UP466 Who's watching women's sport? New Sky Sports data challenges the industry's story on where the opportunity lies

The commercial growth of women’s sport is dependent on the audience question: Who is watching? 

To help frame the answer, we been given an exclusive preview of major new research in to women's sport fandom by Sky Sports which is due to be published in the coming weeks.

Sky’s rights portfolio of women’s only sport is unmatched in the media industry, running across football, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, netball and more. 

And as you'll hear in the conversation, the new findings run against some of the received narratives that have grown around the audience for women's sport across the sports and marketing industries.

Our guests are Jo Osborne, Head of Women's Sport at Sky Sports and Claire Kelly, Managing Director of Gemba Europe and Middle East, the strategy and fan insight agency commissioned to carry out the research.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. Today we're asking a big question Who watches women's sport? and we've got an exclusive preview for you today. An early look at some new research into women's sport, fandom by Sky Sports, carried out by Gemba, which is due to be published. In the coming weeks, and as you'll hear in the conversation, the findings are contra to some of the received wisdoms that have grown up around the audience. Question for women's sport across both sports and marketing industries. My guests are Joe Osborne, head of Women's Sport at Sky Sports, and Claire Kelly, managing director of Gemba Europe and Middle East. if you're listening to this, you'll also like the Unofficial Partner Substack newsletter, which goes out to subscribers every Thursday. If you want to join them, sign up either via unofficialpartner. com or go to Substack and search for Unofficial Partner.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 0:57

So hello, Claire, welcome back long time. No, see Claire. We haven't seen you for a couple of weeks here.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 1:01

I know, I'm such a shrinking violet these days, aren't I? On it, on it every two weeks.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:06

And Joe Osborne, welcome to you as well.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:09

Thank you. I think it's been a lot longer since I was, uh, since I was on, so I'll have to get to Claire levels. I'll build up.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:16

got a feeling it was lockdown actually. I was looking at the other day. I think it was a, it was a while ago during that, that weird period. Right. Let's set this up. So Joe, you are head of women's sport at Sky Sports. Tell me about this job what is it and what's the remit of it and where does it fit within Sky Sports? Because I think that's. Might be our route into this.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:38

Yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think there is, there are a lot of synergies to why we've done this research. So my role is something we talked a lot about before it, it came into being, because I think a lot of us feel the same way. Siloing and separating women's sport is a very a very interesting subject and it is not, absolutely not what I'm here to do. So Sky Sports, as you may well know, is set up very much around the sports that we cover. So football team work on football, cricket, NFL work on those sports, golf team works on those sports, Formula One, et cetera, et cetera. it allows for a lot of subject matter expertise. And we're, you know, we have a lot of the sports that we cover. So a role like mine is, is a rare one, and it's very much a horizontal one that works across all of those verticals. Because you've talked about many times in this podcast, and lots of people have talked about many times in this podcast, we fundamentally believe that the opportunities in women's sports are different that the audience will grow differently. And that we should be looking for every opportunity to maximize those opportunities. And in a business like sky, where we have lots of different arms from sky sports itself to sky media, to all the other ways in which we operate across various business areas maximize those opportunities takes a little bit of centralizing. So essentially my job is to look for the opportunities, help to maximize them across the business, bring in. external impetus us to think differently and actually just focus on it full time when lots of other people don't always have the luxury of doing that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 3:09

So, is it Are you identifying the rights, because there's always two bits to it, like the head of a sport, a TV, you know, Sky, there's the sort of external, what are we going to buy in the, where are we in the rights market? what does it look like when we, once we bought it, there's a production of it. Where is that? Is it across both of

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 3:29

I sit fundamentally in the second one of those, so maximizing across content, maximizing across the business. Obviously, there's a voice that comes into where the opportunities lie. But my role predominantly sits across the second one because my background is in content. So I've been a live, I was a live producer for 20 years before taking this role on. So, I have an expertise in that space that allows me to then think about how we deliver the content, where we put it, how we reach an audience, and then what we do on top of that to, to really kind of sweat all the assets. I

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 4:01

And it's obviously not, you know, those aren't mutually exclusive, those two bits of it, but obviously people listening to this and we've got the bundle, which talks about the, you know, rights marketplace, so something like the WSL deal, how does it work? Do you say, right, okay, I think it would be interesting. This is an interesting area. Yeah. And do you do the rights team go off or is it the other way? So, right. We bought, the LPGA or we bought W T W T or whatever it is. Now, Joe, make it sing. Is that how it works?

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 4:28

think it's just a, it's a collaborative conversation, which I love because that's the way I love to work. But I think we have a lot of conversations all the time about what we think is going to grow, why we think, and I think what the benefit of my role gives us is to be able to take impetus from other sports. some sports will sit, you know, just thinking about their sport all day, I can think about what's working in the States, what's working in another sport. We can look at, we'll come on to it, I'm sure, but, you know, when we saw the Ashes sit side by side in 2023, actually, does that give us something for the Solheim and the Ryder Cup? And how do we then take all of those learnings and actually, crucially, and this is what we'll come on to sooner, is. Where is the data that backs us up? Do we have the insights? Do we have the viewing figures? Can we look at, for example, one of the questions I always get asked is, don't we have a women's sport channel? Why don't we have a women's sport linear channel? And my answer would be, there is no data to back up that the audience, that's what the audience wants right now. So, I think the short answer to your question is it's a little bit of both and it's collaborative, but also, the women's sports that we've been backing, investing in, a lot of them go back 30 years. Golf, cricket, netball is not that much shorter of that. Obviously, football has come in as a different proposition in recent years, and it's now our fifth or sixth year of covering the WSL. So actually, none of this is new. What is interesting is how we then adapt and each sport is on its own timeline, how we then adapt our strategy year on year to build on what we've learned. So it's a, it's always a wider conversation. And what's brilliant about Sky Sports is everyone's invested in that conversation.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 6:06

Okay. So let's get to the, the nub of it in terms of who's watching then. And what have we learned? Who's going to take this one? Who's what just present the findings. Cause I say, I, I, when you first talked about this and we've, we talked about it a little bit in the background. And I misread it or I misunderstood it. So I think I need to be really clear about what it's a, what it is saying and what it isn't saying. So let's go. Who wants to take that?

