europe, for us what we realize is our star players they index so well across fashion, travel, cultural, political issues in some cases, and we really want to draft off that — not to use a NASCAR term.

But what we want to make sure of is that you know we’re still in the early stages of the cards — we’re in the early stages of our digital/social transformation and what we know is that linear television continues — it’s critical for us of course — but it continues to grow pretty steadily, and what we’re finding is actually the digital consumption of our matches in our sport has doubled in the last three years and that’s what we want to make sure that we’re doing, because we’re global and we don’t have anything but a one or two week window of time at particular geographies.

That’s where we’re really pushing in the last year to make sure that the social and digital products help take the fan on tour, and so we’re really trying to take advantage of, to a certain extent, our players’ images, their likenesses, their behavior. The first two or three days of a tournament is really heavy and aggregating the content from the players as they’re available before that.

What we’ve really worked on is short form content and we’re finding it incredibly helpful, both male and female. Our Facebook views are up 500% year-over-year, Twitter’s up 800%, and we’ve increased our overall social audience by 62% just in the last 18 months.

So what we’re finding in the early stages is you have to have a complimentary — telling the stories and whether it’s male/female, whether it’s different preferences or what not, where people are from in 32 countries — you really have to be you know a good tactician. But you have to also be strategic, and most of all you have to listen to the fans and when they want to sort of go down a different path and your curation process just has to adjust.

Morgante: So like NASCAR, you typically follow a driver in NASCAR right and since tennis is not a team sport it is the same way, the folks have a thirst to understand what they do off the court or in their personal lives and does that drive….?

Cenedella: I think we are (tennis) by nature in many cases a regional sport. So although we have maybe 10 or 20 — if you’re an avid tennis fan maybe you could name ten or twenty players — but what really happens is it’s the German populace they want to know how the top five to ten German players are doing in the UK. It’s the same in China with Li Na a couple years ago. I mean it was the most-watched CCTV sporting event when she’s in a Grand Slam Final. We have to be able to adapt and take advantage of those.

It’s obviously a challenge from a timezone standpoint, and that’s why we’ve really doubled down with WTA Networks and our thought process — really trying to be able to customize as much as possible content that might be captured at the same moment. But the way it’s edited down, the way it’s overlaid with music, sound effects, etc. can kind of focus on different countries appropriately.

Morgante: So building on that a little bit, Jill if you can give us your perspective on how NASCAR has had a continuously growing female population and viewership in your Latin communities have grown as well. Can you tell us how that is different from what Matt just mentioned regarding his strategy?

Gregory: Yeah, I think a little bit for us, we’ll always probably be surprising to some folks, but we’ve always had pretty much a 60/40 split between a male and female audience, and that has stayed consistent over time. A lot of the elements that are true to our brand resonate with a female fan base as well, but we don’t have a dedicated female strategy. We’re going to go after moms in this market or young females in another market.

We know that the things that NASCAR fans want are pretty ubiquitous across male-female audiences and across demographics as well, they want to be inside the helmet;they want competition. They want the intense passionate racing; they want crashes and excitement. I would argue that women are no less competitive than men so our fans want the same thing. So we deliver that to them and we’ve actually seen the way we’re delivering it through digital and social — that 40% of our general audience split is actually you know a little more evenly balanced.

Almost 45 to 50% of our followers on social media are female so you know I think it goes again along with the themes that we’ve heard today, it’s customization and whether it’s a male fan, a female fan, a Hispanic fan, they want what they want, when they want it on the platform that they’re consuming at that time so all of us have the challenge to deliver that thirst for customization and the delivery mechanism that is most convenient for the fan.

We all have to try to deliver against that so we don’t target female-male; we do some things in the different demos, but male and female is where it’s pretty standard across the board.

Morgante: So Noah, to her point there, regarding the personalization it seems to be a common theme, but when the whole panel used the term second-screen, I don’t know if that’s relevant anymore. It’s almost like the tablet has now become the third screen and the TV’s either maybe not a screen at all or a “sometimes screen” and the focus is that the primary screen is your phone. How is your strategy changing there from a “second-screen” perspective and keeping that personalization?

Garden: Sure, I mean for us it was always the first-screen and I think when you look at it now you used to customize based on you know age group and demographic and now increasingly, it’s really by device. So if you take a look at the iPhone or any phone for that matter, we see roughly at MLB, roughly seven minutes that somebody spends on their phone consuming us on that device, so what do they want? What are they coming for? Used to be back in the day, if somebody clicked five times to get to a score or to get to where they want…but you have to be respectful of their time with the seven minutes.

So we put scores front and center; we put highlights front and center; we allow you to customize that experience. We have a condensed game where you can watch the whole game in ten to fifteen minutes versus you know watching a full game if you come on your phone. That’s probably something that should be more front and center. So we really look at the device now and you take a look at connected devices on the other end of the spectrum.

You know we get them roughly 45 minutes on average there, so that’s a different experience and with that experience it’s you know you want more of a lean back experience, but at the same time there are people that want more information. It used to be just about the strike zone and you know, what’s hot, what’s not, where did it land, and you used to say it’s a 93 mile-an-hour fastball, but that doesn’t even tell the story because a 93 mile-an-hour fastball can get hit if it’s not moving. Now it’s really dimensionalizing the stats and showing the movement of the ball.

So you know there’s people that want that information, and while on a phone that might be something that’s hard for us to bring front and center on the connected devices. It’s something that you can overlay easily and provide so we really now look at device more than we look at by demographic.

Morgante: So all those things, those additional overlays as you refer to them: the strike zone, the trailing path of the ball, the trajectory, how fast this outfielder ran to get that ball, that kind of thing, are those things that fans that were clamoring for that you guys introduced?

Or is it a function of the fact that you have the most games of the season so there’s so much that the fans can take in from baseball? Baseball also being a sport that has traditionally been a statistic heavy sport, is that part of the strategy of how much can we overlay here, and how much is too much versus this is what the fans are asking for?

Garden: I think it’s both. I think there’s a segment of the fans that are asking for it. You know and again, if you take a look at it there’s different stats that you’ll see coming out, but we can basically tell now summaries on first base based on who’s pitching, who’s catching the lead. We can have something there that overlays on the field that say you know there’s a 90% chance a few ones from here that he’s gonna make it to second.

It’s just contextual. Does everybody want it? Maybe not, but increasingly people want to sort of understand what’s going on, and why so-and-so hit this, why they ran here and just understanding the game, I think can make you a better fan. But that said, some people don’t want it. Some people just want to lean back — so really it really just depends.

Morgante: Yeah, I mean I get the privilege at Microsoft working with a lot of our sports partnerships. Two of the questions I get asked a lot most often are if Microsoft can help us solve who ticket number two, three, and four is. That’s the Holy Grail because nobody’s done that yet. And the second is how can you help us be more contextual and more relevant so that example for?

To clarify a little further is if I’m attending a New York Knicks game and I’m attending in New York Knicks gear, don’t offer me something to go purchase merchandise for the New York Rangers — or even worse not being relevant — so that’s an example of being relevant but not being contextual.

Where if I’m already at the game and you know I’m at the game because I’m tweeting or I’m doing something, don’t offer me a discount for parking if I alreday parked my car — like that’s very frustrating for a fan. However, it’s super beneficial to know that information from a league or team standpoint. So how much is too much? And this is for anybody not anyone specifically.

But how much is too much about reaching out to a fan? Now do you want them to say “Hey, WTA, NASCAR, I’m here so are you sending me stuff?” or “I don’t want you to know that I’m here. Don’t send me anything, I just want a tweet on my own.” Like what’s the balance there? And that’s not an easy question, and there’s no right answer.

Cenedella: It’s hard not to listen to the fans. We’re still at the point where we’re segmenting and trying to understand — even the last two years — we’ve come to learn actually our average age is two or three years less than we thought it was. As we’re going into different modes, different platforms of viewing so you know we’re still at the point where heavy listening and adapting and trying customizing, but making sure you’re okay failing a little bit if it’s moving you forward.

Gregory: I think there’s never too much. There’s never too much for us. You know we have to educate a lot of our fans particularly moving casual fans to be more avid on the strategy — what is happening at the racetrack, where they are re in the venue is really important for us. There’s a lot of noise. We have a lot of ground to cover so providing data or some explanation and some background on what’s happening at the track through your device is really helpful for us.

It’s hard to know what’s happening and we can obviously do that much better through the broadcaster, through NASCAR comms and our products, but that data and what’s happening and the things that Microsoft has helped us with is taking all of that and making that fan understanding much deeper which keeps them coming back.

We’re not using it as much to send them to you know buy another beer or another Coca-Cola. We want them to understand and to know more about the sports, so I think a little bit you know similar to Matt is that we want to make sure that it’s enhancing their understanding of the competition.

Morgante: So in tennis you have different logistical challenges than NASCAR does. With NASCAR we’re talking about a vast space typically in remote locations, not usually in metropolitan areas that impede on connectivity. Tennis is different where there’s simultaneous matches going on and if you’re a fan of more than one... So if you’re that German scenario if you’re a fan of more than one German tennis player, that’s happening at the same time, like how are you on this court and understand what’s happening on the other court. Those are some of the challenges that you’re facing, right?

Cenedella: That’s right, I think what we have not only do we not own the venues, the venues are in use for you know typically two to three weeks around a tournament and some of the larger stadiums are a little more year-round.

Indian Wells out in California is a great example owned by Larry Ellison. They’re putting in technology to try to make the fan experience analogous to going to a major sports league. But it really is for us. We have potentially at some tournaments 16 to 24 matches going on different courts at the same time, so how do you tie it together?

I think of the analogy with golf and what Microsoft is doing with the PGA Tour is very similar to what we’re looking to do where I’m on court seven and I’m watching my favorite German player, but I hear a lot of noise bubbling from court number nine. What’s happening? I can [find out] and that’s where we have to get much more advanced with the connectivity.

But also just as simple is how we were telling the quick story or creating the platform so that the fans can really look and say “Okay, although I’m on court seven I know this is going to the third set on court nine between two top 20 players. I’m gonna walk over there right.” And that’s what we have to move towards. It’s just it certainly is a challenge, but not insurmountable right? Just have to focus on it along with our members.

Morgante: Would love to hear your reaction to the term cord-cutter? Do you hate that term, do you embrace that term? What does cord-cutter mean?

Cenedella: Well, I was probably scared of the cord-cutter until I became one right? So I haven’t had cable in about a year and a half, and yes, it’s difficult without sports. Sometimes you have to work a little bit harder, you know?

But the reality is that people that are choosing to get their entertainment through different channels/vehicles/platforms, they’re going to do that and no entertainment or brand is necessarily going to stop them. You know what we’re finding is as they’re viewing on alternate platforms, it’s helping us overall with the relevance of the WTA.

So we’re fine with it. I think it’s like anything. You know, 50 years ago there were fears of this technology. When cable started, right? Now it’s just a different paradigm that we have to work within which makes it more difficult; it makes it more of a challenge when you’re extrapolating that by 35 countries but what we’re trying to do is take it in digestible bits.

What we’re really learning is that, to the talk of linear earlier a bit, is we can work with the linear broadcasters and illustrate that the fans that are cord-cutters, they never knew them before, they never had information or data from a traditional linear side.

So if we can work through partnerships — and we’re actively doing this with the broadcasters and alternate channels on the digital side — we’re able to actually go back and provide the broadcasters meaningful information. So there’s a whole question about whether it’s cannibalization or you’re building up overall relevance. I think our mindset is the pie is this big, let’s really make sure that the pie is as large. We can get it before we start worrying about cannibalization, right?

Morgante: Jill, did you want to comment on NASCAR?

Gregory: I think you could be afraid of the core of the term cord-cutters. They’re not going to do you any good.

Cenedella: Don’t be afraid.

Gregory: It’s here. [Laughs]

And I think one of the byproducts is that it’s forced us to look at the way we present our sport with our broadcast partners and make sure that we’re providing what the fans want. Live sports is a product that is very compelling, and I think that it’s best suited to adjust to to all of these changes.

But to Matt’s point, the other screens, the other opportunities, that just allows us to present it differently, to present it in a way that attracts those younger audiences that we were going to lose anyway if you’re not going to innovate. Then they’re not going to come and they weren’t going to come to us. So I think it’s forced a lot of us in this business to look at how we present things a little bit differently and take advantage of it and have it be complementary versus something that is a competitive disadvantage.

Cenedella: I do think it’s going to call into question — you know talk about the traditionalists, and tennis is very traditional in the media side — so trying to advance away from sort of a bit of an overbearing reporting. This is our three or five set match and that’s it. Talking about presenting a five minute match, a ten minute match in different contexts.

I think that certainly has to be the future, right? And whether people are going to a VOD, SVOD or what not on the streaming side, you want to be able to curate it in the way that they’ll watch. My 10 or 15 year old daughter, they’re not necessarily gonna watch a two or three hour tennis match, but boy they’ll watch a 25 minute or definitely a 10 minute match. Especially if I ask nicely, if you ask your kids nicely…

Morgante: Snackable!

