- 2 years ago
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00:00We're talking about ways that leagues, and companies, and teams, and
00:03media companies can reach younger fans.
00:05And that belt, I imagine, if you take that to an NHL game, for example,
00:10you've got a lot of young people out there looking to take photos with it and
00:13interact with it.
00:14Absolutely, and when you're in the world of greatness right here,
00:18the Hall of Famer, you couldn't miss up the opportunity.
00:21And this is our first collab with the WWE with the championship belt.
00:24But it's really all about that mashup of cultures, right?
00:27And anything we can do to touch that's within our sport and
00:31beyond our sport is what we were talking about earlier.
00:33It's all about winning the casual fan game.
00:35So delighted to have this and delighted to be here with everyone.
00:39How does a partnership like that start?
00:40Is it you're thinking about what kind of collaborations we can do?
00:44NHL and WWE doesn't jump off the table as something that I think naturally fits
00:48together, but it obviously works.
00:49I think WWE does a phenomenal job of marketing to Gen Z and young fans.
00:54And they've been focused on that for a long time, as have we.
00:57And so it's about finding those intersections of opportunities
01:00to expand your fan base.
01:02Paul, what do you feel when you look at that?
01:05I think it's a perfect representation of where everything is headed.
01:09I think it's all about synergy.
01:10I actually think that WWE and the NHL and the NBA and
01:14Major League Baseball and any sport all have the same theory.
01:20If it's the Yankees and the Red Sox, I understand who the teams are.
01:23I understand why they're having a game and I understand why I care to see it.
01:26If it's the Yankees and Texas, by way of example,
01:30it's not going to have 50,000 people in Yankee Stadium.
01:33It's all about who are these people, why are they together on the same frame,
01:39and why should I care enough to pay attention to it?
01:42So the same thing with the NHL, with the games.
01:45Same thing in WWE with the main event of WrestleMania.
01:47So I think the synergy actually is perfect.
01:51I want to read you guys a quote that I wrote down.
01:53Tim Ellis, the CMO of the NFL.
01:56What we know is that if you don't acquire a fan by the time they're 18,
02:00you're most likely never going to get them.
02:03Do we think that's right?
02:04I'm curious what you guys think.
02:05We think it's right 100%.
02:07That's not true.
02:08I'd say, I think, I'd say, I'd piggyback on Heidi's point earlier.
02:12We think about the casual fan a ton.
02:13So when we started doing sports content in 2015,
02:16we kind of made the mistake of just covering the games.
02:18We just covered Yankees, Red Sox, the Knicks, Lakers, etc.
02:21What we found was that if you were a fan of those two teams, yes,
02:25you'd come and watch our stories, interact with that content.
02:27But if you weren't, we couldn't really pull you in,
02:29because it was just kind of hardcore sports fandom.
02:32What we started doing is covering everything else, the pregame,
02:34the postgame, the fans, the locker room, all of that shoulder programming.
02:37And our goal was really to kind of pique the curiosity of the casual fan,
02:41the young fan, the under 18 fan, who maybe doesn't know who LeBron James is,
02:45who does not know that the Wimbledon finals are happening over the weekend,
02:49or the Euros, right?
02:50How do you capture that fan's curiosity,
02:53kind of keep them kind of coming back to our platform,
02:55then develop that long-term fandom, as Tim says, over time?
02:58It's hard to believe that, though,
02:59in the fact that you see everybody, the drive to survive effect.
03:02You can't tell me those people are all under 18,
03:04and they all of a sudden just started, found this over COVID.
03:07Like, the reality is, is the content drove that fandom, the engagement.
03:11And you're seeing it now, too, especially in like the WWE.
03:14You see crossover athletes come in there, and they're now a fan of that.
03:17Like, the core fan who's a local fan base, whatever, I can see that.
03:21But it's hard to agree entirely with the fact that F1 popped up and
03:25has a bunch of young fans everywhere.
03:27I recently got very into cricket on, well,
03:29you saw me at the India-Pakistan game in New York.
03:31So yeah, I think you're right.
03:32I think it's either there's a good piece of content or an experience that you can
03:36have that suddenly you're like, I didn't know this existed, but this is great.