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 6:32

Alright, maybe I can take that. So, I think the context for the research is that Jo and I have been talking for, what, almost coming up to 18 months now Jo, about who the audience for women's sport is and actually, should we even be saying women's sport, or should we be just saying it? talking sports specific, so the women's cricket fan, the women's football fan, the women's tennis fan, et cetera. And you go to a lot of fantastic conferences and you hear a huge amount of discussion around the new emerging audience for women's sport. A lot is talked about the profile of that audience, but pretty much it's always talked about in the context of the attendee. So we all know you know, I've been to women's six nations matches and you look around the stands and you really do go, wow, this is a completely different audience. There's so many families there. There's much more of a gender balance. It feels different. The drinks people are buying a different, the way that they're engaging the dwell time. Wow. It is a new, a new audience for women's sport, but Joe and I have harbored a feeling for, for quite a while that we wanted to get some data around, which is yes, the attendee profile is different, but is the profile of the person actually sitting on the sofa, consuming the sport through broadcast different, or is it the case that it's the core sports fan who is already engaging with the category? Who is actually the one that's most likely to be watching a significant amount of content around that women's sport In the same way they engage with men's sport and yes that new and emerging audience is there But they're taking a little bit of time to cut through and come through from a broadcast perspective So we wanted to build on some work that we'd done Askenba with the women's sports trust, last year and go back out to field speak to men's and women's sports fans and really understand the extent to which they were consuming on the sofa as well as Attending and what we found backed up joe and i's hypothesis Which is that actually there's this sort of silent majority as joe's brilliantly coined them who are consuming both men's and women's sport, who are fundamentally the ones that are watching live content every week. And if you look at the tennis fan, you see that actually 77 percent of passionate tennis fans are passionate about both men's and women's tennis. As it relates to golf, it's 58%. As it relates to cricket, it's 59%. That crossover audience who are passionate about both forms. is the significant proportion of the audience. And actually that emerging fan base that is women's only, and I don't mean by gender, as in women watching, I mean as in the audience for the women's equivalent of that sport, is actually very much the minority. It's in the sort of 7 percent for tennis, 6 percent for golf, 6 percent for cricket. It's not to say it's not there and it's not growing, but It's not the core principle audience currently as it relates to that degree of passion for the sport and live content consumption.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 9:43

So a few things in there. There's a bit of anecdote versus data, I think in terms of the experience, the match experience, like you, you you see the audience at a women's football match at the Emirates and you think, is that typical? And it's tempting to think, Oh yes. Okay. And now then the story then, and this is a sponsorship story. So again, one of the tropes of this conversation is that is women's sport a sponsorship property does the media rights contribute to the economy in the same way, et cetera. There's that. And the difference has become quite a big plank to the commercial story, the sponsors, or it's a sponsor facing story. You can see the narrative has emerged over time. Look, it's younger. It's they're trendier. They are female. They are not blokes, white blokes like me. So there's a sort of anti Gillis audience. It's not the typical sort of, uh, football audience. This, uh, first reading seemed to counter that. And I thought, well, that's a bit dangerous because actually I can see a lot of sponsors turning around and saying, hang on a minute. I thought we'd bought one audience and you're telling me it's something else.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 10:52

I mean, chip in if you, if you want on this bit, but I think, I think it's more, how do we get from here to there? We know that audience is there, but what happens when those sponsors are dipping their toe in the water is that audience isn't just there ready to be grabbed. You have to engage them and you have to think about how you're going to engage them. So actually it's more about here's the opportunity, here's how we maximize them and they're on tapped. But also I think it's equally as dangerous to build a sport without thinking about the Including into the mainstream, that is riskier for me because you are cutting off an opportunity for your commercial potential. And I think we'll come on to the sort of distinctiveness piece, but, uh, so I remember when the brilliant Ali Donnelly was at uh, More Than Equals, she's now at England Rugby, but she wrote an article about a year in to sort of reflect on her first year. And she, she said one of her favorite quotes. which I hadn't heard before, which was there's a difference between saying you are welcome and saying this is built for you. And I think what women's sport has as an opportunity, I love that quote, I think what women's sport has as an opportunity is to say we build it for women and girls, we build it for this brilliant new audience, but we include a core sports fan as we go. you can then capture that silent majority in the middle who love both, and we'll come on to the other pieces where they add value because there is a lot of. value in that audience, but you're not polarizing it by saying it's just women and girls, or it's just for the Richard Gillesses of this world, if you want to polarize yourself that way.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 12:26

I could be the, the man, the every man, the, every, every football fan.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 12:29

Perfect, perfect. So the everyman Richard Gilless and the, uh, the sort of eight year old girl who's taking her first steps into sport fandom, there is a lot in the middle of that, and you have to build for both.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 12:41

I think that's such a key point. This is It's not about saying that that new emerging audience doesn't exist and that they aren't really exciting and they don't have a huge amount of marketing potential. It's about, in some ways, making sure we're not alienating the core middle audience who just aren't being talked about, aren't being celebrated. And I totally get your point, Richard. It's potentially because there's a risk there that You know, you saying therefore it's not a new set of eyeballs and therefore in terms of sponsorship potential you know, it's not as obvious. Or even from a broadcast point of view, you know, are they genuinely? incremental subscribers to a base that are already paying for sky. So what is the kind of commercial argument there? I I actually think there's real positives in here because Actually, we've also seen in our research the work we did with Women's Sport Trust and since that in other research agencies have also found that women's sports fans. are typically more open minded and have more sentiment towards brands that sponsor women's sport than the equivalent men's sports fans in terms of their sentiment towards brands that are investing in, in men's sport. And so that there is power in that sentiment when they are sponsoring women's sport, even if it's the same eyeballs. Potentially actually there's a more open mindedness and an ability to kind of cut through the noise there and to, to market to that audience more effectively through a women's sports property. And we've spent quite a lot of time talking to different organizations around bundling and unbundling. And actually I think there's kind of two, two different arguments here. But and both stand depending on where you are in terms of your maturity as a as a sports property But you know, we've worked with the fifa women's world cup We've worked with the icc on the principle of unbundling certain rights within certain categories Because we believe there's real commercial potential to, to speak to that women's sports fan in a differentiated way when they're in the mindset of consuming the, the women's sport equivalent of, of the sport that they love. And, you know, Unilever with Rex Soner have just showcased that through their sponsorship of the ICC. And we've seen that with, with FIFA Women's World Cup, that they unbundled I think four categories and, and to great effect. And so we're not saying that there isn't actually commercial potential. We actually think there's, there's. Real, cut through there. It's just understanding actually that in terms of exposure and the size of that audience It's actually potentially greater Than we're currently describing it when we're talking about the women's sports fair And it's actually just about how do we unlock the passion in that total addressable market? So the market is there but currently it's a more casual market. It's not as engaged It's not as passionate as the men's sports audience, but They're non rejectors, they exist, they are interested in women's sport and it's how do we take them from casual to committed in order to really close that commercial gap.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 15:46

The, the unbundling story is, is a sort of exciting one, isn't it? it sets. The sort of story going and narratives, obviously, as we all know, you know, you get pulled along by certain stories and the unbundling story is, Oh, it's new. It's exciting. There's a whole sector here. I can see, this happens, then this happens, and then you get to a much bigger number. And then you also start if you're not careful, and the reason this research is important. Is that you start to make decisions based on that sort of story rather than on the evidence and you start, you get to, should we have FIFA or should we have UEFA, you know, it the WTA route rather that, you know, is there a, the complete unbundling again, it's quite exciting from a sideline perspective, I think, Oh, something's really interesting here is a whole new thing they go and, you know, there's, it's created Back to Ali Donnelly's quote about, you know, you're welcome or it's built for you. Why don't we just build the whole thing? Go back. So I know this is of remit for your research, but I think it's sort of your research is tempering that story.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 16:52

