UP507 The YouTube Arguments

Guests Jen Topping and Jo Redfern critique the arguments around sport’s relationship with the creator economy, the control v chaos philosophy divide inherent in digital IP monetisation and audience building, and the PR battles being waged for premium advertising among the big platforms. Plus, the Beano. 

Jen Topping’s Business of TV Substack newsletter is great, as is Jo’s Kids Media Club podcast. Both are broader than sport and all the better for it. 

Plus:

The "Taylor Swift Data Fallacy" - This explores how top-tier creator success (like MrBeast's) is mistaken for average outcomes when creators transition to streaming, leading to unrealistic expectations.

The Data Reliability Crisis - Addressing the fundamental problem that much online engagement isn't authentic, with nearly half of internet traffic coming from bots.

Generation Z's "Creative Maximalism" - Examining how younger audiences have developed entirely new creative frameworks that challenge traditional media production.

The D2C Imperative - Why direct-to-consumer strategies are becoming essential rather than optional for traditional producers.

Creator-Led Sports as a Microcosm - Using sports leagues as an example of broader shifts in entertainment consumption and production.

Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
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Transcript

0:00

Hi there, Richard Gillis here and welcome to another episode of Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Today we are looking at that messy sort of fascinating collision, is that the word between traditional media and the creator economy and where sport plays in that world. We've got two experts to talk to us. We've got Joe Redfern and Jen. Topping Both are broader than sport and come from a uh, a different background. And I think, uh, all the better for it. I'd point you if you want more Jen and Joe content, a couple of things I'd recommend. Jen Toppings business of YouTube Substack newsletter is really good, as is Joe's Kids Media Club podcast. Check both of those out. I think there's really interesting stuff here that we get to, which talks not just about sport, which is quite often the, uh, you know, what sport should do in relation to the platforms, but actually the battles being waged between the platforms for premium advertising as they try and sort of convince the advertising markets that they are television effectively for purposes of nicking their ad clients. We also reference, a really good piece. Again, I'd point you in the direction of a substack by the entertainment strategy guy. That's his, uh, title, not some I'm just, uh, describing. And he wrote a piece called the, uh, Taylor Swift Data Fallacy, which. We reference a bit as we get there'cause we're talking about the issue of portability as in do the audience travel with the creators.'cause again, that's one of the underlying assumptions and I think it's useful every now and then. I've written this in the newsletter a few times, which is to just critique some of the arguments that are performing. quite often self-serving arguments by people who are putting forward a point of view. And those arguments then get sort of locked into, received wisdoms and you hear them being passed around and sometimes it's just interesting, fun. to question them, um, if you are, uh, pain in the ass like myself. Anyway, uh, enough of that so, welcome and enjoy Jen Topping and Joe Redfern.

Richard Gillis, UP: 2:03

So Jen, let's start.

Jen Topping: 2:06

Hello?

Richard Gillis, UP: 2:06

of all, hello both of you. Thank you for

Jen Topping: 2:08

Hi.

Richard Gillis, UP: 2:08

on. I'm really chuff'cause I, I'm a big fan of both of your stuff. You are like interpreters of a world that I sort of a bit of, but you are really deep into it and I really value the stuff that you do. So thanks for coming on. Jen. Can you just explain who you are, what you do all day? Because I, this is the same question will come to Joe as well, but just give us a, the listener, a sense of, what a day looks like.

Jen Topping: 2:31

Wrangling my children, getting them to school. No, that's too much detail. So I guess the background is, is I work, I've always worked in the media. I started as a journalist working for the BBC, and then I was at places like Channel four Xbox, doing interactive tv and then, and, and mainly in that edge between where technology sits and where content and TV is. So it's always just on that edge. So I managed channel four.com. I helped launch four od back in the day in 2006, launched social media channels, ran, ran, launched YouTube channels for, for channel four and various other organizations. So I've been consulting, um, for over a decade now. And in general, my consulting work sort of fits into two buckets. One is either. Production company, businesses, creators, et cetera, wanting business planning, strategic advice in general in a widest possible sense. So I work with organizations like Creative Scotland or Channel Four's, emerging Indie Fund, helping on that sort of business planning. Where are you going? What's your ambition? And then the second half is more about, okay, how do you crack the internet? And so that, that sort of fits with brands like I, I worked at BO studios when it was imagining what, well, what would the BO be if it was gonna launch today? Well, you probably wouldn't start with the comic, but it would include the comic. So what does that look like? Um, similarly, I was at the Booker Prize for three years as a consultant there, sort of reimagining what the booker looks like for a, a younger, wider global audience, which was a, a, a brilliant project to work on. And then increasingly, these two worlds have come together. So it's for both the TV side, the film side, the creative side, and the larger media organizations both want to know, okay, in this converged world, what are we actually supposed to do? And then this is very long, isn't it? So I'll, I'll keep going, but about,

Richard Gillis, UP: 4:12

it sort of stores up questions for later on.

Jen Topping: 4:15

well, about a, year Ag. Yeah. Love the beo. Love the beo. A year ago, I sort of, more than a year ago, a year and a couple of months ago. Basically, I just talk so much to production companies and to TV producers, and they're going like, how do you just know all this stuff? And I'm like, well, basically I have a social media addiction and that's really what this is about. And I, I just read a lot and consume a lot of media. And they're like, well, I don't have time for that, because of course they don't,'cause they're too busy running production companies and producing work. And I realized that there is quite a lot of noise out there from their perspective. So I'm specifically talking to producers and so I just thought, I, I want to help them shortcut their knowledge. So it's not, this is everything that's going on in the media, every single, you know, sparrows fart. It's not that it is. I think if you are a TV producer running a TV production company and you are looking at our market right now and trying to plan for the next year, two years, five years, this is what I think you need to know. And there's also an element of me bringing my background to the table to say, well, this is everything I've learned in 25 plus years of working in the media. Just shortcut your knowledge.'cause you don't need to make the same mistakes that I've made. Just know this bit and then you can speed up and get where you need to be faster.

Richard Gillis, UP: 5:30

Brilliant. Okay. So Joe, again, you've been on, you are a veteran, a beneficial partner, and, and you've so we've, we've done a couple of things together, live events together. What's is your, is it, yeah. Give us, let, let's answer that your first question first. Let what, what the, the, what do you do all day type question.

Jo Redfern: 5:47

Well, there's similarities with Jen actually, which probably explains why I love what she does and who she is. yeah, having spent with a slightly different angle, but having spent 20 years managing IP and kids media, which, you know, I was there when Pepper Pig was born. I was one of the people that sat around the boardroom table when this little pilot of a pig jumping up and down in a muddy puddle in Wellington's was brought in. And the, the MD said, got something, hasn't it? Shall we invest? And we all noticed, I went, yeah, do you know what? It's quite nice.

Richard Gillis, UP: 6:15

still got any, you still got a percentage of pepper pig?

Jo Redfern: 6:18

Oh my goodness. No. If only, if only. So, but really that is to say that was looking back in my, you know, older years now with a bit of wisdom. That was really my obsession with the start off. What makes ip, whether it's a pig, whether it's

Richard Gillis, UP: 6:36

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 6:36

PSG, what makes it so compelling that that fandom and fans are galvanized to turn up week after week in the rain or to watch an episode over and over again to insist on only going to bed in pepper pig pajamas. I mean, really that album always fascinated me. So it spent a long time doing that. Was at BBC Children's looking after See bbs there for a long time. And then having observed this shift, because I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm sure working in kids media puts you in the future business.'cause they're already the ones that are.

Richard Gillis, UP: 7:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 7:11

platform shifts and having observed how a lot of the kids media the BBC children's audience was moving to YouTube and into social gaming and Minecraft, and then this Roblox platform decided I needed to go and get involved there. But a public service broadcaster like the BBC, very trepidatious prevented in some cases from activating on those platforms because of the charter. So I left there and joined a startup that was basically trying to create the new pepper pig, but on YouTube and, and Roblox and gaming first. So I kind of hopped over to the other side and I've never really gone back and my pivoting to sport really driven by the same principles, the same curiosity, the same obsession with the alchemy. But how does it need applying to sport? Because I had sport in my life from being a girl. I did gymnastics up to British squad level when I was a teen. My two kids are, my husband's sporting, my two kids are sporting. I can't imagine kids not having sport in their lives. As much as the business of sport needs kids and future fans for its sustainability, and I kind of spotted that there was a gap there and someone like me might be able to fill that gap. And so here I am. That's what.