03:39I think that's the challenge of something that we do at Springhorn
03:42Uninterrupted is about how do we create content that's engaging with a larger
03:47sort of range of people, and I think it's about platforming it.
03:52So there's different ways of reaching the Gen Z audience, but
03:55also reaching the traditional audience of, I don't know if necessarily traditional,
03:58but older audience, because they're used to receiving content in a much different way.
04:03And so with this Gen Z population of 65 million people,
04:09they're consuming in such a different way via Snap or YouTube.
04:13And so that's why at Uninterrupted, we partnered with you all on a show,
04:17because it was about young athletes.
04:20We followed, it's a franchise called Top Class.
04:23And we followed four seasons of Bronnie James' high school career, and
04:27we created shoulder content on Snap that drove viewers to
04:33our prime video preview where you can find it traditionally.
04:37So we were following Gen Z athletes using Snap as a way to
04:45appeal to the Gen Z audience, but while still trying to bring in an older audience
04:49on a freebie platform, which kind of mixed probably in the Gen Z and
04:52a more traditional viewership.
04:54So I think anecdotally, we all know, I'm aware that none of us are Gen Z and
04:59we're up here talking about it, but we all know people who are,
05:02we've seen the way that they consume content.
05:03But I am curious, definitionally, how you guys think about the fundamental
05:08differences between an 18-year-old hockey fan, for example, or an 18-year-old
05:13soccer fan versus what you would see in a 45-year-old hockey or soccer fan.
05:18Well, we look at it so many different ways.
05:20And first, I should start with we're now entering our sixth season
05:24of our youth advisory board, which is called the NHL Power Players.
05:28And- I love this idea.
05:29I love this idea.
05:30It was inspired by an 11-year-old girl who wrote me a letter and
05:33said that she could help me figure out how to market to the next generation fan,
05:36and she'd work for free.
05:37And we invited her into the office, and
05:40she brought a whole full on PowerPoint presentation with all these ideas for us.
05:43They were really quite good.
05:45Some of them we were already doing, but she didn't know it, right?
05:47So that's an aha moment where you're like, wait a minute, we're not reaching or
05:50connecting with this next generation in the right spaces and places.
05:54So that inspired the Power Players.
05:56It's a group of 25, 13 to 17 year olds.
05:59We refresh every season.
06:01We have around 1,500 applications a season.
06:04Last season, we had kids everywhere from Newfoundland to Hawaii.
06:07There are hockey players and fans in Hawaii, believe it or not.
06:11And we meet with them twice a month, and we talk about everything.
06:14It's not just hockey.
06:15It's about sports and media and content and culture and music and social justice.
06:21All those important issues and topics that are important to them.
06:24And what I learned in that is all the research studies that we have in the world,
06:28the quals and the quants, those are all fantastic.
06:30But the nuance really comes through meeting with these kids over and
06:34over and over again.
06:36And one thing, I don't think I'd go a day without reflecting on their voices in
06:41my head about how they see the world and how they view the world.
06:44And I think the thing that's most surprising to me is how much content,
06:49not only that they consume, they've grown up digitally,
06:52they've grown up in a feed culture.
06:54But not only how much content they consume, but they remember and
06:57have an opinion on and can share that with you.
07:01And you think about how sophisticated they are and
07:04the things that they notice about content and about marketing.
07:07And this is our future, it's our future marketers, our creators, etc.
07:10So we, as brands, can learn so much from them.
07:12So that's what I would suggest for everyone for the future.
07:17We also look at it from a real world perspective, and
07:20we've been doing a longitudinal study on ticket buyers, season ticket members,
07:24and single game buyers.
07:26And the highest satisfaction levels, the highest interest in more games,
07:30the highest interest in renewal all comes from Gen Z.
07:33So at one point, all executives have been laying back and
07:36saying, what keeps me up at night?
07:37Gen Z.
07:38But Gen Z, if you get them the right spaces and benefits and experiences,
07:43we're reimagining our arenas to make sure that we're Gen Z friendly.
07:48That's how we're gonna continue to win the future.
07:50And you nailed it.
07:51I mean, none of us on this stage are Gen Z.
07:53But the opportunity and something that we do at Springhill, and
07:56interrupted really well, is that we bring in Gen Z employees and
08:02co-workers and colleagues into the decision making rooms.
