A (3:01)

It's available in some countries. You don't have. It's, you know, you're not going to have the broadcast games.

B (3:05)

Exactly.

A (3:06)

Everything NFL.

B (3:07)

It's everything NFL available to in every country in the world outside of the U.S. right. So, you know, and we just announced a few weeks ago we're going to be doing something very similar with the NHL, which we're really excited about starting this season. Obviously that won't include the US Or Canada, also doesn't include a couple of the Nordic countries. But. But for the most part, we're going to be bringing this great American sports content to fans all over the world. So we're really excited about it.

A (3:33)

And then this summer, so it was, I remember we bumped into, into each other a couple. I don't know, this is probably like a year and a half ago you were telling me about this. This, you guys basically created a, a brand new global soccer event, if I'm framing this correctly. And this summer was the first time it came together. Give us the whole story of how that came together and what I'm talking about here.

B (3:58)

Yeah, so you're kind of right.

A (4:03)

Most of my career I've heard that. Yeah.

B (4:06)

So FIFA has had this tournament called the Club World cup, which was imagined to be a tournament of the top club teams in the world. So, you know, it's teams that play in the conferences like the Premier League of Syria and Bundesliga. So obviously in, you know, La Liga, we have a lot of familiarity with the top club teams in the world because we do so much of the domestic production and distribution of the domestic football. And so I think we were a very natural partner for FIFA to come to when they wanted to make this thing much bigger than it ever been and sort of reimagine it. I think leading up to the World cup in the US in 26, they envisioned putting this tournament in the United States in 2025, this past summer. And it came together very quickly. We spent time with them really at the end of last year, imagining what this could look like and partnering with FIFA on a deal and we became the global broadcast partner for the FIFA Club World Cup. We were producing every single match. So 63 matches, 32 teams, and then in the end it included a playoff match, a play in match as well between Club America and LAFC to earn that final spot. So it actually ended up being 64 matches. We did broadcast partnerships in many countries around the world, but we made the service available to stream for free to soccer fans everywhere in the world onto Zone. And it was by far the most ambitious thing that we've ever done. And, you know, we got to show incredibly competitive tournament for the first time in many cases that the top clubs from around the world, places like Brazil and Argentina and Mexico, were playing the top clubs from, you know, England and France and Italy and Germany, which was.

A (5:55)

If you think of the World cup, if you, if you only know the World cup as country versus country, this is. Mike, Mike, tell me if this, this is like, if you did the Yankees versus the Tokyo Giants versus, like, it's all the big. From all the big leagues across the world.

B (6:07)

That's exactly right. These are club teams. So these are. These are teams that have players from, in many cases, all different countries around the world that they have, that they have assembled on their side, but they represent a very specific club. So this was the top clubs in the world. So think about clubs like Chelsea and Man City and Paris Saint Germain, Bayern Munich and the top clubs in Brazil and Argentina and Saudi Arabia and Japan and South Korea. There were three MLS teams in the tournament. Yeah. So it was the Seattle Sounders and Inter Miami. And then LAFC beat Club America to earn a place in the tournament as well.

A (6:48)

So there were three, which you might not think, right. Yeah, my weak knowledge of soccer, you wouldn't expect to be us to be as competitive, but that's kind of a cool story.

B (6:59)

Yeah. I mean, Club America, America has one of the strongest fan bases of any club in the world. They're the. They're the large, largest team in Mexico City and huge, huge fan following. I would say like they're the Mexico equivalent of the New York Yankees. And seeing their fans, you know, show up in LA for this playing match was. It was, it was wild. And it was the first match we did, and seeing it on Dazn and all these different languages all over the world, it was really, really cool to see it all come together.

A (7:30)

So how did it all go? I mean, you're doing a complex undertaking. You need a lot of streaming capacity. You don't know about the viewership. You're doing stuff. You're doing simulcast with cable. So I'm Sure. It was crazy. How did it all go? Like, what did you learn?

