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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the HAVOC Rundown. I'm Justin, and joining me today are Ryan, Tony, and Thomas, our normal crew. Normally, this is where we jump into a five in focus game corner, all our usual segments. But today we're doing something a little different. For the last couple of months, one of the biggest topics in Combat Robotics has been the announcement of the partnership between NHL and dazn. Then about a month ago, we got our first look at the partnership in action during the opening round of the NHL World Championship Pro Tour. Since then, there's been a lot of discussions with the community and what this partnership means, where it could lead, and what the future of sport might look like after the first pro tour. We reached out to both NHRL and DAZN because we wanted to learn more about this, the story behind this partnership, and what fans, builders and competitors should be paying attention to moving forward. To help answer those questions, we're joined today by two people right at the center of it all. First off, we have Kelly Biederman, CEO of nhrl. Welcome back, Kelly.
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A
Thanks, guys. Happy to be back.
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B
And then from dazn, the. From the Sports Marketing center at dazn, we have Ed Cracknell.
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C
Thanks so much. Excited to be here. This wasn't. This wasn't on my 2026 bingo card at the start of the year, but I'm very glad it's happened. I'm very, very glad to be here with you guys.
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B
Glad to have you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking time, Ed. I know you're in the uk, so the. The time zones are a little misaligned for us over here. So I'm very glad, very thankful that you had some time put aside to talk to us today. So we put together a mailbag and asked the community what they wanted to know about this partnership. We got a ton of great responses, and a lot of those questions kind of shaped how the discussion is going to go and what we're going to talk about. So. So with that said, let's start with DAZN itself. So I wanted to talk about the partnership itself, make sure everyone understands who DAZN is and why this announcement is such a big deal for Sports Combat Robotics as itself. So for listeners who may not be familiar with dazn, which I'm not sure how that's possible at this point, but can Kelly and Ed, can you just summarize what DAZN is? What exactly it does that kind of stuff, like, what. What is dazn? What is the whole goal of Dazn
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C
Kelly, I suppose I bet I better take this one and I'll be in trouble if I don't do a good selling job here. So look for those not familiar with Dizone and that we've been doing an amazing job and Kelly and the team to try and kind of get us, you know, we want to be as authentic as possible with this partnership. And Kelly and the team have done an amazing job of introducing Dazn and start that off. But I think, you know, take a step back. Everyone knows Netflix and effectively what we're trying to do at Dazn is to be the Netflix of sport. So the best way to think about us is. And I came from a traditional paid broadcaster background, but we're very much a platform. So designs available in over 200 countries. In Europe particularly, we've got kind of local markets where we're very, very strong. So likes of in Italy we have Serie A, which is their main football tournament. We show every game of that. Spain, Portugal, Japan, so we've got Germany. So we've got kind of huge, huge reach in the local markets. And then we have a truly global proposition. So operating in over 200 countries. I think last year we, we showed just over 86,000 live events. So we have a very robust tech platform. We have deals with some of the biggest, biggest rights holders in sport. So we showed probably the ones most familiar to your, your listeners will be the NFL. We, we have a partnership with the NFL, so we broadcast the NFL everywhere outside of the United States. We have a big deal. We've just announced with FIFA. We've just launched FIFA. Plus we did the Club World cup, which we streamed globally last year as well. And we've got various other partnerships in combat sports and boxing particularly. We kind of pretty much own the whole boxing ecosystem and have deals with every promotion there. So we're a huge tech platform. Um, we're, we're very lucky to have some very gifted engineers. And obviously that's a bit of a theme of, of NHRL as well and the, the talent that you guys showcase kind of week in, week out. But yeah, we're, we're a huge platform. We're, we're beyond broadcast. We're completely ott, so we don't have the limitations of a traditional broadcaster. And we also have great products that can go beyond broadcast but enhance the fan experience, which we're continuously evolving each day. So we were super excited when we first started having conversations with Kelly and the NHRL team about what we could do here because we loved as being honest. Like it was my first. I've had a very crash course into the NHRL and the whole ecosystem. I've absolutely loved it. And dazone as a platform is a, is a perfect partnership to be a growth partner of the sport.
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B
Okay. So many people in the community, the common robotics community, this is the first time they'd ever heard of DAZN. So how do you usually, how does DAZone typically reach new audiences? Grow awareness? Like, um, what is your growth plan? Like how is the growth look for, for trying to spread the awareness of the Zone and what your message is and what you guys do?
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C
Absolutely. Great question. So look, we've got these big deals which, which do a lot of the awareness job. We've got a very big marketing team of which I sit in as well to try and spread, spread, spread the word of Dizz. And the rights we have, we, we typically have on the, on the right side two types of rights. We have our paid for rights which sit within subscriptions and that varies by your local market. And then we have kind of a freemium tier which is where we're looking to partner with rights holders who want to grow. And that's really what the Zone is about today. It's a great growth engine for sports. We've got, you know, we're probably the only place in the world where you have a global fan base of sports fans on there watching all the different sports and what we look to do, and the essence of this partnership here is to sign a long term partnership. No, this isn't a one and done. This isn't a short term deal. This is about us growing together and it's effectively about us. You know, the product's completely free. So the only, the only barrier to watching NHRL Pro League onto Zone is putting in your email address. That's it. So it's about us growing together and using our kind of combined assets is both the NHL and the wider ecosystem like this podcast, but also using kind of DAZ kind of core strengths and huge sporting audience as well to kind of help grow together.
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D
Um, so what attracted the Zone to Combat Robotics and specifically in hrl.