08:05And they have to be the executors in a way that's something that we would never do
08:09previously because it's about seniority and all these things.
08:13But they're the ones who can speak directly because what we found in Gen Z,
08:16one is that they're the most culturally diverse generation
08:19than any other generation before, number one.
08:22And number two, they can sniff out, to Heidi's point,
08:25they can sniff out when something's inauthentic.
08:27And so they're looking for authenticity.
08:29So if there's a peer creating for them, they can relate more.
08:33And that's how we draw them in.
08:36Is there a moment that sticks out, something that you heard from a 15-year-old
08:39that you were like, wow, I've never thought about that?
08:42Or we hadn't even considered doing that, that really stuck?
08:47From a content creation standpoint, I spent my career thinking about every edit,
08:52every cut, every camera, everything that we do to make it the most pristine,
08:57most precious piece of content.
09:00And there are, how raw can this be?
09:02I don't care if there's nothing, I only really want to watch it if it's raw.
09:07I mean, frankly, when we did that Top Class show, there was a live Twitch
09:13viewing of the first episode with Bronnie James.
09:17And it had more concurrent views watching that than the actual show that you can see
09:21in the highest quality on freebie.
09:24Yeah, I would add just two things on your question around fandom between a 45-year-old
09:28person, 18-year-old person.
09:30So I think as a 35-year-old person, I'll give you my perspective.
09:34I grew up outside New York City, Yankees, Knicks, Rangers, Giants fan.
09:37I'll watch those teams, I'll root for those teams no matter who's on it,
09:40no matter how good or bad they are.
09:42That's just how I think we grew up in terms of fandom.
09:45I think the young person, say the teenager today, they root for the individual.
09:49What are they wearing?
09:50Who are they dating?
09:51How are they working out?
09:52What's happening off season?
09:53So they follow that individual a lot more than the team.
09:56And their loyalty does not actually lie with a lot of those local places like we
09:59had previously.
10:01I think the second thing is the attention span.
10:02So I'm sure many people in this room have teenage daughters and sons.
10:08One thing we looked at a snap a long time ago, our snaps are ten seconds long.
10:13The average attention span for a goldfish is nine seconds.
10:17The average attention span for a teenager is eight seconds.
10:20We had to figure out our content to make sure it was tailored towards that young
10:23person.
10:24So you're seeing short form content now really take over and
10:27drive that sort of snackable audience that hopefully leads to people coming to
10:31watch, going to experiences live, watching on TV, etc.
10:34So those two things we see on our side are the biggest differences for those fans.
10:39It's funny you mentioned the affinity and Paul, you had mentioned Yankees Red Sox.
10:43I don't know if Scott is in here, but Scott has a 15 year old son and
10:47the Red Sox were in town recently.
10:49And Scott was like, I'm gonna get tickets, Yankees Red Sox, great.
10:52And his son was like, actually the Reds are in town next week and
10:55I'd rather go see them because Elie de la Cruz is so exciting.
10:58And I think you're right on.
10:59Well, I think that's just the way some people think about what they care about and
11:04what's exciting to go to.
11:06I think for a lot of generations would have been Yankees Red Sox, point blank,
11:09right, like it's a great rivalry.
11:10And now it's not, it's who's the one person that doesn't play for
11:14the Yankees that I can see when I come.
11:16And the reason for that though is the evolution of consumption and
11:20how content is distributed.
11:22Because this generation is the first, Gen Z generation is the first generation that
11:26can interact directly with their idols.
11:30Whether that's an athlete or an entertainer or whatever through social media.
11:34Where before, I'm from Miami and Dolphins, Panthers, Marlins, Heat.
11:38I only got it through news, local news, sports center, things like that.
11:44And it was all team based.
11:46And so this sort of athlete affiliation idol stuff has moved the needle.
11:53And so for us at Uninterrupted, we build relationships with these rookie athletes,
11:57younger athletes, amateur athletes.
11:59Because that's who our audience is gravitating towards,
12:03is those sort of younger athletes.
12:07Paul, I feel like WWE solved this problem a long time ago, right?
12:11There's no Yankees or Red Sox, there's individuals, so.
12:14Yeah, but again, it's the same premise.
12:15Who are these two people?
12:16Why are they fighting?
12:17And why should I care to see it?