Cenedella: Snackable, right? So then you could argue that you’re gaining a fan, or attention, that you otherwise would have never had.

Morgante: So I’m going to wrap and this was a last question for all four of you, if you can give a brief answer regarding your opinion on the deals that are happening now that the Amazons and Netflixes and Hulus and Twitters of the world are shopping for deals with the NFL and some other deals that these media companies or social companies are going out and looking for. These big media deals, what is everybody’s opinion on that? Is it just a trend, is that going to continue, is it something you guys are entertaining?

Cenedella: Wait, has anyone else been approached by these companies? [Laughs]

There’s no doubt it’s happening. Of course it’s happening as the search for credible and quality content becomes a bit of a bidding proposition. Sure, so it’s here to stay and probably will continue to accelerate. The real question will be what’s the whole contextual experience for the viewer? Because in those new or non-traditional platforms, are they going to be able to like really create the whole ecosystem of data, stats, behind-the-scenes, etc.? Or is it just going to be streaming matches. I think that’s a interesting challenge — we’re ready to watch it.

Garden: I mean I would say listen, there’s enough to go around. I mean if you look at baseball in particular, and we play every day for six months, we’re doing the Friday night game on Facebook, and we’re learning — probably just as Facebook’s learning. The question is that content makes sense for that platform at that time.

I think that we’ll find out, but certainly content is still king and when it comes to sports and those of us on this stage, it’s really one of the things that’s very tough to time. So as a result you know it’s valuable. It’s valuable to platforms. It’s valuable to partners, and it is certainly valuable to advertisers so just making sure that you’re capturing those eyeballs in the right place at the right time, it still allows you to monetize it in the way that you know you want.

Morgante: It’s interesting you say time shift, is it less flexible than linear broadcast? Or just depends on the strings that are attached?

Garden: Yeah, I mean I think that it just depends, for us it’s geographical. We play every day so once tonight’s game is over, you’re onto the next day, and you’re on to the next game. If you’re overseas or you’re displaced like that and you might want to wake up and really watch the game, you might watch the condensed game, you might watch the whole game. So it’s a little different, but you know again for us, it’s just really hard to time shift. No one game — unless it’s the playoffs or the World Series or the All-Star Game — no one game has enough meaning that you go back.

Morgante: Alright we are over a little bit, so I want to thank everybody for making the trip.

Even if you had to take a subway.

[Laughter and applause]

Check back soon for more content from Hashtag Sports 2017. In the meantime, subscribe to receive updates or go ahead and grab your pass to Hashtag Sports 2018 while the going’s still good.

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MLB’s Garden: “Not Having Their Phone Is Like Not Having Air” was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Will the Numbers Add Up to Success?

#15.

That number has been on the back of every jersey I’ve worn since Little League. I’ll be wearing it on my back once again this summer because it’s my number.

Well, ok; it’s not solely my number. It’s also the number Thurman Munson wore when he led his team to back-to-back World Series titles in the late 70’s. If #15 was good enough for Thurman, it was good enough for me because I wanted to be like Thurman Munson. I wanted to be the star catcher of the New York Yankees.

But things have changed.

Some young kids today want to wear #30 and shoot like Steph Curry. Some wear #13 and dream of making one-handed circus catches like Odell Beckham Jr. Others wear #10 in hopes of being as beautiful to watch on the pitch as Lionel Messi.

I know this because at KidSay we talk with Gen Z all the time, and for the 20 years we’ve been tracking kids ages 5 to 15, there’s one thing tween and teen boys haven’t wavered on — the job they see themselves doing as an adult.

20% of boys ages 8–15 say they’re going to be a ‘professional athlete.’ It’s their number one response and appears more than twice as frequently as their second choice (engineer — 8%).

And esports have made the idea of becoming a professional athlete even more relatable for kids (if not more realistic).

Activision Blizzard’s recently-launched Overwatch League is a major step in this direction. It’s the first city-based pro esports league, with initial teams in the U.S. as well as China and Korea and a long-term goal of having teams in the world’s 28 largest media markets.

This blending of the esports model with the ‘location loyalty’ of traditional sports leagues ratchets up the development of one of the fastest growing trends in sports.

It provides an access point for millions of gamer boys and girls to form an emotional attachment to the teams they watch, root for — and, perhaps, aspire to become a part of. This is something that was lacking in other esports leagues and is a key to luring Gen Z to screens. Once they’re there, then other sports leagues can use the esports’ streaming platforms to recapture some of the audience that has broken free of (or was never a part of) the traditional pay-TV ecosystem.

Of the growing Gen Z esports audience, Hashtag Sports Co-Founder Anthony Caponiti told KidSay, “Look no further than the league with the highest share of young TV viewers. The NBA’s recent streaming deal with Twitch shows the world’s most global league is positioning itself in the closing gap between esports and mainstream consumers to connect with Gen Z fans through streaming video.”

The question KidSay is committed to answering is: Will loyalty to a local esports team be enough to keep Gen Z coming back?

As the generation that expects a more transparent and authentic relationship with the brands they use than any previous generation, will love of their local team emerge in a sport where, to this Gen Xer’s eyes, it’s more about the game than it is about the players playing it? Will today’s kids find their equivalent of Thurman Munson playing for the New York Excelsior? Will they make the kind of deep attachment to a player, to a team, to the sport, that will last a lifetime?

Will they find their own #15?

I hope so.

Terence Burke is the SVP of Research at KidSay, and co-creator of KidSay’s Trend Tracker, a noted research report that many of the world’s most successful companies rely upon to understand kids and their rapidly-changing world. Connect with Terence here and here.

Enjoy more thought leadership on the impact of Millennial/Gen Z fans at Hashtag Sports 2018 on June 25–27 in Times Square, New York City.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

Esports and Gen Z was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our goal in providing a platform for disruptors has never been to deconstruct sports.

The plan has always been to help reconstruct sports — and to champion the technologies, media, and minds that are the architects of a better future for the connected fan.

As the industry’s largest and most diverse gathering, we entered 2017 uniquely positioned to unite a group of established stakeholders (who pioneered a $100 billion industry) with a rapidly growing community of emerging participants now reaping the benefits of a digitally-transformed sports economy.

And unite we did.

Faces in Our Crowd: New and Old

What made Hashtag Sports 2017 so special was the deeply-rooted sense of community and collaboration that spanned across an unrivaled range of attendees and the shared sentiment of charting a new course for an industry at an inflection point.

Attendees stood in line with the founder of Foursquare for a chance to immerse themselves in virtual reality content from Mandt Media, exhibitors listened to feedback from David Stern as he explored the technologies changing the face of the fan experience, and mid-level marketing managers sat next to NHL CMO Heidi Browning and NFL Pro Bowler Russell Okung in the TimesCenter auditorium to take in insights from the industry’s foremost thought leaders.

In addition, the diverse make-up of our speaker roster brought fresh faces to the limelight through a mix of disparate backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, and viewpoints.

Impalpable Energy: You Had to Be There

From the moment the doors opened, an undeniable buzz was born that transcended any speaker we could ever advertise or happy hour we could organize.

And the energy didn’t end when attendees left the TimesCenter after each day’s programming.

Official and unofficial networking events were sprinkled across Manhattan as New York City served as the sports industry’s week-long playground for celebration, education, and networking, and meetings were put on the books months in advance with sports and entertainment stakeholders expecting to cross paths with decision makers from the media, advertising, sponsorship, and tech industries across North America and Europe.

Friendships were forged, deals were set in motion, and knowledge was shared. But to feel it and understand it, you just had to be there.

Highlight Reel: Only at Hashtag Sports

However, what happens at Hashtag Sports definitely doesn’t stay at Hashtag Sports. There were no shortage of highlights, and our attendees shared some of their favorite moments using #HS17 across social media.

Vincent Wiskowski on Twitter

@Vikings on how they gained more fans on snapchat in 1 day than ALL #NFL teams combined in one month 😳 #HS17 #smsport

Jeff Eisenband on Twitter

His & Hers II. Chatting evolution of @SportsCenter, finding out @michaelsmith was "the one" and @WWE-LaVar Ball with @jemelehill. #HS17

Fast Company on Twitter

@ChuckSalter at #HS17: "New platforms create new places to find stories, but also new ways to tell them." #contentmarketing

Jamie Hudson on Twitter

Here's @MartysaurusRex giving his take on how to get kids to go play sports outside... And then there's the T-Rex impression 😄#HS17 https://t.co/9qnsEB1Jw2

Akash Bhat on Twitter

Q. What's fandom today? A. A father holding a baby, risking dropping it to catch a foul ball ⚾️ #HS17

Scott Kegley on Twitter

Product marketing team for hire. #flavorlife #NYC #HS17

Aubrey Kragen on Twitter

Thanks for having me, NYC. #HS17

Nicole Bersani on Twitter

What an awesome event with some awesome professionals. Thanks, @HashtagSports! Tons of insights and ideas to take home. #HS17

Matt Glapinski on Twitter

That's the way to finish a great event like @HashtagSports - meeting an @NBA champ @JaValeMcGee34 in Bryant Park! #HS17 #Warriors #NYC

Here are a few of our team’s favorite moments:

• Jemele Hill talking politics and controversy in the lead up to her own political controversy
• Martellus Bennett amusing with his antics and a never-before-told childhood story
• Chiney Ogwumike interrupting her own session to post on Uninterrupted live on stage
• Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley tossing Stockade FC t-shirts into the audience
• Microsoft launching their Sports Performance Platform to put data into play
• KidSay showcasing a first-of-its-kind partnership and research study Luker On Trends
• Minute Media unveiling the launch of their brand new esports platform, DBLTAP
• Team Hashtag ringing the NASDAQ closing bell

Stay Tuned: We’ve Only Scratched the Surface

2017 was all about the sports ecosystem’s perspectives of the needs and wants of The Connected Fan. 2018’s theme, The New Sports Economy, will explore how the digital transformation of sports is erasing long-established, cross-industry silos and requiring increasing collaboration between emerging and established players in order to effectively reach the connected fan.

An infusion of funds from non-endemic tech giants in tandem with the continued convergence with other culture-shaping verticals including music, film, and entertainment is pushing the industry forward and challenging longstanding business models.

In 2018, we’re turning it up a notch to match the industry’s outlook.

Our agenda will feature an extra day of keynotes and fireside chats from sports and media heavyweights, three times the number of workshops to offer more actionable insights, the introduction of structured networking opportunities, and a new and improved VIP experience offering unparalleled access and special event experiences.

Our hope is that Hashtag Sports 2018 opens your eyes to the opportunities that exist when ideas and economy collide and deep-seated notions of tradition are set aside. Paradigms are shifting and business models are being disrupted, and it’s time we unite to celebrate it.

We can’t fuel the new sports economy without you.

For more on our mission and info on registration for Hashtag Sports 2018, visit us at https://hashtagsports.com

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

Hashtag Sports 2017 — Event Recap was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

written by Meghan Duggan, in collaboration with Hashtag Sports

I’m no professional film critic, but if I had a vote for Best Picture at the Oscars this year, it would go to Battle of the Sexes. (Side note: My Grammy vote for Song of the Year would’ve gone to the new Ed Sheeran and Beyonce collab, but that’s a debate for another day).

You’re probably familiar, but the film’s plot is loosely based on Billie Jean King’s fight for equal recognition (and fair pay) for women’s tennis players and her milestone match against Bobby Riggs in 1973.

The irony is that the plot might as well have been loosely based on women’s hockey in 2017.

Coming off our year-long fight for equitable treatment from USA Hockey, we made it a point to go see the movie as a team and share in the experience together. I had a related “pinch me” moment earlier in the year when Billie Jean reached out to us to express her support for our own battles of the sexes. Having her encouragement and guidance lit a fire in our hearts.

As the Captain of the US Women’s National Hockey Team, I have one obvious driving force and mission: winning gold. It’s been my dream since I was a ten-year-old girl just discovering the ice on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

But as I’ve matured, I’ve realized that with that gold medal comes a question: Now what?

And that’s why it’s important to remember that as athletes, we also have the ability to be creators and influencers.

Digital media, social channels, and brand partners like CCM Hockey give me the platform to showcase my creativity and use my influence — and not just with the intent of influencing consumers’ purchase decisions but, rather, influencing young fans’ dreams.

CCM is an absolutely amazing partner. They don’t just stand behind us; they put their money where their mouth is, and it’s been incredible to see the evolution in their promotion of women’s hockey.

In the midst of our fight for fairness in the spring, CCM approached the team about collaborating on a campaign. We gave them a ton of insight into how we were feeling, how we were training, words we visualize, and the mantras we live by, and they gave us the opportunity to help shape the ad’s script.

The campaign, entitled Made of Hockey, includes a full length ad featuring our whole ensemble and answering one core question: “What do you play for?” The rest of the campaign is focused on telling our individual stories across a series of six short digital videos.

The digital nature of the campaign also allows us to continue to share our message of inspiration and influence for young girls with a powerful partner behind it. Social media is the way the world interacts now so it’s an incredibly valuable asset to any movement. And this campaign is exactly that — a movement.