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C
So, so look, as I, as I said we are a tech platform at its heart which means we've got a huge engineering base. So we had, there was some passion in the business for it in, in different parts and it's been amazing since we announced the partnership how many internal messages we've had around. So that's, that's been super positive. You know, the amount of times I get asked, oh, does own put in a team, can we do something? Is quite staggering and surprised me. So what we really look at is a few things, but engagement is our key metric that we look at when we're looking to who should we partner with. And this is part of specific program all about growing together with kind of joint commitments from Kelly, myself and the wider teams about how we grow together. So the first thing we looked together and we got together was let's look at the engagement. Can you tell us a bit more about the engagement, how engaged fans are? Because that ultimately tells you, it gives you enough insight as to whether something is going to. Going to work at a bigger level or not. And we were blown away. Particularly social and the short form nature of it, it's high energy, it's high impact, it works really well in vertical, which is kind of the direction of travel. So Kelly, I and the team spent a lot of time looking at, taking us on the journey of showing the growth, looking at the social behind it, explaining more about how this works, the kind of the level of community as well. That was really important to us. Like, you want to find like highly engaged communities because you can build off that. It's authentic. You're not manufacturing it, so it's there. You've just got to harness it. And then we talked a bit about how do we take this bottle up, what we love and where it is and how do we start to tell stories around it that will engage a wider audience. And I think because you have the high engagement on social, you know, it's already reaching a wider audience. I mean, the video we, we talked quite a lot about was the, the video on social that's got, I think on me insta reels, it's got 150 million views.
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A
Right.
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C
There's. There's a wider audience that are interested in that and then you start to start to unpick that. And that was obviously a massive anomaly because to get 150 million views is quite frankly absurd. But you start to go down and you look at the engagement, you look at the comments, you look at the likes, and there is really something in this. And A Zone is the perfect platform to help elevate that and tell some more stories around it, to keep engaging people.
- [08:31]
A
Yeah, and to jump in there, I feel like vice versa. You know, we've seen so much success on social and for us there was just so much attraction to, to being with a partner that has so much experience translating sports content to sports minded audiences in a way that, you know, social is harder to, to nail that specific focus for us. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, looking at what we're doing is seen as, as sports, not just entertainment, which has been something historically for our sport, has been a little bit of a harder line to, to cross.
- [09:09]
B
Yeah, it's. You. We, we completely understand that. It's. It's something. It's a line that you go, when you look at this, especially looking at, like, Battlebots and stuff like that, you look at it as a purely entertainment thing. And then when you talk to the builders and everything, this is 100% a sport. So treating it as, as a sport is. Makes everyone in the builder community happy because the more that you can seriously take it as a sport, the more they're going to be happy with, with how it's handled. So, so we talked about how the partnership first began. What attracted Dazn to NHL and NHL Dazn. So, Kelly, why is Dazn the right partner for NHL, for the organization's growth? Like, why is this a good partnership?
- [09:51]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, I think really it comes down to the fact that Dazna, proper sports people, so this isn't, you know, just a, a vanity deal. This is the real thing. And the fact that we're in this arena alongside all of the amazing properties that Dazon already has, that is enormous for us. It's. It's a huge milestone for us. It's a huge milestone for the sport. And I think what also attracted us to the partnership is really like, Ed and the team have been so clear with us about how much they want to invest in this and make sure that it's a success long term. And I think that, you know, in a world where we've been on social and on YouTube for so long and it's a constant clawing to get any kind of attention. And you're constantly, you know, the algorithm changes every three and a half days and so you constantly are chasing those things. And discoverability is incredibly, incredibly difficult on, On a platform like YouTube, it's really hard for people to organically stumble across our content and for us to reach those folks. Where that changes is with Dazna and is with a partner that is invested in us and really excited to see us succeed. And I, you know, when we were on a call a couple of weeks ago talking about some of the different ideas that the team has and the ways that they want to help support us, it felt like such a breath of fresh air to Be able to hear about somebody who really sees the value in what we're doing and doesn't want to, you know, put us into. To some, you know, algorithm to try to claw your way through and break through against all odds. It felt like, no, they see the value in the sport. They see the value in what we've built and in the audience, as Ed was talking about, you know, the social audience has been huge and is part of what makes us an attractive partner. But this gives us that real focused, dedicated support in making sure that we can grow as a sport, grow in front of new audiences and reach new people with proper backing and proper support.
- [11:50]
E
Yeah, the builders definitely appreciate being on the same platform that has NFL and professional boxing and not like, you know, stone skipping and climbing the oiled tower. So it's a great way to start. But now everyone's really in a place where they feel actually appreciated. It's nice.
- [12:08]
A
Yeah. I mean, we obviously have done the ESPN the Ojo partnership a couple of times, and like you said, you know, it's. That's great for us and that's been great for the sport. But I think being able and seeing ESPN constantly rehearing those specials, you know, is great and makes us feel confident that we have really great content and great stories to tell and that this translates very well to tv. But you're right, like, being alongside, you know, sports that are taken a little bit less seriously versus dazn, seeing us as a sport properly in its own right, that is incredibly meaningful for us and a big part of why we were attracted to the partnership.
- [12:48]
F
So, yeah, during. Sorry, during Pro Tour, when I signed into DAZN to watch it, I watch it on Dazon the whole day. We were first up on the screen and everything like that. It was like, we're next to. I think it was a boxing match on our left and to the right was a. Racing. Was racing. And it was like, we're right there where YouTube is like, you have to know exactly what you want to watch
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B
and everything like that.
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F
I love it. It's so good.
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B
One interesting question that I know I had, and I think it showed up in the mailbag. Ed was the. When you go into the zone and you look at the sports, there's categories of sports. Where would you say Combat Robotics lands in those sports, like, genres? Or does it get its own genre, like on the site? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, when you look at the Dropdown, you look at the genre of sports.