12:18I don't think Gen Z really understands the fact that if you
12:23really take a look at the mentality of that age group.
12:27And I have a 22 and a 20 year old as kids,
12:31and who are desperately trying to replace me as the head of the family at the moment.
12:36And telling me how old I am, like how many people deal with this?
12:40I call it a clicker, they go, you mean the remote?
12:42Yeah, I mean the remote, just hand it to me.
12:46But Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was the prophet
12:51that led the mindset of Gen Z.
12:55Here we are now, entertain us.
12:58My kids do not seek anything out.
13:02They scroll, that's all they do, all day long.
13:05And I call it the WTF moment.
13:09They scroll, who's that?
13:12And then they go back, go, this is interesting.
13:15Which is why, if you talk to Mr. Beast, who is the most popular YouTuber in the world,
13:20he'll tell you that the screen cap is the most important thing
13:25in marketing his videos, which do hundreds of millions of views.
13:30That one little screen cap, so that when someone scrolls past it,
13:34they go, who's that?
13:36And they go back to watch it.
13:39I don't think Gen Z actually goes out and pursues anything.
13:44We gotta come to them.
13:46We gotta grab their attention.
13:48And he was just talking about the attention span.
13:51The attention span is zero.
13:53It's just absolutely zero.
13:54Eight seconds was too much, actually.
13:56My God, 0.8 seconds is too much.
13:58Again, it's just click.
13:59I mean, it's the habitual clicking of it.
14:02And the mindset of like, oh, wait, and you go back to it.
14:06And that's how the Gen Z today is entertained.
14:09So in that first millisecond, if you're not grabbing their attention, you lost them.
14:15When you hear that, Nick, as someone who's trying to reach these people,
14:18is that terrifying?
14:20Is there opportunity in that?
14:21Is it something in the middle?
14:22What does that look like from your seat?
14:24It completely changes our model a little bit, because as we look at our generation
14:28of people, we never wanted anybody to hard sell us.
14:31I didn't feel like I wanted to be hard sold by an athlete, a musician,
14:34or even my team I was a fan of.
14:36This whole mentality of Gen Z, of they understand how their influencer,
14:41creator, athlete makes money, to the point when you read a comment,
14:44if we hired an influencer to promote the new iPhone or the new Galaxy Pro,
14:48they literally in the bottom are like, get that money.
14:50It's like, it's such a different mentality that they understand.
14:55They understand the fact that like, this is like, I need to support my favorite
14:59creator, so more brands come in and pay them, and they can continue to grow,
15:03which it's super uncomfortable, because it's just like,
15:05you have a level of putting your brand in the hands of some of these people.
15:09Like, we were talking about this earlier.
15:11If I put my hands in the brand of a Twitch streamer who's doing two hours,
15:15somewhere in that two hours, it's going to take two minutes to talk
15:17about my product.
15:18And you literally are putting yourself in the position of,
15:22I'm buying 50,000 concurrent streams.
15:24I'm buying social conversation, but I am taking all brand guardrails.
15:28We've always been taught and comfortable with and moving them away,
15:32because we want the message to land.
15:33And I think that the jobs of people in the brand seat is taking your hands off and
15:40trusting and enabling these creators and these influencers and
15:43athletes to own your brand and talk to their fans the way that they know how to.
15:48It puts everybody in a spot of just rethinking how this works.
15:52You spent a long time at Anheuser-Busch as well.
15:55Did you ever think about 18-year-olds when you're marketing on the Anheuser-Busch
15:58site?
15:58Is this a new concept at Verizon?
16:01Man, we used to have the best concept of, we never thought of you at 18.
16:05But we always would just pay attention to media trends in high school and
16:08working your way up.
16:09Because when you're 21, we think about the journey of, what do you care about?
16:13And we can't wait to what you cared about at 21, because there's a level of
16:16nostalgia of your college experience.
16:18And three-quarters of the time you're in college, you're not of age.
16:20But you are still trying to hang on to those habits, those friends,
16:25everything else.
16:27But the biggest thing is for the alcohol companies and stuff like that,
16:30they're always just trying to be cool, relevant, and be culturally in a position
16:35of the same brand attributes back and forth.
16:39Where the biggest opportunity is for CPG brands and direct-to-consumer.
