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- [00:02]
Nilay Patel
Welcome to the vergecast flagship podcast of phones that are also laptops and tablets and maybe kind of smartwatches. I'm your friend David Pearce and I just got a new game for the Nintendo Switch and this is a surprisingly big deal to me. So I'm sure I've talked about this before, but my like, true sweet spot era of gaming growing up was the Nintendo 64, which means I logged in, know, a million hours on GoldenEye. I played a lot of Mario Party, I played a lot of Mario Golf. But the Nintendo 64 game for me was Mario Tennis. It was the game I played against all of my friends all of the time. We would have these epic five set, like three hour long matches. It was the best game ever to sort of sit next to somebody and have a conversation while you also were playing a video game, because there's a lot happening but you don't have to fully focus. I loved it very much. But anyway, this new game, Mario Tennis Fever, just came out for the Switch 2. So I immediately got it. And I have to say, so far it's like, it's good, it's kind of a lot. These games have gotten much more complicated and gimmicky and just kind of wacky over time. They're all trying to bring more stuff into it and that's frankly not for me. I liked when it was just tennis, but this is still tennis on the Switch and I will play it, presumably for decades. I'm very excited about that. Anyway, I'm going to put this away because I'm just going to get distracted otherwise. Today in the show, we're going to do two things. First, we're going to talk to Allison Johnson about an experiment she's been doing about whether she can actually use a folding phone as a computer. This is a thing people have been talking about forever. It's sort of the dream of big phones is that they can adapt to be other things. Allison has given it a real try. She's bought some gear, she's used the thing, and she's going to tell us how it went. Then Jacob Feldman, our friend from Sportico, is going to come on and catch us up on the state of sports streaming. We have some YouTube TV news, the super bowl just happened, the Olympics is going on right now. And it seems like a good moment to just catch up on what it means to be a sports fan in 2026. Plus, we have a hotline question about foldable phones, which happens to be right up my alley at this moment. I'm very excited to talk about it. All of that is coming up in just a sec, but first I'm to I'm going to go win this tournament because I play with Lefty Luigi and I am unstoppable in Mario Tennis. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.
- [02:25]
Allison Johnson
Support for the show comes from l' Oreal Group, the global beauty leader defining the future of beauty through science and technology. L' Oreal Group, create the beauty that moves the world.
- [02:38]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
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- [03:21]
Allison Johnson
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- [03:23]
Nilay Patel
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- [03:26]
Allison Johnson
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- [03:28]
Nilay Patel
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- [03:32]
Allison Johnson
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- [03:36]
Nilay Patel
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- [03:39]
Allison Johnson
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- [03:46]
Nilay Patel
Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Alison Johnson for senior reviewers here. Hi Alison.
- [03:53]
Allison Johnson
Hello.
- [03:55]
Nilay Patel
You have been on what I would say is one of your stranger phone adventures recently. A thing that you do is just sort of ruin your life with phones in to varying degrees. And that is your job. And I love that for you. But um, you. You've been trying to figure out recently, I would say, how to make a phone work as your computer and it seems like you've had some success.
- [04:20]
Allison Johnson
Uh huh. Yeah. Surprisingly.
- [04:22]
Nilay Patel
How is it going? Tell me, tell me the origin of this experiment first.
- [04:25]
Allison Johnson
Okay, yeah. And it's specifically a foldable experiment which I can date back all the way to the Samsung launching the Z Fold 7 this summer.
- [04:40]
Nilay Patel
Summer.
- [04:40]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. V. Song and I were in this, you know, tin can of an auditorium. WI fi on our phones was like working okay, but we couldn't get our laptops connected. So I was like, hell, this is a computer. I opened it up and used the inner screen and it's just enough room to run like, to like functionally use WordPress. So that was kind of a light Bulb moment.
- [05:05]
Nilay Patel
I remember V came out of that like a changed person.
- [05:07]
Allison Johnson
Yes.
- [05:08]
Nilay Patel
She, she watched You Slack and WordPress in, in sort of a desktopy way on your foldable phone. And she came out of it being like, I have seen the light. Yeah, this is the future.
- [05:18]
Allison Johnson
She still brings it up to this day. Um, it's true. Uh, so, yeah, and I, I, you know, ran the gauntlet of new phones coming out over the fall and into the winter, but I, I find myself with some time to, to use whatever phone I wish right now. Um, so I came back to the Z folds seven. People have been doing this specifically our, our friend Mr. Mobile Michael Fisher. He's been evangelizing the, the Foldable as a computer kind of thing for a long time now. I actually called him up and I was like, what do I do here? Like, give me your, your tips and tricks.
- [05:59]
Nilay Patel
So the thing I liked about your experiment though, and I, I, Mike, Michael is the best. And we'll, we'll link his videos. He's been doing this for a long time. I've never been able to tell for him how sort of real a part of his computing life it actually is. Do you know what I mean? Because I think there's a thing where, you know, we talk about Dex all the time on the show, which is Samsung's sort of desktop browser. All the way back, like 12 years ago, Motorola was trying to do this, this thing. Like, the idea of what if my phone was also my computer is a very old one. But I feel like you in this experiment tried more earnestly than most. Like, this wasn't, this wasn't sort of like a bit you were trying to do. Like, I feel like you, after this question that I have been asking for a long time, which is basically, where does my phone end in my laptop begin? And you tried to sort of see how far into laptop your phone could actually get. And I feel like you got pretty far. Like, were you surprised by how much you have enjoyed using a foldable phone kind of as a computer?
- [07:00]
Allison Johnson
Yes. And I've seen people trying it and doing it over the past few years and kind of wrote it off as like, okay, that's great for them, but, you know, that's like a weirdo thing to do to me.
- [07:12]
Nilay Patel
It's like the exact opposite of the people who bring IMAX to Starbucks. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yes, this is technically a thing you can do, but I don't think you're serious.
- [07:19]
Allison Johnson
Oh yeah. It's like you're Just being way too extra. But I was getting annoyed with like, you know, it. This MacBook Air I have in front of me is a very light laptop, like, relatively speaking. But once I'm leaving the house with it and if all I need to do is get into Chrome and write something up in a Google Doc or WordPress, I'm like, why do I have this big thing? And it, you know, I was thinking about it, it kind of changes your, my, my kind of mindset. You know, if I'm leaving the house with a backpack and I've got my laptop and, you know, water bottle and snacks, I'm like, I'm on a particular kind of journey. Whereas if I can outfit my phone, the thing that I was going to have anyway, into a package that I can put in my purse, all of a sudden I'm on like a totally different kind of journey. I'm like, I don't feel weird if I go run an errand afterwards or if I go pick my kid up. I'm like, what do I do with, you know, do I put the, the laptop in the trunk of the car? It's just, it just all exists at once. And I, yeah, I've gone pretty far with it. I'm not trying to like, replace my computer at my desk, you know, crucially, but it's sort of that thing of like when I leave the house and my needs are pretty straightforward of like, need something to run Google Docs, you know, that's basically a Chromebook. I like, I have Chromebook. It's this phone. And it has really worked surprisingly well.
- [09:03]
Nilay Patel
That is very exciting. So let's walk through the setup you've landed on. It seems like from reading your story, you picked the Z Fold seven pretty immediately that, like, it was clear to you that this, you've been calling this purse computer. It was clear to you that this was going to be purse computer right away. What is it about the Z Fold seven as opposed to like the Pixel Fold or any of the other sort of giant screen phones out there?
- [09:24]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, it really is. Just the size and the weight it is on paper doesn't seem that much smaller or lighter than like the Pixel Fold. But I, I feel the difference every, you know, day that I'm carrying it around, it feels like a normal phone. So if it feels like all upside, you know, what you get with the inner screen as opposed to like, well, I'm putting up with this, you know, kind of heavier phone that fits weird in my pocket to. In order to get this other stuff.
- [09:56]
Nilay Patel
So my phone sucks, but I can kind of type on it is not a good excuse for a phone.
- [10:00]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. And like, you know, maybe if I go to the coffee shop today, I will experience the full magnitude of the
- [10:07]
Nilay Patel
phone, but in the meantime, it's going to be hard to hold and use with my thumbs.
- [10:11]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:12]
Nilay Patel
Not what we're looking for.
- [10:13]
Allison Johnson
So. And it's a. The pixel fold is fine and it does airdrop now, which I enjoy, but Z fold seven just feels like a normal phone. It feels like all upside. So I was like, well, I'm carrying this anyway. Why don't I. You know, the first step is a little keyboard. And I, I saw Michael Fisher posting about, you know, a thing called like a, A travel keyboard, like a port portable keyboard. I didn't know that was a thing. A category of keyboard that exists.