It was an ambitious and admirable project, and the guys and gals wearing the directors’ and producers’ hats over there did an incredible job encapsulating both the athlete and the creative within each of us.

Our objective is to show the world that we’re a group of amazing, powerful, passionate, and strong women, each using their own strengths to achieve a common goal — a goal that some of us have come up short on once, if not twice.

Make no mistake about it, we secured the ultimate victory earlier this year, but we don’t want to see someone else celebrating when it’s all said and done.

See you on the ice.

Meghan Duggan is a native of Danvers, MA and has been on the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team since 2007–08. She currently plays for the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League.

Enjoy more thought leadership on the role of athletes and creators in the new sports economy at Hashtag Sports 2018 on June 25–27 in Times Square, New York.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

A Movement Made of Hockey was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve played professional soccer for 8 years now.

In my time as both a midfielder and defender, my job has been to transition from offense to defense and defense to offense or clean up emergencies as the last line of defense. Anyone who’s familiar with soccer, or sports for that matter, understands that the best players are always thinking ahead and are proactive rather than reactive.

That’s the way I view money management too.

I launched A Frugal Athlete in hopes of promoting financial literacy and sharing prudent financial practices from other professional athletes. After a lightbulb moment during a 30 for 30 called Broke, I decided to create a platform that highlighted athletes who were making smart decisions with their financial playbooks.

As sports continues to grow through increased sponsorship spend and bigger broadcasting deals, more money will be invested into the players. It’s important for athletes to have the financial knowledge to prepare for what’s ahead and be proactive in their career transition.

In this new sports climate, you see plenty of athletes taking advantage of their platform, brand, and entrepreneurial spirit to start businesses and side hustles and passion projects that will last well after their careers are over.

For me, promoting financial literacy is a passion project.

The whole premise of A Frugal Athlete is to help players think long-term and take action into their own hands. Whether it’s leveraging of your platform as a professional athlete, using your resources and networking, building a brand, or just being smart with your finances in order to prepare for what’s next. Your career only lasts so long in comparison to your whole life.

Derek Jeter put it best when he retired, “I went from an old man in baseball to a young man in life.”

Athletes know that in order to be successful on the field you need to have an idea of what is going to happen next. But if that is the case, why don’t the majority of athletes plan for the rest of their life?

A Frugal Athlete tells the stories of different athletes and their experiences dealing with finances. From LeBron James to Serena Williams to myself, the motive is to tell these stories and indirectly promote financial literacy.

Athlete entrepreneurs will continue to motivate and teach others how to navigate the life of a professional athlete in business. From LeBron James creating a video network like Uninterrupted to Kobe Bryant getting an Oscar nomination for a short film or Adonyal Foyle publishing books that help athletes learn financial lessons, it shows that we can be more than jocks.

We can pursue our other passions and be storytellers, not just the story.

Andrew Hawkins. Junior Bridgeman. Ryan Broles. Paul Rabil. These are the athletes I admire. Why? I consider them members of Team Frugal in the sense that they have been proactive and thought ahead throughout their playing careers. They’ve been smart with their finances, continued their education, and built multi-million dollar brands — we’re all capable of it.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You will see more and more athletes become entrepreneurs on top of their playing careers. With the influence of digital media, tech, and social media, it’s an inevitable confluence of factors full of financial impact.

As I tackle Frugal Athlete with my midfielder’s mindset, I envision that it will help me transition to a position in the sports business sector long-term. If all goes well, Frugal Athlete will be a major platform — not just for professional athletes but student-athletes and the fans that follow these athletes — which increases financial literacy and promotes prudent financial practices.

If Frugal Athlete can be a hub that other people come to proactively to seek information, I know that the site will have served its purpose.

And hopefully I won’t have to serve as the last line of defense anymore.

Amobi Okugo is a professional soccer player and the founder of the financial literacy blog A Frugal Athlete — and that’s only the beginning of his story. Born the son of Nigerian immigrants, he is dedicated to championing the role of education and entrepreneurship in and out of sports. You can connect with Amobi here.

Enjoy more thought leadership from athletes and creators claiming a seat in the new sports economy at Hashtag Sports 2018 on June 25–27 in Times Square, New York City.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

Midfielder’s Mindset was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The challenge for every sports property, broadcaster and league is to reach and engage today’s young fans and live video on social platforms like Facebook and Periscope is a proven way to do this.

In this session from Hashtag Sports 2017, panelists offer a variety of perspectives on how they approach live video to enhance the fan experience and directly reach today’s consumers in a constantly evolving and competitive media landscape. Where does the balance lie between engagement and monetization? How does data weigh into the picture and what does the future hold for live video?

Check out the full video and transcript below!

Hemal Jhaveri: Hey everybody, welcome to The Power of Live. I’m Hemal Jhaveri, Editor at USA Today Sports — mostly I work with ForTheWin. Sitting next to me is Jason George from Telescope, Tim Greenberg from the World Surf League, Joe Caporoso from Whistle Sports, and Heidi Browning from the NHL. Thank you guys for being here.

The first question I want to kick it off with, largely a big open umbrella question: What are the major benefits of using live that each of you have found in your different niches?

Heidi, why don’t we start with you?

Heidi Browning: Thank you. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today everyone! We use live really in three ways. The first way is to drive tune in to our linear broadcasts of the game. As you know our broadcast partners are important to us. They are important revenue partners to us. So we want to make sure live doesn’t take away from our broadcast, but actually is additive to it. So whether were doing it on NHL’s behalf, or SportsNet, or NBC, all of us have been using live to drive tune in over short periods of time before the games actually air on TV.

The second way we use live is to expand our audience. So how do we take live streams of our game to Twitter, and understand the audience that might not ever tune in to TV? How do they engage with us on Twitter? And then we’re expanding internationally by streaming it on Tencent, and understanding how we can bring the game to our Chinese audiences.

And then the third way that we’re using live is really more of a “How do you elevate the players with our fans?” Our players, we’ve got such a challenge with, because they’ve always got the gear on, they’re on and off the ice so fast. People don’t recognize their faces. And we really know that if people knew more of the players, they’d watch more hockey. So we’re using those moments of live through Spectacles, through Periscope, to help bring that one-to-one relationship of what’s it like in life off-the-ice for these players.

Joe Caporoso: I would say for us at Whistle Sports, we have two different primary reasons we’ve been focusing on live:

Exposure to a few different niche sports and different sports leagues that we’ve been working with — whether that’s a premium high school basketball tournament, or a new growing summer basketball tournament like TBT, or some different charity events around the city. We recently just worked with the Steve Nash Foundation for the Showdown in Chinatown.

And to give exposure to some of the different digital creators that we work with. Sort of give a behind-the-scenes look at what their day-to-day life is like, and put them into some engaging situations where they can really directly engage with our audiences, and sort of give a direct pipeline where they can respond to questions. So we’ve had a balance of more straightforward broadcast of actual sporting events, and then first-person direct engagement to give exposure either to our culture, or some of our different creators and what they’re doing day-to-day.

Tim Greenberg: So the World Surf League is very similar to Heidi. We use live in several ways. The majority of our consumption happens on our operated platforms: our app and our website. But we’ve been using Facebook this year to stream all of our contests. We produce over 800 hours of live programming per year, and we stream all of that on Facebook.

We’re learning a ton about our audience; we’re learning new markets that maybe weren’t exposed to a niche sport like surfing, and we’re learning better ways that we can engage with them using products like Telescope, where we’re having a one-on-one fan conversation in real time throughout our broadcast, and learning more about our audience as we do that. And then the third way would be just new distribution channels and growing our sport to a bigger audience.

Jhaveri: So Jason, you’re a little bit different from the vendor technology side. From your perspective what are the major benefits for you guys, or what you’re trying to push forward?

Jason George: We specialize — I think these guys said it pretty well in terms of all the benefits and what allows you to hit a global audience. I think one think definitely worth remembering is that a lot of these viewers are coming from a mobile device. So it’s reaching the audience in different ways, and it requires different techniques. We specialize around social and some of the Facebook side of it. And the thing I’d say to really remember is that it’s an opportunity to have a conversation with your audience, not just to kind of talk at them. Because the social side of it is “How do I also use that to actually drive your ship, and drive discovery?”

So roughly half of your audience actually comes from saying something in your feed so, they’re getting something tagged, they’re seeing it because they are interested in it, or they’re seeing it because a friend is sharing it or commenting on it, so how do we use those tools as well in that space to really drive… Live’s always been a big part of TV viewing, that’s not new. I think it’s these platforms that are offering opportunities to access different content, more niche content sometimes. Like we said, it’s a behind-the-scenes opportunity to get close to some of the characters and talent involved in the sports.

Jhaveri: So to move this a little bit forward, in terms of your live strategy for distribution, like you said there’s a lot of different places your live broadcasts can go. It can go to Facebook, Periscope, or you can do it in your own app. Do you have any thoughts on where you’ve decided what works best?

Tim, you said you just started with Facebook. What was the decision-making factor for you guys to move to Facebook versus trying to keep it all in-house?

Greenberg: Growing our sport. You know surfing means a lot of things to a lot of people. A lot of people don’t actually know that competitive surfing exists. So we sort of think of it as the Costco sampler aisle. If we can get surfing into the news feed, and we can expose people to this amazing sport, these amazing locations, and we can drive conversion to our owned and operated app, it may not happen overnight, it might be a long process, but just that exposure is something that we really value for Facebook.

Jhaveri: Heidi, what about the NHL? You’re in a very unique position, because you have to manage your broadcast partners as well. How do you navigate that tension?

Browning: So as I mentioned earlier, we do this in partnership so that we can be additive to the broadcast experience, not take the audience away from it. Because that’s one of the big fears that many people have is that it will take audience away from their television ratings. And that’s not it at all. It’s really to expand beyond the hardcore avids that would watch us anyway, and try to touch on some of these expanded, casual fans or just act as a reminder to tune in.

The way that we do it is not to show what’s happening on the ice. We’ve been experimenting with different types of content so some of it might be in the locker room or going down the tunnel, some of it might be some pre-game discussion about what they think is going to happen, some commentary with the talent online, sometimes it’s our post game pressers. So we’re just experimenting with the different ways to incorporate it into the overall picture.

Jhaveri: And what is it about sports that is such a great fit for live broadcasting? Right because we see a lot of news programs, entertainment is not yet caught up. But sports really feels like it’s leading the way in terms of live broadcasting. Joe, do you have any thoughts on that?

Caporoso: I think what we’ve seen, and what I think is that people always have strong opinions, and they’re passionate about sports. What we’ve been most encouraged by when we’ve experimented with live is just how much engagement we’ve gotten. For example, when we live stream something on Facebook, seeing how active the comment section has been and being able to utilize real time polls and other tools from Telescope. And people aren’t shy to very quickly express their opinions, and all of the sudden devolve into different debates in our comment section which is great — it’s what we want to see. We want to drive that conversation.

When fans are in the comment section about an Under Armor Elite basketball game that we’re live streaming, they’re immediately talking about their favorite high school prospects, their favorite colleges, and how these prospects compared to NBA players, and that can lead into hundreds of thousands of comments for us which is exactly what we want because we’re getting really good exposure and information from our audience in real time. I think in sports that’s something they can quickly pick up and are immediately not shy to show their passion and start debating about these different topics.

Jhaveri: And this kind of goes back to what you were saying about the engagement factor, right?

George: Yeah, I think there are some things you don’t mind watching on delay, right? There’s other things — because if you can’t tell, I’m English — some English sports I don’t want to watch on ten-second delay. I want to watch them in the moment, you know, if you like connecting to people through that. And the second thing is, our background at Telescope is really interactive around TV shows, and that’s kind of a laborious process. How do I get somebody from a TV show into a digital environment, get them to do something, and then get them back to the TV screen? And that’s actually a painful process, whereas I think with lots of these platforms the interactivity and engagement is totally organic.

A lot of the fans are already there commenting, and already there expressing their opinions. You said sports, the passion point is the most high profile example of that. So actually harnessing it is a real kind of key thing to this. As I said, it’s talking with people not just at them. And by doing that as well, the way a lot of the social platforms work, is that will help you raise the profile of the content and the algorithm, and help it get discovered. So there’s an actual real commercial and audience reason to do that as well. That’s why I encourage people to do it, so you don’t just view it as a one-way broadcast as traditional broadcasting has been. But how do I really harness that kind of found passion in the right sort of way?

Jhaveri: So as a media person everything in our industry all of the sudden is about monetization. What are your thoughts, or concerns when it comes to monetizing live streams? Is it something that’s a primary concern? For the NHL it might not be, for the World Surf League it might be different, and for Whistle Sports it might be different.