16:43I mean, there's a reason why all these podcasts and all these,
16:45if you can't go to TikTok without two swipes without getting served an ad,
16:49because it actually works.
16:50And I think it's just the whole model is just completely upside down right now.
16:53Yeah, one of the things that I think about when we have these conversations is
16:57that the audience is getting harder to find.
17:00But the technology of targeting is also getting significantly better, right?
17:04Which of those things is happening faster?
17:06Is it the audience getting further away, or is it suddenly being able to
17:10target a very specific person with a very specific version of your thing?
17:13Comes at a cost, right?
17:14I think the reality is that your ability to go across social media and
17:17everywhere else and target a specific audience of age, hobbies,
17:22what they're fans of.
17:23I'm a fan of WWE.
17:25I can literally target in to make sure every ad I'm serving is just going to that fan base.
17:30And I think that it allows us to be, if we had a partnership with WWE,
17:33to culturally create a piece of content that's personalized, it's going to resonate.
17:36And I'm not serving it to a person who doesn't like WWE.
17:39I'm guaranteeing I'm landing the right message.
17:41It just puts us all in this position of when we start looking at stuff like AI and
17:45everything else is, how do I start creating four or five, 600 versions of this?
17:50because I can target and go in there and
17:51create 700 different messages that makes it feel like Verizon gets me.
17:56And I think that in this generation, we can turn off our brand love quickly by
18:01basically serving them an ad that is completely out of left field,
18:04that's meant for their mom or meant for their brother.
18:06The ability for us to feel closer and better understand the consumer,
18:10it's only getting better and better every day.
18:12One other thing I feel about a lot of the stuff we're talking about internet wise
18:16is how unpredictable and how nimble everybody has to be in this world, right?
18:20Like something just takes off.
18:21And I was thinking earlier about the fact that Taylor Swift just popped up on
18:26the NFL radar, right, and fundamentally changed the business of the NFL overnight
18:30in a way that I would not have thought possible before it happened.
18:33And I do think the NFL did a good job of leaning into it very quickly and
18:37being like, this is a thing and we need to figure out right ways to do that.
18:40It is interesting to me that I think particularly for
18:43younger generations, you need to react quickly to the thing that is taking over.
18:49Because I do think a lot of these things happen very quickly and
18:51then they can disappear quite quickly also.
18:54But I think the one piece on that when we start thinking about it too is
18:57the influence that people outside of the field of play have on the game now is
19:01tremendous, like they're literally, when we start looking at if I wanted to do
19:05something with the Kansas City Chiefs, maybe the first person on our list of
19:09people isn't Travis Kelsey or Patrick Mahomes.
19:12It could be who are their super fan influencers that have 2 million followers.
19:16That for us, because they're probably an easier way in, and
19:19probably the fact that they don't have to deal with practice schedules and
19:22all these other rules, our ability to go in and
19:24look at this ecosystem of influencers and people there.
19:31I can tell you from doing an event previously, we brought an influencer to
19:34a tailgate, we had 4,000 people lined up to see this influencer.
19:38I've brought retirees.
19:38Who was it?
19:39I can't say, because it's like, we're not friends with them anymore.
19:42I want that story in a second.
19:46But it becomes one of the situations too, though, is that for
19:49us to be able to go out there, we're providing access to,
19:52when they show up to a Giants game at a tailgate, it's just like,
19:55you don't expect to see them there.
19:57We're bringing your favorite influencer there to meet and greet with them.
20:00And they love, and it's the kind of value we can provide back.
20:03But I think that it's different ways in, it's gotten more and
20:06more complicated in a good way, because I don't necessarily need to rely on
20:10the New York Giants to give me a retired athlete.
20:12I can go get their biggest super fan out there, and they're huge.
20:15Yeah, and I would add on the influencer piece.
20:17I think if we had this conversation three or four years ago,
20:21the conversation about creators would have been much smaller, right?
20:23And today, as Nick was saying, capturing those new fans and
20:27different fans from the perspective of a creator now is all part of all of our games.
20:31So instead of just the action on the fields,
20:34there's amazing food stories in certain venues.
20:37There's amazing sort of activations happening that the creator can bring to
20:40life in a different way.
20:42For the first time ever this year, we're sending five critters to the Olympics with NBC.