Richard Gillis, UP: 8:21

journey, I like this, the journey to Unofficial Partner. I quite like this like a sort of,

Jen Topping: 8:24

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, UP: 8:24

a, the children and ip, I mean, you all, there's a PhD in its own right. I'm not gonna ask that question, but we are, you know, and again, I used, I'm, I was a teacher, you know, I'm a recovered teacher. And it was a sort of, every, every conversation about education turns into autobiography within a sentence or so. So, and it's the same with I, you know, that relationship that we have. Before we called it IP and whatever it is, just, it's, there's something there, isn't it? There's something fundamental there in terms of that relationship, that devotion, of the things that we want that, that bit, at the center and then everything else has been everything since Mr. Ben has been a sort of poor imitation, basically, I think.

Jo Redfern: 9:06

But you know, there, there are, there are developmental stages in kids and I won't go too far into it and I don't profess to be an expert, but you, you deal a lit a lot with educational consultants and, and people like that when you're at B BBC Children. There are developmental stages that, that stay consistent over time, over hundreds of years. It's just the, the, the context around it changes. So actually those seeds of fandom, when you think about, and, and your parents. So you know, when you start leaving that preschool age and you start pushing out and you get a sense of self, very often called the yo-yo age, you start going out and you start aligning yourselves with things. You start literally badging if it's in the case of sport, but also yes, wanting to carry the lunch bag or the backpack and wear the pajamas. And then you might kind of retreat back into what's familiar. But those are the very seeds of fandom. So when two circles released that report, that said fan by 14, and you've gotta think about how you, you instill fandom by 14. I'd argue it's even earlier than that.

Richard Gillis, UP: 10:07

Mm.

Jen Topping: 10:08

Hmm.

Jo Redfern: 10:08

kind of 10 or 11, but. MO 10, 11 year olds.

Jen Topping: 10:14

Mm.

Jo Redfern: 10:14

it's a rather easily down the road by a lot of leagues and rights owners until they become partially or fully MO adults, but,

Richard Gillis, UP: 10:24

Yeah. Yeah.

Jen Topping: 10:25

I think that's so interesting'cause that's, I mean, bearing in mind, I only worked in kids only at the Bino, so that is my limited kids' experience. I'll defer to Joe's knowledge, but the bits that I took away from that that was so interesting was how, you know, Bino is targeting what, eight to 12, you know, seven to 11. That's a pretty high school age. And the difference between that demographic and those preschool kids that are buying lunchboxes and, and duvet covers and backpacks, that group already, it was harder to create merch. For that demographic relative to that younger group, the Bluey group, the Pepper pigs. And then, and then from that group as well is how fickle their interests are, how they're already sorting themselves out into, um, different interest groups, whether it's Minecraft on one side, or probably right now it would be K-pop, K-pop for, for a different group. Or maybe there's a crossover, but it might not be that strong. And then suddenly you end up then getting them aging up. And then, so then my next bit was when I was working at Channel four and they had this. A whole program called tribes. Um, they still release some of it every so often. It's, it's not as, as frequent as it used to be. It's absolutely brilliant because you could look, it's basically looking at sub tribes within a teen, older teen market. So you can almost see there was a gap in my experience that then went from Bino to this sub tribe group. You know, these sub tribe groups are sort of 16 plus, and you can see all these different fragmented audiences then that then carry forward to adulthood. And chopping and changing, you know, it's the, it's the goths of old or, you know, whatever emo doesn't really matter. And, and I think that's that classic thing for sports organization is, is how, how do you get to them when they're young, especially if it's not necessarily being handed down by parents. So it may be a sport that their parents aren't interested in what comes through the playground. And then on top of that, if frankly, a lot of the rights are locked away behind paywalls, which you may or may not have access to, well, you can imagine in a world where kids. Sort of don't watch sport in that they play it, but they don't necessarily watch and engage in it as a, as a, a spectator emotional experience unless they're, there are very specific circumstances for that environment to be created. And if, if I was in the grownup chair at a league, they wanna give me a call, I'm, I'm here. But if I was, I would be, I'd be quite attuned to that. That feels, that feels that feels do, that feels existential Slightly. I mean that's probably say stating it too strongly. But there's, there's, there's something going on There

Richard Gillis, UP: 12:57

is definitely, and yeah, we're sort of dancing around identity, aren't we, as a, as a central bit of it and whether or not the, the sort of, something which is innate or learnt and there is a question of what we want to present to the world versus what we want. I think it's, it's fascinating'cause it if you convert it into the sort of micro of the sports fan experience and everybody, you know, we are on a. WhatsApp group this morning where people are talking about the sort of ride cup and the fandom and America tribalism. did it come

Jen Topping: 13:28

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 13:28

you know, is it a Trump thing? All of these things, which I don't agree with as in the Trump thing, because I think it's always there and it's been there for a long time.

Jen Topping: 13:37

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 13:37

But it's fascinating. It's, it's, it's that bit of sort of social science where it meets the sport, and then you've got the platforms in the middle where, who really know stuff.

Jen Topping: 13:49

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 13:49

else is sort of guessing, aren't they? It always feels to me.

Jo Redfern: 13:54

It feels a little bit like that. It's interesting that when I was reading the chat on the WhatsApp group this morning, Richard, about that, you know, is what happened at the Ryder Cup, a reflection of what's happening in the us and I, I take your point that Tribalisms always existed

Jen Topping: 14:10

Hmm.

Jo Redfern: 14:10

as has, if you call it bad, bad sporting behavior. Really, I guess the only point where it, I think it maybe has been facilitated is just, it feels like there's permission to do that now with, without much fear of repercussion.

Richard Gillis, UP: 14:26

yeah,

Jo Redfern: 14:27

in a way that started me thinking about, again, we look at. I know, again, coming back to young people, young people want content. They still have the capacity to be fans. They still love sport. Arguably they love it and show their love for it in a different way. But if it's, if rights are locked away and access is restricted by default, then

Richard Gillis, UP: 14:53

yeah.

Jo Redfern: 14:53

there are things that will happen as in piracy. There are people that will facilitate that and they'll do it much like people felt emboldened at Beth Page to,

Richard Gillis, UP: 15:02

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 15:03

let their tribalism bubble over even though it's always been there. with young people. If you are going to insist, if you are a young fan, somebody once told me, if you are a young fan of rugby to, to consume all of the rugby that's available, you need six different subscriptions that total, you know, 67 pounds a month. That's only if you like rugby. What if you happen to like tennis and something else? Really? When that. all of those rights and that content is locked away, then piracy becomes that default behavior. Let's not demonize young people so they don't wanna pay for anything.

Richard Gillis, UP: 15:39

Right. I'm gonna use this. I, Joe, I, this is the perfect, and we are nearly fi we're 15 minutes in and I'm gonna ask my first question.

Jen Topping: 15:48

Oh.