- [10:47]
Nilay Patel
Every imaginable keyboard rabbit hole is 100 times deeper than you can possibly imagine. This is what I've discovered is like, any specific kind of keyboard you need A, exists, B, there are thousands of them, and C, everyone has really strong opinions about all of them.
- [11:02]
Allison Johnson
Oh my God. I have learned very quickly not to ask the keyboard nerds on staff because they just keep recommending stuff that I don't understand. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't get it. Like, I want something that is, that folds in half. Like, our needs are different. So, yeah, I started out, the first thing I ordered was this proto arc. I have them all here because of course I do. So it folds up about the size of. I don't know what I compare this to, like a notebook, but it does kind of a trifold thing and it unfolds into a full size backlit keyboard with like a number pad. And kind of realized that was overkill and it was a little too heavy. Anyway.
- [11:54]
Nilay Patel
Okay, I was just about to say we, We've arrived at my biggest picture question here, which is the minute you buy a keyboard, haven't you completely undone the whole problem you're trying to solve by not having your laptop?
- [12:04]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, I, I started to question the journey honestly. And I really think that part of the, the reason for getting this particular keyboard was because it came with a little, like, carrying case. And I, I was like, well, that can't be the, you know, reason why
- [12:22]
Nilay Patel
I, there's such an easy road here to actually ending up with more gear.
- [12:27]
Allison Johnson
Oh, I am awash in weird little keyboards. It's so silly. Like, they keep arriving and my husband's like, oh, God, another one of these things.
- [12:38]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, so which one ended up working for you?
- [12:41]
Allison Johnson
It's kind of been like a Goldilocks journey. I got one that's, like, really slim and light, folds in half. It's called, like, sams.
- [12:50]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [12:50]
Allison Johnson
It, like, it's the size of a passport, and it. I don't feel it in my purse when I'm carrying it, but it is a little, like, squirrely. When you put it down, it, like, slides around a little bit typing on it. So funny. There's a hinge right in the middle. So you kind of, like, are working around that. What I've landed on is this Logitech. It's called Keys to Go. It's a. It's an iPad keyboard, basically, and is very slim and light. It's sort of right in between, like, the other two I had tried out. It's amazing. I think it's basically the keyboard I use at my desk, but made super small.
- [13:35]
Nilay Patel
This is so funny. I did not realized that was the one you had landed on. And I was fully prepared to tell you that no matter what you've been using, it's not as good as the Logitech Keys to Go. I have one of them lying around here somewhere. And this keyboard has no business being any good. Right? Like, it's not. The keys don't travel really. They're all. It's all sort of one sealed thing. So everything just feels like, kind of gross and membraney, but like 30 seconds of work and I'm typing as fast as I do on my full size keyboard. It is shocking how good that keyboard is. And it basically weighs nothing and the battery lasts forever. I have a red one that for a long time went everywhere with me. And I love.
- [14:11]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, it's so nice in the. The battery. Yeah, it's not USB C rechargeable, but you get three years of battery out of the, like, little coin cell batteries in there. So I'll take that.
- [14:22]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [14:23]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. And it's been great. It's. It's totally the size and weight that I was looking for. I can put it in the bag that's on the back of my.
- [14:34]
Nilay Patel
This is a good example of purse computer versus pocket computer, right? Because the Keys To Go takes this out of being pocket computer, but it remains fanny pack computer or purse computer. Or, like, the thing about the Keys To Go is, like, you mentioned, am I okay just, like, leaving this in the car while I'm at target? Like, the answer is yes. It's a tiny little, like, wafer of a keyboard. If you lose it, I promise it will be okay.
- [15:01]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. Yeah.
- [15:02]
Nilay Patel
So like that there is something about the, like, throw it in the backseat and don't worry about it thing that is also, I think, really important for this particular use case.
- [15:11]
Allison Johnson
Yeah.
- [15:12]
Nilay Patel
What I wonder most about this is my discovery with the keys to go in particular was that actually I realized what I wanted most was not some wild new operating system idea or like I spent less time doing the multitasking stuff than I expected. But I realized like, what the actual utility here for me is to have my phone with a much better keyboard on which I can type much more quickly. And that there was just a series of things that made it feel like I was getting more done on that than I could just with my thumbs on my phone. It just like I could sit, I could put it down, I could prop it up in a coffee shop and it felt like I was doing stuff more efficiently.
- [15:51]
Allison Johnson
Yeah.
- [15:51]
Nilay Patel
But I feel like you, you had, I don't know, you tried to take it a step further. You were like, how can I actually make this feel more like a desktop computer and not just like I can type faster into my phone app?
- [16:03]
Allison Johnson
Yeah.
- [16:04]
Nilay Patel
I feel like that's where all of this starts to fall apart.
- [16:06]
Allison Johnson
It's in it. Definitely. I have boundaries around. Like when I'm willing to take this out as my only computer, I do
- [16:14]
Nilay Patel
want to talk about those boundaries because I think that that line is really complicated.
- [16:18]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Well. And I like, I have some trips coming up. Wouldn't it be nice to not haul my MacBook around? But then I start thinking about using Lightroom on Android and the whole thing just disintegrates. Yeah. But it really is kind of the. I want to leave the house. I want to be as unencumbered as possible. But I still, you know, there's a minimum viable product of I sit down at a coffee shop. Something, you know, Michael Fisher and I talked about is we both have trouble, like writing anything meaningful on a slab style phone. It just feels like you're boxed in and it's. It. I'm like, I can type an email, but everything, anything longer than that just feels like it's not working. So having the inner screen of the foldable changes things for me.
- [17:11]
Nilay Patel
How big is the internal screen on the Z Fold 7.
- [17:13]
Allison Johnson
The inner screen is 8 inches. So just big enough to run WordPress, write my little blogs, and it does something for my mindset. And having a real keyboard in front of me also does the same thing. And it's, there's sort of two parts to this journey, I think, which is convincing myself that the phone is a computer and not a phone. And the keyboard, all of that has done it, you know, like successfully tease
- [17:46]
Nilay Patel
that out for me. What, what does that sort of emotional difference look like?
- [17:51]
Allison Johnson
I think it is the thing. Whereas on a phone, if I'm typing out with my thumbs, you know, it. I'm, I'm just so aware that it's a phone and something about having like keys under your fingers. You're not like tapping around with your thumbs on the screen. Yeah, it, it does it for me. It just like clicks, I think.
- [18:14]
Nilay Patel
Okay, I buy that. So where, where has your line landed? Like, if you're, you're leaving the house, what, what is the most complicated thing you're, you're willing to sit down, prop up the keyboard, open up the phone and try to do it.
- [18:31]
Allison Johnson
Definitely comes down to like, dealing with images. If I am going to be like taking photos and I need to move those onto computer phone and manipulate them and export them. Like, I, I'm sure I could do that on Android, but it makes me kind of queasy. I will do as much as, like, you know, when, when we're writing up some news, we'll get some images supplied and you need to resize them or crop them because they're not quite right and all that. Like, I'm comfortable doing that, but that is like right up to the edge of like, if I need to start doing background cutout things like. Forget it.
- [19:19]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, that, that seems right, but it's. I think, yeah, it seems like if you can hit the list of. I'm comfortable doing basic communication stuff, even if what I need to do is like write a long email, I can. I think spreadsheeting is a tricky one. There's going to be a lot of people who are like, even an 8 inch screen with a keyboard is not enough to do spreadsheeting. Yeah, I think that line is probably different for everyone to some extent. But again, one of the things I keep coming back to is I think Android is part of the problem here. And you, you ran into this a bunch that, like, for our purposes, we use Google Docs like for a living. Right. Like, I, I fundamentally, I, I make Google Docs for my job. It's essentially what I do. Um, Google Docs, the app on Android, is garbage. And if you try to use Google Docs in the web browser, it just constantly yells at you to open the app. And the app is garbage, as I said, because it's garbage. And there's just Sort of this ongoing frustration that I think, like, you mentioned it being a Chromebook. The thing about a Chromebook is it is a really good browser. And if you open up the Z Fold seven and it gave you honest to God, desktop Chrome, I would be so much more compelled by this whole setup because it would feel simple and thoughtful and you could just open up a thing with a bunch of tabs and that would be your work system. But it feels like at every turn, Android is fighting this thing that your phone is trying to let you do. Yeah, that just drives me nuts.