20:46If we went to NBC six years ago and asked for this, they would have laughed in our face,
20:49right, and now today, they're embracing it because they want to showcase the village.
20:53They want to showcase what's happening around Paris.
20:55That's how they bring new people to come watch their events, right?
20:58So I think it's really, really important.
20:59And as Nick said, I think we're all kind of learning, as this happens to your question,
21:03even around kind of the fickle nature of this environment.
21:06Seeing how our user bases across all of our platforms and leagues, etc.,
21:10react to these things and where they kind of engage with more.
21:12It's the flywheel of targeting, right?
21:14Because the reason why there's a group of people lining up to meet this influencer
21:20is because the Gen Z generation is so much more about experience and
21:25don't really care as much about affluency or different aspects.
21:29It's all about how can I share this piece of thing and how can I experience it?
21:33And everything becomes a moment.
21:35And that was the beauty of Taylor Swift in so many ways is,
21:38her flywheel is about her authenticity.
21:40The songwriting is about herself.
21:42The fans can relate to her.
21:43They want to show up.
21:44And then when they're showing up, they can share that through their bracelets or
21:48through their content that they're creating.
21:50And creating this moment of I was there, not that I saw it.
21:55And so it's snaps bringing it to people, to NBC, Peacock, through your channels.
22:01And I think that's what all of us, whether we realize it or not, are trying to do.
22:06As content creators, we're trying to find activations and
22:09spaces at Uninterrupted and Spring Hill.
22:11It's creating experiences for our fans, our audience,
22:14our athletes to all be a part of.
22:16And then just ladders all through the flywheel.
22:18Absolutely, to build on the whole power of the creator and
22:22expanding your audience and reaching new audiences.
22:25We also had a creator suite in our game one of our Stanley Cup final.
22:28I thought you were gonna say the Panthers, Stanley Cup Champion Panthers.
22:32And we brought them there and we gave them an extraordinary experience.
22:35They got to actually go in the locker room before the players went in there and
22:40went out on the ice.
22:41So we exposed their audiences to all this.
22:44And many of them were hockey creators, but then we expanded beyond that
22:48to get intersectionality with other athlete creators and lifestyle creators.
22:52So we get a full rounded suite of new audiences to reach.
22:56And when you look at the data afterwards, we had 43 million views on our account.
23:01And an incremental 47 or 8 million on their accounts.
23:05And 4 point, or billion, sorry, sorry, million, sorry.
23:09And then the 4 point, they had 4.5 million engagements.
23:14So 40 million views, 4.1 billion incremental engagements on their channels,
23:20which are people learning about our sport through the eyes of someone else.
23:23So that was 10x what we got on our channels,
23:26which is the whole point and reason that you do that.
23:28And a lot more than watch a Stanley Cup finals game even, right?
23:31Yeah, well, not many less, but yeah.
23:33I mean, just to kudos Heidi a little bit when she came in.
23:38And so much of what they did at the NHL was figuring out how they can
23:42expand their reach beyond the NHL avid fan cuz they had that.
23:44And so I believe since you've joined,
23:47they think the sort of audience growth has been upwards of 30%.
23:51And that's because you created all these different social avenues,
23:54social channels that weren't just NHL.
23:56So you're targeting through different spaces to reach different audience.
24:00And that goes back to what you were saying, Nick.
24:01It's like everything can be targeted specifically to a certain spot.
24:06How much do you guys think different sports and
24:08their gameplay and layout affect this conversation?
24:12Paul, I think WWE, the ability to script, obviously, and
24:16a lot of the things we're talking about, fits really well into this.
24:18I think there are some sports out there that I can look at and
24:21maybe be concerned about game length and things like that.
24:23I imagine there's just inherent qualities in different sports that
24:27lend themselves better to younger generations for
24:29all the reasons we're talking about.
24:31Again, I just think it's a matter of, it's a visceral audience.
24:36And they wanna be captured so quickly.
24:39And when Paul Levesque took over the creative of WWE, and we sat down and
24:45he said, where do you think we go?
24:48And my act is attached to the biggest act in WWE,
24:51which is the tribal chief Roman Reigns, who's the WrestleMania main eventer for
24:55the past half of a decade and part of the decade before that as well.
25:00And our theory has been respect the past, but reinvent the future.