Well, and I think tennis is a great example because they there has been equality or more equality That's even a phrase there for longer than any other sport So it's over 50 years now since the battle of the sexes and formation of wca and everything that billie jean king set up there and you see full stadia Mixed audiences mixed crowd mixed tv audiences. So the most gender balanced tv audience that we see in the uk is for tennis watching both, so we're not gendering at any point in the, in its, you know, best form at the Grand Slam and more icons in that sport. So you've got, if you think about the number of women that rise above their sport icon status on mainstream, tennis has more than a lot of others. cannot be a coincidence that they have had equality for longer. So to your unbundling point, it's going to be sport dependent. We always say that. be specific, which sport are we talking about, which audience are we talking about, but also building the stage up together never been proven to be a bad thing.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 18:02

Okay. So there's a couple of things. One is, I think that I often think football, and this isn't just a, in the gender conversation, it's more broadly football is a, is a sort of bit of an outlier. Do you, can we, let's. not talk about football for a second, because I look at netball and I find that, you know, that's a whole story in itself, which I'm not, you know, invested in because I'm not the target or I'm, you know, but what we learned from netball? Because this appears to be a success story. There's the obvious point to say there isn't a blokes netball to get in the way of the story where there might be. But, you know. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. So what do we, what have we learned about, do we, have we learned anything about fandom and about audience from, you know, cause sky and netball have done a brilliant job. It's grown and we've had Joe on here previously, CEO on here talking about that sort of move and the shift over time of building audiences. And the, the really, the boring bit of stadia sizes and value prior ticket pricing and all of this stuff. I call it boring. It's really important. It's just. It's the nuts and bolts of people's jobs. What do we know, Joe, what do we know about, what has Netball taught us about this question?

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 19:13

netball is a really interesting one, it probably doesn't connect to a lot of what we've been talking about so far in the research, because we are talking about that crossover with traditional core men's fandom, but we can learn a lot from netball. So here are some big bits that we've learned from netball over the years. One, is a very female audience, and it's built for women, and it's a very female audience. It's not that astonishing, but you have to kind of reach that audience where they are. So on YouTube, compared to our, the rest of our YouTube channels, which are very, very male, skew very, very male, it's a 78 percent female audience. between 55 65 percent under 35. But what is more interesting to me than that, because I think that's not as surprising, is the audience stays for longer, it's more loyal, they watch live games back when we've streamed them. So we'll see. So even the, the first game of the Super League over the weekend got about 25, 000 views on YouTube 25 hours, 24 hours. That will grow. Typically, we see that grow to at least double. over the next week. So they watch back the whole game as live, which we just don't see in any other property. So they are, what does that tell us? It tells us the audience might not be able to get to it live. They might want to watch back with their kids. You know, there's a lot of kind of ifs and buts that come after that, but we know that they behave differently from any other audience. I think what you can extrapolate out from that is that you're building it for them. They're coming in their droves to attend. And actually that is an audience that does look quite similar in a viewing space, but it doesn't look like that on linear. And it doesn't fly, at the moment, on linear in the same way as it does. on YouTube. Now that might be a pay thing, that might be a reaching them where they are thing, but we know that, that we can reach them effectively with a product. And what I think Claire Nelson and Frank Connolly have done there is gone right, we have the opportunity to build out that USP to be different. They've prioritised the boring things, as you call them, like stadia, like tendencies, like building fandom for their new franchises, like making sure that the players are paid and that you can get the right amount of talent in each team. And I think it's going to pay off. Like we're already seeing it pay off. I went to the super cup the new tournament launch, and it was absolutely buzzing. It was bouncing from, and it was, how long was it? It was a seven hour event and start to finish they were selling out merch. The forest merch went very quickly. They were selling out merch right left to center. Like it felt different and it felt like a proper relaunch. So I think we can, can take a lot from that audience. But what we need to then do for each sport is to feed it into what we already know about those existing sporting audiences in the footballs, the tennises, the golfs, the cricket. Ha

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 21:58

Yeah, and I think Jo's absolutely crushed it there because that's. A really good example where Netball understands its core audience. And there's a product market fit piece there. That's very, very clear because that core audience is primarily a participant led more female dominated audience who understands the game and is excited about the product on show, I think. What's really important to Joe's initial point at the beginning of that discussion is that we have to understand each individual sports audience and we can't just put this wrap around Women's sports fans and treat them all similarly because you just would never do that in any other form of business You know, you'd really understand your specific product and your specific audience for that product and I was thinking about it over the weekend It's probably really average example, but I'm gonna run with it So give me some patience. So, so do you know the drink, Jubel, which is the beer that's got an apricot cut through it? Am I, am I talking, I'm going to, I'm going to convert you into Jubel drinks.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 23:04

talking to the wrong market. That sounds like hipster

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 23:07

Well, it is hipster nonsense, but bear with. So, as I,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 23:11

am I, am I drinking it in a jam jar or am I, you

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 23:14

I think,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 23:14

I the only one without a top knot? Is that, is that what's going

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 23:17

yeah, I think actually it was principally flogged to people that were on the slopes. So probably some like awful, you know, version of, of what you'd expect to see someone in like the rompon and Marybel or something like that. But basically it is a beer that is a fresher, fruitier version. Because the understanding was right, the people that launched it, that core beer drinkers actually wanted to have. a version that was a little bit more citrus, a little bit more sweet but still allowed them to assume that they were drinking a beer. And so the core audience for that product were already beer drinkers within the category. They were just looking to provide a distinctive product that would allow them to to purchase an additional item within that category. As a result, they're bringing an extra audience into beer consumption because there might be some new and emerging beer drinkers who perhaps typically drink cider or, uh, or gin and then, uh, interested in beer with a cut of apricot, but primarily they're focused on the beer drinking audience. So my equivalent here is if you're a golf fan, it's much easier to market. Golf to people who are fans of the men's version of that sport and then introduce them to women's golf because they're already in the category. They're already either playing or recognizing that it's a four hour round, you know, sitting down and you're really in for the long haul and you understand the techniques involved, the skill, etc. It's easier to cross sell. Women's golf to a core golf audience. If they've not discovered it previously and vice versa, that it is to bring in a brand new audience to golf and then educate them from scratch. Not to say that it can't happen, but as it relates to kind of product market fit, you're really focusing on your core. And I think sometimes that's where the narrative around women's sport, when it's classified in that bundled phrase, misses a trick because. It naturally gravitates this new and emerging group, but by sport, that's very, very different. And it needs to be attacked and treated in a, in a different way. And, you know, Joe alluded it to it previously, but there's some fantastic examples where in cricket with ashes to ashes or the hundred. Or in golf, where Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup ran back to back, appreciating that was actually not necessarily a judgment call. It was, it was almost a scheduling factor, but in both those examples, plus in the Six Nations, where you recognize that the core audience for those sports is actually the, the sports fan, the fan of, of, of the category, inverted commas, and then you give them an opportunity to consume as much. of that sport as you can in a really exciting innovative way where the women's equivalent and the men's equivalent are seen as connected, but distinctive. Then you drive some, some brilliant long term fandom. And, and we've seen that like one brilliant bit of research that we've done recently is on the Welsh rugby fan and their engagement with the Six Nations because appreciate this Six Nations is probably not a great example, but there aren't loads of things for the Welsh national fan to shout about around sport anyway. You know, there's not lots of opportunity to get behind national pride for your team, because there just aren't loads of different opportunities in terms of tournaments. To be able to support and so what we see is that there's a huge crossover between the welsh men's rugby fan and the welsh women's rugby fan as it relates to the six nations because They want to be able to get their their jersey out They want to show that national pride and so the fact that they run concurrently means that crossover audience is really really high So there's an opportunity to really focus and market that product to to the core. And I think that's the case across a lot of sports. But there's just a risk we don't we don't remember to talk about them when we're when we're