B (7:43)

It was amazing. I could say now it went as seamlessly as it could have. I will tell you, we worked on an accelerated timeline. So a project of this magnitude, in an ideal situation, you might have two years to plan something like this. We did it in less than six months. The level of complexity was high. You know, we were, we were in 13 languages and broadcasting into, you know, 196 countries and, you know, 200 plus territories around the world. It was, you know, we thought that we were building the capacity to have it be the most streamed event in the history of the world and, you know, making sure that the tech is going to hold and be stable, that the complexity of the production works, that the talent and the studio shows work, that we're able to deliver it to our broadcast partners seamlessly. It was, the level of complexity was high. And you know, of course we were managing, you know, advertising and advertising loads across platforms, both streaming and linear platforms, as well as the integrations into the broadcast and the sponsorships. We were doing studio shows, you know, pregame post game, halftime and shoulder programming. And it was just so incredible to watch it. Mike, I gotta tell you, it was such a great tournament. The matches were competitive, the viewership was incredibly strong and we had really high expectations for the tournament and it exceeded even the high expectations I had.

A (9:13)

Did you have to do. You said you had six months to get ready. Did you have to get some more streaming capacity, bring in some new ad tech partners? Do you have to do a lot of plumbing work to get this ready or are you already set up?

B (9:25)

Well, you know, we do large scale events, but they tend to generally be more domestic in nature. So, you know, we'll do things like the Classico in Spain, which is Real Madrid versus FC Barcelona.

A (9:38)

Huge everywhere.

B (9:39)

Exactly. And so it's easier for us to manage the capacity with CDNs and making sure that we have the ability to handle the sort of live simultaneous viewership when it's something global and simultaneous like this, you know, it had never really been done before. I give our CTO and his team incredible kudos. You know, the planning they did to make sure that our platform was going to be stable and be able to handle this. You know, they did all the incredible planning. They're the best I've ever worked with, I have to say. And you know, but you know, when the tournament's getting ready to start, you cross your fingers and.

A (10:19)

Oh yeah.

B (10:19)

And so, you know, because we all.

A (10:21)

Love to Pounce and scream when things go wrong.

B (10:23)

Right?

A (10:24)

Either the fans or the. Or the press.

B (10:26)

That's right. And so, you know, you. You do everything you can to prepare and do everything. But, you know, when you're doing something that's never been done before, there are always complexities and variables that you didn't expect and things can go wrong. And so, you know, I. What I would say is the team did everything they could to make sure this thing went off seamlessly. And it did, you know, and you. You take that as a win and you take the lessons learned from it and you hope that the next one goes as smoothly as this one did.

A (10:57)

Did you guys kick around? You know, you. You could have said, well, we're going to make this exclusive only to subscribers. But then that caps your exposure, and it's like you're trying to. To promote this and make this a bigger event global. Did you guys debate whether to have a broadcast partner or not? Or was that always sort of the strategy?

B (11:13)

Of course, everything was debated. I think from the outset in our agreement with FIFA, we wanted to make the tournament free. We wanted to make this a huge event. So we wanted to make it free on Dazn everywhere in the world. Whether we kept it exclusive on Dazn or whether we had linear partners like in the U.S. for example, we did an incredible partnership with my old colleagues at Warner Brothers Discovery, at TNT Sports, where we did all of the production together, we did all of the ad sales together, we did all of the talent and all the production meetings and studio shows together. And we produced 64 matches together, but we put 23 of them on the Warner Brothers Discovery Networks, and all 64 were on disown. So we were able to maximize awareness and viewership. We were able to provide a great broadcast product to the cable footprint of TNT Sports. But at the same time, we were able to meaningfully grow viewership on Dazn and make Dazn a household name to U.S. sports fans that watch the tournament. And Dazn branding was persistent on the broadcast on TNT as well. We did the same thing in Spanish language with Univision. I think we put 15 or 16 matches on the Televisa Univisio networks, but we produced the entire tournament similarly with them. And Spanish language, you know, we had different partnerships in different countries around the world. In several countries, we were exclusive on Dazon and we kept it for ourselves. France would be a good example of that. You know, in countries where we're fully distributed and, you know, and we have millions of Customers.

A (12:56)

You've got the base already set up. It makes sense to keep.

B (12:58)

Exactly. It's less controversial. It's easier to do that, and the upside of the linear partnerships is less obvious.

A (13:06)

Right.