- [20:47]
Allison Johnson
And you can wrestle it into a place that works, but you do have to be willing to deal with the weird Edge cases where it's just funny. Like, some stuff is just so much better on the inner screen in a Chrome tab as opposed to the app Slack. Terrible on the, you know, like, tablet kind of screen. It just is the Slack app, but stretched so there's a bunch of white space that's not used. But actually, Richard Lawler, our friend and senior news editor, he was like, I opened it in Chrome and it's great. It's everything you want it to be. You get the columns and, yeah, you will inevitably, like, close the phone and I'll open that tab on the outer screen and be like, oh, my God, what is this, an app for ants? You know, so you have to be willing to, like, fuss with things a little bit. But when I'm sitting down at the coffee shop to work, you know, I get situated, I get Slack going in a Chrome tab. And what trips me up, and it always tripped me up on a Chromebook is the switching profiles. Like, my phone is, you know, kind of default assigned to my personal Gmail and Google account. I have the work Google account on there, but Chrome is constantly trying to, like, shove it to the backseat. Like, no, no, no, you don't. You don't belong here. Like, every time I open a new tab, it's my personal, you know, Google and. And all the things tied to that. I'm like, no, I want the work profile. And you have to kind of keep doing that. But I, for me, I can get to a place, like, without too much trouble or I can sit down. I have my little blog. I put up with the Google Docs app because I cannot get it to run the desktop version of Google Docs in a Chrome tab, even though it's all made by the same company.
- [23:03]
Nilay Patel
It's. I am convinced that no one at Google has two Google accounts. Somehow they. Because this is. This has been a problem for 20 frigging years. And somehow nobody understands how to just make it work with multiple Google accounts. And also, I don't think anyone at Google uses a web browser. I, I'm dead serious. This is the, it's the only thing I can think of. Everybody is just like, desktop apps are great and, and we don't need web tabs. And I'm like, have you, what if, what if we opened up Google Docs? Wouldn't that be cool on our phones? And they're like, why would you ever do that?
- [23:34]
Allison Johnson
Drives me insane.
- [23:35]
Nilay Patel
Um, but back to your sort of. Is this a computer or is this a phone? Question. Like when you, when you sit down and you're sort of in the flow state of your, your purse computer life, what does the screen look like? Are you, are you in a, are you in a one app at a time thing? And you're sort of flipping back and forth. Are you tiling as many apps as you can fit on this 8 inch screen? Because that's kind of what you would do on a laptop. Like, how does it, how does it end up after you've been doing this for an hour?
- [24:00]
Allison Johnson
I am usually kind of like one app gets most of the screen and that's Google Docs. And then off to the side I'll have like Chrome with whatever I'm referencing or I'm looking up. I had the Pixel, the Google Pixel recorder. You know, I had a transcript and recording that I was referencing kind of back and forth. It gets a little hinky because Google Docs app will constantly, like, you, you have to like tap into it and then you're actively typing and writing. It's not as seamless as if you're just kind of like tabbing back and forth on a desktop. You can, you can open like so many tabs on little windows. On the Samsung in particular, I find that like, I, I can just as easily, you know, have my two apps set up, swap over to Spotify and, and start playing something. And then, then I've got controls on the keyboard if I need to do something quickly, like pause or turn the volume down.
- [25:15]
Nilay Patel
Okay. So that's, that's like slightly chaotic, but feels sort of manageable. And I feel like I'm looking at my computer right now. I'm sitting in front of a 27 inch screen and I have four windows open, including the one that we're recording into right now. And that's like, that's probably one more than you would do on purse computer. But like, you could split screen, an 8 inch screen fairly functionally. And that would. And Android does allow for that, more or less.
- [25:43]
Allison Johnson
Yeah. And, and Samsung is very like, you can make each window as big or as small as you want to. It doesn't matter if it looks like garbage. They're like, yeah, go for it.
- [25:54]
Nilay Patel
It's so nice of you, Samsung.
- [25:56]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, I appreciate it. Yep.
- [26:00]
Nilay Patel
So what, what about the software in particular would work better for you? Like have you, do you have a wish list coming out of this experiment that you're like, if only I had X, Y or Z, this thing would be totally doable.
- [26:13]
Allison Johnson
I want every company to remember that they have an Android app and to fix the bugs in their Android app. Because it's just like, I know all these developers are running around with iPhones and they're like, oh, something is horribly broken on Android. So first things first, fix your Android apps. Second, I think the profile thing is really the only thing that I get tripped up on over and over. And I'm kind of like this, like it could just be better, you know, I, I know how I have it working on my laptop. You know, the two profiles coexist reasonably well on my MacBook. So those would be my two things, I think.
- [27:03]
Nilay Patel
Okay, I think that's a good one. And I think I've actually been thinking a lot about the app thing from a different direction. I've been using this Razer Ultra for the last little while and I am actually, I find myself more and more convinced that I'm right, that flip phones are the correct form factor and should be the future for everybody. So congrats to me. Um, but there is this thing about even, even the apps that are best designed and there are some very good Android apps out there. Like a thing that is true is that iOS apps are better than Android apps. Like, it's just a, it's just a fact. But there are some very good Android apps out there, but none of them have done the work required to work on a bunch of different screen sizes. Right. And this is like the promise of Android is that Android can be functional all the way up to the size of a TV and all the way down to the size of like a watch. Right. Like this. This is the thing we're supposed to do. And there is nothing in these apps that works properly on anything other than like a six point something inch candy bar screen. It doesn't work on the smaller screen. This stuff doesn't work great on the bigger screens. Like, my guess would be the Z fold experience probably works Best in some ways when you have two apps side by side because they are essentially phone apps like you, you get something that looks and feels sort of like a vertical oriented phone app side by side. And that, that in many ways is actually how these things are intended to be looked at. And there's like, Android is so desperate to be versatile, but just hasn't quite finished doing the work and all the developers haven't quite finished doing the work of like you want the phone to be all of these things and to be able to do all of these things and, and, and sort of satisfy all of these different use cases. And technically speaking, Android is so close to that and so much closer than anything else is out there. But there's just all of these tiny little design quirks and the fact that everybody wants to push you to mobile apps because that's what the ecosystem is. And all of this stuff that's like, we've talked a lot about aluminium, this, this like long Google project to unify these things that it's like if Google can actually start to put some of these pieces together, like they will solve purse computer. Like this is the thing they want to make work, which I find very exciting. And every time I use it, I am just less and less convinced that everybody who is going to need to be on board to pull this off is going to be anytime soon.
- [29:20]
Allison Johnson
Yeah, it's frustrating because like the hardware exists like I have. There is so much more like horsepower in this Z Fold seven than like the Chromebook I bought five years ago, you know, Totally. It has, you know, like an insanely good WiFi and cellular chip. Like so many problems, like hardware problems are solved. There's a million tiny keyboards, you know, like it's all here. But then you kind of get let down by the software and you're like, oh, this is where the limitations are. And it feels like, yeah, could, it just, could be so much better.
- [30:00]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. All right, so real talk before I let you go here, you're hypothetical situation. You're going away for the weekend. It's you, you have no work plans. But like we're in the news business. Sometimes work happens. We always exist in a phase of. I might have to work soon, it's a delay. Everybody should do that. But you're going away just for a couple of days. Are you comfortable enough that purse computer, The Z fold 7 can do it, that you're going to leave your laptop at home?
- [30:31]
Allison Johnson
Yes. Yeah, I am, I am bringing purse computer. I'm bringing my little Logitech Keys to go.
- [30:38]
Nilay Patel
Love it.
- [30:39]
Allison Johnson
I have had enough success being in WordPress and getting everything I need to do done that it feels like this is the minimum viable product. I'm not going to run into some weird edge case where I'm like, oh God, now I need to slack somebody to do something for me or like upload an image or something like embarrassing it. It covers all of those basic use cases for our jobs that I'm totally happy and only like 5% unsure.
- [31:15]
Nilay Patel
What do you do with the fact that this thing is going to be super destructive to your battery? Like we, we all kind of baby our phones anyway. And you're saying I'm going to do more aggressive stuff for hours with the screen on even more. Like, are you just killing your phone by 1pm every day now?
- [31:33]
Allison Johnson
No, not quite. I'm. I would not trust it as like a full day. You know, I'm gonna ride the bus downtown and use my phone and sit at a WeWork and write blogs for five hours. Phone. The phone would absolutely be dead for those kind of one to two hour stints in the middle of the day at the coffee shop. I'm finding it's fine. I get to the end of the day, like in the alarmingly low percentages of battery, but it's okay for those little short stints. Anything longer than that, I would definitely plan to have like some recharging time or a battery or something like that. Okay.