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 27:13

I think that's true. And I thought also, I mean, this is a question for you, Joe, I suppose is, is again, I may, I said that football might be an outlier, but I can get there in golf. I can see this. I'm, I'm, I've lived this experience of I'm a golf fan and I'm a. golf fan. And I watched the Solheim and I watched the L E T when it's on. And I, you know, football is just so wedded with tribal stuff. And it's just, you know, that that experience feels anecdotally quite, you just run into. the idiot wall of people who just don't, you know, who define themselves as actually not wanting this to happen. And they're so vociferous and so loud. I guess what you're, to your silent majority thing, is, is that just noise? Is that just social media noise? It's real and it's horrible and it's dangerous. But actually what we're saying is below the surface of that, something else is happening. Is that what, is that the picture that we're telling here?

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 28:11

I think you are right, there are a lot of people that sit underneath those very noisy groups, and there is a noisy group that also says women's sports shouldn't be remotely marketed to the core fan either, so that there is a smaller noisy group that sits there, but in the middle

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 28:25

yeah,

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 28:26

so that middle group This research is telling us are more likely to follow more sports, at least two more sports. They are 40 percent more likely to spend more time and money in sport. They are more likely to be younger. They are more likely to be female, although skewing male, but there is a, they are more female as a group. So. That there's the value and actually that's all compared to the people that say that there are only men's sports fans and we're seeing a huge shift right in how we consume sport personalization is here is growing. People will be able to choose what they what they consume more and more and more. So it's still really important to build the discoverability of women's sport and to market to those wider audiences as they might narrow and narrow from what they're used to. But I don't think what we're saying is. that men's only group, who are very loud and very anti whatever they're anti in their various ways, aren't the valuable group and we shouldn't be worrying about them. It's almost, and I hate this word, I don't know why I'm using it,

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 29:28

So, if you have a question, please feel free to ask it. The rest of you can get in line, if you wish. And we'll be back in a minute. So, you know, I, I will be back with you in a minute. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm a little bit nervous.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 29:50

that whether these fans come in through men's sport or whether they come in through women's sport, whether they're completely new or whether they are sports fans discovering more sport. What they appreciate about these women's sports is the Be it the technical nature of the golf they're watching in women's golf, be it the breath of fresh air that they feel women's football is, be it the lack of elitism that they see in women's cricket, which compares to how they see it in men's cricket, they appreciate what's distinctive and they appreciate the distinctive personalities. So we don't want to, by mainstreaming and by delivering these sports and marketing these sports to a wider audience. What we don't want to do is lose that nuance because actually they're there because of it. So the important thing when we're growing together is if we're talking ashes to ashes or the sky version of that was for where England batting, but we had both teams in that. You want to make sure that you're pulling out the nuances of what's brilliant about the women's game alongside the men's rather than just lumping them together. So that makes it harder. Let's be honest, that makes the messaging harder, but I think what's exciting for me is it's the same story bringing, bringing both groups in so we don't have to silo. We don't have to say over here is how we, we market to the core and over here is how we market to this. New audience. Actually, they're there for the same things. Caitlyn Clark is a brilliant example. Kaylyn Clark is always a brilliant example. She plays brilliant basketball. They harnessed her. They built the WNB up to the point where it was ready for an icon like Caitlyn Clark, but male or female, men's or women's first. You appreciate what Caitlyn Clark does. Maybe it's a slightly nuanced thing, maybe it's about her rivalry with Angel Rees rather than her three pointers, but within that is the same personality and the same story. So you can bring those icons and those stories to both groups with one united message, whilst not alienating either and, and growing your headroom that's the exciting thing for everybody.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 31:47

there's a, I think there's an interesting question. Sky Sports brand, because I've always seen it as quite a male brand and this again, this is anecdote research group of one, but I think it is true to say that it has been built to attract men and people like me over the, you know, its history has been fundamentally aimed at, at And I don't know what the, what the research would suggest on that. I think, and that's because the production point, there's a question that's coming about the product. And how it, you know, the, the presentation of it, but just, what do you think about that just in terms of the, brand of sky sports, is it a live conversation within company to say, right, okay, well, you know, the, it's almost back to Joe's beer metaphor, but, you know, there's a sort of presentation whether it can broaden or whether it's has broadened over time, dunno, what do you think,

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 32:48

say the brand conversation as with any brand is always a live conversation. How do you grow? How do you adapt? But absolutely, I'd say, you know, I joined sky 23 years ago. And it was a very different place. It was a very different brand. It was marketed at a very different, very specific group. Like, I don't think there's any denying that. I think the sky that we are now. is a wider business, but also the Sky Sports that we are now is a different Sky Sports. And you look at something like Formula One and the way that that's grown for female fans, you look at Premier League, actually a lot, you know, a lot more women watch Premier League than a lot of women's sports actually. So of those brands are growing and I think we have grown and also driven a lot of that change. So yes, it's a live conversation. Yes, There is some interesting stuff in this research that talks to the value that women's sports have for any brand. So, fans who like both are much more likely to see Sky as a brand, a trusted brand, a brand worth paying for. All of those are really interesting because again, it shows you the value back to attracting women and making sure women feel part of Sky Sports. But I would say over the last five, at least five years, making Sky Sports a place where women, where under 35s, where headroom audiences, all headroom audiences, feel comfortable, included, welcome. And welcoming is one of our watchwords, entertaining, innovative, welcoming. That's been a very live and a very pertinent conversation. My, my aim is to showcase where women's sports sits in that, because actually the growing and emerging sports, right? So they're not going to attract the same audiences. You will get more women watching Formula One at the weekend just gone than you would have done watching the netball, because just more people are watching it full stop. But actually, the role that women's sports plays as part of our brand identity I think is a growing and exciting space.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 34:50

and from a perspective of, I mean, I'm just wondering about, you think about that? As you were saying that it's, you get to the sort of presentation teams. know, and, and so women talking about men's football, women talking about Formula One, women talking, you know, so you get that culture war thing, that's a point at which it becomes a horrible conversation, but I'm wondering if, is there any research suggests the link between, it would be interesting to know what the shift in the brand of Sky Sports and or just Sports presentation generally and the presentation teams and the makeup and the gender makeup of that be quite interesting to know whether or not how that is shaping people. You know, again, my head goes back to Andy Richard Keyes, that you couldn't get a more male environment, inverted commas, or a version of a male environment. That's a totally, like you say, totally different world. To the sky sports you see when you turn on now. And I'm wondering if that's actually a factor in the shift in the, you know, external perception. I