B (13:07)

So, you know, I think we were, you know, we weighed the economics. We weighed sort of what's the best deal. We weighed what's best for the fans. We weighed, how can we develop the best product. We were also moving on an accelerated timeline. So we. With partners that we thought were sort of best in class and could move quickly and sort of understood what we were trying to accomplish. And we're excited to partner with us on it. So we're really happy with the partners that we ended up working with on it.

A (13:31)

I hope you took a summer vacation. This.

B (13:33)

This is, like I did.

A (13:34)

It's exhausting hearing about this, like, complexity of the last year.

B (13:38)

It was. It was. You know, it was so ambitious. You know, we've known each other a long time, Mike. I've gotten to work on some really cool launches. I got to work on the March Madness launched the first time. We put all the games in their entirety and television and streaming, which is.

A (13:52)

A huge deal at the time.

B (13:53)

People forget it was a huge deal. It was a partnership between TNT and. And cbs. You know, we did the. The Thursday Night Football thing. I got to be part of launching Thursday Night Football on Amazon prime the first time. It was exclusive there, and that was similar. But this is so global, and the globalness of it adds a tremendous amount of complexity on all aspects of something like this. And so it was the most complex launch I've ever been a part of. And, yes, I did go on vacation. Literally the day after the tournament, I went on vacation.

A (14:29)

Turn the phone off.

B (14:29)

Yeah.

A (14:30)

All right, so you. You kind of hit that. But take a step back. It is a. Sports has always played a humongous role in our industry, but it's. It's a crazy time right now. It's more. You know, it drives the upfront to a certain extent. It drives media rights and distribution. I mean, what do you make of so many things going on right now? You got the NFL Network, ESPN Complex deal where the league actually owns a part of the media. You got YouTube doing its game. Like, how do you even start there? What do you. What do you make of the state of sports and streaming right now?

B (15:01)

Yeah, I mean, well, I think it's different in different countries. I think, obviously, you're asking about the U.S. so I think maybe we should focus on the U.S. marketplace. I mean, sports are extremely hot as you said, sports is what drove the upfront marketplace this year. And, you know, it's no secret why that is. Sports is what's driving, you know, viewership, and it's what's driving so much value to the media owners. You know, when you look at sort of the two sides of the coin, you've got the linear networks that have. It's almost like, you know, I don't want to exaggerate and overstate it, but it's almost an existential requirement to keep.

A (15:38)

Sports, to keep the lights on. And to a certain degree, or it.

B (15:41)

Feels like that to hold viewership. It's been, it's been such a. Such a strength historically for them.

A (15:47)

Yeah.

B (15:47)

And it's. And it's the thing that has continued to perform the best and the most consistently. I saw a statistic, I think 80 of the top 100 broadcasts in 2024 were live sports.

A (16:00)

Yeah, it's like. And most of it's the NFL with like, a few exceptions.

B (16:04)

Crazy. Yeah. And it varies year to year with, you know, you know, One of those 20 is like the show that immediately follows the Super Bowl. And, you know, so you just start to. You start to look at the impact of sports, particularly in a year where you don't have an election cycle, it becomes that much. That much more. But live programming between sports and news is really, you know, the driver of so much of the value that the incumbents have. Have enjoyed. And then obviously the streamers are much more aggressive coming after these rights and much more aggressive in terms of understanding the value and understanding that it's a way to drive new subscribers. It's a way to drive, you know, to reduce. Churn, and it's a way to drive engagement and drive, you know, usage of the product and, and get people to enjoy the product. So, you know, and, you know, as the streamers become more competitive for the advertising dollars, you know, they bring. They bring incremental capability that the linear networks just. Technology doesn't enable them to do of things like interactivity and addressability and attribution.

A (17:16)

It raises the bar about what a sports broadcast is.