Greenberg: Yeah, for the World Surf League right now we’re in a phase where we’re trying to grow the sport. We’ve been testing and experimenting a lot with how we’re distributing our content. So our primary objective right now is not necessarily to go out and monetize. That might change when we start to figure out exactly what consumption habits are, but it might be different for other sports. We’re really trying to get our product out. With the Olympics in 2020 there’s a lot of momentum around surfing so first let’s build the packages and then see how we can go out and monetize

Jhaveri: Okay so that’s interesting — it’s not really a primary concern for you guys.

Caporoso: I think initially, when we began testing it, and got more comfortable with the actual process of doing it, it probably wasn’t at the top of mind for us. But now that we’ve done it for a year and a half, two years, it definitely is a concern. I mean everything we’re putting time and resources into, how can we find a way to monetize it? Because that’s going to allow us to expand the resources we put into it.

You know we’ve experimented with some brand integration, we’ve thrown it into different brand campaigns that we do. Whether that’s doing a creative giveaway around it, or again just using some of the features that something like Telescope has where we can easily get a brand’s graphics integrated.

It’s not something that I think we’ve done with a high volume of consistency yet, but it’s something that we’re trying to more regularly package and offer more different options and different ways to get a brand in there. Whether it’s their logo, or linking out to something in the comments section, or again, just finding a creative way to get their product in without beating the consumer over the head with it.

Browning: And then for us it’s again that indirect influence on revenue, which is making sure we’re actually building audience for our broadcast partners. And although we can’t tie it directly, we’ve had live streams before every game from both NBC and from SportsNet up in Canada. And our ratings are up 53% year-over-year. So all these things matter when you’re trying to capture people’s attention and getting them to tune in to what you want.

Jhaveri: And is there any tension between that old media and new media?

Browning: We’re all in this together and trying to drive as much engagement and audience growth as possible so it’s more of a partnership, for sure.

Jhaveri: Are there any pitfalls that you guys have noticed with live? Has there ever been an instance — well I’m sure there have been plenty of instances — but like one real learning experience with using live?

You guys all have different challenges, whether it’s trying to broadcast live from the game, from the beach, from an arena where WiFi isn’t great. What are some of the biggest pitfalls that you’ve encountered?

George: Well definitely don’t use a shared WiFi network at a stadium or something like that. I think that there’s been loads of learning.

The one thing I’ll say is that it’s still the early days so I think that even on things like monetization, that’s clearly a crucial area. The [social] networks like Facebook, Twitter and various places are making a lot of advances, but there isn’t necessarily a marketplace for it in the same way. There’s not the understanding from sponsors of what it’s doing in the moment. So it’s still early, and it’s an important part. I think in terms of pitfalls and learnings, we’ve also seen a lot on how those platforms have evolved.

TV, which gets knocked a lot of the time, still does a lot of things well. One of the things it does well is scheduling. You make an appointment to view and you come there. So for instance Facebook, initially on Facebook Live you literally just went live. Of course people share and they come ten minutes into the stream. So introducing things like the schedule to drive people to that content, and to get them to make an appointment to view.

I think there’s tons of learning and advancements happening around those platforms and learning around best practices. How do we bring graphics into there? How do we engage the audience? How do we incorporate that audience participation directly? Giving shoutouts to people from the host, obviously featuring that stuff on air. A lot of those conventions are still developing. Other media like TV has had 80 years of kind of doing that, so it’s still early.

Greenberg: Surfing is a little unique. We don’t know when we’re going to be on. So everyday we wake up, look at the waves and say “Okay, we’re going to run.” So for that reason we’ve never been able to bring on a consistent broadcast partner.

A long time ago we actually cut the cord early on for that very reason. We’ve been streaming direct-to-consumer for over 15 years in various forms through some of our endemic partners. The past four years, that’s been our primary model — getting a broadcast off of the beach using a satellite truck or whatever means necessary. We have an incredible broadcast team that makes this happen every single day.

I’m not sure exactly how they do it, but sometimes they pull together a miracle and find the satellite and make it happen. So we’ve learned a lot, and definitely having strong WiFi for those “behind-the-scenes” moments is something that I can’t stress enough. We have a lot of earned knowledge over time — and a really cool team.

Caporoso: I think for us again it’s just check, and double check the WiFi connection in advance. Make sure you test everything in advance. We did TBT the first time — I think we did 64 games over the course of two weekends — so that was really four, 12–13 hour days with the production team on the ground at the actual arena. And then people back at our office, making sure that you have multiple people trained who could step in and be just as comfortable as the other person running everything on the backend.

If you have a group of fans within the live stream and all of the sudden the audio cuts out or the video cuts out and then you have to repost a whole separate post, it’s hard to get that whole audience back. You can’t afford to have more than one or two of those mishaps in a short period of time because people are going to lose interest and move onto something else.

If they’re engaged within a game, they’re engaged within commentary, and all of the sudden the audio fades out or the video cuts out and you have to remove the post, it’s just not something you could afford to have happen multiple times. So testing as much as we can in advance, obviously certain things could happen that you can’t plan for, but the more fail safes you have in place and backup plans, the better.

Browning: I’m just going to build a little bit on what you were talking about Jason, which is the platforms out there, it’s still early days for them too. And so really understanding how to build and accumulate audience to drive to live, I think that’s a really big area of focus that we’re all learning from. We need to think through that user experience, that was such a great point.

Twitter, same thing. Thinking through the user experience of how do you get people into the game at the right time? Even though it’s the most real-time platform, there’s still challenges in driving audiences there. I think there area lot of things that we can do together with our partners to be smarter about how we build audience.

Jhaveri: One of the interesting things is that I — always in conjunction with live broadcasts — I hear Facebook Live mentioned quite a bit. Is there anybody on stage here that’s primarily focused on Twitter? Twitter has recently introduced Periscope production studios so that you can have that same broadcast on Twitter. Are there any thoughts on which platform is better? Or why you would use one and not the other or not simulcast?

Browning: We’re using Twitter. We broadcasted 12 games on Twitter as an experiment this year, again, to see if we can expand our audience to people who would never tune in anyway. And this was the first year Twitter did NFL as well so it was a learning experience for all of us. We drove several hundreds of thousands of people to watch on Twitter, which I thought was remarkable because some of the local markets don’t even get that much tune in on TV so for us this was really exciting and encouraging.

Now flash forward, you go over to China and you’re streaming on Tencent. You can get millions of people, and it’s a rounding error in the population there, but it’s still a way to introduce the game. What’s fascinating about both of those is that the primary platform they view Twitter or Tencent on is on their mobile devices. So thinking about how we deliver our product — the game — on a mobile device is another thing to think about.

Jhaveri: I think the stat on [China] is that 70% of video that’s consumed on Twitter is consumed on mobile. So it’s a huge chunk of their demographic that is actively engaging in video and live broadcast.

George: Yeah, I think 75% on Facebook is all mobile.

Jhaveri: So it’s all mobile, all the way.

George: Yes, and that definitely has different long shots and establishing shots that don’t wear particularly well on mobile. Thinking about how you produce, audiences don’t mind some of that authenticity. They don’t mind a camera phone or a handheld camera that’s not a perfectly constructed shot. I think they find that they actually like some of the authenticity in some ways, especially in certain scenarios. So I think it’s a different way of producing the content as well.

Greenberg: Yeah, in real-time. My favorite example is we were shooting a big wave contest down in Puerto Escondido and our broadcast team would cut to a lock off shot of a palm tree and our audience left. So I ran down to the truck and said “Please, keep it on the ocean!” And we learned that in real time. So it’s actually learning from our audience, and changing our broadcast habits. Now we’re experimenting with alternate streams, we’re thinking about ways that we can get bigger graphics to work on mobile because that’s where the audience is.

Jhaveri: And also captioning, right? People are consuming video, live video, without the audio on. So captioning is huge.

I want to go back to this point of authenticity; we were speaking about this backstage. I did a Facebook Live broadcast handheld on my phone behind-the-scenes of the NHL Centennial, where the NHL let press up on stage to interview all the players. But it was like 30 minutes of me walking around a stage like “Oh look, there’s Wayne Gretzky and then right next to him is Patrick Kane, and then there’s Jonathan Toews.”

I don’t know if we have a hockey-heavy audience in here, but they’re very famous. That was one of our most engaged pieces of content, this unfiltered, very shaky, live broadcast. There’s such a hunger for the unmediated experience.

What are your thoughts on terms of how you bring authenticity back? Sometimes it’s that “We were doing this, but now we’re going to run back and do it the other way…” because part of the difference between live and actual TV production is it’s a lot looser.

Caporoso: I think fans want to see a candid experience with their athletes, or whoever they’re following on social media. They don’t want the standard boilerplate answer that they’re hearing so consistently of the normal coach speak where you’re not really getting any information.

Even if the quality of the broadcast or stream is a little lower, a little rough, they don’t mind because they’re seeing what these athletes and creators are actually like. What they’re like in their normal environment. When they’re with their family, when they’re out shooting content, or when they’re out, like some of our creators, when they are out practicing and finding ways to do trick shots or soccer freestyle moves.

This is what the actual process is like day-to-day. You’re not getting a polished cut piece of content to them. The fans feel closer to them, they feel like they’re getting more exposure. Never mind that they’re getting more one-to-one answers directly from them that aren’t being passed through a media member or third party.

George: And with that comes a bit of uppity sometimes as well which is part of the kind of attraction for fans, right? You might be in an environment in the locker room and hear some things that you wouldn’t in a normal broadcast. And that’s obviously part of how you manage that situation in a live environment and how do you prep people for that and try to minimize risks?

But I also think it goes back to that two-way conversation. People feeling like they can impact and can have their voice heard is really part of that as well. As I said I love the fact that it’s organic to these platforms. It really feels like you’re not trying to create something that’s kind of phony. It’s right there. That’s also a part of it, the fans that feel closer to it, they feel like it’s part of the experience.

Greenberg: In surfing, authenticity is our currency. We have to be authentic in a community that’s very, in some ways insular, in some ways not. We need to make sure that we’re always having that second thought before we do anything. But the really cool thing about surfing is that there’s no free surfing like baseball.

You’re not necessarily going to be able to go out to your local mound and capture content. Surfing happens all around the world at all times so we have teams across the globe that can go out to a break and capture content at a moments notice. And we can stream all of that content, capture it, and bring it to our audience.

Jhaveri: It sounds like logistically there’s lots of different challenges for how it can be done.

George: Just coming back to this platform actually because you know as well about the different… I think look, there’s also YouTube out there who’s really building out live and doing a lot of entertainment. I think ultimately for an IPO or content creator in some ways you just want to get your content out there and distribute it as widely as possible.

So potentially they’re all useful and interesting platforms. Certainly I think Facebook has an advantage just because of scale. They have that huge base and that huge amount of scale. They have a lot of information that enables them to drive audiences to you.

I think what Twitter’s done really well is they’ve always been pretty focused on monetization so actually they’re pretty good on monetization aspects, and trying to really package that up together. There’s different things they’re currently stronger in, but ultimately all that you want are the eyeballs right? So distributing to all of those endpoints or if one of them wants to pay exclusively — which is how a lot of sports rights negotiations traditionally work — that’s great. But you know there’s a premium price on that.

Jhaveri: Tim, you guys talked about how you just wanted to expand the base — same thing with the NHL. What are you guys seeing in terms of the demographics that have been tuning into your live broadcasts?

Caporoso: I would say our audience does skew a little younger. It’s probably predominantly about 14 to 25-year-olds. I would say it skews even younger in a lot of these live streams. The people that we’re seeing really taking the time and jumping into one of the streams and engaging and offering a lot of comments, liking and sharing it, are probably more in that 15 to 18-year-old range.

They’re not hesitant about taking the time to sit within one of these live streams for 15, 20, 25 minutes, and, again, be very open about expressing their opinions. I think this is just in the habits of how they’re consuming media.

They’re not hesitant to flip through their feed on something like Facebook, Twitter, or even YouTube and stop on a random feed they might not be expecting, but they’re willing to give it a chance. They don’t necessarily need to have something prescheduled out and plan ahead that they’re going to watch it.

They’re willing to — if they like the Whistle Sports Facebook page — see that we’re live-streaming something which is not standard to most of our posts and stick around for maybe 15–20 minutes and maybe give it a chance and engage. So we definitely have seen the younger side of our already younger audience not just watching it, but actually directly engaging with that content.

Jhaveri: 15–20 minutes sounds like a lot. Right?

Caporoso: For us, I mean most of the video content we put out on Facebook is usually about 30, maybe 90 seconds. So then when they see these handful of posts that could run for 60 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes, if they jump in there and immediately get pulled into some type of sports debate, or we’re going to flash their comment up on the screen, they’re that excited with that type of shout out to where they’ll either stick around for that period of time, or they’ll leave and they’ll come back. Overall, they’ll spend more time engaging then they will with a normal VOD video.

Browning: You’ve built in a reward mechanism. That’s smart!

Caporoso: Yeah, people love shoutouts.

Greenberg: We skew younger on Facebook than we do overall — around 32. It depends on the platform — it’s 22 on Instagram. So on Facebook Live we’re young which is exactly what we want. We want to start capturing that younger audience and bringing them in as fans a little earlier.