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 35:57

No, it absolutely will be and it's absolutely intentional. What you want to be is representative of your audience. What you want to put on screen is to be representative of your audience. and that's absolutely the forefront of all of our thinking. And there's, there's there's, uh, people like, I don't know how much Formula One you watch, but Bernie Collins, who has absolutely changed how we think technically about Formula One and that output. I don't think you would have had a role for someone like Bernie years ago. She's incredible. And there are women across all of our, all of our strands that are incredible. As well as. men that can talk about women's sport and are fully invested. Nasser Hussein is always the first that springs to mind because his knowledge of women's cricket and the way that he talks about the stories and, and what's exciting about it, I think is really powerful for a traditional men's cricket audience. So yes, that's at the forefront, I think. The bit, the bit that is forever challenging as a broadcaster and as anyone working in sport or in society if we want to go wider at the moment is how you continue to give a platform to these brilliant women. without exposing them to more distress and hatred online than they need to be. And that is an ongoing conversation that actually women in football are sort of pulling a group together to start to think about how we continue to address that.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 37:16

That's a really interesting point. Cause they're doing a lot of brand work in that sense, aren't they? And the duty of care is very, I think. important. It's a conversation quite often have when you talk about brand ambassadors, when brands say, okay, well, I want a young black woman to, you know, North Face gets a young black woman to talk about mountain climbing and being outdoors. That person gets bombarded with horrible stuff and North Face is sitting there. Well, you know, the, the, the marketing people say, look, we've, we've shifted the brand in a different way. So there is a sort of the individuals there. really, sort of using being used as a shield there in that

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 37:57

well,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 37:57

they?

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 37:58

I don't know if I'd use that phrase. I would say that you don't even need to stick your head above the parapet to get that as to be a woman in that space or any minority or any underrepresented group in that space. Nowadays, you just have to be. I don't know what the word is. You just have to, you just have to be all on our screens are experts who want to talk about the sport that they love and are absolutely being employed to do that. And that is enough to trigger a wave of incredibly threatening and unacceptable behavior. So I don't think there's a, I think it's more, how do we shield them? Because that's where they want to be. want to be on those stages, talking about what they love, being experts, doing their jobs. we then have a responsibility to. work with them as to how far they're comfortable being in those spaces. And everybody does. It's, that's the same for everybody. But I think back to your original question, don't, what we don't want to do is to let that noisy, shouted minority stop us being representative for our audience, stop us being representative for our customers, stop us giving opportunities to all the people that should be on screen and should, and have an absolutely rightful place So that bit can't stop, but we still have to work on how we help to protect them and perhaps other spaces that should be doing more protecting aren't doing that.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 39:14

And to support that one of the things that was really encouraging, I think, for Sky and this broader story that came out of the research is we asked both Sky Sports subscribers and non Sky Sports subscribers to describe the attributes. of the different broadcasters. So we looked at Sky, TNT, BBC, et cetera. And Sky, for both non subscribers and subscribers, came out top on reflecting diversities of perspectives. And that was even stronger with an age 18 to 24 group than non. So that's Sky's position, and we've got so many quotes out of the qual here, as leading the way on women's sport is being recognized and is really powerful as much with Gen Z. coming through as it is with the sort of older audience. You know, we've got some amazing quotes like sky's the driving force behind sport and women's sport. It's the main facilitator. It's one of the first companies to go to the next level with women's football. It was one of the quotes it's seen as more inclusive, more innovative than other broadcasters and the brand equity it's gaining. From being able to show that diversity of coverage and recognizing the talents of many male and female athletes in its coverage, both on the pitch and also the presenting team. It's definitely cutting through. And, you know, it is really interesting to think about whether this is a sort of generational moment that we're in as it relates to gender. Yes, there's a point of time where there is a noisy minority who are inverted commas. You know, putting some hate out there on on social media, but you would hope that this is a generational moment where, as Gen Alpha, Gen Z, who are more gender fluent perhaps because of, uh, of a lot of, uh, more societal things going on in that space, perhaps hopefully going to be more open minded to, it's sport, we're talking to you through a sport front door, not through a gender front door, and that's one of the conversations we've had with Joe and the sky team significantly over the last few months is, is the fact that we're using gender is the hook to describe the sport, you know, whether it be on the sky sports app or just more broadly in, in news articles, is that a floor in the way we're marketing it here? Should we really be starting with that amazing action on the pitch the skill on the golf course is the hook. And then it happens to be that it's either a women's sports star or males and men's sports star. And so we're almost over. And actually, if this is a point in time, like we just did some separate research with Arsenal. And it was very much younger audiences. It's like a one club mentality. It's like I am Arsenal first and foremost, and I support the men's team, the women's team, the academy team. And that is so powerful as a club. If you're thinking that you're just putting your entire fandom out there and saying, actually, this isn't about a particular team or gender of a team. It's about what we're We have shared values, a shared ethos. There's a passion and a personality that we evoke in our fans, regardless of the team they're supporting. And, you know, it's a marketer's dream if you're a one club mentality from that respect. And so I think that's what I'm really excited about coming through from Sky's perspective, given their thought leading status, but also about like. you know, is there a different way in which we can start to package up men's sport and women's sport where it's not just obsessed about the gender of it?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 42:40

I think there's a, you know, it's interesting that sort of shift and it, and it feels true that, that Sky's brand has changed, you know, and I think there is a, you wouldn't have had that feedback 10, 15, 20 years ago. So, you know, the, the, you know, it's at the forefront of these issues. It's a, that, that wasn't, it's sort of DNA. It felt like that felt completely different.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 43:01