Richard Gillis, UP: 15:49

I knew this was gonna happen, but. And it's not the first question I thought of. It's a question that has just appeared to me. So you mentioned two circles. I've just come off a call with Sam Sadie, chief Executive of live score betting sport and betting. They've done a deal with X, so Musk and, you know, to, to get sentiment in, you know, around betting. So this is just all context for this question. Two circles had a data point. I was at their summit last week the week before. And the, the data point was va and we talked about the value of ip, sports ip and you can total it up and that, and you get to, you know, tens of billions if hundreds of billions. And now the question is leakage, which you touched on there. And they've put a data point on it saying, and you know, their big, their clients are the big rights holders. You know, the FIFAs Ufas champions premier Leagues, Wimbledon's, no, you name them. They, you know, they're on their list now. One of the questions was, for every dollar that. Sports ip, the official rights holder captures another 95 cents Okay? So you, it's sort of one to one. And the leaks are exactly as you say, there is piracy being a big one, betting. The reason I mentioned it is another one. And by leakage, they're talking about money that that is being made from the ip, but not from the IP holder. Now, and Gareth Bch on this podcast, we'll put this out two circles is line is that that's a bad thing. They want to reduce that number to zero. IE capture all of the, the value that's out there. Sam, Sadie coming from a betting. Company says the number should be far, far higher, and it's his job to drive that number higher because you can then you are, you are almost working as a marketing arm for the Premier League. If you then take fantasy Premier League, blow it up into this enormous thing, into much more of a, of a market, an audience for it. So that's, I think what we, a lot of what I hear you two talking about is really interesting on that question. In of where and how rights holders can step into these audience. Where extent are they generating the audience themselves? To what extent are they leaning into creators or third parties on YouTube or whatever to generate interest in their thing, in which case they've gotta let it go. Monetizing the audience, we're, let's put the monetizing question to to one side for a minute and we'll come back to it'cause it's a business podcast, but just, I'm just floating that as a, as an idea. What do we think about that relationship between official IP and what two circles are defining as Unofficial ip? And here we are on the Unofficial Partner podcast. I didn't do that on purpose, but

Jo Redfern: 18:46

Jen, have you got thoughts? I have thoughts, but I don't.

Jen Topping: 18:49

I think probably, so firstly, a quick question. Just on the point around gambling. What, can you just clarify exactly how they're defining that? Are they just GA defining leakage as being any gambling that they'd get no value back from, or is there something more specific in that?

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:05

a Premier League match Spurs versus Arsenal on

Jen Topping: 19:07

Yeah,

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:07

Sunday. IP monetizable IP would be things like Sky has paid for the rights, sponsorship, et cetera, merchandise tickets, all of that stuff is captured betting. There are millions and millions of people betting on it, which the money then doesn't go to the official rights holder. It

Jen Topping: 19:25

Mm-hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:26

Flutter to

Jen Topping: 19:29

Yeah. 3 6, 5. et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:32

it's a peculiar relationship betting because there is a sort of tax that they take on that via sponsorship and official partnership. there's an official data feed that they pay. So there are ways of capturing some of it at some point and some bits of the world. But I think just beyond the technicalities of it. It's actually quite an interesting question as to what the relationship is or should be.

Jen Topping: 19:56

Yes.

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:57

control versus chaos question.

Jen Topping: 20:00

Yes. And I think that's probably why I'm asking is'cause to me, I would view the question around piracy slightly differently from, so the so the definition of leakage, I'm not sure it's a bucket. some of that I think is healthy leakage and some is unhealthy leakage. And that just sounds really biological. Yeah. But My issue is, is one thing I think, I think that the issue of piracy, I'm not in favor of piracy. I don't go yay piracy. But at the same time, you know, Joe and I spoke previously about this when, back in the day when, when I was at channel four and we had we launched four OD, but it was subscription service. You had to buy an episode. It wasn't a free streaming platform. And what you saw in all the streaming, you know, the line wires and all of these. Um, bit torrent sites. It's every day.'cause I had alerts set up. It would just be a flood of all of the programs that were on channel four yesterday that were made available. And it would be things like, how clean is your house? How to look good naked, yesterday's episode of Countdown. I mean, really. But seemingly yes. There, there was an, there was a quite a sizable demand for that type of content once four od became available. To watch with no subscription and no paid, um, barrier in in front of it. All of those BitTorrent just dropped down to a tiny trickle to being just a handful of titles that were desirable enough for someone to bother to do that behavior. So there's a thing around if you create barriers, then people will want to get round them and because of the internet and how it functions. And that's just gonna be a necessary part, natural part of the internet. I'm gonna park gambling for a second'cause I think that's different. The bit that I think is always interesting to me is what you count as leakage and what you count as brand building and what you count as audience. Delighting, And I and I an audience delighting, that's a terrible phrase, but, but being where your audience is, I think that all of these rights owners, IP owners, instead of looking at their core central proposition, which is how do I make money out of my assets? This is how I monetize them. And then everything else is either marketing or it is like p and l type activity, distribution type act activity that can be individually monetized and then often has like, oh, we're on TikTok. Well, I might have a little p and l around that TikTok activity. Or that becomes marketing and then it's again, treated slightly differently. That's not how your audience sees it. So being in places, leakage, you may define it as you actually have a huge power to control that within that environment. If you create content, experiences, interactions, anything that delights your audience. Really powerful. And so my question then is, instead of looking at it as leakage is step into these places, that's where I'm pa pausing, gambling.'cause I have a feeling there might be very complex regulatory issues around that. Um,

Richard Gillis, UP: 22:50

as as an idea rather than it be, you know,

Jen Topping: 22:52

yeah,

Richard Gillis, UP: 22:53

gets to a legal, tedious, legal conversation quite

Jen Topping: 22:55

yeah. But I think if you've treating for many fans in these spaces, they, they don't see, I'm not being marketed to here and then I am going to go along the, you know, user experience and buy a ticket or buy a piece of merchandise or take out a subscription that might be their sole interaction with that brand, that club, that emotional connection that might repay you in bucket loads. So rather than individually seeing core revenue stream marketing. Individual little activities over here that create additional revenues back or marketing back to the core is actually to adopt this multi-platform mindset where you see where all your fans are and you appreciate that you've got a whole host of activities going around that may not immediately bring you money back, but are actually, you know, like their hedges. You know, you're hedging the whole time. Where are these audiences going?

Jo Redfern: 23:49

that's kind of an anathema in sports. Certainly in my observation, I've, I've been focusing on sport for a little over 12 months. There is much more of an approach in sport to needing to control and own those transaction opportunities. And to some extent, harking back to my old world of managing kids ip, there's, there's been an acknowledgement that actually you do kind of wanna let that leakage happen. Back to Pepper Pig again. Pepper Pig was one of the most pirated kids shows on YouTube, but it would not, and it was being parroted prolifically from relatively early on, but it got to such a scale. It was supporting the rest of Hasbro's business. You know, it's, it's a 4 billion I mean, in a more recent example is on Roblox. Anime is huge on Roblox and. Anime, you might call it copyright infringement. You might just call it fandom, but a lot of anime characters and IP pop pop up in different games and guides Roblox. My hero, academia, big, big anime ip who owned Crunchy Roll, the anime streamer, decided they wanted to do a, um, a my hero academia game on Roblox. So instead of approaching all of those that had borrowed from the ip, but the fans that had built a big community, and yes, they were monetizing, but built big communities there, instead of actually maybe going and talking to them about making the the relationship official, they basically sent out take down notices and shut down these games that had in that had been in it for years, and they'd really built up their characters and their story, and then it got taken offline. Guess what happened to the official, my Hero Academia game when it launched? Like within 24 hours, they all basically negative review, bombed it, gave it down votes, killed it, killed it, stone dead. That's the power of fandom. So in a way, you think about what is leakage or what's Unofficial or things that you can't control and monetize, is still a value to them, but you've just gotta reframe them because in a way, same with Squid Game. Netflix owns Squid Game. There are two or 300 Ripoff Squid, squid game games on robots. But Netflix let them continue because it pushes viewers to squid game.

Richard Gillis, UP: 26:16

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen Topping: 26:17

Hmm.

Jo Redfern: 26:18

said that that's the case, so,

Richard Gillis, UP: 26:19

don't wanna misrepresent Gareth Portas.'cause I think his, his line is, you, you have to know the number. You have to map the world. You know, their data. People, they, they want to map the world. They want to know what it is that is leaking.

Jen Topping: 26:32

Yeah,

Jo Redfern: 26:32

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 26:33

not be able to do it much about it. It may actually be a, you know, as you say, a good thing.