- [13:36]
C
Justin, have you been in my. In my Inbox because this is one of the things we've been quite a lot recently and the honest answer is, is I don't think we quite have the answer just yet. It's funny like on, on that point, look, it's is like we have loads of sports on design, right? And it's one of the perks of the job. And you know, you know, up there with one of the best jobs in the world to work across such a plethora of great sports. When Kelly and I first started speaking, it was like, oh, is there a. Is there a playbook? And it was like, no, because we don't know, we don't treat any sport the same. And I think to that we need to understand a little bit more before we start to categorizing it and putting it, putting into boxes. We kind of need to understand a bit more about it, see more of the data, see the crossover of sport, see where the cultural moments are that we can do. So that's. It's a work in progress, in all honesty. But we aren't here to. What we don't want to do is we're not going to pigeonhole it into something we've just shown our first event. We're very much learning. We're still on a, on a mission to learn more, to understand more about the community, spending far too much time in Reddit trying to understand the team up. So, so we're very much in a learning stage of it. What's exciting is, and this is one of the strengths that you get with work with Dazn is because of the nature of what we do and we're taking very seriously in the sports spaces. You saw some fantastic articles come out around the partnership and the one I love was actually in Italy. So Wired in Italy did a massive piece around NHRL and what this means. And so I love that. And I don't think we need to say we fit in this box. I think we can be a bit bolder than that and we can see how things evolve over time and ultimately where the stories of the sport will take us as well. Because the one thing you can predict is it's unpredictable.
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D
Right?
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think we think not to put words in Ed's mouth or anything or steer anything in a specific direction because it is something that requires a lot of thought and planning, is we have long thought about our sport as kind of part of a new category of sports that's emerging that really leans into sports that are mentally and challenging and a little bit more of an intelligence based sport and really looking at a new category that leans not necessarily in a physical direction, but is a little bit more of that. You know, obviously there's a physical aspect and the engineering aspect. There's just this intersection of tech and sports where you're seeing lots of different partners and lots of different platforms and properties that are emerging. And I think it's just an interesting time for sports and you're seeing more of those come out. So who knows? We'll see.
- [16:13]
D
One of the cool things that we've been doing over the past year is actually trying to highlight the sport like around the world. And it's amazing that I'm finding almost 100, 200 different events in Combat robotics all around the world. And actually you're talking about Italy. They have a major event in Italy on a regular basis over there too. So it's, I think this really is a global audience and it's going to be interesting to see how this partnership really helps to grow the sport beyond NHRL and everything else around the world,
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C
which would be kind of cool.
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B
Yeah. To Tony's point, when we were doing that summer series and seeing all the things around the sport, there was little pockets and the little pockets, you kind of had to know that this pocket was there in Norway. You kind of had to know this pocket was there wherever. And having something that kind of links all of those together at a global scale is really cool and exciting. So we talked about how we got to the partnership. I wanted to talk about what it means for Com Aerobotics. And I'm going to sound like a one of those interviews that you have every time you go for a job or interview. But what does success look like one year from now and five years from now? I know that's a very interview question, but I figured it was, it was a good one. Like in your eyes, what does it look like to be successful in this partnership, like a year or five years down the road?
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C
Kelly, do you want to go first or do you want me to go first on this one?
- [17:34]
A
You go first. Take this one.
- [17:36]
C
Perfect. So I think where I'd love to be in one year, our partnership and, and look, this, this is a kind of up to me, right? So I'm not marking my own homework. Here is the two metrics I, I we really care about here at DAZ is remember, this is completely free. So there's no barrier to entry. So it's basically how many people are watching and regularly watching and then how long are they watching for? So they're the, they're the two bit metrics that we, we love here at Dazn. Now to achieve that, what do we need to do? The overarching ambition and what we kind of say to the team here is we want to be authentic with the audience. So we've got an existing audience that we want to make sure we're super serving and feeling we're doing them justice as the, you know, the broadcaster of choice, the place where they want to go to watch NHRL Pro Tour. But also then how do we start to tell the story to a wider audience and can we get them engaged as well? So really it's understanding being authentic to the audience today, but also starting to serve the audience of tomorrow. And then in five years it's very much about, you know, still making sure we've got a great offering for the fan today, but making sure we've got a platform where it's being viewed, you know, across across the world in all the 200 countries that we're in. So how do we start to, you know, keep building and the tide rising for more and more people saying which, you know, in turn, and I think this is where Kelly and I were so aligned in our initial conversations, will open up so many opportunities for everyone involved in the sport, everyone watching the sport, because obviously the more people you have engaged with it, the more you can invest in serving the fan and the more you can get eyeballs for sponsors, etc. Etc. So that's kind of our one year is really just to be an authentic place and to start to build it out and five years is to kind of massively expanded that.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think on our end all of those things are, are true, but I think looking at it from the lens of NHL and the builders and the competitors, it's really having those competitors have built true fan bases not just for the sport, but of the builders and of the teams that's really, really important to us. And I think that, you know, Dazn has a ton of really creative, great ideas. And also because they have so many different sports properties and so many different, you know, they've got lots of talent, they've got lots of athletes. There's lots of ways for us to lean into some of the, some of the tactics that they've used to build up those sports and build up those, those competitors. And that's a big piece of what we want to do, is to be able to help that kind of awareness and that kind of exposure to translate into what really defines a pro sport, which is that there's frankly sponsorship and money that can come in that makes it more doable. And for our sport where there is, you know, a significant amount of cost that is on the builders and on the teams, we want to make sure that as the sport grows that that translates into better deals and bigger deals for the builders. And so I think for success on our end it's about, you know, obviously we would like to see the, the social growth, we'd like to see the engagement on the platform with Dazn, but we'd also like to see that translate into the sport itself and to see the sport grow along with it. That's a big piece of how I would say we would measure success and that that requires some, some help of, from the builders themselves and from the teams to, to organize on, on social and to do more on promotion and all of that. But it's a, it's certainly something that we'll have to evolve over time.