And sorry, Rachel, do you feel like then you, Sky Sports still speaks to you if Sky's brand has changed?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 43:07

yeah. I mean, I think there's a sort of interesting, it's going to, because know, I am obviously, you know, I say obviously, but I'm at the liberal end of, you know, the, the spectrum. I don't know. It's a good question in terms of the, and it's a bit interesting commercial question for sky in terms of, is it dangerous to risk and alienate what would be your traditional fan base of, of. Football fans in inverted commas, how much change do they want? Do you, are you dragging them somewhere or are they following you? Just in terms of there's a, there's a, there's a whole question of, well, if they're paying the subscription, what's, you know, how many of them are there? Are they dying? And in which case it's a commercially savvy thing to, to shift the audience. You're doing it. I'm, you know, I'm saying all these questions. I like what's happening. you know, I'm a man, but also I like what's happening on, you know, sky sports. So there is, and I think there's probably a lot of them. I think the definition of men is narrow and again, politicized. So, you know, we should be careful with that. There's however, I do also think that on a, just on a, Day to day basis, I sort of I click on a story and it wasn't necessarily on sky. It was on BBC sport where they haven't identified that it's a women, you know, so spurs lost and I'm now into a women, a WSL conversation. Well, I don't know. I don't, I, that if they had a flag, it was the WSL then fine. I get that you're presenting football as a whole thing, just as a navigation thing, you know, uh, even a wishy washy centrist liberal like me gets annoyed when I'm, I'm misdirected for why you might call political correct. reasons. So there's a whole sort of, it's, it's nuanced and complicated, but I think, you know, it's trying to work that through and it might just be the time at which, you know, there might be, there's sometimes an over response or an overreaction, and then it settles down. People get frothed at the mouth about batters versus batsmen, didn't they for, and now that's settled into.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 45:16

Good. Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to pick up on that because I think you're absolutely right. And when Claire was making that point, I think she's nailed it, right? That's where we want to be. And again, it's how do we get from here to there? So what we don't want to lose sight of is. the discoverability point. We are, the research backed that up as well. Live is absolutely a passion driver and they're still struggling to work out when everything's on these fans. So we absolutely have to, we have to build up the stories, the personalities, the skills. of the sport without losing the ability to identify what we're looking at, and especially in a male sport dominated space, which is what we're working in. It's going to be less of the stories until it gets to that gender parity. So have to overcompensate on the why, the where, the what. You know, when's that game on? How can I watch it? All of that stuff, you know, what league am I talking about? And I think it's going to be back to my boring specifics point, platform specific. So on Sports News, on Sky Sports News, we don't, we don't talk about the gender, know, you'll see it on the graphics, you'll see, you know, what league are we talking about, but actually they're just talking about the Women's World Cup. would be the World Cup or, you know, they'll just say in the WSL and it'll be league specific on the website and on the app. We try and do it by league where possible, but otherwise I think we might have to start thinking about, Google have done, when you search Chelsea, do you get men's and women's options so that then at least you can find what you're looking for? And I think as we build towards a space where we want to see more parity, we're going to have to keep working on the nuts and bolts and this research absolutely backed up that up. We still, we cannot lose sight of visibility, discoverability, know, let's, putting women's sport on main event, let's keep putting it on showcase because we need to rise it up above a lot of other sport to get eyeballs.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 47:03

Yeah and I think that's what's come out is that there's an addressable market there but they're not yet really anywhere near as passionate as the men's sports space is because we haven't yet given them as much opportunity to discover and engage and obviously there's opportunity for strength of pyramids to grow, strength of participants over the next 20 years or so. But yeah, the reality is at the moment it's a more casual audience, a more casual fan base. And we want the opportunity to be able to make sure that we're enabling that casual fan base to get more connected, to get more excited to get more inspired by women's sport, women's cricket, women's tennis, women's football, etc. And you know, the example that we talked a lot about was as it relates to icons, like Lauren James, as an example, like her skill levels on the pitch. are extraordinary. She is so skillful. I mean, I took my, my son to watch her play and she's called back to back hat tricks. Uh, and he just could not believe the, the talent and skill on display. And yet at the moment, she's nowhere near sort of an iconic status in the same way that if she was cutting through an immense football, that she would have that same amount pedestalling if that's the right word about her. So I think there's an opportunity as well to to really make sure that we are creating those stories, those narratives around these players in order to make them more more mainstream, in order to make those headlines about the skill of Lauren James as much as much the, you know, the team she's playing and the league she's playing. And, and I think what's really cool that came out when we were speaking to some of the younger fans is that something like FIFA. That the game that has enabled young men and women to discover the talent and the skill of women's football players is amazing. They've become household names for gamers because they understand kind of all of their attributes. And so they like, you know what we heard was like 18 year old guys or girls who understood them from playing FIFA were then looking out for them in Sky Sports News and looking around headlines around them. And so that. That idea of making sure we're, we're making players iconic. We're, we're helping them to be seen as iconic in order to cut through is still as ever present as it has been over the last 10 years in terms of that, the role that the individual players as much as the team. And I think that came out really clearly in this research. And again, it's hopefully a way that Sky can continue to market them.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 49:36

I think what you've just said about the casual fandom is something we've, and actually Sarah Boyd is one of my colleagues is actually working in entertainment now. And I miss her dearly because she had some really interesting thoughts on this. It was that casual is, can so easily be, and I know this is something you've talked about before as well, Richard, on this really pejorative term. Like what is casual? Is it occasional? Is it a main event? What does it mean? Do they only watch shoulder content? Like, you know, are they only watching it? you know, cheer or the last dance and they've never watched a live sport event in their life. Actually, I think what this research is, I found really interesting about it was that casual could be a you know, it could mean something very different in the women's sport fandom space and in this fans of both space that they are watching more sports, they are spreading that sports fandom wider, but it doesn't mean that their sports fandom overall is less. In fact, it's more. how do we then advantage of that group of people? And, you know, how many reports have there been, how many conversations have there been about turning casual into committed, but actually, are we thinking about what casual means in the right way? And, and actually that's, it's really good for us because. We're the home of sports fans in the UK, that's where we, we're the home of women's sports fans in the UK. If we can combine those two groups together because that fandom goes across, then that's really exciting prospect. So I think that, that casual piece and is it pejorative and does that then subconsciously undervalue women in the sports space because of how their fandom shows up? I find incredibly interesting.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 51:06

it's also, yeah, it's a really interesting question. So what is a casual fan and what do they buy? Sky Sports subscriptions is the question, I guess, because my assumption is that got to be. An avid, that's your core audience, but is that true? I don't know.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 51:23

Well, the casual fan of women's sport can be a committed fan of men's sport, right? So they. They may well already be subscribing and and that was you know What one of the kind of cruxes of what we were trying to get to for for sky here was to say Does the women's sports fan create an incremental subscriber subscription for sky? And actually I think where we've come out the other end is The women's sport fan may already be subscribing to, to Sky. They may already be a core subscriber and actually what women's sport fandom is doing for Sky is as much about keeping them sticky, creating that brand equity, ensuring longevity of subscription, because it's giving that sports fan more categories to consume, more content could consume. more opportunity to recognize the value exchange that they're getting from that subscription fee as opposed to necessarily bringing in this huge brand new audience. It's about thinking about that existing audience in a different way. And I think that's probably the crux for me of this whole piece of research. The whole conversation is I desperately want the commercial model for women's sport to work. And my concern sometimes when I'm sitting at conferences and listening to that focus being so much about that new and emerging audience is I don't believe that new and emerging audience can be recognized in terms of commercial value for the next five to 10 years because they're just not big enough as a sector in their own right. I think if we start thinking about the core audience as the real commercial opportunity. in this period of time in the next five to ten years and we build business cases around that core audience and we recognize this is an opportunity for them to consume more content to to be in a different headspace as it relates to sentiment towards sport and to sponsors of that sport then that's where that the commercial opportunity can be really felt and Yeah, the risk is that we, we focus too much on the, on that kind of new incremental as the kind of the keys to the, to the Holy grail. And we missed the trick, which is, is the core.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 53:38