- [32:20]
Nilay Patel
The version of this experiment that personally I'm very excited to try is the. The. It's a three hour train ride from D.C. to New York. Can I. Can I purse computer through the whole train ride? Which is like, I very rarely have like serious business to do, but it's, it's a perfect time to catch up on emails and get some reading done and watch a show and whatever and. And that is in theory the thing. This is perfectly set up to do for me really well, without me even needing to bring a bag on the train, which would just be glorious.
- [32:50]
Allison Johnson
There you go. That's the dream.
- [32:52]
Nilay Patel
I like this idea. All right, well, I'm gonna do it. I'm coming to New York in like two weeks. I'm gonna keep you posted. It's gonna be unbelievable.
- [32:58]
Allison Johnson
All right, I want to hear all about it.
- [33:00]
Jacob Feldman
Good.
- [33:01]
Nilay Patel
All right, Alison, thank you as always. Next time we're going to do this from your phone and it's going to be awful and we're going to have a whole different conversation about it.
- [33:07]
Allison Johnson
But I'm ready.
- [33:09]
Nilay Patel
We're going to take a break. Thank you Alison. We'll be right back.
- [33:14]
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- [36:43]
Nilay Patel
Welcome back. One of the most interesting pieces of news to me over the last couple of weeks was a new set of packages from YouTube TV that try to kind of split out different parts of what you might want to watch on YouTube TV. And the funniest thing to me was that there is a sports focused package, right? So the idea is you don't want everything, you just mostly want sports. And the sports package is like 80% as expensive as the whole package. So this really just is the state of sports streaming. Sports rules television, particularly live television, and most of the money and most of the resources and most of the viewership in TV in live events, period, goes to sports. So I figured now was a good moment to catch up on where we are in the state of live sports and streaming. Jacob Feldman, who's a reporter at Sportico, keeps up on this and covers it tons all the time, and he was on the show last year to explain where we were with ESPN and a lot of these changes going on with how the sports industry is morphing itself for a streaming universe. So I invited Jacob to come back and talk about the super bowl and the Olympics and what's going on with YouTube, TV and ESPN, which I honestly forgot launched its streaming thing. We got a lot to catch up on. Let's get into it. Jacob Feldman, welcome back to the Vergecast.
- [37:57]
Jacob Feldman
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
- [37:58]
Nilay Patel
This is like an annual tradition where I watch a bunch of sports and I get really annoyed at how hard it is to watch sports and then I bring you on to talk about watching sports.
- [38:07]
Jacob Feldman
Sports Streaming Therapist is kind of my title in many ways, and so it's an honor to do it.
- [38:12]
Nilay Patel
This sounds about right. So I have a bunch of things I want to kind of jump around and then I want to talk through a bit of a piece you wrote kind of about the sort of big wars in sports streaming coming this year. Um, but I want to start with the Winter Olympics. For anyone who can't see, you're wearing a USA curling jacket, which just hopelessly biases you forever in this whole thing. Uh, have you been watching the Winter Olympics?
- [38:33]
Jacob Feldman
I have been. And. And we can get into this. Obviously, the Winter Olympics overlapped with the super bowl this year, so I was out in San Francisco last week or. Or two weeks ago, depending on when you're listening to this. And so I missed the beginning.
- [38:43]
Nilay Patel
But.
- [38:43]
Jacob Feldman
But I've been catching up and. And. And watching morning, midday, and night.
- [38:48]
Nilay Patel
What have you made of it as a. As a sports business reporter, thinking about, like, the streaming of it, Right? All.
- [38:53]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah, the streaming of it all is amazing. I think as a fan, I think they finally figured this out, and we can talk about the progression here, because for a long time, the Olympics were one of the most frustrating sports to watch. You had it on for three hours each night. They were kind of spending most of the time talking about family backstories, which are great if you're into family backstories, but if you're into curling, not so great. I think there was a lot of
- [39:17]
Nilay Patel
stuff that had already happened that you already knew all of the results of that they weren't showing enough of. So it was just like it. For the longest time, the Olympics sort of satisfied nobody in a way that drove me crazy, but it does. It feels now like Peacock in particular was just like, what you want Olympics? Here's all of it. Here's the olympics. We have 400 streams going at any given time. And honestly, it's exactly what I wanted.
- [39:39]
Jacob Feldman
Yes. And if you want multi view, they have that. If you want curling only multi view, they have that. This year, if you want Red Zone with Scott Hanson, they have that. It has really been, you know, choose your own adventure in the best kind of way.
- [39:51]
Nilay Patel
It does seem like the biggest technical innovation, at least the one that has sort of blown the most people's minds, is the drones. I feel like the drones are suddenly everywhere. They have absolutely made some of the coolest shots I've ever seen in the Olympics. There's one for the downhill skiing that it would just sort of fly up behind them and follow them for the beginning of every run. And it's amazing. It is noisy, which is a little weird. And there's sort of this whirring sound that I now associate with the Winter Olympics. What have you made at the Drones?
- [40:24]
Jacob Feldman
Yes, the whirring Olympics. And I have heard from some producers because I asked them about this, too. Some people think this might be a solved problem, and maybe even by the end of the Olympics, they'll have figured out the right setting in terms of the audio to cut that out. But, yes, the drones have been one of the biggest surprises and delights of this Olympics. And I think it's probably. Yeah. I'm curious your perspective on this and someone from the tech side. I mean, you guys have seen these drones develop and then us on the sports side every four years, like, wow, they can go that fast or that small. The cameras are that good. You know, it's kind of like when you jump, you know, four generations of iPhones, all of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, yeah, these actually can fit in. They don't, you know, distract from the broadcast like they might have four or eight years ago.
- [41:07]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, it is really fun to watch that progression because there was this moment, I don't know, five, eight years ago that there was this thought that drones were going to become sort of a real consumer product that, like, you would have a drone and I would have a drone.
- [41:22]
Jacob Feldman
Sure. Everyone needs one for Christmas. Yeah, yeah.
- [41:24]
Nilay Patel
And we would just, like, play with our drones. And that has not really panned out for a while.
- [41:28]
Jacob Feldman
Then the FAA got involved, I think, at some point. Right, right. Maybe not.
- [41:31]
Nilay Patel
And they're still. They're still a little too expensive, and they're still a little bit fragile. So there's, like, a lot of reasons it didn't quite hit the mainstream that way. But as a. As a professional tool, yes, we just continue to unlock incredible new things that drones can do. And. And I've had the same experience that it's like every time I turn around some sporting event or another. They're all over F1 now, too. These drones that are like you, they just. They're opening up new ways to watch all kinds of things in ways that I find just unbelievably exciting. Even as somebody who just absolutely does not care about drones as a. As a product, I think they're such a cool camera thing.
- [42:06]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah. The cool thing is, I think we'll get to the point where it's just a cool shot. Right. We can talk less about the technology. And, yeah, they're coming to NASCAR this year in a big way. Baseball's using them. One of my favorite little details about the Olympic drones is that in a few cases, it's actually ex Olympic athletes piloting the drones. So one of the big concerns was, are these going to get in the way of the athletes? Are they going to crash? Are there going to be injuries? And so this was a multi year process to get all the various sporting bodies on board, eventually get the athletes on board. One of the things that helped was, yeah, these are, I think it's the ski jumping and maybe one other where it's, you know, these are extreme sport athletes who were the core drone market. And so a lot of them, after their playing days are over, have moved into the drone piloting world and bring, I think that expertise of here's actually how we should be using these drones. Here's the coolest shot, here's how to give people at home a sense of what it's like to jump off one of these mountains.
- [42:59]
Nilay Patel
That's so cool. I mean, that's kind of an extension of the sort of athlete to sports photographer pipeline, which is a thing I've always enjoyed. Like the Randy Johnson's of the world who are like, I know what's happening, I know what it looks like, I know where it is. And so I can get different sorts of shots because I just understand the game differently. I love that. And especially with extreme sports athletes, I was gonna be like, oh, wow, impressive that they're this good at flying drones. But they're probably all learning how to fly drones anyway. Because if you're heliskiing, you probably have a drone with you.
- [43:25]
Jacob Feldman
Right, right, exactly.
- [43:26]
Nilay Patel
That's awesome. So real quick, I'm curious also about the Super Bowl. You were there. It sounds like as a viewer, the super bowl was pretty uninteresting this year. And I mean uninteresting in the best way. Right. Like there were no streaming issues. There were no. It wasn't like, oh, it's on Tubi. How do I download tubi? It just like was the Super Bowl. Did you notice anything different this year?