- [21:06]
C
Yeah, I think just, just to. Oh, sorry, if I could just add, just add to that where we get to as well with the builders. It is the way we will grow is by personalities and having people and having, having talking points and discussions. One of the, the elements of obviously we are, we're beyond a broadcast platform. Right. So it's not just about live here, it's not just about kind of catch up. It's also about how do we engage the builders in the platform. And one of the new products we've just launched is a, is a player chat. So the idea is that you can watch the world's best players and we launched it in football. You can watch the world's best players on design, but you can actually now chat to them. So we launched a player chat functionality. It's kind of like a WhatsApp but turbocharged where anyone, it kind of translates into any language. But you know, so we've had people like Balde plays for Barcelona or Enzo Fernandez, he's the only guy to win the World cup and the club World cup on there. And fans can engage. We would love to take some of this functionality in the, you know, in the years to come and start to roll that out to the builders and so they can actually have a unique one on one relationship, ask the questions they've always wanted to ask. It's about breaking down those barriers. But to be able to do that, for us to be able to invest, we need to create personalities. We need to be able to create individual social. Not everyone wants to do that. And that's absolutely fine. But it'd be great if those thinking like wanting to build something longer term start to invest in their own personal profiles and you know, more coverage the better because it will help everyone.
- [22:28]
D
So I had an issue. You brought up stuff about looking at the metrics and things like that. Do you have the ability to actually look at um, I know you have the ability to look at new audience that are coming in after pro league started or looking at the pro league, but do you have the ability to look at the metrics for the crossover? So like if somebody was on your site looking at boxing and stuff like that, but now they're looking at the Combat Robotics and the NHRL offerings. Do we have, do you have that ability to look at those crossover metrics?
- [22:55]
C
Yeah. One of our, one of our big strengths is as dizz we're we're a global sports platform and you are completely right. Cultural moments and cultural crossover is two of the biggest kind of things that we've got in our, in our, in our armory or our weaponry that we can use to kind of help grow. So we've got so many examples of crossover particularly from kind of boxing to football or recently we, we showcase the wrestling pay per views for example and we did a massive crossover. We had, we had the big show in the office. Turns out he is, he is quite big. Not moving as, as gingerly as he once was. But we did a lot of crossover content with him for example with boxing, with some upcoming boxing fights. So you can, we have the ability and it takes time to build and to be, to have enough data to make sure it's, it is in the right direction. But we'll build that up over time and we'll work with Kelly and the team. We would love to see some crossovers. We would love to take someone from a different sport adjacent and bring them into the, into the world and actually understand a little bit more about you know, how these things are built. The, the amount of time and effort that goes in and, and find the crossovers.
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B
I, yeah, I, I, I want to see a football team create a combat robotic combat robot. That would be awesome. I love that.
- [24:04]
F
Yeah.
- [24:04]
B
So, so we talked about the, the growth kind of touched on the impact in the long term growth of Combat Robotics. The, the focusing on the builders and allowing the builders to contact their fans. I mean we see that a lot in the discord and we know people like Jameson go love to reach out to builders. We, we see him with fans all the time like signature, like writing signatures and, and talking to fans whenever they come up in a pit. So I think that's a really cool idea. So the. A lot of the audience consists of those builders and competitors, but for the partnership for D Own, it is getting a lot of those people that may not know what it is and getting those in for the first time. So how. I mean, we talked about a little bit, but how. What's the goal of getting them to understand exactly what it is when they're looking at it? Is, is there anything, Kelly, on the production side to change so that new time viewers from Dazn that may not know even what it is may be able to understand a little better? I know in the first pro tour, we went over the seeds a little bit more often. We went over the partnerships a little more often. But is there more like of the goals, there's more of the. The plans that way to maybe tweak a little bit so that newer people that have no idea what they're watching on Dazn and click over are able to understand a little bit quicker?
- [25:30]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think you saw when we announced the partnership and when it went live on Dazon's platform that we also released a suite of content there that helped to introduce the sport to new audiences. And I think that you'll just see us doing more and more of that and also taking, you know, different playbooks from other sports and figuring out how are they packaging things in. In post production to recap what happened at an event or how are you creating more storytelling about builders as an example? I think that builder stories, and again, to like, bring it back to the point that Ed and I were just talking about around the builders, you know, building even bigger profiles and even bigger fandoms. So much of how people get excited about sports and become fans of sports is because they find a team or they find a person that they're excited about and they like that story or they relate to that person in some way. And so doing more and more of that kind of storytelling and helping to one help to support builders as they're building up those profiles, but to being able to tell those stories in meaningful ways, whether it's in the broadcast or in packaged content outside of that, I think that that's a huge avenue for how we'll help to make everybody realize how. How much more relatable it is. I mean, you guys know, I didn't have anything to do with robots and robot fighting before almost five years ago now, but the way in which I really fell in Love with it was really understanding the people and also understanding more about the thought process that goes into designing and building and fighting and the iterative process. It's all just incredibly inspiring and really interesting when you start to dig into it. But it can be a little bit of a barrier to entry to just start with the sport for some fans. So I think it'll really introduce the sport to more fans by humanizing the teams, humanizing the builders and being able to showcase more of that. So I think that that's, to me, one of the big pieces is to be able to introduce not just the explainer content. And there's going to be more of that. We're redoing the graphics for the next Pro Tour event and stuff like that. So there's going to be some new pieces there also working on ways in which we can leverage downtime in the stream, just cage turnover times and things like that, to do more about storytelling and scene setting and helping people do. Helping people who are watching understand what happened and what's happening a little bit more. So those are all conversations that we've been having internally for the last couple of weeks and thinking about ways to do it. But a lot of it does come down to that, that builder storytelling and making sure that as builders are active, more active on social and not just obviously the Discord is an incredible platform for that direct access to. To, you know, somebody like Jameson, as you mentioned, to be able to interact with fans there and to interact with them on site at events. That's part of it. But really we'll have to ensure that our social presence and the social presence of builders is where all of those fans are going to be. And that's not, you know, just in Discord. And that's a little bit more of how do we build those profiles on. On Instagram, on TikTok, et cetera.