See, I think that's the, I think again, back, we, we said about the beginning and whether dangerous is overplaying the, you know, but risk there is that sponsors hear that and say, okay, well, I'll, I'll sit on the sidelines for five to 10 years. If they, if that group of, if the story is not big enough, if the audience in the story of the different audience. Younger, wealthier female, if that is a bit of it, but actually the majority is the same audience. Then why, if I'm not in football now, why am I coming into football? If I'm not in golf now, I'm not, why, why bother going into golf now? Cause it's, it's going to be the same for five years.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 54:15

Because I think the research is really strong and it's not just Gambers research, other research out there that the sentiment towards sponsors of women's sport, even if they're the still the same eyeballs, it's actually stronger. And so in many ways, if you believe it's. a core audience, it's potentially got the opportunity for more exposure. And the sentiment towards those brands that are sponsoring is higher than actually there is an opportunity there. And I think, you know, there's a couple of different lines of thought, and I'd love us to keep continuing to, to build data points around this. I'm not saying that, you know, anyone's got all the answers, right? But in an unbundled world, you really do believe that in some of those core categories, that sentiment is higher. is really strong and that it will actually drive as we saw in our women's sport trust research that it will drive more consideration for purchase within the core household decision maker group who are that typically the, the women's sports fan are that core household. That we see that sentiment really cutting through. So there is a powerful story for certain categories and unbundling like, like Rexona with, with the ICC, the flip of that is the bundled argument. And I think that's really interesting and needs more data points, but if you're in a bundled world, can you prove out that sponsoring the women's team and the men's team? Yes, maybe the same eyeball, but does it drive more items in the basket because it's creating even more brand saliency to the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago, Richard, is it solidifying mental availability? Is it making sure that when you've bought once you'll, you'll buy twice because you're actually amplifying. That relationship, that connection, that sense of emotion with a fan. I would certainly want us to explore those, those territories. I don't think there's enough data on that at the moment, but I think there's some really exciting opportunities to look at that probably.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 56:09

And I think it's how we all connect, right? There's, there's the brand sponsorship world, which is going to want to think about one part of this. We've talked about tendencies and we know that they are different. And then from a broadcast point of view, it's not a very, uh, sexy sounding strategy, but essentially you've got to do both. You've got to do both. You've got to engage your core day in, day out, cross promote primarily against WSL cricket, you know, England and India are playing, you know, Both series are happening simultaneously in the Cricket this summer, they are both exciting series. Why would you not cross promote those? Why would you not use the same messaging? Promote the same icons? But actually, you should also be reaching out, finding those headroom audiences where they are, building their brand affiliation, getting them on board to the point when they are ready to spend that money, that you're the brand that they want to spend it with. So you do still have to do both, because if brands go away for five to ten years, they'll be at standing start. And nobody wants to be at a standing start with this audience. You have to build and grow with them. And if you're building a product on screen, on the pitch, wherever you might be, that is built for a wider audience, you are going to have chance of engaging them. But I think it's just where you sit in the funnel, you're talking to and what your, your goals are. But I don't, I think what we're saying is this research is telling us that there isn't. There is, there are a lot more upsides to investing in women's sport than there are downsides and the risk isn't what we, we perhaps have been presented is the risk of the core fan isn't what we've been presented

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 57:38

Yeah,

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 57:38

the past and the risk of, doing something differently, creating your new metrics, thinking differently about that casual fan is also not how we've been presented in the past and that was my sort of key takeaways, that permission to bring it all together with the same storyline. So I think it depends what space you're working.

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 57:57

Yeah, an authenticity to sponsorship that this newer and emerging audience does recognize, you know, they want sponsors that aren't just doing this to slap a logo on and, you know, hit some CSR measures like there is an authentic relationship. With with the fan of women's sport as to like, why are they, why are they supporting? Why are they sponsoring? Why are they investing? And that's really powerful right now for that new and emerging group, as well as that core audience. So to Jo's point, I think, you know, brands would be missing a trick if they're sort of just hedging their bets and waiting on the sidelines. So I do, I do think that that comes through and, and I know that you, you know, you use the word dangerous a couple of times, like genuinely without being.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 58:40

I'm adding Jeopardy, Claire,

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 58:41

I know, I'm enjoying it. We're, Joe and I are adding quality, you're, uh, occurring, occurring jeopardy. Yeah, no, I think, I think that, you know, to use your language, the danger that I read is that, you know, we're building business cases that may not stack up in the next. Few years, if we're looking through the lens of, of the wrong audience. And that's the scary thing is that we all want different all of the different women's sports to be successful. We want them to be built around the right metrics. Of course, the attendee will drive some really fantastic revenue streams. It is a different audience as it relates to attendees. So that ticketing revenue, the merchandise revenue, et cetera, is. The really hard thing is that the core commercial levers of sponsorship and broadcast may not be incremental right now. But that's okay as long as we can understand how we prove out the value to the broadcasters, to the sponsors, because of understanding where that point is. That fan of women's sport is at, as it relates to sentiment and recognizing the value of that, that investment into, into the sports that they love, but that feels to me like a much more sustainable way of thinking about the commercial proposition for each of the individual women's sports, rather than the risk, which is that we're, we're so laser focused on a new and emerging audience that actually the business case isn't necessarily built around the right metrics.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:00:10

Okay, I've got just, I've got a couple of other questions, which is if we look at, and this is probably more your day job, Joe, in terms of just the production. side of it and what it looks like on the screen, those types of conversations. And there's a, there's an element of, uh, I'm always interested in the relationship between, so sky is this big monster in the middle of the marketplace in the, you know, in, uh, we're talking about the UK for all intents and purposes in this conversation, but in lots of markets. And I'm interested in the signals that you're sending to rights holders. About the product, you need from rights holders, whether that's football, whether it's golf, whether it's tennis, whatever it is, and then there's a question about the quality of. Coverage and what that means from your, you know, and again, a day to day question. There was an interesting bit in the new WSL deal or the last one where there's a commitment to, for it to be raised to EFL standard football league standards in terms of the coverage. I wonder what that meant. And obviously that comes with a, there's an investment question in that. There's a cost to it, number of cameras, I'm assuming, but there's more of that. Just take us inside that bit of the conversation, because it's a bit that is quite often underplayed in this, I think.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:01:24