B (17:20)

That's exactly right. And I think we're still scratching the surface of what that's going to evolve into. Yeah, you know, it's no surprise that this is happening. And so, you know, you see a move like, you know, obviously we have a great partnership with the NFL. And so, you know, I don't. I don't have any, you know, insider knowledge or anything like that. I just read the same things you read. But you know, that, that ESPN deal makes a lot of sense for Disney from my perspective. You know, it gives them, you know, durability in terms of that partnership for them, which is so important to, to, you know, the espn, you know, family of products and networks. And so I understand why they did that and I also understand why the NFL did it. Makes a lot of sense. And they were able to capture a lot of value and they were able to bring, you know, a company that has real expertise, you know, to the table to sort of help them enhance that product and deliver for the fans. So it makes a lot of sense both from an economic perspective and from a, from just a consumer perspective. Yeah, so. But we're at an interesting time and I feel like we're kind of like we're seeing the beginning or maybe we're like in the second or third inning of the game, to use a sports metaphor.

A (18:32)

Yeah.

B (18:33)

Of sort of the collision of, of, of these two competing entities trying to figure out the US Marketplace.

A (18:40)

What do you, you mentioned you were at Amazon when you guys got Thursday Night Football. What do you remember about that time? Like in terms of just the getting ready to take on something like that that had never been done before. Not screwing it up, you know, getting the. Obviously it's a company that's steeped in technology, but what do you remember about trying to get ready for that time? What do you think YouTube is going through right now getting ready for their first NFL broadcast?

B (19:02)

Well, it was an incredibly exciting time. You know, similarly to what I just described. What's happened with us here. People don't remember this. It was a multi year deal that, you know, Thursday Night Football had been with Fox and Amazon Prime Video was, had been sort of a streaming partner in simulcasting the Fox broadcasts. But when the, when the, when the package moved exclusively to streaming on Amazon Prime Video, it wasn't scheduled to start for another full season. So we had, you know, the better part of two years to prepare for it. And then I think the league and Fox and Amazon sort of all realized that having this sort of stub year of Thursday Night Football, living on broadcast, knowing that it was going to migrate off eventually, probably wasn't in anybody's best interest. And so we accelerated our partnership a full year early.

A (20:01)

I did forget about that because that would have been a weird situation.

B (20:04)

Yeah, right. And so probably it probably wasn't in anybody's best, best interest to do that. And so, and so we were in a similar race and so we had to move very quickly and we recruited a team. I recruited an amazing leader over there to run the sales team, Daniel Carney, who came over from espn. And we, we built a team of people. And, you know, I. My memory is that in year one, like, at least in my mind, our North Star was, don't screw it up. Like, make sure that we deliver a great. A great match and a great broadcast overnight. Exactly.

A (20:39)

No one needs that right away.

B (20:40)

Well, it was more than that. It was more than that. It was also like, we, you know, you have to realize as an. In the advertising side, you're going into an established marketplace, there's established advertisers and established NFL broadcasters. There's a certain way they're used to doing business. And if you're a new entrant and you think that you have the ability to change the way everybody.

A (21:00)

You guys have been doing it wrong for 50 years. Yeah. Like, good luck with that. Yeah.

B (21:04)

And so, you know, what we really wanted to do was, was be a good citizen and participate in the marketplace in a way that, that customers wanted to work with us. And then sort of, we had so many great ideas of how we could make the product better, how we could innovate on the advertising side, how could we could innovate on the measurement side, how we could innovate with interactivity. So much of the capability that being a streaming service, like technically is enabled by and so much innovation. But we really resisted. We really resisted sort of moving too quickly on some of those things and focused on delivering the basics and proving that a, we could deliver a great broadcast and that the talent looked good and good studio shows and the tech was working perfectly and that there was no buffering and all that. And, and that like, just like the sort of like, you know, what do they call it? Was it Kierke, the hierarchy of needs? I think it was Kierkegaard's hierarchy of needs. So, like, just like get the base level needs of the fans before you start moving up the pyramid. And, you know, and I think. I think we did that. And I think we did that really well. And I think you started to see in year two and year three, as we started putting on capability on top of, you know, the insights and the ability to sell products at retail and the ability to do interactivity and the ability to do shoppable ads and the ability to do enhanced copy splitting and putting different creative in front of different customers based on what, you know about what's happening in that household, all of a sudden you start to see the advantages of what a streaming platform can deliver. But what I remember most about that time is how excited we were and similarly how nervous we were and wanted to make sure that we could deliver a great product. And, you know, looking back now, it's. It's obviously a foregone conclusion, but at the time there was, you know, it was a lot of. A lot of nervous people making sure that we could deliver a great NFL game.