25:05And then the question becomes, well,
25:06how do you reinvent the future that hasn't been invented yet?
25:09And if you take a look at, everybody's all into AI now and everything.
25:14AI's been around for two decades because it's in algorithms.
25:18I mean, I have my phone off right now.
25:21But if I sit here and I say, and when I leave here today,
25:24I'll be going to Las Vegas, I guarantee you when I go online,
25:28I'm gonna have all these ads going, hotels in Las Vegas, hotels in Las Vegas,
25:31renter cars in Las Vegas, a massage in Las Vegas.
25:34And I'm like, well, I had the phone off, but it's never off.
25:36Elon is listening.
25:38Zuckerberg is listening.
25:40They don't have to be watching the stream right now.
25:42They know what we're saying in here.
25:45It's already been determined by the algorithm.
25:47And the whole idea to me is to reinvent the algorithm.
25:50What can we do that's not out there?
25:53What is the NHL not doing?
25:54The NFL not doing?
25:55What are they not seeing on Snap or TikTok or YouTube?
25:59That if we put up that little thing like Mr. Beast does, and
26:03there's a screen cap, they go, what's that?
26:06Boom, we have their attention.
26:07And whether that's John Cena or Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Roman Reigns or
26:12whomever it is from WWE, if it's standalone by themselves, great.
26:17If it's with a celebrity like the NFL did with Taylor Swift,
26:21as long as it's something that gets that moment to moment attention
26:25that can then go viral cuz they call their friends and go,
26:28do you see what's on right now?
26:29And they go and they send the link.
26:31It's all about links.
26:33So it's all about referrals.
26:35And boom, it goes viral in an instant just like that.
26:38That's what we look for.
26:40What is that not out there today that if we put it out there,
26:44it becomes the norm tomorrow?
26:47Is there something that jumps out, a specific one of these guys,
26:50something you guys have done?
26:53Yes, I'll make it personal.
26:56We did the Hall of Fame in Philadelphia for the WWE WrestleMania weekend.
27:00And because WWE has absolutely no good taste at all,
27:04they put me in the Hall of Fame.
27:05And-
27:06Congratulations.
27:07No, seriously, they have no taste at all to put me in it.
27:10And I was looking for the viral moment.
27:13And the viral moment was a very profane statement that I made during it.
27:18But I knew that if we go there, because WWE has been such a PG rated product for
27:22so long, that if I take it to a different dimension and I tie it in
27:27to what's going on currently, that that will be the viral moment that,
27:31even if it's censored, will just go widespread.
27:34And we did 100 million social views on that moment alone in WWE because
27:42it was so out of the box and so different, but tied into what we do anyway.
27:48Because here is something that you see that's standard, you break the standard,
27:52but keep it within the parameters of what makes sense to that audience.
27:57I think platforms make a difference, too, in some ways.
28:00Because, you didn't mention it, but next year you're gonna be on Netflix.
28:05And just by way of platforming somewhere else,
28:08you're gonna bring in a different audience.
28:09And so maybe it's not what's happening in the field to your question,
28:12which is, how do you change a product?
28:14Or are certain things more appealing?
28:16But I think platforming in different ways, and that's what we're doing.
28:19Whether we're putting it on Netflix as a main thing, or
28:22if it's shoulder programming or content surrounding the actual event.
28:26And then the other additional aspect of it is this Gen Z generation is now
28:31seeing themselves in sport, so a lot of those athletes are now turning pro or
28:36in that space.
28:38And I think next year we're gonna see Caleb Williams change the game.
28:42I think that no one has ever seen a quarterback like Caleb Williams,
28:46not just from, I'm not talking about his athleticism.
28:48I'm talking about who he is as a human, because he is the epitome of Gen Z.
28:53And I don't know if the media or if brands are ready for him, but
28:58the Gen Z audience is.
29:00Yeah, I'm fascinated by the way specific athletes, and you see,
29:04I'm a big tennis fan, and I remember Stefano Tsitsipas, the Greek player.
29:09He would sometimes do courtside interviews after winning and
29:11tell people, log on to my YouTube in an hour, and we'll continue this conversation.
29:16And I remember thinking, my God, that's the future, right, we're athletes.