- [43:45]
Jacob Feldman
No, I think that's right. It's interesting. Last year it was on Tubi, as you mentioned, which is free. And so this year there was no free streaming option. But it didn't seem like there was any uproar. I think people still accept that if it's on a broadcast network that you can get with an antenna, they're not too upset. And so, yes, the streaming option was Peacock. Peacock, as we mentioned, has grown a lot over the last four years since the last time they had a Super Bowl. It seemed to hold up well. Hulu, YouTube, TV, all those companies now at this point can handle the scale of the Super Bowl. And as you mentioned, it's become standard for them to broadcast these massive events.
- [44:19]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about some of these streamers because I think we're in a really interesting moment of change for a bunch of different streaming services. And almost all of it is centered around sports in some meaningful way. But let's start with YouTube TV, which just announced a bunch of new packages. There's the sports plan. There's the sports and news plan. There's the news and entertainment and family plan. They're trying to sort of slim down the bundle a little bit to make it a little less expensive for people. But the most interesting thing to me here is basically there's YouTube TV, which is all the channels, and then there's YouTube TV, which is just the sports channels. And boy, is it almost as expensive as the whole thing. So watching these things, You've been covering YouTube TV for a long time. I think YouTube TV is the closest thing we have to like a real success of a cable replacement. I think what stuck out in these new plans to you?
- [45:11]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah, I think taking a step back, this is what YouTube TV always wanted to be is my sense. Going back to the early days, I think there was even a conversation about, you remember Locast and Aereo and some of these free streaming, legally dubious services. I don't remember exactly how that shook out in the courts, but they no longer exist.
- [45:31]
Nilay Patel
Not well for aerodynamics, I'll tell you that. Yes.
- [45:34]
Jacob Feldman
But point being, I think YouTube TV kind of thought about that model too, of like, we're YouTube, we're a free streaming service. Is there any way we could ingest these local channels and give people a package of TV on top of YouTube? That didn't work out because as low cast scenario, these programmers, these channel owners wanted you. If you were going to show Fox, you also needed to show Fox News and Fox Business and Fox Sports. They're bundling this all together. You had to buy them all, essentially. And YouTube said, okay, we'll do that. We'll put together this big base plan. And then YouTube TV got big enough where they're like, actually what we want to do is offer a sports plan. And if you're not going to go along with that, we're going to go, you know, we'll offer it without you, essentially.
- [46:16]
Nilay Patel
So there was the big Disney dispute last year. Right.
- [46:18]
Jacob Feldman
So this is all part of this. Yes, exactly.
- [46:20]
Nilay Patel
Interesting.
- [46:21]
Allison Johnson
Okay.
- [46:21]
Nilay Patel
Yes.
- [46:22]
Jacob Feldman
So but even before the Disney one, there was a renegotiation with Paramount, which owned CBS, with NBCUniversal and I think Fox as well. And so they, they have a new set of Deals that allow them to offer these bundles. And the sports one is particularly interesting because it separates sports and news for the first time. Basically, you can get TNT without cnn, which normally come together. You can get Fox Sports without Fox News, which almost always come together. But as you mentioned, it's not that much cheaper. I think it's $55 if you're a new user, which is a pretty good deal. $65 if you're not a new user. And I think that'll be most people, which is $18, $17 less than what's called the main plan. Now, you should be called the base plan. But it's kind of confusing because now base is the most expensive. And so there's still some. So some education to be done there. But in my world, every sports fan that subscribes to YouTube TV is like, okay, great, $15 less. I'm not losing that much. Sign me up. And I do think the timing of this is really notable as well. They launched this or they announced this the day after the Super Bowl. As you know, YouTube TV is most popular during the football season. They have Sunday ticket, obviously, it's a big part of that. And churn rates are the highest in February. Everyone cancels or downsizes. And so I think this is YouTube TV's effort to say, stick around with the spring. You can get all of March Madness on this slightly cheaper bundle and get all the World cup in the summer on the slightly cheaper bundle. And then football season will be here before you know it. That, to me, I think, is what will be success for them if they can flatten that churn a little bit in between football seasons.
- [47:52]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, well. And I think that reaction you described, where a bunch of people just immediately go, oh, great, this is all I'm here for anyway, and now it's $17 cheaper, is, I think, a really telling one. And to me, it feels like what I can't Decide is if YouTube is in a particularly good position of leverage where it is the one that is the most successful. It's also YouTube. It's also Google. Like, it just doesn't need to play the games that everybody else needs to play. So it can afford to basically sit back and be like, listen, here's what we're going to do. Either get on board or don't. We don't really care all that much. And I think the dispute with Disney pretty clearly proved that YouTube has more leverage than its content providers at this particular moment. But what I wonder is, is it. Is this just YouTube or is this the beginning of a sea change that's like, actually what's about to happen is we are all just going to recognize that cable is sports and sports is cable. And in 12 months, that's all it's going to be.
- [48:46]
Jacob Feldman
Yes, I think it's both. So YouTube TV is not the first of these products to come out with a sports specific bundle. Fubo did it six months ago. DirecTV did it a year ago.
- [48:58]
Nilay Patel
No offense to Fubo, but I don't think that's going to move the needle quite the way YouTube.
- [49:02]
Jacob Feldman
Correct. But point being, this is not a new idea. I think for a long time these companies have said, look, people are signing up for sports. How do we maximize and make this the cheapest we can with the most sports that we can? I think that has been the direction for a long time, really. Probably since the launch of Netflix and since the destruction of, of the cable. But the slow death of the cable bundle, which, you know, both started 10, 15 years ago. And then, yeah, I think YouTube size is what allows it to pull this off in a big way and allows it to charge $65 and still be successful. And I do think we're going to see. My sense is another part of these negotiations from last year are going to be more integrations between YouTube.com and YouTube TV. I'm sure you have this experience too. When you talk to those folks. There's YouTube on TV, which is the YouTube app on the TV, and then there's YouTube TV on the TV, which are still two different apps. And they'll explain to you why people love that. I will tell you that that's confusing.
- [50:00]
Nilay Patel
They're wrong about that fact. And not only that, those two apps seem to have no idea that the other ones exist. The thing I keep asking people at YouTube is like, you understand that people who watch NFL games might be interested in NFL content on YouTube. And every single time they're like, oh, that's such an interesting point. And like how it's like, have a meeting, guys. This is not complicated. Right.
- [50:19]
Jacob Feldman
Or maybe the people. Yeah. Who are watching Pat McAfee on YouTube might want to know that he's on ESPN.
- [50:23]
Nilay Patel
Right.
- [50:24]
Jacob Feldman
On your other app. But yeah, they'll tell you it's actually. Yeah, whatever. It's a whole nother conversation. But point being, I think those are going to get closer together now that they have some more flexibility in that. And I do think, you know, YouTube, as you guys have written about, is dominating TV viewing time, both apps included, increasingly in recent months. And this is Only going to accelerate now. They have some flexibility both in how they're selling it and also how they're distributing some of this content.
- [50:50]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, that's interesting. We've been tracking this change for YouTube for so long from kind of, you know, cat video platform to hugely powerful cultural influence.
- [51:01]
Jacob Feldman
Everything video. Yeah.
- [51:02]
Nilay Patel
But that everybody still thinks of as cat video platform. Right? Like the sort of. In the business in particular, the idea of what YouTube was, was so far behind what YouTube actually was for so long. And I feel like over the last two years, really, that has caught up. And now everybody who needs to know, from like the CEO of Disney to advertisers to users, understands that YouTube is this, like, unparalleled cultural power. And I wonder if this is the year it starts to flex that power on a lot of different fronts. Like you're describing that all of a sudden in the way that I think back to, like Steve Jobs basically going to ATT with the iPhone and being like, you will. You will either play our game or we will walk away. I have all of the power in this relationship. Like, that's a game YouTube is sort of uniquely positioned to start to play on a lot of different fronts if it wants to. And it'll be interesting to see how hard it tries to push.
- [51:54]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah, I think before you said sports is cable and cable is sports, I think increasingly YouTube is TV and TV is YouTube for a lot of people.
- [52:02]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, I totally agree. The other company sort of sitting there next to this, and this is the one we talked about a lot last year is espn. When you came on last year, one of the things you talked about a bunch was this looming launch of ESPN as a. As a streaming platform. They were going to just launch the channels. You could just stream espn. The channels ESPN was doing, where to watch. It had this big idea of we want to be the destination for all sports everywhere. All the time I was preparing to do this conversation with you, and I literally just straight up forgot that ESPN actually did launch that thing. It just. I'm sure it exists in the world and I'm sure people like it. It is just not part of this conversation. In the same way, where is espn? ESPN did make this big deal. The NFL that just closed. That brings a lot of NFL stuff to espn. Where is ESPN in this journey to be like the sports platform for all sports things everywhere? Is it working?