Browning: Same for us. I think it’s really a reflection of who’s adopting live first. Are they the younger audiences? For us what’s more important is hitting on those expanded audiences. We’ve done a lot of experimenting on social media trying to drive some of this engagement so we can understand how each audience behaves with different types of content.

And you know, sometimes when you’re showing content that’s around the more emotional, off-ice kind of moments, that’s when you can attract a much broader audience. That’s in fact social media as a rule. That’s our most highly engaged, high-reach content. It’s not about the best goal of the game, it’s really about those human moments, and same with live, those human moments are what draw the bigger audiences.

Jhaveri: And it’s very hard to script those, right? Like it’s very…. You sometimes get lucky if you can catch them, and sometimes you just have to have the cameras just going.

Browning: Yeah, it’s the greatest unscripted drama every night on the ice.

Jhaveri: Yeah, that’s true. What do you think is next for live? It seems we used to be on apps and then live streaming on websites. Instagram Live is something that we haven’t talked a lot about because you know so far we can’t get… Are you guys able to hook up to Instagram yet?

George: They don’t have an API.

Jhaveri: They don’t have an API, yeah. What do you guys think is nice, Instagram Live seems like the old school, right? Like it still seems like a little bit more of how we were doing Facebook before we could make it a little bit more polished and produced.

George: They just announced that they’re going to — the other thing is Instagram Live traditionally has always disappeared. You either get it in the moment or it’s not there. But they just announced that they’re going to let you access it for 24 hours afterwards. So they’re starting to build that out. I think in a different way they still seem in that DIY kind of mode.

I mean Facebook really developed their API because they had a lot of professional content creators saying “Hey look, we love streaming on Facebook, but we want to be able to do professional content. We want to be able to add graphics, we want to be able to do multi-camera shoots, play-in tapes and everything else” — and ultimately monetize. So they responded in a way where I think Instagram’s keeping it more at that “creator.” It’s a great creator tool. I think it’s fantastic for that. Whether they then take the same sort of path, I don’t know.

Caporoso: I think more data and analytics around it is the most important thing. Especially for something like Instagram, it’s hard to put time and resources into something that we can’t gain much data and analytics on. Without that we can’t find a way to monetize it, or justify our resources on it long term. I think all of the platforms could stand to give out more data, more analytics around the viewer retention and the viewer behaviors and what type of viewers are engaging with it.

I think you’ll see more of a push for that, and again I just think there will be more ways to monetize. Eventually, how can you monetize something like Instagram Live? With Facebook now if you’re over a certain number of concurrent viewers you could hit on an ad break like you can on certain VOD content. But will there be more options to monetize in places like that? More data and analytics and then more monetization options across more platforms?

Browning: I feel like live is going to create a whole new type of fan. A new fan that we haven’t contemplated before. So we’ve spent all of our careers trying to drive people into the building, buying the tickets, watching on tv. With the combination of live and social, and the ability to see all the stats that are happening in near-real-time, experiencing it through live, this is how we’re going to reach audiences who might not take the time to watch a whole game. But they’re still important, right? They’re still fans and they can still be brought through the funnel from a fan to a customer to an advocate. So I think that’s what’s exciting about this opportunity.

“I feel like live is going to create a whole new type of fan.”

Greenberg: I think personalization. You know, being able to have a customized dream in some way, shape or form is really exciting. And interactivity.

Broadcast graphics in their current form are kind of a horse-drawn buggy. You have this thing that’s built and burned into the stream. There’s no reason you couldn’t go in and augment that and make it more interactive, and have that experience across every platform to get more information inside the stream without having to leave. So there’s a lot of opportunity and I think I see that going that direction. And monetization.

Jhaveri: Yeah, that’s always big. Where does this tension come in between live keeping its authenticity versus it turning into TV?

Like we said earlier, people are attracted to live because you get that unfiltered stream. With all of these advances coming in — in terms of being able to personalize streams, being able to monetize it — the one thing I’ve noticed is that the ad break sometimes can be kind of a killer. Like in the middle of the ad break sometimes people decide they don’t want to do this. Do you think there will be any kind of tension between turning live into television?

Caporoso: I think it’s important to be creative and find ways not just to take a bunch of people sitting around the desk that you could watch on a TV channel and just try to flip that over to be something that you’re watching on Facebook or YouTube. You have to push and try to find different formats and creative ways that make more sense to your audience, not just duplicating something that we’ve been seeing on TV for 5, 10, 15 years and just replicating that exactly on a social platform. So that puts it on the league, or the sports media company to find more creative ways to take advantage of this distribution.

George: I think it’s both, right? There’s some of those highly produced sports broadcasts that will start happening on most platforms. I’m sure some of those already have bidding for the rights, and obviously Twitter’s been very active in that market. There’s going to be more of that as they start to build audiences. So that will be more of replication albeit, with some of the things that brings around. Interactivity, dynamism, a potential for personalization. But I think what you have is this additive piece around: If you want to get closer to the action and your talent, then that’s what you can do.

I’m a Leeds United fan. Not many people know who that team is, but they’re a second-tier team in the UK. You know it’s difficult for me to get access to their content here, so stuff like access through social channels, interviews of the players, the behind-the-scenes training grounds and various things like that are kind of a crucial thing for me (and the other 55 Leeds United fans in the world).

Jhaveri: Well this is what we talked about earlier. The NHL, World Surf League, etc. are underserved by traditional media outlets. So live has been a huge boom for stuff like that.

What are — aside from Heidi you said earlier that you guys use live to showcase behind-the-scenes moments — any other creative ways that you’ve used live? Either when you stumble upon them by accident, or have been like “Oh, we weren’t planning on this, but it turned out to be great.”

Browning: Well this kind of relates to the TV question. During the Stanley Cup Playoffs and Final, Nashville was in there. There’s this strange hockey culture that started I guess in Detroit where people throw octopus or octopi on the ice. So Nashville had to have its own trend, and all of a sudden they started throwing catfish on the ice, like giant catfish on the ice. So we captured this moment through the live moment of being there, and believe me they’re smuggling catfish into the building.

So this turned into a whole content creation, live content [element] of how do you smuggle a catfish in through security? You tape it to your leg, you tape it around your belly, all these crazy things. Well that content — we started with NBC, our partners and created more content around it — that content found its way from live to television; they actually started showing it during the broadcast and intermission. So for me that’s like the virtuous cycle which is really great. Don’t be afraid of the live, bring it into your actual broadcast.

Greenberg: I think my favorite one was, we did this project last year where we created the world’s first crowdsourced surfboard. So we have events across the globe, but we have these breaks in-between. So how do you actually keep our fans engaged when there’s no contest happening?

We reached out to a surfboard shaper and went live, and you know crowdsourced all of these amazing ideas for the surfboard. We took it to Brazil. The thing is called the Mako — it was fan named. We gave it away to a local surf youth group. The thing was the most coveted surfboard maybe in all of history. It was unbelievable. I have a replica in our office, and every time we bring anyone in, we talk about how this thing went from digital to a physical product. There’s just a lot of really creative ways that you can start to crowdsource and use your audience to make content.

Caporoso: We had one of our dunkers in office and we actually brought him through a random basketball court down in the city. Basically our fans were crowdsourcing what dunks he should try to do in real-time. Then there was a random pickup game going on on the other half of the court. He just immediately inserted himself into that game and started dunking on random seventh graders who were playing basketball.

Just seeing some of our fans reactions encouraging him to go into the game, and then try this dunk or try that dunk and could he do this 360? It was a very casual thing that we were experimenting with. Then it turned into this 45-55 minute live stream where we got really great engagement and really got to feature one of our top creators.

George: Yeah when I pick out — it’s not a sports example actually — an example three weeks ago where we did the One Love Manchester Benefit concert for the Manchester bombing, the Ariana Grande concert. It came incredibly quickly. I think we were given about two days notice to manage the stream on Facebook Live. It had a local broadcast partner in the UK, but obviously there’s global interest in both the music content and the campaign in general.

So we broadcasted it on Facebook. I think it got 20 million live views, and about 18 million views overall. It raised quite a bit of money through the Facebook donate capability as well so that’s a great example. It enables a global audience. Going and trying to do local broadcast deals in the old days would have been impossible. Clearly that content was very relevant, and reached a huge amount of people globally. So it can happen, and it can happen quickly.

Jhaveri: So the one theme that I kind of heard through all of this is that the content that you guys have used for live — even though you’re not able to monetize it directly — is content that lives on in lots of different ways afterwards. Whether it’s catfish, or designing your own surfboard, it’s something — as somebody who is a part of the media — I will watch over a live broadcast. We’ll pull moments for that to either be put on a website, or write a story about it. It shows up in lots of different ways.

So even if that content’s only around on Instagram Live for 24 hours, there’s still going to be lots of different ways that people can use it, and a lot of different benefits aside from that. Have you noticed any — we talked a little bit about this, like Heidi with your broadcast partners — pushback from your organizations about using live?

Greenberg: Not for us. We’re pretty unique in that we own all of our rights. The experiment was pretty welcomed with open arms as a way to just see what’s out there, and how we can reach new audience.

Caporoso: I think we were — you know credit to everyone else at the Whistle — more open-minded about trying this. It was something new. We hadn’t really thought about going into broadcasting live sports, and how that would fit into our overall business model. Really didn’t get a lot of internal pushback on it. The only main concern was just to make sure that from a technical and production standpoint it will live up to the necessary quality standards.

We’ve been able to find the right partners to make sure that happens. We didn’t really have at the time, the in-house capabilities to set up the necessary API’s, and do the live streams. We’ve been able to build that out. So there was a lot of open mindedness about it. I think the ecosystem is moving towards a lot more of these different live streaming opportunities so they kind of welcomed it with open arms.

Browning: And for us it wasn’t really a business reason that there was pushback, but it did take a little bit of work to get access — access to the players at the right time because the last thing you want to do is mess up their mojo before they go into a game. We have to be very careful about that. We’ll never show them on ice right before the game. It’ll be like really early pre-morning skate. So that’s the thing for us, it probably still is going to take a little bit more time to get people really comfortable with live as part of life in the sports world.

Jhaveri: Yeah, it’s interesting as a media member there are a lot of print people who aren’t usually used to being on camera. That’s something that you have to navigate. Instead of just being behind a keyboard all of the sudden you’re going to be broadcasting from behind the scenes. So it’s very interesting.

George: I think one thing you mentioned is that you’ve also spent a lot of time, effort, and money producing that content. Actually there’s multiple uses for it afterwards. Whether that’s re-streaming inside content or cutting it again and using it in different media. I think it would be more around that. Spending money on that effort, maximizing the value from it is important too.

Jhaveri: So we’ve got just about a minute. Are there any final closing thoughts for you guys in terms of what big project you might have coming up next using live?

Browning: More. That’s what our commissioner says. More, more, more. The more you do, the more you learn. The more mistakes you find, the more successes you have. I don’t think we could at this point say something’s truly successful because we haven’t done enough of it to learn. But it’s been really exciting, and we’re testing across more than just Facebook and Twitter. I didn’t mention Snapchat Spectacles and the work that we’re doing there. I think there’s just a lot of exciting opportunities ahead for us.

Caporoso: More is definitely the right way to frame it. More sports, more different content formats, more creative ways that we could work with our league partners on giving access to different athletes. I think we just want to keep taking as many shots as we can, experimenting in as many different ways as we can.

Greenberg: More, yeah that, and we’re also experimenting ways that we can program our content. The challenge for our sport is that we never know. So we’re working with Facebook on a few opportunities. There’s a Surfing Sunday block of contents o every Sunday for the next couple of weeks you can actually go on and watch surfing for a scheduled time which is very different from the way we operate.

George: I think we just see how the TEEP starts to move from just a mobile experience — or more of a mobile experience — into the TV apps as well. So you know Facebook recently launched their Apple TV app and other things; YouTube’s been there a while obviously. You’ll see some of that migration of premium content into those platforms as well.

I think it’s still early. Experimenting and finding out what the audience wants and listening to the feedback from them is key.

Jhaveri: Great! Thank you guys very much.

Check back soon for more content from Hashtag Sports 2017. In the meantime, subscribe to receive updates or go ahead and grab your pass to Hashtag Sports 2018 while the going’s still good.

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Heidi Browning: “Live Is Going to Create a New Type of Fan” was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As networks and brands compete for consumers’ frayed and fragmented attention spans, agencies have been forced into creative compression — the pressure to produce a low-volume, high volatility mixture of faces and storylines intended to ignite desired purchase behavior and brand loyalty.

Since there’s no way you could reasonably feast your eyes on all of the creative campaigns helping to fuel the new sports economy, we put together a list of 2017’s most innovative and creative in sports advertising, recapped from ads we curate each weekday in our industry-leading newsletter.

Without further ado, here’s a look at the year’s best in sports-focused advertising and the athletes, agencies, and creatives behind the camera.

1. Budweiser — One Last Ride

Agency: VaynerMedia

Athlete / Influencer: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

If you don’t get goosebumps from Budweiser’s send off of their two-decade long ambassador, you might be as unhuman as programmatic ad buying.