Jen Topping: 26:38

I think it's, a careful dance, isn't it? You know, like if you look, if you think of something like, not to keep going back to four oh d'cause it makes me sound ancient.'cause it was rebred about 10 years ago. But, But, that's on, I mean yeah, but it's on something like 20 something platform. So, so you are everywhere where you can imagine these people are gonna be, well, that runs a little counter to IP rights holding for sports, doesn't it? Because you are, you know, that's what these new deals that are being done where rights have been signed with, you know, like for the Bundas League or whatever, with, you know, with traditional broadcaster, cable subscription or whatever. And then these handful of deals that have gone to video podcasts or to a YouTube or whatever is, it's the beginning of that. But actually there is something in inherent in the business model that makes that challenging. Whereas you wanna be everywhere where your fans are, except your entire business model is not based on that. It's based on being with someone. So there is, I can imagine if I, again, sitting in those hot seats and making these decisions, that's an incredibly challenging space to be in to preserve your existing revenue while also seeing that the world because of convergence and fragmentation around you is changing slash has changed. That you are caught in a space. And so these evolutionary steps that you need to make to be where your fans are and to be where these audiences are, while also not, you know, just throwing it all out in the air and saying, oh goodness, what are we gonna do it, it isn't as, it isn't straightforward, let's put it that way. I

Richard Gillis, UP: 28:06

And I'm gonna just sort of, throw in a couple of questions, which, so you can imagine. So we've been going five or six years. I've been following the sports business for, you know, much longer than that for my since. And one of the, I sounded really resigned, didn't it?

Jen Topping: 28:22

really enjoying it.

Richard Gillis, UP: 28:24

I'm still, here. let me outta this box. There's a, there's a question. So point being, you can see sort of strategic fashions come and go, let's put'em that way. And sort of build award garden, go direct to consumer. If you know this, this conversation always ends with the Premier League and Prem Flix taking out the intermediaries who are paying them billions and billions and go direct to That's the sort of almost the cliche end point. But every sports governing body and rights holder is looking at this question in, you know, it could be a geographical. Thing, or it could be just different products that they got under the same bonnet. Whatever it is, you know the story and there is a been a sort of, now you need to own your own data. You don't, you know, I'm a Spurs fan and the cliche was, you know, I could go into the stadium and they dunno who I am. So you dunno who your fans are. You've devolve that for money. That's fine. You've made a fortune outta that and now that's not gonna work anymore. So I'm just gonna throw some YouTube related questions out to YouTube because you are the experts and I'm, I'm, you know, what they, what they are. But some of them are, okay, what, where is the argument now? What is it that what happens? What's the difference? So between the platforms, why YouTube and why not the others? That's another question, but that might be something else. There's the sort of, are, is the audience real, which would get to the, you know, the dead internet and all of that.

Jen Topping: 29:56

Mm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 29:56

But just take me into you think,'cause I, I buy the YouTube thing people, I mean, I sometimes I write. the newsletter and talk about on podcasts. I just question that, that there's a, a cross LinkedIn, for example, is there's a wealth of people selling YouTube as a, as the answer to all ills. And the journalist in me just has to counter, you know, against that. So one of the questions, well, what is the critique of the YouTube position if I'm, if I'm a rights holder? And it will be different for if you're top table and mid, mid squeeze, middle and all those things. But give me a sense of how you would critique your own arguments. sound

Jo Redfern: 30:37

Mm,

Richard Gillis, UP: 30:38

interesting? Right. Let's, let's go who?

Jo Redfern: 30:40

I'll jump in with YouTube because I guess I am one of those evangelists, although I am quite pragmatic about the challenges of, of monetizing on YouTube. But let's start with the positives. YouTube for me. So again, you, we think, I always come at it from the lens of the younger fan, that that's the audience I know best and I've spent all of my career working it for them. YouTube is their very first Portas of call for video it's their search engine too. So they'll go there when they wanna know how to boil an egg, tie a school tie, or is Mark Goldbridge doing an alt commentary on Bundas League this Friday? I mean, it's, it's where they go. Which kind of means that you've gotta be there if you're trying to reach those audiences. So how do you show up there? Well, it will not be a replacement for rights. It's not like for like monetization there is hard, as you know, although the tools are getting better. Interestingly, YouTube, I mean YouTube make, YouTube makes$35 billion annually on ad revenues.

Richard Gillis, UP: 31:47

heard it successful.

Jo Redfern: 31:49

Yeah, they're pretty good at it. Anything outside of ad revenues, not really a motivation on the, you know, for them to, to improve them. But they're beginning to feel the pressure from creators. And if they do want the NFLs and the Premier Leagues to, to embrace it more significantly, they do have to improve their creator tools. And in this sense, creators is equally a Premier League team as it is Mark Goldbridge. So they are, they are working on it, but it's, you know, when you've got$35 billion just coming in from ads, there's not, there's no real urgency. But that said, what it also allows, which I think is a positive, is you've got 110 million YouTube channels. Jen mentioned niche earlier. You know, my 16-year-old, he doesn't hear a commentary on B, B, C and chime with that commentator. They don't speak his language, they don't talk like he does yet. Mark Goldbridge or Manny or SV two might do. Now you've got the ability, as someone like the Premier League there to maybe have four or five different creators creating content around your product, whether it's an an old commentary or some shoulder content. But they will create it. They, you've got the ability to have lots of different tone of voices, different languages, different ways and styles that's gonna supersize your ability to reach and resonate with younger audiences. So surely that's a positive.

Richard Gillis, UP: 33:15

Yeah, I can see that Jen.

Jen Topping: 33:18

Yeah. So what where, where to start? It depends on how you view YouTube. So. There's one bit, which is exactly what Jo's talked about, so I won't duplicate there. That ability to reach new audiences, that ability to be part of something, especially for younger audiences or specific niches and demographics. I think there's just a little thing around YouTube. So although we know that in the UK anyway, I think it's like 87% of viewing on YouTube on the television crucial dimension is from like 25% of the audience, and that's also a really young demographic. So you've got a young demographic of very heavy users. So we've just gotta be really careful when we consider what, what do we mean by YouTube? And the assumption that it's everyone is equally on these platforms, which I don't think is true. But I do really echo what Joe said about, you know, being young people in their first port of port of call. If you look at it from others, there's so many other people in the mix. If you look at it from an advertising perspective, yes, that's a big chunk of change you've just described, but actually YouTube is desperately trying to position itself as television because it wants more of the premium advertising. Money, which is much more lucrative with the broadcasters have that the streamers are now getting into, you know, you look at Amazon's play around advertising, they flipped all of their subscription base into the, into the streaming as into their ad tier. They didn't ask people to opt in, they just dumped them all into that, that tier purely so that they can try and scoop up as much of the global premium, which YouTube isn't, I'm afraid, the premium ad market money, which is competing with Netflix and competing with all the broadcasters. That's why Channel four Sky and ITV came together to create this new premium video ad marketplace basically to try and cross sell across broadcasts and across video and demand to say we are the premium players we're television or audio visual content that's premium in nature to put it separately to YouTube, which is yes, does have premium content on there. It's also got high quality creators, but equally. YouTube itself says 30% of logged in viewing on the platform is live streaming. Now what is that live streaming? Is that people chatting? Is it this, is it people shooting the breeze? Or is it live sports or live news channels? Well, again, with YouTube it's a mix of everything. So I think when you look at it from,

Jo Redfern: 35:34

stuff too.

Jen Topping: 35:35

yeah, and I think that's where, where you start to see, as much as YouTube is a compelling space to be in, it's like two things can be true at once. This is a the, the world is here on YouTube. What an amazing platform, what an amazing set of tools and monetization and community at the same time. You know, it's, it's return on how much you get from advertising on that platform is significantly lower than you would get on tv. It's also, if you're an advertiser, well the audience is massively fragmented, so it's hard to pull people together in the same way as you can do in other media types, because all the eyeballs are on lots and lots of different channels, rather than like, everyone's watching Great British Bake off or whatever it happens to be that you can reach via a, a coherent advertising campaign. So I think that a, the answer isn't completely straightforward. The other bit that I would add in is that there's so many battles. These are this is my, my interest. There's so many battles going on all around us that we're not quite sure of. So I've mentioned one, which is advertising that's raging. That's why YouTube says we're TV is because they're trying to, to take that premium split. Then you've got battles around, you know, cloud computing and Amazon web services, and who's gonna distribute this content?'cause Amazon, like 75%, something like that. 60 to 75% of a Amazon's profits come from Amazon Web Services, which is the CDN and the content distribution of, guess what? Most of the video on demand platforms excluding, you know, YouTube and Netflix who have their own distribution platforms. So there's this battle raging there. Then you've got ever all these other battles, which is Spotify and Netflix and YouTube battling it out on, you know, games and podcasts and as well as eyeballs and content. So there's a whole host of stuff going on underneath the surface where I'm, I, I, I think on a, on an individual. Organizational level. I think everyone, producers especially should be on YouTube because otherwise it's, it's the world's audio visual storytelling platform. Your audio visual storyteller sports is an audio visual experience. You sort of have to be there'cause that's what it is. Equally, you are basically in a way giving the platform that would like to take your entire lunch money. You are giving them your, your lunch. So that's, that's the challenge.