- [52:57]
Jacob Feldman
It is complicated. So espn, as you mentioned, wants to be the destination. When you think sports, they want you to think espn. The challenge for them is that right now, a Lot of their money still comes from the cable bundle, so they don't want you to get rid of the cable bundle. So they are trying to walk this middle path, which included launching a service last year called espn, but also sometimes called ESPN Unlimited, that is free if you have cable, but otherwise is $30 a month. That includes everything. There's also ESPN Select. And plus, if you just want a little bit less of things and increasingly less and less, but they're gonna try to get you to unlimited, then they're also gonna bring in MLB tv, and that's gonna cost extra. It's gonna cost a little less if you have ESPN Unlimited, which is free if you have some cable, doesn't currently include YouTube TV, but will by the end of the year. It's a big mess. It's a big.
- [53:50]
Nilay Patel
The fact that you just were able to do that coherently off the top of your head is the most impressive thing anyone has done on this podcast.
- [53:56]
Jacob Feldman
It's terrifying and unfortunate. And I go to bed and wake up every morning being like, is ESPN Unlimited again? What is it today?
- [54:03]
Nilay Patel
You're the guy with, like, drawing the lines on the whiteboard, being like, here's how all of this makes sense.
- [54:07]
Jacob Feldman
Or doesn't. Yes, exactly. People in the office give me a hard time for saying, I've just become customer support at this point for ESPN and MLB and whoever else. Like, here's what you need. Here's why you don't have access to this. Here's what channel it's on, and maybe one day that will end. But. But for now, ESPN has given me a good job of explaining what they have going on. Yeah. So in the long run, I think they'd like to get to the point where, again, they are the front door and you can buy other services from them. You pay them monthly. But getting there, it's very complicated and has upset a lot of sports fans over the last six months, both in terms of the confusion of what do I have access to, why do I not have access to it, and also the cost of it. $30 a month is a lot for a streaming service, especially when it doesn't include everything that you might expect. It might.
- [54:55]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. Does ESPN have moves coming this year, do you think? Like, is this NFL deal a big one?
- [55:01]
Jacob Feldman
I think it's smaller than some people might think. So, again, you have to get into the details here. For instance, they are getting NFL Network, which means that they are getting seven more NFL games. I think that's the biggest deal. So they'll have more Games as part of the deal, they're giving back four games to the NFL, so they really are only getting three more games. They're getting the right to distribute NFL Red Zone on linear channels, but not the right to distribute it digitally. So Red Zone's not going to be included in espn, not going to be included in ESPN Unlimited. But there are some tie ins there. And again, it's a little more complicated than ESPN all of a sudden owns the NFL or the NFL. You know, it's not going to be as straightforward as you might think, but it does help a little bit. This MLB TV deal is going to again, be a big deal, I think next year, more so than this year. I think they're still getting up to speed in terms of what the integration is this year. You're still going to be able to watch in the MLB app or in the ESPN app. I think they'd like to get you to the point where it's all in the ESPN app if they can get all the various authentications and configurations and bundles with local deals. And T Mobile has a benefit that doesn't expire until 2028. And again, you very quickly go down the wormhole of rights deals that make this all much more complicated. But ESPN is slowly working its way towards a more simple structure.
- [56:15]
Nilay Patel
Okay, slowly but surely. And I think, and part of the challenge is, I think, you know, again, I was looking at some of these other deals going on right now and Amazon continues to, A, have all the money in the world and B, invest pretty heavily in sports in such a way that I kind of think, I don't know, I took Amazon only like half seriously as a sports player for a long time, that it was like, it seemed happy to have football and you can see why it would be useful to have football and maybe that would be enough. But it seems like Amazon is really interested in being one of the main sports networks in the world. Is that what you read too?
- [56:51]
Jacob Feldman
Yes, and it's even bigger than that because Amazon is really interested being your TV app. And so in a very different way than YouTube TV. It's very different models, right? So YouTube TV's model is you pay YouTube TV $65 a month, you get every channel you would need to watch sports. Amazon's model is okay, actually on YouTube TV you're not going to get Thursday Night Football because we have that. You're not going to get a lot of MBA because we have that. So you're already coming to the Amazon and while you're coming here you might as well buy Peacock from us. You might as well buy Paramount from us. Hopefully one day ESPN will allow you to buy ESPN from us. And we'll bundle it all together. We'll give you one interface with all your sports. And it's also a big deal for a lot of sports fans who maybe are not as technically proficient that maybe they have an Amazon fire stick. They have an Amazon remote. There's an Amazon button on the remote. I hear from a lot of people that that's how they watch sports, is they click the Amazon button and they see what's there. And so Amazon, I think, has a much bigger ambitions than just being a channel or a network. I think they want to be the place you go to, just like all these other apps that we've talked about.
- [57:50]
Nilay Patel
Right? But Amazon can do that without needing sort of exclusive rights everywhere, which is a really interesting play that it has, that is going to be hard for anyone else to do.
- [58:00]
Jacob Feldman
They need just enough exclusive rights to become the default place where they then have everything else. And this is why it is all so fragmented. I mean, we haven't mentioned Netflix. They have a somewhat similar model. Increasingly, YouTube had an exclusive game. So all these companies want to be the place where they can offer everything. And as a result, everyone has a very small slice of the pie.
- [58:20]
Nilay Patel
Right. But it does seem like the way that race shakes out to me is it seems like the future is. There's sort of one of two futures that's going to happen, Right. Either we get to a point where every sport has one provider and you have to go to lots of providers for different sports. But, like, in the way that Apple is just doing F1 and the MLS, right, that eventually everybody. They're all sort of stratified that way. Or you get to the point where it is so impossibly dispersed, which is like what the NFL is, right? It's. I mean, it's. It's. Trying to know where all the NFL games are is insane. No one should be required to have to do that.
- [58:58]
Jacob Feldman
Just me. I'm the only one who has enough. No one else has enough.
- [59:01]
Nilay Patel
Correct. That's why we bring you here every once in a while. But then the race is to be, okay, how do I become the gateway to all of that?
- [59:09]
Jacob Feldman
The hub, the front door.
- [59:10]
Nilay Patel
Right. And this is. We've been talking about this with streaming in general for the longest time. That was like, Apple TV is desperate to be the search engine for all of your other streaming networks. And that stuff has been messy over time for A variety of reasons, but it does feel like the race to do that for sports in particular. It's getting really hot as this stuff gets so much more dispersed that for Amazon to say, okay, you're coming here anyway, like, sure, we'll send you to the ESPN app for the ESPN stuff, but you're going to find it through the prime video app like that. That's a source of power that I think all of these companies are now after, even when they can't win the rights with all of the money in the known universe.
- [59:47]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah. And as you guys talk a lot, a big part of that is, okay, if you buy ESPN through us, we're going to get 30% of that on and on and on. And that's how you make them make work from a financial perspective.
- [59:56]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. You mentioned Netflix, which is obviously a fascinating and unknowable player in this. The other thing that's going on right now is Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers, which is another player, long time player in the sports world. What, what do you make of that deal? If, let's, let's say that goes through.
- [60:16]
Jacob Feldman
Sure.
- [60:16]
Nilay Patel
Just purely hypothetically, it seems, I would say Occam's Razor says that deal will eventually close. Right. Does that change the sports streaming world in any meaningful way?
- [60:24]
Jacob Feldman
Not as, again, not as much as people might think. So Netflix is buying Warner Brothers, but Warner Brothers already spun off Discovery, which included TNT sports in the US and it's actually more complicated in Europe and we don't have time to get into Eurosport and Discovery in Warner Brothers. So we'll stick in the US and so I think basically the only sports that Warner Brothers have is like Hard Knocks things that are on HBO essentially. Whereas the things that are on TNT like NHL and college sports, those are still streaming in the HBO Max app. It's unclear how long that will continue, but wouldn't be owned by Netflix. But I think it goes back to the larger point of Netflix buys Warner Brothers in theory and suddenly becomes a much bigger player. And all of a sudden more sports are going to want to gravitate to where people are watching. And we can talk about the podcast part of this too. I mean, Netflix clearly wants to be a place where people are coming for sports content. I think they realized what drive to survive kind of woke them up to. Oh, sports fans, they're pretty serious. They'll pay to watch this stuff. And it's on and on and all the way to the point of Christmas games and NFL and World cup coming, women's World cup next year, I think will be the next big test.