This heartfelt brand tribute is set to Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met,” one of Junior’s favorite songs. VaynerMedia has crushed the creative competition this year (alongside Budweiser) as Gary Vee’s baby hits a sweet spot in its on-going pivot to full-service agency.

2. Gatorade — Sisters in Sweat

Agency: TBWA\CHIAT\DAY

Athlete / Influencer: Serena Williams

Gatorade’s latest Serena Williams spot features a baby body double of the tennis star’s daughter (with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian), encouraging young girls to use sports as a means of self-discovery/empowerment and shouting out XX chromosome execs like Tory Burch (Designer) and Susan Wojcicki (CEO, YouTube) who grew up playing sports.

The brand used the research services of millennial women’s lifestyle site Refinery29 (proud facilitators of a joint program with Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab) to uncover the reasons young girls stop playing sports. File that under r/TodayILearned.

3. FuboTV — Fubo Chavez

Agency: BigEyedWish

Athlete / Influencer: Michael Varamogiannis

Find the above ad offensive? Mission accomplished for fuboTV. The upstart needs to make waves as it battles others hitting the airwaves with deeper pockets and it’s looking to controversy to do so.

Agency BigEyedWish played mixologist with comedian Michael Varamogiannis to create a combination character based upon the likes of Borat and the Old Spice guy. Fubo seems to be doing the trick for fuboTV. The sports-focused streaming service hit the 100,000 subscriber mark shortly after the campaign launched.

4. UNREAL — Help Tom Brady Bring Good Back This Halloween

Athlete / Influencer: Tom Brady

The story of UNREAL is kind of unreal. Digitas founder Michael Bronner launched the candy brand in 2012 with his teenage son Nicky. Notorious health freak Tom Brady has put his money where is mouth is, investing in the sweet venture to help take the “junk” out of “junk food.”

Just like the candy comes TB12 approved, the ad does as well. Brady wrote the copy for the campaign in ten minutes in a Whole Foods parking lot before filming the now viral ad (not shocking to the “People of Earth” who have watched it).

5. CCM — Made of Hockey

Athlete / Influencer: US Women’s National Hockey Team

Coming off the team’s year-long fight for equitable treatment from USA Hockey, Captain Meghan Duggan and her teammates crossed into creator territory and helped their biggest brand partner shape the script for a powerful ad.

The campaign features a series of short videos telling the stories of individual team members and a digital spot that asks one core question: “What do you play for?”

6. Bleacher Report — Up Your Game

Agency: Johannes Leonardo

Athlete / Influencer: Allen Iverson

To celebrate its 10-year anniversary, millennial maven Bleacher Report unveiled its first national spot in late April. Delivered in tandem with a new brand scheme and ESPN’s announcement of 100+ layoffs, the ad puts front and center the publisher’s biggest competitive advantage: a commitment to culture.

Don’t blink or you might miss subtle odes to basketball beef and dying media.

7. NAB — Mini Legends

Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne

In June, National Australia Bank announced a Mini Legends Draft, calling on young fans across the country to submit videos of themselves imitating their favorite footy players. Fast forward a few months, and some of those lucky kids got the chance to star in an official NAB campaign.

Equally as adorable as the campaign was the viral video of one Mini Legend finding out he scored the role of Joe Daniher from the Essendon star himself.

8. EECU — A Bank You Can Trust

Agency: Jeffrey Scott Agency

Athlete / Influencer: Derek Carr

Straight Outta Fresno, Derek Carr unleashed a campaign as cringe-worthy as the Raiders’ season (and the all-denim outfit he dons). Carr’s sneak peak of his “debut single” on social quickly went viral with the help of a mysterious “Derek Carr Music” dedicated website and downloadable digital posters.

The mock music video drew thousands of new eyes to the central California Educational Employees Credit Union, but rest assured Carr isn’t quitting his day job.

9. State Farm — Together

Agency: DDB Worldwide

Athlete / Influencer: Aaron Rodgers

How could we deny a spot to the ad with the catchiest tune of the year? Mr. Discount Double Check stars in another overly played and over-performing State Farm ad with a jingle that sounds like it’s straight out of an 80’s sitcom…because it is.

Joey Scarbury’s “Believe It or Not” served as the theme song for ABC’s short-lived dramedy The Greatest American Hero. Office challenge: See how many co-workers you can get humming the tune by EOD. Our bet: all of them.

10. Minnesota Timberwolves — All Eyes North

Agency: Friends & Neighbors

Athlete / Influencer: Minnesota Timberwolves

The Timberwolves keep things in the Minnesota family for “All Eyes North.” Narrated by local Twin Cities hip-hop star deM atlaS, the spot incorporates elements of the franchise’s new branding and defines what “North” means for a team that’s trending up.

TBD on whether the Raptors are cool with another club claiming the North.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

2017’s Best in Sports Advertising was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“The best time to make a sports fan was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
 — Reboot of an Ancient Chinese tree-planting proverb

Professional sports leagues too often think the ‘now’ above is a suggestion. It is not. It is an imperative. It is a call to immediate action. It is a truth that, if unheeded, puts the future of pro sports in existential peril; a peril that the sports world has never faced.

Why such a bold claim?

Because today’s kids are not the easily harvested sports audience that their predecessors were twenty years ago. They are not beholden to a static screen that is controlled by their parents — they control their screens, screens that travel with them wherever they go.

Kids today are not limited to relatively few content options — YouTube, Netflix, and Twitch alone give them millions of content choices. This new reality is why cultivating today’s kids is more challenging than it has ever been for sports leagues.

How Nickelodeon’s “Sticky” Content Keeps Sports Relevant for An Emerging Generation of Fans

In the very recent past, limited entertainment options meant leagues did not have to work so hard to nurture fandom in kids. Sports fandom was often a default mode for many kids because frankly, what compelling entertainment options were there? That fact, combined with the way sports was embedded in American culture, meant that the next generation of fans was practically bequeathed to sports leagues. This enabled leagues to focus their energy on their core adult customer. After all, kids were not the ones that purchased tickets, bought apparel, or appealed to advertisers. Adults were. Therefore sports leagues rightfully focused on adults while giving a nod to kids, assured that in a decade or two those kids would be their adult customers.

To be certain of that today is to be irrelevant tomorrow.

While sports are still compelling and a major part of the fabric of American culture, there’s no assurance today’s kids will be tomorrow’s fans.

Sport competes for kids’ attention with an ever-increasing avalanche of content produced to meet kids’ insatiable demands. This content explosion obliterates the ‘default mode/bequeathed fandom’ model that virtually ensured that kids would be future fans. Gen Z’s future fandom is far from ensured.

Since 1999, KidSay has been tracking the attitudes, behaviors, and desires of America’s kids. Our partnership with Rich Luker, founder of the ESPN Sports Poll and CEO of Luker on Trends, offers the sports industry the most comprehensive look at how macro trends with kids ages 5 and up are impacting their relationship to sports.

Rich Luker: ”It Makes No Sense to Talk About Generations”

One of our key findings is that having kids attend a sporting event is a crucial step in creating the type of passionate engagement that leads to life-long loyalty.

Luker says, “If a kid goes to their first baseball game before the age of six, they will go to 58% more games — PER YEAR — for the rest of their life than someone who does not attend their first game until the age of 14. By and large, sports leagues do not even think about “fans” until they turn 18 — long after they have lost any hope of making them fans in the first place.”

Pro sports leagues are not planting enough seeds with today’s kids.
This is evident in the fact that no pro sports league can claim that a majority of America’s kids have attended a game. Luker’s insights and recent nation-wide polling conducted for KidSay’s Trend Tracker report tells us that.

This tells us that pro sports leagues are missing out on the opportunity to cultivate relationships with kids when they are young and impressionable — fertile soil upon which fandom grows.

Shared family experiences and indelible memories of the game or while viewing together at home nurture fandom.

It is through these relationships and experiences with family, and teams, and the sport itself that kids develop the deep sports roots that last a lifetime.

Kids want those relationships and experiences. That’s evident in the 84% of kids 8–15 who want to attend a pro sporting event. KidSay recommends developing those relationships and immortalizing those experiences for kids’ terms. Here are 4 key ways to start doing that:

1. In bite-size chunks
2. Via mobile devices
3. Through collaboration and cooperation
4. With an authentic message and content that “gets” kids and the platforms they are on

And one last thing. If you did not start doing this 20 years ago, the best time to begin is NOW.

Terence Burke is the SVP of Research at KidSay, and co-creator of KidSay’s Trend Tracker, a noted research report that many of the world’s most successful companies rely upon to understand kids and their rapidly-changing world. Connect with Terence here and here.

Enjoy more thought leadership on the impact of Millennial/Gen Z fans at Hashtag Sports 2018 on June 25–27 in Times Square, New York City.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

If You’re Reading This, It Isn’t Too Late was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Generation Z kids are bombarded by a tsunami of highly accessible and enticing alternatives to sports each day. What effect will this have on the long-term outlook for the professional sports industry? How can the sports industry adapt to this reality in a manner that builds a relationship today so that kids will be engaged with sports tomorrow?

In this session from Hashtag Sports 2017, Rich Luker, the Founder of the ESPN Sports Poll, and Terence Burke, SVP of Research and Editor-in-Chief of KidSay’s Trend Tracker report, discuss a new alliance of the two groups and present the first, ever, “State of Sports for Generation Z” convergenceing kids from 5–17.

Check out the full video and transcript below!

Keith Friedenberg: Good afternoon. So this is a bit of a quick introduction, I know it’s just been done a moment ago, but just to go a little deeper on it. I’m Keith Friedenberg — I’m a partner and the Executive VP at WME | IMG, the global sports and entertainment agency.

I’m joined to my left by Terence Burke, Senior VP of Research and Editor-in-Chief of KidSay’s Trends Tracker. I should say that KidSay is an expert in the youth space, working with the likes of Disney, Hasbro, Netflix and Google. And obviously to the left of Terence is Rich Luker, founder of the ESPN Sports Poll, and Luker on Trends. Clearly a long time expert in the field of analytics in the sports realm. Very happy to have you both here today.

Rich Luker: Keith, thank you for being with us. In a sentence, let me tell you where we’re headed. And it is this raw because it’s happening this quickly. You’re going to see slides with data on it, but we’re rapid firing what we’re doing here. Please yell out if you have questions, we’ll stop as much as we can. They do have microphones on this side, but we’re going to go.

Here it is: 73% of kids between the ages of 8 and 11 now have their own smartphones. 73%! Now let’s put that in perspective. Their parents, the parents of a ten-year-old today, when they were ten, they didn’t have Google.

This changes everything, and it’s happening so quickly because what it means, we might think about it as technology, but what really is happening is, those kids now have control of everything they do in our space. And the only thing I really want to say about that before I really jump in is: We don’t see this as bad news at all.

Friedenberg: It’s a massive opportunity.

Luker: This is not a sky is falling moment, it’s a “We’re incredibly fortunate [moment]” because we’ve kind of been sensing that something was going to come along and go “You’ve got to pay attention.” And it’s not that the sky isn’t blue anymore, it’s just kind of greenish. And that’s okay. Nothing bad is going to come from that. So, with that, would you talk a little bit now about the changes that are happening?

Terence Burke: Sure. So, you’ve known, you’ve been hearing all day about — particularly with the millennial audience, and the engagement on social and mobile — how leagues and sports have to adapt to that new universe. We’re here to tell you that that new universe is even more compelling when you look at the younger ages. Take a look at kids five to seven. 77% of them have, at their disposal, the ability to choose their content anytime, anyplace, anywhere they go.

Luker: Their own tablet tablet right. It’s not that they’re using a family tablet; they have their own tablet.

Friedenberg: And the main issue there is, is that now they’re able to dictate terms when it comes to content consumption.

Burke: And that idea has transpired to the tween market, to the 8-11's. And for the last couple of years we tell you, you know the Hasbro’s and the Nickelodeon’s, and also there was a clear divide where below 11 was a tablet space. It was less mobile sometimes. You could take it in the car if you had one that had a cellular signal, but the reality is now that smartphone on that next slide — that smartphone is now heading into that young kid space. And that’s changing everything like you said. Ownership of content and when and where they are going to consume it.

Friedenberg: Well I think it’s a really interesting issue where people talk a lot of lip service. “Oh, this is going to be the digital natives.” And you know that hits the trades and everyone reads about it. Now from a business perspective, from a P&L perspective, from a content development perspective, from a distribution perspective, it’s actually hitting the actual market in a real way today.

Luker: Yeah, in other words, if you’re waiting until 18–34 to think about them, you’re done. Everything changes, and again put this into context: they don’t know life without a smartphone if they are seven years old or younger. It’s like saying “What’s a chair?”

Its part of their DNA, right? And for anybody who’s in that 30+ group, so their parents, it’s not that case. We’re adding that on and still coming to terms with it. They have come to terms; they’re there. But that’s just the beginning of the problem, or the challenge should I say. What you have on the top are the percentage of people who say “This is my favorite thing to do on the internet.” I may not have a pointer here so I’ll just kind of fake it.