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F
There are a few builders that really have really good. Have been building a really good social product, a social area of their own. I mean, like, Max Morningstar has been putting out a lot of good stuff on YouTube. He does like long form and short. It's hilarious. It's the best everybody looks forward to. Looks forward to his. When he does his videos and everything like that. Seth does a really good job and he's been getting into a lot of short form now, too. There's a few good builders that have been really working really hard on it and everything like that. There's also people like Brandon who do. Brandon Bennett Young who do after events and all their builds like write ups and everything like that. So there are a bunch of builders that already like. But I mean like, I feel like this partnership can really do a lot for taking what they already do and being like shining an even brighter light on those people. And there's so many people, we've been doing this forever and so many people in this community are just like our personal heroes that it's like, it's funny to go to an event and be able to be like, oh, I really look up to this builder. This builder is amazing. And yet like, I just talk to them like they're normal people and it's the best thing in the world.
- [30:13]
B
Well, I mean all these I.
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F
This community is so, so nice. Like all other sports are like very competitive and you never see, you never expect like Max Verstappen to be like really nice to somebody else. But this sport is really good for all of our builders are like really nice to people. They're really nice to their fans and everything like that. So I love the idea of these people being able to not just do this as like their sport on the side, but also being able to get like a sponsorship. That they could actually do this for a living is amazing to me.
- [30:50]
D
Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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E
As soon as the first builder gets like a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, there's gonna be a lot a massive wave of wait, I could do that too. So it just has to be that one person that takes it off.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah. I mean it's, it's not easy by any stretch and it's a time commitment and all that, but that's really when you start to look at the difference between where the sport has been for a long time and launching into the pro level like that. That's a distinguishing factor is, you know, how, how committed are you to, to this? Not just as a, as a builder, not just as an engineer and as a competitor, but also in the ecosystem that surrounds this. How are you launching into sports the way that, that traditional sports are look on a, from a media lens and from a media standpoint. And that's a different thing than we've been focused on. And I think it's incredible. The builders that have built have been content creators for a long time. There are so many who've really leaned into that and obviously create not just content that is about nhrl, but also is just helping create more accessibility in the sport and getting more people excited about it. So the more that builders are doing that and the more that they're also introducing themselves a little bit more also you know, there's, you know, the distinguishing factor between, you know, builders that are, you know, leaning into branding and colors and stuff like that, that that kind of consistency starts to also help with the recognition of, like, oh, I can recognize this builder or this robot and connect the dots between those things. That's going to be increasingly important and something that, you know, again, when you look at any traditional sport, you see that consistency and you can tell, you know, in Formula One who's on which team and who they're represented by from a sponsor standpoint. And so those are important, important things that we're going to start to try to push within the community, more particularly the pro level, wanting to make sure that everybody is leaning into that marketing and branding aspect for themselves, for their teams, perhaps more than you would see at the more open level.
- [33:13]
D
So I know a lot of our builders and stuff like that are very young, so what is this partnership going to do along those lines, helping kind of guide those marketing aspects? Because these. They're kids, for all intents and purposes, they're kids. Even Jameson's, who's getting up there at a little bit of age, he's still really a kid. So it's like, how are you guys going to work with them to help them with that marketing in that aspect, to help grow them as well?
- [33:40]
A
I think, obviously, there's an aspect of it where some of it comes from NHRL and guidance and providing just space on the platform for that kind of storytelling. I think that it's about leaning into a few folks who are really ready, willing and able and eager to have to start to build that playbook and start to make it clear these are the sorts of things that work. But a lot of it, too, is just people who are creating content and seeing that gain traction. Um, that's. That's a big aspect of how things. How platforms will grow. And so it's not necessarily something that has to be taught by us. I think a lot of it is just the. The commitment to trying and to, you know, taking our reps on footage, for instance, and recapping the way that a lot of the builders are doing, you know, kind of creating that, getting into it and just starting to do it. That's really how a lot of creators are learning and that's. You have to kind of think about it like a creator. As it is, NHRL can certainly help to provide some support and some guidance. We're always happy to talk and give people advice. We've done that a lot. But the more that builders are excited about this and it's something that they're experimenting with and we can see that and see that commitment and see that traction. We're happy to help. But it's a lot of also, you know, some of it is self taught and it's, it's just learning by trial and error the same way that it is with designing and fighting robots. You know, it's a lot of putting something out there, seeing how it works and if it doesn't, iterating on that and moving forward. Ed, would you add anything to that that maybe in your experience with helping people who maybe haven't built a platform for themselves before, how you guys help support that?
- [35:38]
C
Yeah, it's a really good question. I, in a past life I worked for quite a big football club in, in the UK and Premier League football club and we spent a lot of time working with the individual players to give them a bit more direction and the aim was to try and help them cut through to get different sponsors. So I think, I think we're always here to help as well with, with the zone and, and pick up different people from different sports. I think fundamentally having a bigger platform always helps because you will naturally get more eyeballs on you which will kind of give you that kickstart moment to go. There's nothing. The hardest bit about creating content is creating the. You've got to be quite resilient, haven't you? Got to be able to keep going and going and going. So having more eyeballs should help that process, make that process a bit quicker and reward people for putting in good content. The one thing we always look for is people who are distinctive. So you know, are they cutting through, are they doing something a bit different? We call it the sea of sameness. When you have everyone trying to act the same, it's very hard to cut through. So we love people who are distinctive, people who, who do things a slightly different way, people who are. Have a different approach to other people that, that creating that standout is what people love characters. People go and, and so that's probably our advice from zone point of view view is to, to find out what, what makes you a bit different and really double down on that and not try and do too much. Just, just do your thing and do it very well and, and the audience will reward it and then we'll guide you as to where to go next.