A (23:07)

Now, do you think YouTube's. I'm not going to say it's going to be easy. They're doing one game and they're Google. And you guys have all gone ahead of them now like this, you know, like, is it. Should they be. Do you think they'll be facing the same bandwidth advertising concerns or is it going to be, you know, the playbook's kind of set up now to do this. I mean, neither of us are there. We're speculating.

B (23:28)

Well, yeah, I don't know. But, you know, I can give you my. I can give you my best guess. So my best guess is that, well, listen, the NFL is a great partner, and the NFL. So the first game we had week one in 2022 on Amazon Prime Video was San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs.

A (23:49)

I remember this. Yes.

B (23:50)

And it did a 13 rating.

A (23:52)

That was a really good game, if I remember correctly.

B (23:54)

It was a great game and it delivered huge audiences and it was ahead of our sales estimates. And I remember I was at the game in a suite with all the biggest advertisers who wanted to be there when history was made. But these were also the people that we invited because they had taken a chance and invested with us and helped us made this thing a success. And so we invited the partners that had, you know, help make the thing a success to celebrate with us. But you're standing with them side by side. We had a fire stick TV in the suite and we were watching the streaming in there, and you're like, fingers crossed the ads are going to run in the right place and the progress is going to work and everything. And it worked. And I was getting every 15 minutes viewership updates. And I was seeing that we were delivering the viewership. And I remember just looking around the suite and seeing the customers and being like, oh, my God.

A (24:51)

Oh, my God. Because I could have been a nightmare. How do I get out of this room? If it's. It was.

B (24:55)

It was high sticks poker for sure. But, you know, you know, but I also think that everybody, look, everybody understood what the vision was and that I think people had realistic expectations that Rome wasn't built in a day and that, you know, and so they were, they were invested in the vision and invested in the long and the ride. And so I do think that, that our team there did a very good job managing customer expectations. You know. So, you know, the reason I mention that is it's, I noticed that YouTube t. YouTube's first game is the Chargers and Chiefs.

A (25:29)

Oh, that's funny. I didn't realize that.

B (25:30)

Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's very likely to do a great number. I think that these are teams with, with a national following and I think that they're doing everything they can to assure that YouTube's first foray into the NFL is a success.

A (25:49)

Yeah.

B (25:50)

And, and so that's, that's, I think smart. And so, you know, unlike what we had at Amazon, I think the thing that YouTube's going to run into that's challenging is they only have the one game, right? And selling one NFL game and sort of getting, getting the sort of attention of the marketplace. When you're, when you're in a marketplace of competitors that have, you know, you know, this, a Sunday package or a.

A (26:18)

Sunday, they want to do campaign time and. Yeah, that's not easy.

B (26:22)

Yeah, well, especially when the, when, when the match is in week one. Yeah, it's, I, I think it's going to be harder than they might expect. Like one of the things that I remember, I think people just sort of assume that, you know, the NFL sells itself. It's super easy to sell. It's just, yeah, it's the NFL and that's not how it really works. You know, it's a very competitive marketplace. Every major media company has a package of some variety. You know, you've got, you've got, you've got Netflix in the game, you've got Amazon in the game, you've got YouTube in the game and every major broadcaster in the game. It's very competitive. And so I don't know how they're packaging it. I assume that they're packaging it. You know, they have the Sunday ticket product, they have, you know, the Red Zone. They have, you know, obviously YouTube. And so their ability to package in really interesting ways and create season long campaigns is something that I assume that they have done and is working effectively for them. But I don't know that. That's just my speculation. But you know, I, but, but I think if it was another company that didn't have all of the assets they have I think, you know, selling one game early in the season, an island.

A (27:24)

Would be a little harder.

B (27:26)

It's, it's, it's harder than people think it is. But, but I have no doubt it's going to do a great rating.

A (27:30)

Yeah. All right. Okay, getting back to you guys, give us, give me like where, where are you in this upfront marketplace right now and then maybe what, what's next for you over the next six months and even going into next year?