Yeah, I think that's probably true. To sort of first question, I think it's more than signals we're giving out to the rights holders. We have in depth conversations with all of our partners. It's

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:01:34

you're giving money

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:01:34

Well, we are, but also that comes for us with a partnership. So for um, the conversations we're having are daily, weekly, monthly about how we build this partnership together for this brand new deal. 118 games a season, 90 percent of all the games, we will be the home. How do we show up for them? How do they show up for us? What does that look like in terms of, you know, how we talk to the players, how they show up on Sky Sports. everything like that, the conversations we're having, including the player clips. And that was obviously a highly publicized part of that deal. So those are our rights holders are our partners. So it's, it's, we're very open and honest with them about what we need. And they're the same with us. And I think where we, you know, something like the a hundred is a great example of building that with them, building that with the ECB. So the broadcast graphics and everything. fully integrated. And that's what we've done with Netball Super League. This time, we've had brilliant conversations with the club owners, the coaches, the, you know, the whole of the Super League to say, what do we need to make this look as good as it possibly can? Because that's what you're thinking about. So all of that comes into it terms of the quality. Again, I think we need to think sport by sport and what those fans want. Have across your, I don't think it'll be surprising to hear across all of our sports. There are different levels of how we deal with different games and some will have more cameras, some will have less cameras. It also depends where we are. So more sport in big arenas, more sport in big stadia helps us to make that look as good as possible if you can balance filling them and the cameras. So those are, you know, there's, there's There's been lots of chat about the PWR recently and what they're able to do in the spaces that are in, you know, I think they're doing a brilliant job and I think the finalists, they look fantastic. So you have to sort of out where those temporal moments are and put the right number of cameras behind them. So yes, we are focused on bringing the quality up where we can of all of our women's sports. We absolutely, there is, there are always budgets, there are always considerations, there are always things we can't control. but what you'll see is us. to innovate as much as possible across this new WSL deal as we do with every single one of our rights and we find those moments where we think we can cut through to those new audiences. So golf's a really good example. The Women's Open is pretty not very many spaces in the golf calendar where women's sport gets to stand alone. Women's Golf, the Women's Open, the Solheim Cup are two massive moments. This year we've got the Women's Open. How that shows up for families. To be inclusive, how you bring the golf audience, the wider golf audience to that should show up on our broadcast as much as it shows up at an attendee at the event. So we always balance that, need for quality with making sure that we're not homogenizing. So it's parity, not homogeneity. with men's sport. And also we've got amazing teams, amazing directors, amazing producers, amazing crew who can make sure that women's sport shows up distinctively across those spaces. So yes, the number of cameras is important. Yes. The way that we show up is important, but having the best pundits is really important covering in a way that feels different. You know, I don't, you say netball's not for you, but If you watch a lot of netball or a lot of basketball, you shoot that very, very differently from football. You sit on camera one lot because actually you want to see the movement. You want to see the interceptions coming. You want to feel like you see the flow of the game. It's not going to be as close up. There's not going to be as many much time for replays. Every sport has different needs, so we just try and make sure we're bringing that to the customer as much as possible, as well as thinking about how they consume it. When do they want their highlights up? How are they going to find out about this? What do we need for sports news? What do we need for our digital and social platforms? And our WSL TikTok channel is going great guns because we make sure that those needs for access are factored into everything that they do, so that we can hit fans exactly where we need to. So, the broadcast product is important, but the whole offering. fans and how we use our access and how we use our resources is equally as important when we're trying to grow a sport.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:05:34

And that, that, we talked about the casual fan. And my assumption is, and we've said this a few times, we talk about this a lot on here. Is that the casual audience has migrated to YouTube and to, you know, there, there is a, I, I, again, anecdotally, I, that's happened to my sports viewing. So the assumption being, the marketing funnel is that the platforms at the top are doing, or, you know, the, the top of funnel, and then. That you're working them down to become a Sky Sports subscriber or whether, you know, whatever action looks like at the bottom. I'm going the other way. I'm going up the funnel. I'm, you know, a lot of my audience, I used to be a sort of in many sports, but now I'm actually TikTok will cover it. That's fine. I, you know, the clips or I'll do a bit of YouTube highlights and whatever that must be a worry. That must be a concern for sky sports. Cause you're doing a lot of the work, a lot of the work that a lot of the stuff that I see on Tik TOK is emanating probably from sky, but you're not getting value from me I could easily, that's a margin call for me in terms of, you know, a sports fan, whether or not I maintain a subscription,

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:06:44

I mean, firstly, Up The Funnel is a great name for a new podcast. You've got Up in there as well. I'm just saying, Up The Funnel.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:06:50

had

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:06:50

You can credit me for that. Yeah.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:06:53

And then. You sort of think, well, you know,

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:06:57

So, yeah, I'm going to start a TikTok channel called Up The Funnel as soon as I leave this call. But uh, but secondly, that, I mean, but that, that's the same for every brand. What was brilliant about this research is that live still came out top for the passion drivers. They changed with every other sport underneath that. So is it national identity? Is it friends and family? Is it participation? But actually live comes up top. So actually we still think, and it Again, it's how we define casual, right? Like, if you're actually interested in watching 90 minutes, minutes, 4 hours, 3 weeks of live sport, then you're going to be a different type of you're going to be a different type of fan. But also, if you're seeing something from Sky Sports and TikTok, building affinity with our brand with you. Whether you're a, if you're not a subscriber, then that is something that, you know, if it's our pundits, if it's our output, if it's something else we've created specifically for that space and our social team is fab and they are thinking a lot about those social social first formats. We're not, we shouldn't really be defined as a broadcaster anymore. We're content. We are, a distributor. We're all of those things. So actually there are, there's a lot of effort that goes into engaging fans on those platforms. And also there's a lot of Thank you. You know, there's a lot of Sky Media and brand interest in those platforms because we know what the audiences look like there. So, yes, it's factored into thinking, but I would say it's pretty much anybody who is in this space is having the same I think. important is that our USP and our live rights are something that we think very carefully about where we distribute, and that is another thing that we talk about when the sport of lawyers, what does giving away for free look like, as opposed to creating reach? Where does that line sit? And it will sit differently with every single sport because they are at different stages in their growth. And it will depend entirely on your wider goals as to bring in that sport in and and paying for it in the first place.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:08:52

yeah, fascinating. Well, listen, as I said, the beginning, there is loads in this research. We'll, we'll, we'll sort of do the usual stuff about putting links out. And obviously Sky are going to be pushing this across theirs, uh, your channels. and I think it's really interesting stuff. I think there's a load in it. And I think it will get a response. So, uh, I look forward to it in the meantime, Claire, thank you very much for your time

Claire Kelly, Gemba: 1:09:15

Thank you.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: 1:09:15

and Joe Thank you very much for your time.

Jo Osborne, Sky Sports: 1:09:18

Thanks for having us.