Upper left it’s 12–13 year olds, and it’s in a very narrow window in a period of six years where it goes from 16% to 29% saying streaming is important. If you look at the age 14 and 15 over that seven-year period what you’ll see is that it happens in a different way, that streaming ends up being in the middle, but not as powerful as it has already for 12–13.

Here’s my point: We’ve been spending our time looking for 12–17 year olds, I’ve been yelling at the sports audiences that they’re in decline and you have to do something about it. And I stepped back and said, “What happens if you just look at 12–13, 13–14, 14–15, and 16–17?”

They are three completely different patterns. And what that means is that it makes no sense anymore to talk about generations.

What are millennials? That’s a 20-year-wide period. The front end of that group didn’t have Google. Those who are ten years into it didn’t have a smartphone. Everything changes within two years.

Within two years, when you make business plans, are you going to base them on something that was from before Google twenty years ago? Why do you talk about generations like that? Would you build a business plan on something that was true but based before smartphones? So tell me what’s going to be true five years from now? We got nothing.

And it’s not just in those age groups. The thing that made it very sobering for us was the fact that their data, collected in a different way from ours, showed the exact same results.

Burke: And that’s where the synergy between Rich and Luker on Trends and KidSay came in to say “We’re telling the same story.” We’re seeing the same progression, and that’s the idea that looking at a generation is so moot, so counterproductive. You’ve really got to look at what’s happening on the ground now. And you see it with the 8–11 year olds, you see an even more dramatic spike. Are 8–11 year olds doing less social networking then they were doing in the past? No, of course they aren’t. They are doing more of it. Are they playing games less? Of course they’re not. But what they say they do most often is watch video. They find the content. They find the content that’s for them. They have a myriad of choices that they can go to. And they say “I want the one that’s for me, I’m a nine-year-old girl. I will find it.”

Friedenberg: I’ll also say, what’s really happening here is the psychographic definition of these age groups are more important than the demographic definition of these age groups.

Luker: Well, that’s going on developmentally too. So they’re parents, they’re kids, they’re teenagers, and those dynamics which are constant.

Friedenberg: Meanwhile, historically from a generational perspective, probably nuanced as we got about this stuff was “Oh you’re a leading-edge generation or trailing edge generation.” It’s just too much of a big bucket to be effective on what your business plan is going to be, to execute against this plan.

Luker: So now here’s another really critical part of this change. Not only are they in control, but if they’re in control, as compared to what? Now most of you are closer in age to them than you are to me. When I was growing up we had primetime television, we had very few things we could do. It was sports, it was watch TV. And, the providers of things we could do on our free time, they controlled it all. It was on their time, on their day, in their way, in their places, we’re not going to change when the football season is, we’re not going to change the football teams. We’re not changing any of that. What we could do in our free time controlled us.

Digital Dunk Development

Anyone over eleven is able to deal with the ambiguity between properties which are trying to control them with time and the fact that they have this freedom.

If you’re under the age of eleven, you’re not going to put up with this. I was in a discussion with one of our clients yesterday who says “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got a four-year-old, she has her only tablet, she only gets a half-hour a day and then we put it up. And then you know later in the day we go to watch TV, she says “I want to watch this show” and I said to her “It’s not on now.” But it has to be on now. That four-year-old can’t imagine not being able to watch the show she wants to watch on TV. That’s not her world. This changes everything.

Friedenberg: From an opportunity perspective, which is really interesting, is that it does empower a whole new suite of potential content that can be empowered to a new generation of consumers, which is really intriguing to content creators and sports as well. And then also on top of that, if you happen to be an MLB fan sitting in China, or sitting in India, you now have a much broader global reach of fandom that you can leverage into. So thats why the sky is not falling, the landscape is shifting. If it’s played well and architected appropriately, there’s actually massive opportunity that comes along with it.

Luker: Well, and the people who are going to win are the ones who, first embrace it. What does that mean? They’re starting younger to understand what the new world looks like, that’s where [KidSay] is really good. Realize you get moments, you don’t get days. And the fact that they control it, and there’s massive amounts of competition. But now let’s take another dynamic; there’s yet another dynamic in this. Not only is it out of control for us, but there is this sense of relevance overall that we’re mistaken because we’re saying for example with games. “Games are too long” [complaints] could not be further from the reality of what the problem is. That is the perspective of somebody who comes from a cultural constant who controls content, right?

So if we’re saying these 11 year olds who are younger are doing everything in bits and drabs that’s largely right. But then how do you explain binge watching where they will watch six, seven, eight hours, nine hours, ten hours of the same show?

The Future of Sports Isn’t Scary

I confess, me and my wife, the most common statement between us when we’re watching TV at night is “Another?” Right! But the point is this, I could start a show, watch 30 seconds and say “No. Gone, I’m done. You lost me.” Or I could go “That’s okay…” Get through one and go “Alright, another.” It may be 53 episodes, and if I so choose, if I am so stupid I could watch all 53 in a row if I want. So I’m willing to spend the 53 hours, and every age group is. The point is, they get to decide how much they watch, when they watch, and how they watch. And that’s what this is all about.

Friedenberg: It’s the modality of engagement.

Burke: And then there is the engagement. The idea that they are compelled to be there for something that’s satisfying them. It’s helping them be a kid in the moment. It’s helping them become who they wish to be. It’s that medium for them that enables that happening.

Luker: No, I know. I think that’s funny because in the earlier discussions we didn’t talk about this at all. But again they are already in that world, but in a time in their life when they’re creating their world. So we’re all creative, we’re all post-adolescent, and we kind of have a sense of who we are. So that’s even more powerful. So that’s not just what they do in their free time that’s being defined by this, it’s intricately involved in who they are as human beings.

Friedenberg: Well, and you mentioned it earlier but that’s the seminal point in which you want to hook them. If you can hook them in that developmental stage, you likely have a fan for life. And the lifetime value of that fan is going to be unprecedented, if you get them at that young of an age.

Luker: Let me give two illustrations of that from baseball. First, if you take your kid to a game, their first game, before the age of five, they will go to 58% more games per year for the rest of their lives than somebody who doesn’t’ go to their first game until they are 14. Powerful, absolutely.

Now let’s debunk generations a little bit more. What’s the average age that a parent today takes their kid to a game? And by the way, better than half of all parents do. Most people tell me seven-, eight-years-old. It’s two.

You know what that means? They’re millennial parents. They’re not wanting fast, wild and crazy. They want the same experiences. That’s why we’re saying that the sky isn’t falling, we just need to recognize where the sky is forming now, and it’s in those greater in-depth relations.

Friedenberg: And this youth market issue is tethering into millennials who value the experiential economy, far greater than goods. So, for example, for my generation, having a house and a Mercedes in the garage was my badge of honor that I’ve made it professionally.

Now, for millennials and younger, it’s about having that shared experience, and the value of that shared experience. Not only the intimacy at the game amongst nuclear family, but also how they broadcast that out to their general network, sort of proving to the world “Look how close we are. We’re actually sharing this experience together at a baseball game.”

Burke: And this is what Rich and I really see coming. Kids at this age, there’s that universal element of the bond to the family, and that experience, and the richness of that. You’re not only tapping into the fun of the moment, you’re tapping into the existential love that’s there — and that really brings meaning. That’s why that engagement between parent and child at these younger ages is so crucial.

Luker: Well, we’re going to come back to that because that’s really the solution in a large sense. But just in case there’s anybody in the room who thinks there isn’t a problem, we left this slide up here for a while.

We have seen these declines coming for 15 years, and if this was an eraser, i’d erase millennial. Because it’s only in the last month, we’ve figured there’s no value to the title “generations.” But we still use those age groups right, those born 1980–2000 drop from General Avid Fans from 48% to 28.9%. We’ve been saying “You’ve got to do something, you’ve got to do something.” And we really didn’t do anything about it. And so some of you are saying, well part of the reason is…aging.

Couple of things here that are really pretty powerful. If you look at it by age group, the greatest losses we’ve seen are males 12–17 in sports overall across the board, and then about five years ago we started seeing the critical mass of males 18–34 decline. And that’s when people got nervous about it.

At the same time, why aren’t we doing anything about this? Because we are still making money. And the biggest problem I have is that our clients won’t act for the future if the quarterly reports are good [right now]. And the people who work for them, won’t have the courage to step up and do those kinds of things either. And what you see on the bottom lines are males who are growing in interest.

My generation is much more vital and lively than my parents generation was, by far. And because I’m a baby boomer, it’s a lot bigger. So we’re still giving you the cash. Not for long!

And the problem is, we’ve done nothing to invest in that love of sports. You know what happens if you do? Look at Title IX, and look at females. In the face of twenty years of explosive competition from things online, they’ve remained stable and even grown. Title IX is the only thing investing in the love of sports on a play or on a fan level.

Don’t make a mistake about this. Sports don’t build fans, fans build sports. The previous presentation talking about FANchise — I love that. The idea that they would be truly involved is really powerful. And make no mistake about this either. 2016 is the year that it hit.

We’ve been talking about it for 15 years, I honestly thought we had a couple more [years]. It’s here. Double digit declines in media for sports, for all the major sports. EPL had 19% this last year. And people will say to me “But Rich, look at the Finals for the NBA, the best since 1998.” We all love fireworks, and we’ll still come for fireworks. Is that going to sustain the sport for the season? Is that going to keep the audience’s there? Is it going to keep the intensity of what we do in place? And the answer is no.

Friedenberg: By the way, just to bring this to life a little bit. Formula E, which is mostly in Europe and actually a great new circuit on the scene. From a social media perspective, if you actually vote for your teams, the car on the track will get a boost, an actual performance boost based on that fandom coming through. If you’re a legacy motorsports enthusiast, that might be considered sacrilege, that the fan can actually control what’s happening on the circuit. But in this next generation it’s actually very intriguing, they’re leaning into the issue, and saying alright, if the fans actually vote for these top three teams, on race day they can actually boost those cars and get more power into the engine, which is very intriguing.

Burke: And that’s where we see with younger kids, and all of these experiences, the more that they are involved, the more that there is that relationship between the brand or the leagues and the kid, in a sense that feels like, “They get me, and they want me” and I feed back to them — a relationship is where the answer will be with kids

Luker: Well, if you step back and think about it, I’m going to keep building the negative case just for a minute. Before we talk about the good side of this let’s be sure what we’re talking about. So we saw these declines for 12–17, and you’re going to show this in a slightly different way in a migration for the younger kids. And we decided to look at 12–17 year olds in a bigger picture. We have a lot of variables on technology as a whole. And so what we did, the key factor here that really alarmed us was: from 2012–2016 the percentage of 12–17 year olds who said that they were online for most of the day went from 20% to 40%.

Now let me be clear about that, if I asked you how many of you spend most of the day online, I mean is that something that we’re proud of? Is it something we’re even conscious of. So I’m telling you, it may be 40%, but it’s actually more than that. Now, what does that mean in terms of sports? If you’re online most of the day, what we did is the two on the right are the dominant things for 12–17 year olds in general online activity, the two on the left are sports. On the far right is streaming, 18% of the population says that’s very important to them, 52% of 12–17 year olds, and 44% of 18–34 year olds.

Social networking, 20% overall, 50% — draw a line there. The percentage who watches 8+ hours of sports on TV, that’s a big deal, 20% of the population of those who are online most of the day, 19%. 12–17 year olds dominate everything in sports. It’s less there.

Friedenberg: This is important from an opportunity perspective. Overall consumption of media is skyrocketing. It’s shifting, it’s changing. Scripted television, non-scripted television, news, sports, it doesn’t matter. The actual total tonnage of consumption is skyrocketing upward. For the most part people are working an additional work week of just consuming media. So on top of their 40 hour work week, or 50 hour work week, they are doing the same on a consumption basis as well. So there’s a lot of tonnage here. How it’s shifting, and how it’s maneuvering, and how it’s being consumed is the question. And how do you lay into that and plan for that in the future. But it’s actually a good thing from a consumption standpoint.

Luker: That’s absolutely right, Keith. There’s another piece of that. When I was growing up, there was no competition. And we’ve measured for 30 years, what are the priorities? Time with family and friends are the highest priority in free time. You have personal activities, productive activities, outdoor, going out on the town, movies and such. And always, for the 30 years we’ve measured it, the two bottom things have been sports fan activity, not playing sports, but watching sports TV. I’m a social psychologist, I should have known this.

My dissertation was on how media affects adolescents, and I completely blew this. The issue was, there was no competition! Here’s how it works: If I want to do something and there’s only one thing I can do, I don’t have to make a choice. As soon as I have to make a choice between two things, whatever I choose is a priority. And that’s what happening.

We now have to prioritize, and what we’re losing in this space is that people aren’t prioritizing. And I’ll tell you why. Because we aren’t doing anything to earn that priority. We’re not doing the things that say “This has heritage value to you, it’s more important than other things, it has a lot of legacy to it, it’s a great experience.” We’ve assumed for 50 years that fans would be there. That if you built it they will come, and they did. Sports hasn’t changed. It’s just as valuable, it’s just as powerful. We just have different work we have to do to get them there.