Jo Redfern: 37:52

I think it's a really, it's a really good point that you make because what I think is on occasion we tend to think, we talk about direct to consumer, but then you talk about prem flix, but direct to consumer is YouTube. It's Spotify, or I mean, it's more about direct to your fan owning the relationship with the audience because. If we're gonna say D two C has to be owning the pipes, then we might as well all go home. Like Gen said, Amazon owns a ton of the pipes, so do YouTube and Netflix has got their own, but really there are a few people who control the pipes. So if we start thinking about it as owning the relationship with the audience and acknowledging that one of those, or a few of those relationships will be on other people through other people's pipes, but we we're gonna be okay with that. We're gonna be quite sanguine.'cause actually we're thinking about this in terms of our IP and we're thinking about ecosystems. And the other thing is we tend to think in terms of each, each pipe or each platform as being an endpoint. And we mon, you know, we reach them there and we figure out how we advertise to them or we monetize them there. But if we only ever think about them as endpoints, we, we take away those bridges that we're trying to build between platforms. If we're talking about fandom and IP fandom. It's okay to have some Premier League fans that are only gonna be on YouTube, and yes, they'll be quite difficult to monetize there, but there might be voracious fans, they might be sharing and creating content, spinning that flywheel of thunder. You might have a smaller number of more lucrative fans on prem flix, but you know what? I think if we can get comfortable with knowing that, that's fine. And actually we can have a little bit of fluidity between those two. But getting comfortable with these different strata of fans, different types of fan. We tend to, I,

Jen Topping: 39:45

Y. Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 39:45

against funnels at the moment you might have seen on

Richard Gillis, UP: 39:48

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 39:48

LinkedIn because that encourages, just

Jen Topping: 39:52

Mm-hmm.

Jo Redfern: 39:53

direction of tr travel. Then you gotta try and stop everybody down that funnel. And actually what if we said, do you know what then no, it's fine. We're, we're not gonna think in terms of funnels anymore. We are gonna think in terms of those ecosystems and to, Jen mentioned it earlier, you can have a mini funnel for your YouTube fans have a mini funnel or a plan or a strategy for them over OnPrem flips and an in gaming and on mobile and on the website. But actually, if you think about it as more of owning your relationship with your audience, wherever they may be, and optimizing that experience there, then that starts to relieve the pressure of, it's had, it's had revenue on, on an algorithm driven platform like YouTube.

Jen Topping: 40:31

Can I add one? Oh, Sorry. I was just gonna add one thing in. It's also not, everything's forever. Like it's, a lot of this is about try, you know, this is a completely fluid world we're working in now, where things are chopping and changing and what's true yesterday is not gonna be true tomorrow. And, and so you try it out. So if I just go back to YouTube. YouTube. Channel four signed its first deal with YouTube in 2009 and put its entire archive, catch up everything onto YouTube in 2010 to 2014. Then for whatever reason, one assumes financial, they decided to focus on their own platforms and they took all that content down and now they've decided to put it back onto the platform. And who knows, maybe it'll come off the platform again in the future, but, but this is happening all the time, so, so if you look at creators, for example, some of the biggest creators. Who made their fame and fortune on YouTube are now launching their own platforms. So you've got Dude Perfect, have their own streaming platform, which is a subscription service. Their wholesalers, you know, child friendly, family friendly content. So you can pay them monthly and you, you know, you're not gonna run the risk of anything dodgy within the platform, but there's tons of them. There's side Men have one drop out, have one. There's Nebula, which is one that is owned by creators, and you can go there for packages of premium content from creators with an ad-free existence. So, and that's that's about owning. Being, being less dependent on YouTube and less dependent on that ecosystem in case.'cause you know, tech companies haven't defend, they pivot. So you may go, oh goodness, I've invested everything into YouTube and now they've pivoted and, and there goes my business. So, so there's, this is a shape moving, shaping, changeable, feast. And you don't have to say, oh goodness, we have to be on TikTok from now until the end of time. It's actually, you go into this and you test, you learn, you duck, you dive, you try things out. And then you may, you may hit some rich scene, but then after, but you're staying close to the numbers, staying close to what your audience is saying, close to saying close to change, and really being engaged rather than frankly signing a deal and then walking away. Well that deal's now signed. So we don't need to think about that for the next three years, four years, or whatever it is. If this is a heavily engaged in monitoring, learning, curious, picking up rocks, what's here type role rather than that, sit back.

Richard Gillis, UP: 42:47

a question that, which builds on both of those things, which is about, I think it's about audience portability, you know, and you'll have you pointed it to me actually Jen, the Taylor Swift data fallacy, which was the sort of

Jen Topping: 42:59

Oh, love him.

Richard Gillis, UP: 43:00

which I'll

Jen Topping: 43:00

He's a genius.

Richard Gillis, UP: 43:01

it's really interesting. And so, and one of the things that came out of it is, so Mr. Beast's beast games on Amazon, a hundred million pound dollar budget. Question about the audiences didn't deliver massive audiences in the way that it was expected. Side men's in inside series 73 million views on YouTube series one down to 2.4. So 3%

Jen Topping: 43:22

Mm

Richard Gillis, UP: 43:23

Netflix in series two. So one platform to the other is lost. They've lost 97%. I dunno, Pop the balloon live. 21 million on YouTube's, 8.7 on Netflix, which again, sounds quite good to me.

Jen Topping: 43:35

mm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 43:36

digital circus. 8, 890 6 million YouTube views versus 16 on Netflix. So the question is, is that about portability, about friction between platforms? Is that about the audience on YouTube doesn't exist in the way that we think it does. It's a bot audience and or something else. What's, what's your read? What was your reading of that

Jen Topping: 43:57

My take on it was each, each case is different. I think what my argument for all of this really is,

Richard Gillis, UP: 44:04

do away with nuance

Jen Topping: 44:06

oh, it's all I ever do. That's all I ever,

Richard Gillis, UP: 44:08

can we just have one thing that works for everything and then, you

Jen Topping: 44:11

no, that's the point.