- [37:03]
A
Yeah, I mean I think building on that there's in all sports, if you're a fan of, I mean I'm from a basketball an NBA house. And so, and a big Knicks household. And the Knicks are right now having a very legendary run in the NBA Finals. And it's a really exciting moment. And you know, everyone's kind of jumping on the bandwagon because they see this underdog and it's this exciting moment of, you know, the Knicks have had a long suffering run to get here and it's great to see it. And there's just. You can't help but look at that and say, wow, that's amazing, and be excited and interested in it. And so I think it's like thinking about that and thinking about, you know, in, in any sport there's a team or an athlete who is maybe the villain or the goat or, you know, somebody who is that underdog or somebody who's that kind of like up and coming person who's unseating everybody. Those are all like very human, relatable things that will help to make the fans and the builders connect a little bit more and to create more fans of the sport. Is like, you see, Julian, of course, is like leaning heavily into his villain era. And it's, it's great to see that kind of embracing of, you know, wanting to carve out a character arc for himself. And I think that there's just a lot of that that can be. Can be captured in a way that feels, as Ed was saying, it's incredibly important that it's authentic and it's not something that, you know, is. Comes across manufactured or comes across as like too, too entertainment. Y. Like, I don't think that you want to lean so hard into it that it comes across as icky. But I think that those stories are preexisting within the community. You know, everybody can kind of think of how people fit together and teams come together, they break apart. You know, there's all sorts of different things that already exist. And so I think it's trying to help figure out where you want to fit into, into that narrative and how you want to build your own character, I guess, in your own content and your own identity in the sport, particularly at the pro level. Thinking about those sorts of things, that was a jumbly way to say that. But hopefully, hopefully some of those words made some sense.
- [39:38]
B
Yeah, no, no, definitely, definitely. So one of the things I also wanted to ask is NHL has a lot of shorts. They're doing a really good job taking fights, turning them into shorts, taking moments like that moment when friggin in the bot got stuck in the side of the, the plexiglass Last event and turning that into shorts that people can fragment. Fragment X. Yes, sorry. Ryan's always there with the bot names for me. Is there any other ideas or any other work being done to take the longer event streams and turn them into smaller pieces for casual viewers? Maybe not on Disown or on the Zone or. Or turn them more into pieces that people can watch and not have to watch an entire day stream? Because I know NHL has been working on that, turning one into smaller pieces and then the smaller pieces in the short form. And is there more work doing that so that we can take the casual fans that may not know what it is and transition them into being fans and then transition them into the longer form? Like, what are the thoughts there?
- [40:45]
A
Yeah, I think it's still early days on some of that for us, given that we've had one Pro tour event and so trying to figure out, you know, what we will do long term is going to be something that we have to figure out over time. One of the things that, you know, folks have always asked us about is creating a highlight real and, you know, some kind of a recap. And when we've been YouTube exclusive like I was talking about before, discoverability of content on YouTube is really, really hard. And to create, we tried a lot of different things in terms of highlights over time and, you know, experimenting with things and it can be really, really difficult to like, get the return there. But I think what's great about the DAZN partnership is that, that, you know, dazona is investing a lot in the discoverability of NHRA within its platform and it's a lot easier to come across that and it's a lot easier to build to reach potential new fans rather than it, you know, being lost to the ether of YouTube and just like the core followers and core fans who are always engaging with the content. So I think that you'll see us experimenting a little bit more with some of those core that might live exclusively on DAZN or might be something that we put on YouTube and DAZN. But it opens up the door for us to create new types of content that we haven't necessarily seen a lot of success with on YouTube, but we still think are make the sport more accessible to a new fan.
- [42:20]
D
So actually over in the uk, Robot Rebellion is actually a great way that they look at this. They actually take each of the rounds and basically turn them into like half hour of videos. So it's like. And then it's like an episodic type thing which kind of works on YouTube but doesn't really work as well. But I wonder like on a platform like Dazn if those type of things would work a little bit better because then like you could have somebody that'll just been watch a whole bunch of them where it's like, oh, I have a half hour, let me watch one of the videos and then a week later I can watch another one type thing.
- [42:53]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think like I said, there's going to be a lot of experimenting. I think there's lots of ways to make the rounds more accessible. You know, we've done a lot of shows in the past for stuff like Cheddar where we kind of take a specific segment of the tournament. Primetime is, is a vehicle for that and then kind of separating things out maybe by weight class or something. There's all sorts of ways that we've, we've talked about doing different sorts of content post event but it'll be about figuring out what works and, and seeing what are the things that are gaining traction and, and it's still again a little early for definitively what that's going to look like. But we're going to take a lot of guidance from the Dazn team on these are the things that are working, these are the things that have worked for other sports on the platform and try to use that to help guide our content strategy. We're lucky that we have the benefit of that expertise to be able to help say this is the kind of thing that works really well for our audience.
- [43:54]
B
Ed, do you have any examples of other sports that you see kind of in line of where NHL is right now like a couple of years ago that are bigger now? Like I know you said there's not a one to one roadmap. You treat every sport as a separate unique thing. But is there any kind of comparisons that you can think of that are on kind of the same roadmap?