B (27:40)

Yeah, so we've got a lot of exciting stuff planned. You know, we're not, we're not a major participant in, in the upfronts here in the US Our footprint, you know, prior to the club World cup, what we, what we're really best known for in the US Is boxing. Yeah, we have an incredible slate of, of championship caliber boxing fights will do. You know, almost 150 nights a year of fights on our service, including most of the biggest, if not all of the biggest, you know, everything from pay per views to, to championship fights and belt fights, undercards. We work with most of, if not all of the biggest promoters in the world and the biggest fighters in the world. So you know, that is something we've had a lot of success with in the US Marketpl. You know, Club World cup though I have to say was probably the first thing that put DAZN with many of the largest brands that traditionally buy sports. So you know we work with most of the major agencies and that gave us, you know, we delivered at a really high level. So you know, we delivered the audiences, we delivered the ratings and, and over delivered here in the US So, so we have a lot of happy customers that want to do more with us and want to know what's next. You know, we also have a business that I have the privilege of working closely with and leading which is called Whistle Sports, which you might remember an.

A (29:04)

Original YouTube MCN at the time.

B (29:06)

That's exactly right. It's an MCN. We still have a little bit of the MCN and network capabilities but you know, we do a ton of original programming and we do a ton of social work with some of our partners and we've got, you know, several original shows we're launching this fall and what we're trying to do is figure out how to bring these businesses more closely together. Sort of the Whistle Sports which primarily lives on YouTube and we clip it and it lives across the social ecosystem on TikTok and Snap and so forth. And Dazn which is primarily a subscription sports live event streaming service so what we're doing with this slate of originals we're launching in the US this fall is they'll launch as DAZN originals. We'll embargo them so they'll be exclusive on DAZN for a period of time, and then they'll go wide as podcasts and as live shows. We've got some incredible talent. Yeah, it's really cool. So. So we get sort of the benefit of. Of bringing audience to Dazn and launching these shows on Dazn and serving our fans and the people that have been with us. But we can also deliver on the sponsorship needs and bring in the sort of widest range of viewers and fans we possibly can. And then that gives us also a way to promote what's coming up next week, which hopefully will then become sort of a virtual cycle. So that's. That's our plan on our originals. I can't tell you too much more about them. I think based on the timing of when you're going to drop this episode, I can tell you one of them is called Downs to Business, which is a football show we're doing with Josh Downs, who's a receiver on the Philadelphia Eagles, and Caleb Downs, who is the safety on the Ohio State University, plays.

A (30:51)

Texas for opening week, by the way.

B (30:53)

That's exactly right. And many people think Caleb Downs is the number one or number two player in the country. Certainly many people think he's the number one on the defensive side of the ball and his brother's an NFL player. And they're talking about the business of football and they're talking about the impact of NIL and the business, the transfer portal and the draft and how to prepare for it and how to use college to get yourself ready for the pros and what happens when you make the transition and everything that Caleb has been through and working with, you know, marketers and sponsors and doing endorsement deals. I think it's going to be a really cool show. And it's a little different take, but, like, the fact that these two guys are brothers and have had so much success and one of them is. That's exactly. I think it's going to be a really interesting show. So that's going to be dropping in a week. I'm really looking forward to that. And then there's a couple of other big shows that we'll be announcing in the coming weeks that. That I'm really, really excited for. One has got a major NFL theme. And so more to come on that.

A (31:58)

Teasing news here next to me.

B (32:03)

Yeah, and then, you know, I had mentioned we also did this NHL deal, but we have some other stuff on the Dazn side, on the licensing side. When we did the partnership with Televisa Univision, we actually picked up some Spanish language rights in the US For UEFA Champions League and Europa League. We also did a Spanish language deal with Syria. So we're going to have a lot of Spanish language soccer in the US in the back half of this year and next year, which we're excited about. And I think you're going to see us continue to try to find opportunities both on the original side and on the live right side. That makes sense for us, where the economics make sense, where we think that, you know, it fits into our value proposition and that it's going to help us build our US business. But I could tell you that growing in the US is priority number one for us, but we want to do so in a way that that is responsible and that is going to be durable. So we have to be very thoughtful and selective about sort of how we do that.

A (33:11)

All right, well, should be fascinating to watch here, Walker. Awesome stuff. Thank you for taking the time out here and let's chat again soon.

B (33:17)

Yeah, great to see you, Mike. Thanks for having me. Take care of.