Richard Gillis, UP: 44:14

Yeah, exactly. Bloody

Jen Topping: 44:17

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's my problem is with all of this, it's also knowing the people involved. No, having been there and done this myself, there's nothing worse than someone sitting on a podcast going, well, that didn't work, did it. And it's like, thanks. I worked really hard on that, you know? So I'm never gonna dump on any of the people involved'cause I know that they've worked hard on it, but It's actually about an assumption. Yeah, I want to be liked. No, it's about the assumption, really. That's why I wrote that piece about this data. Partly be inspired by entertainment strategy guy who's basically saying, w we're all in this hype bubble where we're hyping stuff all the time and pr and puffing going, oh, it's so exciting. I'm in a brave new world. Oh, actually, when you look at the numbers, you go, really? Um, and that, and it's just about holding ourselves to account on what data's out there. And I think this is where there's several things missing. I think the glory days of being able to have a reliable set of data, you know, whether it's box office for the cinema or Barb figures or Nielsen in the States for television, where you at least had a sort of a standard format that you could all, you could compare like with like you were all within the same category, even in what we've just run through of YouTube performance to Netflix. YouTube doesn't even define a view in the same way that Netflix defines a view or anyone else defines a view. So it's all like apples and oranges the whole time on top of that, for some of those examples yes. Some of the, their subscribers, some of those views, those people won't even be alive anymore because they've been, the content was made, sadly, the content was made so long ago. Also, then their accounts might be dead. They might have moved on to other, they've got other interests they've taken up knitting, you know, whatever. So, so it's an apples and orange comparison. But a, a, classic thing that TV and I think streamers do the same as going, you've got a big audience online. If I put your content onto my platform over here, they will follow you. That is the assumption that you can't rely on. They may, they may, but beyond the ones that I just mentioned in that piece where I talked about and the ones that we've just run through, I've heard anecdotally from broadcasters and commissioners going back 10 years where you're just in conversation and then you ask about a show where a creator or an influencer has featured. More often than not, they'll just interestingly say, yeah, the audience, we didn't see an uptick. And so I would just caution against assuming that it will work. To the linear broadcast or to the video on demand broadcast. The streaming broadcast, it may give you noise in another way, which may not directly influence, I'm afraid. You know, that'd be, be comparable, but it does, you may see an audience impact somewhere else, and that's why the one around Mr. Beast, I think the issue with the Mr. Beast Show is, and, and again, I'm using entertainment strategy guys data and the, and the, the piece that he wrote about it rather than my own research. So I will pay at tribute to him. The, the, the, I think the issue there was just the, the budget size. The budget size was so massive that actually if it was a cheaper show, if you look at side Men this inside that clearly does not have a hundred million. Dollar budget, they, they, have made a side men esque feeling show for Netflix rather than a Netflix X feeling show featuring the side men. And so therefore, the audience didn't necessarily shift in any great number. But actually, do you know what? As experimentation And I think that was worth doing. Same with Pop the Balloon.'cause that had a live element, which wasn't in the other one. And the only other thing I would mention is Amazing Digital Circus was an acquisition. And so that means that Netflix didn't pay for its creation. They just bought it at a bargain and basement price bond would assume. And I think while that is really compelling from a Netflix perspective, I would be worried from a creative production company perspective,'cause it means that all the risk, the relationship between producers and broadcast is around risk. The broadcaster shares, shoulders the risk. And now it's saying, actually, do you know what creators, production companies, you go shoulder the risk and if it works we'll lift it off your hands for a bargain placement price.

Jo Redfern: 48:06

been quite canny in doing that.

Jen Topping: 48:07

Mm.

Jo Redfern: 48:08

same with Miss Rachel.

Jen Topping: 48:09

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 48:10

one of the biggest preschool creators on YouTube. Huge following.

Richard Gillis, UP: 48:13

And

Jo Redfern: 48:14

then when she reaches a scale, then, oh, hey, do you wanna come over onto Netflix again? It pushes

Jen Topping: 48:20

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 48:21

all of the test and learn. Go and make your mistakes over there. And when you've perfected it and you've grown your audience, then, then we're interested. Yeah.

Jen Topping: 48:27

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 48:28

so that Netflix a particularly that that does seem to be their approach. Back to Mr. Beast, a couple of points to talk about. You don't just lift and shift something on YouTube and move it across to a streamer. You made that point. It's, it's a different consumption habit. It's a different need state entirely. Mr. B very often consumed on a phone. You might be walking to school, you do each video in two or three bits because he's crushing a train into a ravine or he is giving away$2 million. But sitting down in front of the TV with Amazon Prime on, it's a different thing altogether. You may be on the sofa, you might have your tea on your lap. I mean, it's, it's, it's completely so you don't just, you know, change the aspect ratio and plunk it on and think it's gonna work.

Richard Gillis, UP: 49:10

The

Jo Redfern: 49:10

other thing is the value, again, you, you, you can't just say it's not reaching TV numbers. It's like, you know,'cause those metrics are, have been very useful to Jen's point, but their existing kind of older fashioned metrics, it's like driving a car but only looking in the rear view mirror.

Jen Topping: 49:27

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 49:27

always just share, judge everything with, what's gone before. So Beast Games on Amazon. I mean, I even think part of the shtick was the a hundred million dollars price tag, because that's what Mr. Beast is about. I

Jen Topping: 49:41

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 49:41

$4 million on this video. I gave away 2 million quid

Jen Topping: 49:44

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 49:45

in a circle for 24 hours, you know, so him saying he put$50 million of that budget in himself, and you know, it's just part of the part of shtick, but.

Richard Gillis, UP: 49:53

how important is, is production values now in terms of just the, in that crossover? Because again, this has an application to sport because people quite often come on and say, well, in their heads, there's the sort of Olympic of sport which is top, top of the shop in terms of cost. Premier League football on Sky is as good as, you know, that set the standard of it and everyone then traditionally is looking up to that and can't afford it and whatever, and then making compromises. But now it seems to me, I, I dunno, there's an intangible in production quality I think, which is quite an interesting question in terms of the, what it looks like and feels like on YouTube and whether or not, I mean, it might talk to your premium advertising

Jo Redfern: 50:36

It does. I think it does, and I think, but I think quality used to be dictated by the producer or the broadcaster. we have it flipped. Quality is much, much dictate. Beauty is in the eye, the bowl quality. Yeah,

Richard Gillis, UP: 50:52

eye, the beholden

Jo Redfern: 50:54

you've got kids watching stuff on YouTube or you've got them playing games on Roblox, and you might have seen it or heard it yourself, and you, you know, a, a grownup comes in and goes, what's the, what the heck is that?

Jen Topping: 51:07

Hmm.

Jo Redfern: 51:07

looks a little bit blocky and, and lo fi or the production quality is not what I was brought, brought up on. Doesn't mean to say that they're enjoying it any less, or the level of fandom isn't as voracious. Just this last Saturday, a game on Roblox, which if you were to look at it, you'd think it was relatively kind of, you know, 16 bit gaming console from 25 years ago managed to corral 25 million people in the game at the same time. That's levels of viewership re reserved for World Cup finals. I don't, you know, I don't even think you are a vision final, you know, so, but that's 25 million users concurrently in one game, there to steal a brain rot. mean, so, so this just plays into that. Yes. Where there's advertising concern is concerned. You want to advertise against premium, but then when you think about who your audience is and who you, you are trying to reach, you might have different levels of

Jen Topping: 52:05

Okay.

Richard Gillis, UP: 52:05

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 52:05

and production levels. And again, one size doesn't fit all. So that's another thing where we've got more nuance now. You can't just produce ones and feed it out to different platforms. You're gonna have to have a different content creation strategy for each one.

Jen Topping: 52:18

I think there's something in, I spend a lot of time on YouTube, and especially around factual creators and looking a lot of factual creators. There is a sameness. And a and, and a dare I say copycat thing going on, especially around challenge, especially around, you know, stunts that it is becoming incredibly samey and there's various reasons for that. One is, well, who's the most successful? Let's copy him. There's another around, it's easier to do because it's a formula, frankly. Television, I mean, we can go back to, it's a knockout. It's been a staple of television, so there's an element of replicating stuff that's very successful. So I think that, that there will be a, we're in a sort of a bubble of interest right now with a specific type of type of audience for that type of content. Now, that may last for a while because there's a lot of people in terms of that demographic who wanna watch that type of content. But I think if you wanted to reach a slightly different audience, older May and older, by that I mean like 25 and above, I don't mean, you know, even 40 and above. I mean actually just slightly outside of the kids or, or teens, youth market. Then I think there is gonna be a, that will get tires. I think that there will be a look for more sophisticated, better class of storytelling. On top of that, when you imagine how much AI slop is not just on the platform already platforms, it's not just a YouTube problem, it's everywhere. We are gonna just be like this with the volume of AI derivative. I have no way to describe it apart from garbage that I.

Jo Redfern: 53:49

of slop.

Jen Topping: 53:50

And I think that creates a specific space for professional produced content, including from sports brands, including including, including with authenticity, with quality storytelling that is reliable and trustworthy, that's not gonna suddenly have like some random better answers or something going on in the middle of it, which can happen in the creator economy. Coming back to your questions about regulation and whatnot. But that, that, I think that is going to be an opportunity. And the only other thing that works against that is the fact that the economics of how you make money on these platforms. Encourages people into the samey, samey, whether it's AI driven stuff or that we're gonna do challenge stuff or whatever it's gonna be. And so the challenge is going to be for everyone is how do you h how can we try and make higher quality content that meets all of the audience expectations outside of the ones who really like that stuff? Because otherwise, I, you know, there was some little interesting nugget from one of the data points in America last month, which saw YouTube not continuing its upward growth. It just slightly tailed down in terms of TV usage in the States. It's just as it's a tiny little data point. You're not gonna read a lot into it, but it's not like that, you know, so it's, it's the platform itself needs to get more needs to, needs to more people who are producing higher quality content to targeting specific types of demographics should be on this platform. And I think that's, but it's about business model as well as about whole host of other things going on there too.