- [44:18]
C
Yeah, I, I, I don't really like getting into comparisons because I think every sport's different, every fan base is different and you're ultimately our job is to super serve the fan base and then look to grow it. If I was to give like a parallel though as to a sport that was relatively low key or wasn't seen as a professional sport and where it is today, I always look to darts. I always a bit wary when talking to other side of the pond where darts is. But in Europe especially darts has come from absolutely nowhere and was probably not seen as professional, wasn't seen as a sport by quite a lot of the community and is now a mainstream sport. And Sky Sports, who are the predominant paid broadcaster in the uk, I think it's their most viewed content outside of football that they now have on the platform. And you've got characters there who didn't have any profile.
- [45:11]
D
Right.
- [45:11]
C
A lot of these darts players didn't have a profile. You had the odd one like full of power or you had Van Gogh, but now you've got someone like Luke Littler who is, you know, I think he's 18 or 19 years old, is, is a superstar in his own right. So we always look at darts as a great example of something that can grow exponentially if it has the right platform to do it and the right characters to help get it there. Because the sport of darts grew because it had great characters behind it and great narratives playing out. We talk a lot about, you know, hype is the most important narrative in sport. You got to, you got to get people to want to watch it, to find, to invest in the characters and to do it. Darts did that very well. So I think we could look at a sport like darts and then take some of the parallels of how the stars of the sport weren't stars and became stars and start building their own profile. You know, they now push their own walk on music and the walk ons are almost as famous as the actual action itself. So that's, that's probably the best example I could give you about something that's kind of grown hugely and is now truly a mainstream sport. And I think they're actually coming over to the US to, to do Madison Square Gardens very soon.
- [46:15]
B
Wow. Okay, very cool. So just the, the final thing I want to talk about is just looking ahead. Um, question for both Kelly and Ed. What excites you each about the future of Combat Robotics itself?
- [46:27]
A
Oh, man, I know.
- [46:30]
B
That's a loaded question.
- [46:32]
A
That is, that is a loaded question. Um, man, I don't know. I mean, it's, I, I've been at this for almost five years and this feels like just a really big milestone that we've been working so hard to get to. So I'm right now like very much relishing in that.
- [46:52]
B
Which you should. I mean it's, it's huge.
- [46:54]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like putting my, my forward thinking hat on. I mean, I guess we're, we're really excited about, about the, the pro level because it just, you know, we, it gives us so much more control over, over the, the production. It's, it's a Smaller field, it's known builders. I mean, we saw it in May. I mean, every single fight was awesome. And so it's just like, so great to be able to see that come together and to really, like, see so much of what we've been working toward happen. I'm still kind of like thinking retrospectively at the moment. I think I'm just really excited for the future like we've been talking about. I'm really excited to see the builders and the sport really grow exponentially at this point. Like, we want the top of the pyramid, this, like, pro level of the sport to get really big and to see the impact that that will have on the rest of the sport. You know, down to the grassroots local and regional events that are growing so quickly and that are happening so much more frequently. And Tony, you were talking about the international reach of the sport and looking at partnering with the Brazil folks right now and sending Sam and Colin down to New Zealand to participate in the World cup there. It's just so fun to see that international reach happening and to continue to see a lot of that growing. And I'm just really excited for all of that to be more mainstream and for that to really hit. This is such a cliche answer, but, you know, I just think it's really seeing all of these things that we've known can be true for our sport and have known, like this should matter to more people and to be able to actually start to see it mattering to more people is really exciting. And I'm just, you know, I'm just really excited to actually see see those things happen. That was like the lamest answer of all time. But no, just right now. So still kind of relishing in the fact that this is happening and just excited for it all to come together and hopefully you've got a better answer than me.
- [49:17]
C
I mean, we've kind of come into NHRL on a standing star, full transparency. Like I wasn't aware of the world. I was lucky enough to have Kelly and the team give me the induction to get some of the best clips, to get a bit of a crash course in it. I love it. I watched pretty much every minute of the pro tour on Dazone and it kind of captured my imagination. So I'm excited to take. Take some of the magic that's there and let it capture the imagination of a wider audience and that. That for me feels. Feels something quite special. And if we can help the builders out there and the people listening start to help tell the story as well and get people to watch it, preferably on the Zone, if they could do that message. It is free. You know, we can start to build stories, build narratives, and it feels quite like a luxury to be in this place to go. Like, we feel we've got, like, a bit of a gem here, and it's our job as the custodians and Kelly and the team and trusting design is to get it out to more people and see where it can go.
- [50:17]
B
Okay.
- [50:18]
C
Okay.
- [50:18]
D
So, Ed, you mentioned earlier your team wants to actually build your own robot. Like, there's great events over in the uk. There's amazing events, like, weekly and monthly everywhere. So it's like, absolutely, build a bot, bring it to the event, have some fun.
- [50:34]
C
Well, we'll have to take you off on that. I need to. I need to work out who I need to get in the team to start building it. We've. We're quite lucky. Across the world, we've got huge engineering teams, so they are. They're chomping at the bit, so. Well, Kelly and the team very kindly are sending us over some robots as well. So we're having lots of fun in the office. It's capturing the imagination. And so, yeah, we're, We're. We're very much fully behind it.
- [50:57]
A
Yeah. So Sam and I are heading over to London in a few weeks to meet with the design team, and I'm sure Sam will give him some pointers.
- [51:06]
B
Oh, yeah, definitely. Sam is some evil henchmen. Yeah.
- [51:10]
A
Yes. The evil henchman advice that he can. That he can give to the design team. So that'll be good.
- [51:16]
B
Yeah. You're going to be up until 3am Ed, building a robot with Sam, that's what's going to happen.
- [51:23]
A
It's a slippery slope, that's for sure.
- [51:25]
B
Oh.