Burke: Yeah, so where Keith was talking about that shift you see this very dramatically in this slide. What it’s measuring is you have kids 5–7 years old right here reporting themselves on the devices in their room. Basically the things that help them consume the media that’s traditionally for them (and I’m talking traditionally five years ago... And then their mom is reporting the same thing.

And from 2013–2017, why have all those devices left their room? Now they have a tablet. Now they have control and can go, as Rich was saying about choice, now they have choice. They’re not limited to that disk and the choices of that disk. They have an infinite variety of places to do, to gain, to watch video, to do all sorts of different things, and so that access to the internet is where they’re at.

Luker: Well, and it wasn’t 20 years, it was five years….

Burke: And so we see this again with moms and their reported use of tablets. Kids 5–7, in that same four year period, everyday use reporting of tablets doubles. As Rich had said, moms are not always proud to report these kind of things so the numbers are often depressed because they’re not going to want to be like “My kid’s on a tablet all the time.” And so, I would say those numbers are a little bit depressed. But you see it right there with kids 5–7, that’s where those kids are at, that’s where their engagement is.

Luker: Let’s give a little context to that. So how many of you caught the story in Colorado about a guy who’s starting a petition to make it illegal to sell a smartphone to anybody 13 or under or to buy it for them? So you can’t buy it if you’re that age or younger. That’s irrelevant! When this many people already have a smartphone that’s like saying “Okay, you don’t get pants anymore.” You can’t do that.

Friedenberg: You can’t put the genie back in the box.

Luker: Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying. So now CBS I think did a video series, a very very long segment, where they had families put cameras all over their house, and then they had kids 5–7, and they’re on tablets at the supper table. And they’re substituting out people for their families, it’s somebody else sitting there that nobody knows, somebody in a gorilla suit; they put a horse in the living room and the kids don’t even notice it.

So there are these concerns about how absorbed and attached they are to these devices. And now pediatric doctors are saying you’ve got to limit the amount of time a 2–3 year old has on a smartphone. Right, that’s how pervasive this is. These are all in the last month.

Friedenberg: But are sports leagues creating that surprising delight that the younger generation is looking for? We do have to talk about the content. I know there are aspects of how you control what’s on field, and that makes perfect sense. But the ancillary programming, how you bolt on additional engagement that can be re-architected to build in more surprising delight, get kids more engaged, and actually put them into the fan funnel? Which is my main point, ultimately, these kids have to engage the fan funnel and we have to drive them down. To your point earlier, that fan funnel is organic 5–15–20 years ago. It’s not organic any longer. You actually have to lean into it and push them down the funnel. And that’s a new paradigm for the sports industry overall.

Burke: And something you had said earlier, regarding this idea, this change might not be good news for Fox, and those companies short-term. But for league sports, with all the different ways you can engage — the kids are looking for it.

If you find them, if you give them that kind of engagement, that kind of thing they are looking for, they’ll be there for you. They might consume you, they might create a relationship in a different way than we did, which is sit down and watch a three hour ball game. But they’re watching Aaron Judge highlights, and they’re doing all sorts of things. They’re engaged in the sport.

Friedenberg: The point is options. Whether it’s linear broadcasts, whether its SVOD, whether it’s the internet, social media engagement, digital, snackable content, three-hour football games, whatever it might be. The point is, the power and control has shifted to the consumer. And on any platform, or any device, or any distribution mechanism, we have to acknowledge what the value proposition is of that mechanism and then lean into it and really offer and enhance services through it.

Luker: Before we kind of start getting to the best of the best news, are there any questions?

Audience Member: Given that with binge-watching you don’t have to watch the commercials and we’re talking about doing shorter things, aren’t there things the leagues can do for example to remove that, find another way to monetize it to make it work?

Luker: I’m going to piggyback off your question and shoot this at Keith. Because she’s right.

Friedenberg: It’s a valid point. How do you safeguard the existing ecosystem, and financial mechanisms around sports even though the landscape is kind of shifting at your feet. I think that’s the multi-billion dollar question that everyone’s asking right now. I don’t think anybody has the solution, I think what is changing though, is the older paradigm was we have to make these absolutely ginormous bets and bet the house on it. That it’s going to end up being this way and that bet’s going to win for us.

Now I think the industry as a whole is moving toward an ecosystem of death by 1,000 cuts. How do we dabble in dribs and drabs and find a million different ways to engage consumers. And hopefully that total tonnage of engagement will start to level the playing field from an advertising perspective, or a sponsorship perspective as well.

So it’s yet to be known exactly what will happen, but I think what was maybe 10 years ago of a major player in sports being like “Here’s my big ginormous bet, double down on this and see if it will work.” Now everyone is saying “Hey listen, we need to try all these avenues of engagement, and whatever one seems to win, we’ll start pushing more behind; the ones that fall off, fall off.” It was a half answer, I admit it was a bit of a half answer.

Burke: I would say something else that kind of echoes on that idea. Extremist came out with some data that said the “Netflix kid” is watching six days less of advertisements than that traditional “cable TV kid.” And that’s six 24-hour days. If you narrow that down to about a six-hour watching day, that’s a month less of ads. And then you’ve got the other thing, kids are actively looking for that “Skip Ad” [button]. If they can’t get that “Skip Ad,” then they’re going onto another video. They’re being trained to actively ignore any of these messages, and so it is a concern, and I think Keith is right on that idea.

Luker: For those who may not know Keith, he’s at WME | IMG, but he’s in charge of all their intelligence and insights globally, and it goes across sports, it goes across entertainment a lot of things, and again it is globally. He’s interfacing with everybody involved in the chain — the producers, the sponsors, and everybody else. This woman has raised a very bold kind of statement and question. And what I want to ask you is, so we’ve seen this coming for 25 years, we’ve had the internet for 25 years, and the attitude in the industry has been, “Well we know it’s coming, but it’s not here yet.” How do we get them past the fact that we have? It’s here.

Friedenberg: I think the legacy mentality of kind of circling the wagons is actually finally imploding. I don’t think anybody believes in really circling the wagons anymore. You have to re-engineer what your content offering is, and what platforms it’s going to flow through. I think there’s a myriad companies doing a myriad of things to try to engage on a different kind of level with consumers. Advertising, sports sponsorship, all of it will come into the funnel as well. But I think that the most opportunistic issue coming up right now is the fact that people are acknowledging that it’s going to happen, it’s already here. There is no delaying it, there’s no circling the wagons, there’s no defending it.

You cannot build a moat around some of these issues. Because the genie is already out of the box and what are you going to do. But it’s difficult because you’re looking at a multi-billion dollar, traditional ad inventory ecosystem that’s being pressured by new platforms. Younger generations trained to not engage in commercials, right? And of course, clearly commercials can be more engaging, be better created, and actually be better embedded, whether its integrated vs. a 30-second ad. There’s a lot of options there, but no one truly knows exactly how it’s going to net out. It’d be a fallacy for me to say this is a completely known issue.

Luker: Well and saying everything is going to change in two years, you know, my clients ask me what’s going to happen in five years. With VR and the impact of AI, we can’t have any idea.

Friedenberg: But do issues, for example of AR/VR, create new opportunities for content distribution, and for advertising as well? So now, again, what was considered a threat, is something to lean into, and is an opportunity for Madison Avenue to engage.

Burke: And kids have told us that they will engage with advertising of brands that they have a relationship with. That they trust will give them something that they want. They will do that. They will seek it out and be like “oh, I welcome that.”

Friedenberg: If it’s relatable enough and authentic, and it’s given to them in the right ecosystem, in the right form of content, they will engage with it.

Luker: Here’s the punchline. We have no clue what’s going to be true with technology in five years. Nobody can predict it, no question. So is there anything constant we can build on? Yes, there are four things, and they’re all part of the same thing, and that is, being human will never change.

You’ll never be an adolescent and then a baby. So the process of growing up will always be the same, number one.

Number two: The consumer purchase model will always be the same. Babies will never buy clothes and food for their parents.

Number three: Human emotions will always be the same. Sadness will be sadness, frustration, frustration, happiness, joy etc… all will be the same, just delivered with different systems.

And number four: We’re not all going to move into pods where we live by ourselves and go online. We need this, we want this, and relationships are critical. 77% of kids 12–17 say “I’ve maxed out. I’ve actively looked for ways to get offline.” The opportunity here is to build relationships with people, with family and friends, that we know will be true. And sports does that better than probably just about anything.

Audience Member: Adding on to this question here, we’re talking about advertisements and the 30 second spot kind of fading away, not being as effective. But now, we’ve got user-generated content. So you look at Snapchat, the Taco head, the Gatorade shower, influencer marketing, and those influencers creating branded content. What do you guys think about that space? What’s your opinion in that area?

Burke: So, you talk to the kids themselves, and they will tell you that the number one thing they will search for looking for new video, is from a YouTuber that they like. So those influencers are really powerful, but here’s the thing. If you’re taking on that YouTube influencer onto your brand, and it’s not an authentic feel, and that person is selling it and not living it, is not a fan boy, or is not really engaged with the product, they are going to sniff that out in a second.

They have now become experts, right? Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule that that he kind of surmised from social scientists. I say they have a 10,000 image rule. They’ve seen so many images they know authenticity from what’s being sold to me. Right, they can intuitively know that difference. And so if you’re tacking on a YouTube influencer, you’re going about it the wrong way. If there’s a genuine connection, if there’s an authentic relationship between that YouTuber and that brand or experience that kid will get that and say “Boom!” then that’s exponentially more powerful than just getting a spokesperson.

Friedenberg: From a WME | IMG perspective we have a huge roster of social influencers that we offer to multiple brands, multiple properties, scripted television, non-scripted television, the entire ecosystem of media is now being influenced by these influencers that are part of our roster of talent.

Luker: Other questions, we still have a few minutes left.

Audience question: Is there one thing that you would tell all three major leagues that they need to do over the next few years?

Luker: No question about it — focus on the parents of kids under the age of 11 because the extent to which they…. Here’s the challenge, we’ve learned this bizarre thing in research. We have 100,000 stories about the love of baseball, and we go through it, and all of the sudden they’d say “And that’s when I got the tattoo.” So, we started focusing on tattoos, and sure enough if you do what we call Google ink research, so say [Google]“NBA tattoos.”

But then do teams — that’s much more powerful — and see what comes up. You’re going to be astounded by how many, and how rich they are. They’re incredible. I’m here to tell you, MLB didn’t put a St. Louis Cardinals tattoo on this guy, and certainly the Cardinals didn’t either. But I’ll tell you who shows up doing it most. Grandfather, mother, brother, somebody who is connected to it. The love was so great that it ended up being a tattoo.

Here’s the deal, we have maybe five years, and I’m saying five years is the only thing that you can count on, that people who still have tattoos, who have a love of sports that’s so strong that they want to be identified by it for the rest of their lives. So what is it? It reminds them why they love the game, number one. Ask them if it was so important to them in their lives and growing up, do they really want their kids to not have that same experience, and make it possible for every single kid to play and attend? If you’re baseball, go straight to the game, if it’s the NFL, it’s before they’re in high school. It’s the high school bucket list, “I’m going to take you to an NFL game.” It’s the parent of those kids that are priority number one.

Friedenberg: By the way my favorite shots now that I actually seek out, I love when there is a dad at a baseball game with a baby in his arms, and the foul ball is coming over, and he sacrifices his kid to catch that. That’s fandom.

And it’s actually good on both fronts, because he’s obviously a fan willing to sacrifice his kids. But that kid, that’s a baby, somebody under the age of five, probably under the age of a year actually at a game, and enjoying baseball for the first time. So it’s actually a double-whammy of a positive whenever I see those crazy videos on the evening news because if that can be replicated a million more times, sports will be rocking and rolling for years to come.

Luker: Well sports, with all the games when they are collecting all the video, and they go to do tests to see which are most popular, it’s not the plays on the field. It’s what the fans do that is the most popular. No question about it.

Burke: When I heard the MLB, Tennis, and NASCAR and La Liga up here, the thing that I heard that was best from a kids perspective is listen to them. Give them the content the way they want it, not the way you think they want it, not the way you think would be best for your sport to get across. Give it to them the way they want it. If they want Aaron Judge with puppy ears and shooting a rainbow, give it to them that way. Whatever way that will give you that kind of real engagement.

Friedenberg: Brands for the first time, both brands and leagues I believe are starting to let loose of the tight grip on ownership of their brand. They are finally starting to let people play with it a bit. I think that in and of itself is a massive change.

Luker: If you take away nothing else, take away that fifth point. It’s not coming, it’s here. If you don’t know them by the time they are 11, you won’t have them when they are 18.

Friedenberg: And we are out of time. Thanks everyone — appreciate it!

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Rich Luker: ”It Makes No Sense to Talk About Generations” was originally published in Innovate by Hashtag Sports on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.