Richard Gillis, UP: 55:20

What what do you think the, the sort of implication I look at Netflix, for example, actually I, let's start with Spotify. We had a conversation, we had a meeting with Spotify and we were talking about, you know, they want to turn everything into video. They want to turn this you know, our podcast into a video podcast.'cause because that's how they mana, you know, it's easier for them to monetize and of that, which I get, you know, I understand it. And then you've got Netflix. So when everyone's trying to be YouTube, I want the risk for Netflix is to be try because they're now saying, right, okay, let's have. Keep it local, some podcasts, you know, that, that podcast model of a superstar, you know, the good hang

Jen Topping: 55:56

Official partners. Unofficial partners on Netflix? Yeah.

Richard Gillis, UP: 55:59

becomes a just a format in, in and of itself, which Netflix is sort of looks like it's interested. I I sometimes wonder whether that's a world that they should go into. Again, back to your, I think your, premium advertising race, I know it's not all of it, but it's a, it feels like a sort of answer look into their soul a bit in terms of what they're trying to do

Jo Redfern: 56:19

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 56:19

because when everything is sort of efficient and everything is, is sort of flattened by AI brand is be, will become disproportionately more important I guess. And that's always an argument that put is put forward for sport. You know, that it has a brand, it has an audience. And of the, I just wanna finish off, there was a question. Again, it's one that I've been Peter Hutton who Jen just for your better. I know Joe knows him. he was a, he's, he was sport, he was sports guy at Meta. He's a, he's a very experienced TV writes guy, then spent a period of time at Meta. He came, he's been on podcast, you know, multiple times. But the last time he came on we were talking about cricket. But the point of this is that he was saying that it was interesting what sport looked like when it came through meta because they didn't need to sign a big check for rights because it didn't actually do much. And it's an engineering company was his phrase. And all they care about is the business model. And if it works, you know, you put IPL up against a CAT video, they don't care what the, what the thing is. They care about what the impact is and, and what happens. And so the argue sports argument for getting rights fees out of, you know, meta, which is a conversation has now almost died away. It of wasn't there, they didn't have a, a, a concrete argument to get their high quality stuff on there. But the question I've still got, I can't quite work out is what's the difference between that and YouTube and is it, is it in the minutia of, and the data they share or, you know, why put your stuff on YouTube but not on meta was my question. and it gets back to the sort of power of the arguments being put forward for YouTube,

Jen Topping: 58:06

Hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 58:07

work out what the difference is between the platforms.'cause I don't know enough because, to get to that answer, but I wondered what's the, if I'm putting League on meta, Facebook, Insta, whatever, they, we do a deal compared to putting it on YouTube. Am I making more money? I'm assuming I'm making more money on YouTube, but, or make getting more customer data or they're sharing more or they're nicer people. I have, I have no idea.

Jen Topping: 58:32

I think that it comes out back to the age old question of audience experience and who you're targeting versus advertiser. So if you come at it from the audience perspective, Facebook, Facebook's reach is massive. Facebook still is a massive platform with a,

Richard Gillis, UP: 58:46

much, much anymore,

Jen Topping: 58:46

yeah, no one does. Everyone goes because, because it's like, oh, it's so boring. It's, it's passe actually. It's incredibly active, really broad base within the wider population. And it's huge for groups. So it's less about your social graph now, like your friends, family, colleagues. It's really become a group platform. So it's where your interest and hobbies live. If you are that type. An older, broader, yeah. Older, broader,

Jo Redfern: 59:10

on Facebook.

Jen Topping: 59:12

exactly. But which is why they've got Instagram. It's quite hard to build audiences on Instagram. They've got WhatsApp channels on WhatsApp. Go into the news channels on WhatsApp. Go look at the size of the footballing channels, Ronaldo, et cetera. Massive. Absolutely massive, massive. For organizations like the Daily Express, it's absolutely huge. So, so they've got that bit going on. So, so you can target specific audiences through whichever bits of the ecosystem and YouTube's the same. And then you've got TikTok and da da da Snapchat. We haven't talked about Snapchat, but that's, it's all of these different plays that you can reach different audiences in different ways. The bit where I think it's different on how you approach these from a, from a rights holder perspective is about, is from the advertising perspective, frankly. So the, the buy that a brand makes are from buying ads. Against Facebook is different in, in quality and, and, and price and who you think you're reaching than YouTube because of the, they're both video. It's so bizarre. That's why YouTube Shorts is a competitor to Instagram Reels is a competitor. Facebook reels, which is not the same as the 16 by nine television experience in the living room. And it's not the, that's why Instagram has, is creating a version of Instagram that is for the television set. It's, again, it's not just because the audiences are there, it's because the, the value of the advertising dollar on the 16 by nine television set is worth so much more than on a phone, an ad or an overlay over a, you know, vertical, one minute form of content. So it's a different play from that perspective. And they're in a different market, you know, in that sense that's slightly different play. They're both looking to different groups, if that makes sense.

Jo Redfern: 1:00:53

and again, that's, that plays to this difference we're talking about in unit economics in. The tendency in sports is to just think, well, we used to sell our rights to Sky Sports or D Zone or whomever, and we got this much for it. So therefore, if we're going on to different platforms, we've got to replicate that. And that's not, that's not gonna happen. Those different, those unit economics are different. Like I said before, YouTube is not gonna be a replacement for broadcast revenues, but plus TikTok, plus some WhatsApp channels, plus some games. So plus in aggregate and then moving them around that ecosystem and monetizing them as they march across bridges and merchandise and live experiences. All of that might be,

Jen Topping: 1:01:39

Okay.

Jo Redfern: 1:01:39

different way of managing your rights if you're the Premier League or Bunes Leaguer or you are,

Jen Topping: 1:01:46

Mm

Jo Redfern: 1:01:47

club World Cup than just, so I think back to that nuance again, much as you, you know,

Jen Topping: 1:01:54

Sorry.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:01:55

we, people

Jo Redfern: 1:01:55

mind.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:01:56

people wouldn't want podcasts if it was, if, you know, they need nuance

Jo Redfern: 1:02:00

Yeah. They need, they, they need, need ones. And also their need states are different. So if you're gonna think about how

Jen Topping: 1:02:07

Hmm,

Jo Redfern: 1:02:07

things that you do in a day, you, in a morning you want some news and you want it in bite-size'cause you're corralling the kids and trying to get them out the door. You want the highlights of the Rider cup final day yesterday. But then you've got a bit of time at lunchtime where you want a bit of a deep dive into something'cause you, you know, and then in the evening and you're sat with your feet up and you wanna be entertained. It's a passive laid back, lean back experience. All of those things can, can work in sport too. You just gotta figure out how you create your content or package your content and distribute and monetize your content across all of those platforms where those unit economics are gonna be different.

Jen Topping: 1:02:41

and I might be.

Jo Redfern: 1:02:41

YouTube is gonna replace broad lost lost media revenues. That's not gonna happen.

Jen Topping: 1:02:47

And I think I, I might be a case study of one, but I spend way too much of my time watching old classic moments of particular sports that make me just go, oh, that's amazing. Kathy Freeman at the Sydney two thousands. Come on. Like, so the, the value in those archives that can be sweated and poured through and re clipped and recomp contemplated or compiled into whole new ways means, and forms onto all of these platforms is highly lucrative part of the forest.

Jo Redfern: 1:03:12

I, agree with you. I've, I've said quite a few times if you, if you gave creators a package of archive rights and said, go for your

Jen Topping: 1:03:23

Go nuts.