- [51:25]
F
Oh, it is. You start getting, like, toolboxes full of parts that you're like, no, I need. I need a better one. You just buy new things and everything like that. It becomes an addiction. It's pretty great.
- [51:36]
A
Well, they've been working on the dream bots for this upcoming event. The. We do this thing where the fans who come to the tournament, we let them draw a picture of a robot. It's mostly done by kids, but they'll, like, draw some kind of a robot that they want to build. And I believe that we have some kind of a weaponized lawnmower being 3D printed at the moment up against what I believe is like a humpback whale. And the tail actuates up and it has, like, a blade on it that spins. So they were, you know, with a weapon lock, driving it around yesterday in the office. So I'm like outside looking around outside of my office and there's like a, a little whale. Um, so weird things that happen. But Ed, you know, you never know what we're going to bring over with us in, in Sam's suitcase. So that'll be, that'll be interesting.
- [52:36]
C
Very excited.
- [52:37]
B
So that, that transitions to the. I have two more questions, two closing questions, One for Ed and one for Kelly. Ed, after watching nhrl, do you have a favorite robot yet?
- [52:47]
C
Uh, well, I'm slightly biased, but obviously Sam and, and Colossus, obviously being the winner of the first pro tour on the zone. So that, that's probably where I'm guy.
- [52:56]
B
Okay, very cool. And Kelly, what robot or moment best represents what makes NHRL special to you? I know, I know that's a, a big question to ask, but do you have a robot?
- [53:06]
A
You're really like the loaded questions this morning, it's not even, not even 9am interviews. What, what moment? What robot?
- [53:16]
B
Like, if you could pick a, a robot or a builder that, that best like, encapsulates what makes NHRL special to you.
- [53:25]
A
I think there's, there's so many. And so it's hard. I feel like I'm going to be. I always get nervous about answering questions like this because someone's going to like, find fault with whatever I say or they're like, well, not. What about that one? There's so many. But I think, you know, one of the things that I've referenced a lot in the last few months was last year's World Championships run, particularly the three pound bracket and seeing like the, the final matchups in primetime, like looking at, at the primetime lineup and then looking at who made it into the top four. And then to see Alex win and to like see that arc and to, to see like he wasn't anywhere close to like one of the highest ranked robots in the tournament at that point, and then suddenly just like comes out and wins it. It was just like this incredible arc to see that. And you know, then kind of unpacking that story and unpacking, you know, Alex kind of his earliest fight, I think he had lost against Jamo. I think his first fight or something, he lost against Jamo and then knocked Jamo out of world champ. It was just like this incredible story to kind of see that happen. And it just felt like this moment of, you know, we've been talking a lot about the stories that exist within the sport that just feel like, so relatable and so just the kind of thing that you're just, I mean, that you just hear about in any other sport. And to see that really play out and to know all of that, it's like those, that sort of story and that sort of context happens at every single event. There's always something like that. And to see those things play out, that's just one that, like, really kind of stuck with me and felt like this is something anybody can relate to. And it really plays into, like, this should matter to more people. I know I always say that, but it's like, these are incredible, incredible builders, and there's just so much of that. And I don't know, again, I feel like there's so many examples, but that's just the first one that comes to mind halfway through my first cup of coffee of the day.
- [55:33]
B
No, that's why, I mean, the one that I had in, in mind been, like, writing this question and thinking about this as far as, like, capturing what NHL is about, what the sport is about. And I know we talk about Corey a lot, but the Corey versus Booty Braid, it will always stand out as that moment that shows that this isn't a sport that people pour sweat, tears, and emotions into. Um, and that moment just always stands out as, like, one of those sports moments, one of those, like, like Grand Slam world, you know, it's just insane.
- [56:09]
A
So collapsing to the ground is, like, forever imprinted in my brain, and then that's, like, making me think of, you know, like, Keziah's first dumpster. Like, that was such an incredible moment. Like, just so many of those that you're just like. I mean, I'm not typically much of a crier, but that one got me for sure. So, you know, I think it's just, like, to be able to, to see this sport that matters to so many people and so many builders, to see their success and to see them, like, continuing to grow and to have new people join the sport who then have, you know, these incredible, incredible runs. And it's just, it's, it's magic. And it's just, I, I, I've loved it since day one. And it's just, you know, I, I love. Who knows, maybe my next favorite moment will happen on Saturday. Tomorrow.
- [57:03]
B
Yeah.
- [57:04]
F
Okay.
- [57:05]
B
So, Kelly and Ed, thank you both for joining us today and helping us better understand this partnership over the last couple of months has been one of the biggest stories in Common Robotics. I think today's conversation has done a great job of explaining not only how this partnership came together, but, but also what it can mean for the future of the sport. It's exciting to hear the vision both organizations have for growing Combat Robotics into the sport. It could be and is. So, to everyone listening, thank you for joining us for this special edition of the HAVOC Rundown. If you enjoyed today's episodes and want more Combat Robotics coverage, interviews, rankings and event coverage and merchandise, be sure to visit havocrundown.com you can also visit Havoc Rundown on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you're at, podcast podcasts. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to, like, subscribe and comment. Let us know what your thoughts are. Again, thank you, Kelly and Ed, for taking the time out to talk to us about this. It's something that we've been really excited about, the community's been really excited about. They have a lot of questions that hopefully we answered today and it's. It's just exciting. Crossroads in time for the sport. So just thank you both for being able to talk to us about this.
- [58:10]
A
Of course. Happy to do it. Thank you guys for having us.
- [58:13]
C
Thanks so much, guys.
- [58:15]
B
Until next time, I'm Justin, and on behalf of Ryan, Tony and Thomas, we'll see you back here on the HAVOC Rundown. Everyone say goodbye.
- [58:21]
D
Bye.