- [61:36]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, the Women's World cup one is going to be really interesting because the question I was about to ask you is. It is very telling to me that we continue to bring up Drive to Survive as the example.
- [61:44]
Jacob Feldman
The example.
- [61:45]
Nilay Patel
That show is old now. It's been around a while. It has fallen off a bunch. Like, I love F1, and I don't watch Drive to Survive like I used to, but there was that. That phenomenon of the first, like, two seasons was really something. And it doesn't. It feels like Netflix has spent a lot of time trying to repeat that, and I'm not sure it quite has.
- [62:06]
Jacob Feldman
It did for one evening.
- [62:08]
Nilay Patel
What was that?
- [62:09]
Jacob Feldman
Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson.
- [62:11]
Nilay Patel
Oh, yeah, Fair enough. Okay. Okay.
- [62:12]
Jacob Feldman
That's fair. Yeah. So they did Drive to Survive, as you mentioned. It blew up bigger than anybody could have expected. They did about 12 different other versions of drivers, five for golf and baseball and tennis.
- [62:23]
Nilay Patel
The tennis one was pretty good. They canceled so fast. But I really liked the tennis 1.
- [62:27]
Jacob Feldman
Tennis 1 didn't go over huge with the audience. Golf, I think, is the one that has done the best. Baseball was one and done. And so, yeah. And then they slowly pivoted to live and they had some really weird stuff. Early on, they had a golf tournament featuring F1 drivers. They did a tennis exhibition match. This Jake Paul, Mike Tyson thing, that's, if you believe Netflix's numbers, like, the most viewed sporting event outside the super bowl this decade. And that has led them to. Oh, like live events. We can do that. So they've done more boxing. I don't know if you watch Skyscraper Live. I did. I would argue that. Is sports terrifying? Yes. Yeah.
- [63:03]
Nilay Patel
Like, I'm the guy who gets, like, sweaty palms watching YouTube videos of people at the top of building. So watching this happen live was, like an actively stressful experience.
- [63:11]
Jacob Feldman
Yes. And I think.
- [63:12]
Nilay Patel
But it was amazing.
- [63:13]
Jacob Feldman
The announcers seem to be stressed, too. I think everybody didn't really know what they signed up for until the eight got going. Like, oh, he's actually just. There's no net.
- [63:19]
Nilay Patel
Or it's just a guy climbing a building. Okay.
- [63:21]
Jacob Feldman
Okay, cool. It could start raining and he's just up there. Okay. So anyway, point being, I think that sports is part of their larger live events push, and I think they're going to try to get more. It's going to be really interesting to see. So the NFL is renegotiating its rights packages starting basically now. And there's a big question of whether Netflix is going to go all in. Are they going to try to get Sunday Night Football or Monday Night Football? Is Amazon going to try to get even more? Is Amazon going to try to get a Super bowl? Is the NFL going to give them the Super Bowl? Is YouTube going to do a lot more Again, they've only had one game to date. Or are the existing players, cbs, fox, NBC and ESPN going to say, we really need football, we can't give any more up. And then the streamers say, okay, well, we'll pick up everything else. We'll take the World cup that you can no longer afford because you're spending all your money in the NFL. We'll take the World Series, we'll take college football. We'll take March Madness. So that is going to be the next big shakeup. I think it's going to be one of those two things. And, and this next NFL right cycle will really determine how important these streamers want to play a role in broadcasting football.
- [64:24]
Nilay Patel
So you, you bring up one of the, the last things I wanted to ask you about, which is it seems like we've been talking for years about this, this looming change where if these unbelievably rich tech companies decided they wanted to win at sports, they just could, they could just outbid everybody. And there were questions on all sides, right? It was like, okay, well, does the NFL want to lose broadcast because it has these huge audiences even in exchange for more money? So the, the, the, the back and forth has been really complicated, but it does feel like going back over a lot of this. That, that change, if, if it hasn't already happened is like in the middle of happening right now that, like you, the first companies you just named as the most interesting players for the NFL are all tech companies. And, and then, and then we lump all the other ones under the traditional
- [65:14]
Jacob Feldman
players, which is like, they're so faint.
- [65:16]
Nilay Patel
Crazy imaginable. So what is your read of that dynamic right now? Like, has this, has this great shift to tech money and streaming happened, or are we still in this kind of diverse, diffuse space for a while?
- [65:29]
Jacob Feldman
I think the big change that has happened is that four or five years ago, the fight was between the streamers and the traditional channels, and those channels have streaming networks. It's a little more complicated than that, but that was the basic idea. Where are you going to watch this stuff? Are you going to watch it via a cable bundle or you're going to watch it direct to consumer via one of these streaming apps? And the streaming apps largely won. I mean, there is still Stuff, the biggest events are still on broadcast tv, but for the most part, when you think of entertainment, you're thinking of Netflix and Prime Video, and you look at the Emmys or what have you. So the battle now is between the streamers. Right. And that's what has really changed as it used to be. Am I going to bring this from put this on TV or put this on streaming? Now the question is, am I going to put this on Netflix or am I going to put this on Amazon? And I think that is where it's going to be really interesting to see different priorities emerge between what does Netflix want to do versus what does Amazon want to do versus what does YouTube want to do rather than it just make more sense on streaming or tv.
- [66:24]
Nilay Patel
Got it.
- [66:25]
Allison Johnson
Okay.
- [66:25]
Nilay Patel
All right, so I'm going to give you three events coming up soon. Okay. And you're going to tell me which one is the one you're most looking at as, like, a moment in this transition. The beginning of the Formula One season exclusively on Apple tv. March Madness being March Madness, I think it's like that's the next big moment on the sports calendar. And the Masters, which also is. Is moving, I think, to Prime Video. Right.
- [66:49]
Jacob Feldman
There's a couple hours on Prime Video, moving very slowly.
- [66:53]
Nilay Patel
A little master. Boy, Amazon made a big deal out of that. If it's just a couple of hours,
- [66:57]
Jacob Feldman
I believe it's like Thursday 12 to 2. Don't quote me exactly on that, but it's something like that. Yeah. Early rounds.
- [67:01]
Nilay Patel
Well, that's.
- [67:02]
Jacob Feldman
Yeah.
- [67:02]
Nilay Patel
Then I'm guessing the Masters is not going to win this. This. This game that we're playing here. But of those three, which do you think is the most sort of meaningful next moment in the sports calendar for streaming stuff?
- [67:12]
Jacob Feldman
Well, March Madness is the most interesting property because of who owns it, and we've already mentioned them several times. So tnt. March Madness is a weird event in that it's split between CBS and tnt and the final alternates between these two. These are two companies that theoretically are competitors, but because CBS didn't have a big cable presence and because TNT didn't have a big broadcast presence, teamed up for this kind of unlikely alliance to broadcast March Madness. And those are two companies, Paramount and Warner Brothers. But now TNT spun out that have been talking about buying each other in different ways and emerging in different ways and both trying to figure out what TV sports looks like in a streaming world. So if you want to watch all of the games, you need a cable bundle. Right. They're not all going to be one app. And if you have a cable bundle, then you can, I think, authenticate into the March Madness Live app and watch it there again. It gets very technical very quickly, but that has made it a great event for YouTube TV, for Spectrum, for Comcast to say, look, this is actually the best way to watch. You can watch in multi view. You can have a CBS and a TNT game next to each other. And so the question is, are people going to pay up for that experience? Or they're going to say, yeah, I'll watch what I can watch in my Paramount plus app because I have that subscription, or I'll watch the highlights on YouTube or I'll watch the docu series a year later. Probably not that option. But that is the question is, can these events that are such signature TV events, can they continue to be that way or do they need to reformat themselves, reframe themselves and pitch themselves? Like you're saying to an all in one audience that now is so used to getting stuff so easily. I loved your Summer Takes episode. What is that six months ago where you were all streaming? All streaming services are bad.
- [68:57]
Nilay Patel
I believe that. I really do believe that.
- [68:59]
Jacob Feldman
That's still a winter take. Okay. Because it's interesting. I mean what you were basically saying was, you know, you should just rent the movies individually or buy them or what have you. And I think the reason all these streaming sources are getting into sports is because you can't do that with sports. Right? There is no alternative. They own this exclusively. You can't buy these a la carte. And so the question is, can these events like March Madness, which is like what, 63 games on the men's side, 63 games on the women's side. I think it's actually 67 games now with expansion and they're going to expand again. Does that work in a streaming environment compared to these big, you know, tempo events? Is it all just going to turn into Jake Paul, Mike Tyson standalone events or can we do these month long things via streaming? I think we still haven't seen.