Jo Redfern: 1:03:24

know, your socks off, you compile the 20 rainiest goals from Premier League 1994 and do your thing around them as a creator, that would be so popular. Because this is another thing about, you know, we, we say young people on YouTube and TikTok, they've got no attention span. That's rubbish. It's their interest span that is shortened because there's so much content

Jen Topping: 1:03:49

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 1:03:50

me. I'm here. I'm interesting. But if you can, you know, if you capture that interest, their attention spans are as long as ever, you know, try getting my kids down for tea when they're head, you know, head down in a YouTube video.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:04:03

they, they talk about your cooking behind your back, Joe. That's the problem. The the right. I've got one final thing. I'm very conscious of your time and I've, I'm being greedy, but I've got, there's one thing which I, I must ask you about, which is led leagues. So the, this phenomena that we've seen over the last few years of that Baller League, Kings League, lots of big rights holders are, are, have seen stuff that you are, you talk about and write about you to and said, right, okay, we need to put creators at the begi, the middle of this. Or if you are an investor saying, right, we need to disrupt golf, we need to disrupt football. We're going to, we're gonna start with the audience, start with the side men, hashtag bunch rather than arsenal and spurs and go from there. Can we just, I get it intellectually and I understand it and I understand. Why you would go there and you know, as all these things, some will work, some won't, it doesn't matter. But can you just again, critique it for me? Can you just see what the, what the stumbling blocks or what the bumps in the road might be for this? Because we're at the early stage of this and I receive on a very regular basis a press release for a new one. So they come in with, you know, swimming is being disrupted and or whatever, you know, it's sort of giraffes in the pool or whatever it is. So,

Jen Topping: 1:05:24

Brilliant.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:05:24

I can be as good as I like, but I know it's a trend that is, is there and real and the good ones will, will work. But just give me your sense of, gimme a bit of perspective in terms of where you think it will work and where there's gonna be a challenge. I don't know whether I'm focused on sport. I dunno if there are sort of parallels outside of sport, you know? Again, you talk about it's a knockout, it sort of feels a bit like celebrity. It's a knockout, but there's a, there's a, dunno, what do you think?

Jo Redfern: 1:05:54

I think if you are thinking that you can launch a PR new product and you just throw a few creators on, it's gonna equal success because they, it's back to what we were saying before.'cause they're gonna bring their audiences Don't, don't disrespect audiences. If your product is fundamentally shit, then I'm gonna go across,

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:06:12

They're idiots.

Jen Topping: 1:06:14

Yeah.

Jo Redfern: 1:06:15

and I'm not, that's not having versions on any new incumbent, but it depends really the motivations for you. Is it really creator led

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:06:25

or

Jo Redfern: 1:06:26

or have you just been told that you need a few creative to get the YouTube kids watching?

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:06:31

and that's

Jo Redfern: 1:06:32

really my issue with it because you know, it's that herd mentality. Something kind of half works one time and then everybody's, okay, we've cracked it, we've got the formula now let's just do that over and over. Yes. So, but that said, I'm being facetious because I work in that kind of creator world and I speak to creators and I look at some of the incumbent kind of sports and hybrid sports that are popping up on places like Roblox and. They are in tune with fans and what fans are doing. You've got developers on Roblox, like I've said, who know their audience and community so well. They can corral 25 million users into their game on a Saturday. You've got YouTube creators that I've spoken to who know their audience so much better than any league or broadcaster could hope to. They know them. They,'cause they've been learning about them for 13 years. They might have attracted their IO and they've tried to tr you know, change what they make at some points and then they retreat or they, they pivot their, their content, but they know them. And actually there's a, a nice respect. One of the things that you, I was talking to a guy that I know that works at Crunchy Roll, the, the anime streamer. And that is something that underpins anime fandom is IP owner and creator and the fan. There is a huge respect. You acknowledge the fan, you love the fan. And I do think sometimes in in sport there's a little bit of that kind of respect of the fan has been lost in lieu of a fan equals transaction opportunity.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:08:04

Oh yeah. I mean, e even with absolute open contempt for the fan, it's not like, you know, it's not the same relationship at all. I mean, not, not all across the board, but I would say that that's one of the features of the last 20 years has been a sort of, you know, as sports become digitized, have lot, they, they absolutely see them as sort of, demographic segments,

Jo Redfern: 1:08:25

Yeah, so I think so in a way, back to the the creator thing, a fan and particularly a young fan'cause they have grown up with a radar that's very finely attuned to in inauthenticity. If they just think that you're just chucking in a few creators'cause it's gonna make it successful, they'll see

Jen Topping: 1:08:41

Hmm.

Jo Redfern: 1:08:42

I don't think that really will.

Jen Topping: 1:08:45

I think that sports have always been disrupted, haven't they? I always come back to the creation of the one dayer in cricket, which is what I grew up with. You know, going from the five day, my dad's a massive cricket fan. I grew up in Australia. That's, you know,

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:08:58

your age.

Jen Topping: 1:09:00

it wasn't the one day in 60 Math Hughes. Hughes.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:09:04

a Gillette cup. Sorry. I'll

Jen Topping: 1:09:06

I wasn't God really? Is it that? Oh, well to me, I'm not.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:09:09

Joe isn't Jen? Isn't that old?

Jen Topping: 1:09:12

But I really remember Murphys and on telly and Warney and all of that stuff and the excitement as a kid of just seeing that and being allowed to stay upright and there's a run chase and it was so exciting. But it was a, but it was, you know, you remember it was ma met by, with massive skepticism by the traditional cricket and traditional media organizations and even

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:09:31

to, I'm sorry to bite, but there is a, I got, when I was, I was working for a magazine called Sport Business and I was the editor and so I got the pitch for 2020 Cricket in 1990, 90,000. And I couldn't have been more patronizing. I was like, you know, I, if I'd have said, if I'd have tapped him on the head and said, yeah, good, good idea.

Jen Topping: 1:09:49

brilliant.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:09:49

You know, thanks very much. And then obviously the IPL proved me wrong yet again,

Jen Topping: 1:09:54

Yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing. The, the, I, I just don't, so my, my last point probably is number one the, these types of, everyone's trying to reinvent the wheel a lot of the time because the formats, games, formats, sports formats are highly lucrative, right? If you've got the new, if you create the new version of Weakest Link called traders or whatever, you've got a license to print money. But actually it's really hard to create that stuff. It, they're really, really hard for every traders. There is probably, I don't know, 500 failed shows that go beforehand, and I can't quite remember the metric, but it's, it's, it's hard to do that, and you have to be a real specialist. The only other bit that I would add into what Joe said is she's highlighted a team and a league in, in America called the Savannah Bananas, which I just absolutely love. Because of how close they are and how fan centric they are, that it's family, it's fans, and it's, they're putting on a spectacle for those people and allowing them to be as close as possible and then use all these digital platforms on the acceptance that they're gonna make money somewhere, somewhere in the mix. They'll make money along the way rather than seeing each interaction with their fans as an opportunity to monetize. And I think that is something to take great inspiration from.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:11:01

I remember Joe, when we were in Lausanne, so we were Jim, we were in you know, Olympic world. We did a thing at, in the, at the IOC museum. And I remember Joe, you saying that Roblox was an IP generating machine and there was a, you know, that,

Jo Redfern: 1:11:13

Absolutely.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:11:14

it's just sort of, that really stayed with me.'cause I thought, yeah, I can, I get that. And sometimes I think. Why bother turning that into a live event?'cause live events are a pain in the ass. They're expensive and costly and, you know, all of those things. Why? Just if you've got a digital audience that is, you are monetizing happy days, I imagine.

Jo Redfern: 1:11:31

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:11:32

the other, the, the other bit is the what happens when you are sort of looking at people or looking at that audience with a just a different perspective.'cause I think it's just a different way of, of looking at it. And I think there's a parallel world where we, there's a gaming conversation where we have sort of Gen Z envy and they look at sport and say, I

Jen Topping: 1:11:56

Mm-hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:11:57

our audience in the same way as the Premier

Jen Topping: 1:11:58

Mm-hmm.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:11:59

the way in which, and we are in a sport bubble and we always look at gaming, music, entertainment in out to out to other sort of realms. But listen, I. All but we could go on for days and come back. Enjoyed that enormously. So

Jen Topping: 1:12:14

Thank you for having me.

Richard Gillis, UP: 1:12:15

Jen Topping. So thank you so much. I really enjoyed that.

Jo Redfern: 1:12:17

Thank you.

Jen Topping: 1:12:18

Thank you.