- [69:38]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, it does feel like whatever is going to happen, this is not the year. It gets less complicated to be a small scam, right? Like there's no, there's no sign of this thing letting up any sense.
- [69:48]
Jacob Feldman
Next year, next year it'll be simpler. That's what we've been saying for 10 years and one day will be true.
- [69:52]
Nilay Patel
We're going to have you back in 2027 and you're going to say, guys, we fixed it. Yeah, it's one app.
- [69:57]
Jacob Feldman
And everybody knows what ESPN Unlimited is by now, right? I don't need to explain that.
- [70:01]
Nilay Patel
Boy, am I looking forward to that. All right, Jacob, thank you as always for being here.
- [70:05]
Jacob Feldman
My pleasure.
- [70:05]
Nilay Patel
I appreciate it. Go. Go watch more Olympics. This is what I'm going to go do, too. It's going to be great.
- [70:09]
Jacob Feldman
Yes, you as well. Enjoy. Go Team usa.
- [70:11]
Nilay Patel
All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to come back and do a question for the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.
- [70:18]
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Allison Johnson
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Nilay Patel
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Nilay Patel
and knock something off the shelf.
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Jacob Feldman
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Allison Johnson
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Nilay Patel
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Allison Johnson
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- [73:57]
Jacob Feldman
All right, we're back.
- [73:58]
Nilay Patel
Time for a question from the Vergecast hotline. As Always, the number is 866-Verge 11. The email is vergecastheverge.com Keep all of your questions, all of your thoughts, all of your feedback coming. A lot of the stuff that we've been hearing recently is still about tiny smart home mysteries. And I have to tell you, I love it. Please keep them all coming. Anyway, our question this week happens to be just perfectly up the alley of what I've been thinking about all week. And it comes from Drake.
- [74:23]
Jacob Feldman
Hello, I'm Drake from Portland, Oregon. I'm actively listening to your podcast about the AI Debacle pin. And as you were talking about the
- [74:34]
Nilay Patel
flip phone sort of idea, it reminded
- [74:36]
Jacob Feldman
me of the days when people would actually wear the flip phone as like a belt clip or like a shirt clip. So it'd be like it just being held there in place. And Bill would use that as speakerphone with the little tiny itty bitty like
- [74:49]
Nilay Patel
screen on the outside saying that they're in an active phone call so they
- [74:53]
Jacob Feldman
can use it as a speakerphone sort of device. That might actually be another approach to the flip phone AI Debacle.
- [75:03]
Nilay Patel
Okay, so the reason I've been thinking about this question all week is because I am using the Motorola Razer Ultra right now. I'm in my phone switching project and basically what I'm trying to do is I'm gonna spend a week using six different kinds of phones, foldable phones, phones with keyboards, phones you've never heard of, phones you've super heard of. I'm gonna try and do the full sweep of the smartphone landscape to figure out which one I really want. It took me a day and a half to get the stupid ESIM ported from my iPhone to, to this phone. But it is now my phone. It's up and running, everything's going fine. And I have had the most fascinating experience, which is that I think more than ever that the flip phone is an important and good and correct in many ways, form factor. And I think this for a bunch of reasons. One, I think it is just easier to hold and carry. Like having this fit into your pocket makes more sense. It also fits in my hand. There's something really nice about the idea that I can actually hold and reach every corner of this device with one thumb. I can, I can use it, like when I sort of roll over in bed, I can like tap around on it much more easily. This thing just works for me. And then there is this feeling like, okay, I'm opening up my phone to do something, take a call, write an email, look at a notification, whatever, and then I close it and I'm finished. And there's. There's just something psychological about I am done with my phone. Now that I think has actually made me use my phone less. The problem is all of the software that is supposed to support this is bad. Like, Android just does not exist in a meaningful way to make this work. So what you're stuck with is every time I'm using an app and I close the phone, it pops up a thing saying, do you want to allow this phone app to run on your external display? And I just say yes, because who cares? But then what happens is it just runs the full version of the app. And so you just get a thing that just feels like a smushed Android app. Like what this should be. The correct version of this, in my head is a, is a phone on the inside and a smartwatch on the outside. What I want from this is to be able to do very simple input and very simple output, right? I want to be able to quickly see what the weather is. I want to be able to quickly do a tap back emoji on A text message. I want to be able to change the music. What I don't need is the full fricking Spotify app on this tiny little thing, or my full Gmail or the full anything else. It's just pretending this is a tiny phone and it's not. And this is, like, fundamentally the thing I think is left to solve, right? In the way that a foldable phone acts like a phone that turns into a tablet or acts like a phone that turns into a laptop, as we were just talking about with Allison, that's an interesting software and UI problem to solve. This one goes the other direction. And this is where I think Drake's idea about having these be AI systems. It's really interesting. Like, the idea of having a phone that I can close or sort of turn off and mute in some way that then morphs into this whatever, always on or push to talk or whatever. AI machine, I actually think is super interesting. Like if when it was closed like this, I could press, and it was essentially just a Gemini machine. That's pretty cool. I can use this for Gemini, but it's trying to do a lot of other things, right? So if I'm using an iPhone and it's like, okay, I close the iPhone and then it turns into like a HomePod or a basic controller for Siri and music, I think that could be very cool. And I do think there is something meaningful about the idea that I am actually shape shifting the form factor.
- [78:48]
Jacob Feldman
Right.
- [78:48]
Nilay Patel
I've come to feel this way about foldable fonts, too. And Allison was saying this earlier that if you have a device that you change its sort of stature and the way that you're holding it and looking at it and using it, you. You can convince your brain this is a new kind of device. And actually, that's one of the superpowers of a device like this is it can transform, and so does your ability to interact with it. So I'm like, thinking about Drake's idea, and it's like, okay, right, I have this on my collar. And the other problem with this razor is it is exactly the wrong form factor. Like, it's. It's too kind of big and thick, like, and wide like this. And then this is just a little too much. Again, I want something that might not be possible to exist, which is I want a big phone that turns into a tiny smartwatch. But I digress. That's somebody else's problem to figure out. But if I take something like this and then, you know, instead of having it open in my Pocket. I turn it into like a pinnable wearable on my collar. And now what I have is a sort of plod style AI recorder that I can talk to and get information from or take notes with or whatever. I think that's super compelling and I think there is something more interesting about that than the idea of making a wholly different device. And that's what everybody wants to do. They want you to either use a smartwatch for a lot of these purposes, which I think is where Google and Apple and others will head, or they want you to buy some complete new form factor. And to me I'm like, what if it's just half my phone? And having now used this for a week, this feels like two devices. It is one thing when it's closed and it's another thing when it's open. The problem is the thing that's when it's closed is optimized for when it's open. And if we can just fix that, I think we'll be onto something. This is the same problem Allison had trying to make her medium sized phone into a big tablet. I'm having it in the opposite direction and she wants to make laptop. I want to make AI. I think there's something really interesting there. Anyway, if you've figured out how this works, by the way, if you have a razor or a Z flip and you've like solved this external display system in a way that you get your notifications and you can do your media controls, but you don't accidentally end up using a full Android app on this tiny screen all the time, please let me know. It's possible I'm just missing settings, but I don't think so. I think we just need to fix this problem. Anyway, for now, that's it for the show. I'm sure I'll have new feelings about new Kensaphone next week because that is what we do here on the Vergecast. But for now, we're going to get out of here. Please, as always, remember to subscribe to the Verge theverge.com subscribe. You can get this podcast ad free. You can get version history, ad free version history. By the way, just about to come back, very excited about it. We're recording a bunch of really fun episodes the week you're hearing this. I'm really excited about the next batch we have coming for you. You can also get decoder ad free, all of it, just by subscribing to the Verge. It is the single best way to support everything that we're doing this show. Is part of the Verge and the Vox Media Podcast network, and this episode was produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Miha and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news, presumably more Epstein files, because that keeps happening and we keep talking about it. And some gadgets. We're getting gadgets again. It's mid February and it's already gadget season. It's great times out there. We'll see you then. Rock and roll. Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour,
- [82:11]
Jacob Feldman
Martha bundled her flight and hotel on
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Nilay Patel
Expedia to see them live. She saved so much she got her
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Jacob Feldman
seat close enough to actually see and hear them. Sort of.
- [82:21]
Nilay Patel
You were made to scream from the front row.
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Jacob Feldman
We were made to quietly save you.
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Nilay Patel
More Expedia made to travel Savings vary
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Jacob Feldman
and subject to availability.
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Nilay Patel
Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.
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Allison Johnson
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