29:21And I think you guys, Spring Hill, has obviously embodied this in a real way,
29:24is athletes now understand their media distribution companies also, right?
29:28It doesn't always have to be through the traditional channels.
29:31And I do think it's very interesting that the athletes that are doing stuff like
29:35that, I think, are ahead of the curve, and
29:37I think that's gonna become way more common.
29:38Well, look what Djokovic just did.
29:41I mean, he just did a speech just blasting the audience.
29:45I mean, if there was ever a WWE promo that was out there-
29:46Yeah, I was gonna say, you gotta hire him, yeah.
29:48From a tennis guy, you know?
29:50And Brock Lesnar did the same thing in UFC 15 years ago,
29:54where he blasted the sponsor.
29:55And it was shocking for him to do it, but what Djokovic did,
29:59because tennis fans have become, it's like when, and
30:03this goes back to the 70s, when the big hero was Jimmy Connors.
30:07And then it was Ilya Nastasya, who was the bad boy of tennis.
30:10And then Bjorn Borg took it to a whole different level.
30:13And McEnroe, and became a whole bunch of bad boys,
30:16until the clean cut guys started to come in and change the game.
30:19And then the Williams sisters just completely changed the whole dynamic.
30:22So now Roger Federer is the standard bearer, and he's just, and the Dahl,
30:26and they're classy gentlemen who probably will get Rolex endorsements and
30:31everything else, and they drive Bentleys.
30:33And this is the class tennis player, and
30:36here comes Djokovic just telling everybody to F off.
30:38Cuz he doesn't like the way they respond to him, and
30:41now everybody's talking about him.
30:42Because again, he stayed within the parameters of what people expect, but
30:47he went against the norm.
30:50Politicians knew this for years, seven second sound bites.
30:53Tell your story in seven seconds or you'll lose the audience.
30:56So it's under eight seconds, as you have found out.
30:58So it's, and Djokovic went out there, and within seven seconds,
31:03he had everybody just going, my God, what is he doing?
31:06And how do you do this in tennis?
31:08But what's fascinating, don't dare push, don't dare scroll past this.
31:12So he did exactly what you're talking about.
31:15And again, I would add, if you think about the people watching Wimbledon or
31:18tennis or anything broadly, I guarantee you, right?
31:21Most people saw that clip across Snap, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube,
31:25whatever, more than people saw a shot in that game, right?
31:28So he now elevated the sport in a different way, that they saw that clip,
31:31and now they're like, what happened here?
31:32I want to kind of dive in more, and that's the power of digital and social.
31:36That's a lead concern holistically, I think, across the board,
31:38both women's side and men's side,
31:40is how do you keep this Gen Z audience watching an entire game?
31:45Is what kind of what you were saying before.
31:47And so we're seeing growth in certain aspects, WNBA, and I think part of that,
31:51it goes back to these Gen Z athletes playing the WNBA,
31:55who are relating to a broader audience, and people are watching it.
31:59And they're having moments on the court.
32:01These moments, for better or for worse, between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark,
32:06they're happening in game, and people want to see, and
32:08they're showing up to see those full games.
32:10And so it's back to being a spectacle, but
32:13I think the challenge for the NHL, or the NBA, or the WNBA, or NWSL, or
32:18any of these sports, is how do you keep your product, how do you care about,
32:24how do you have the Gen Z audience care about your product for the entire time,
32:27versus just going on Snap and seeing a highlighter, or
32:30catching a moment from a Tsitsipas YouTube video that's after the match?
32:34And it's true for watching it on whatever platform you choose to watch it on.
32:39And that's why we're experimenting so much with these alt-casts, and
32:44all different kinds of, earlier they referenced the volumetric
32:49data that we've been doing, where it's puck and player tracking, where the data,
32:53there's a chip in the sweater and a chip in the puck, and
32:55that gives positional data, and you can put any form factor on top of that.
32:58So we worked with Disney on Big City Greens, we worked with Turner, and
33:01did the Metaverses, which was really cool.
33:04We had Tommy Hawk had a birthday party with our RSN in Chicago, and
33:08those are all bringing in new, younger audiences.
33:11The watch time is there, and it's not just about the kids,
33:13it's about the parents and the family that are coming in.
33:16And then similarly, we did alt-casts with using just our data.
33:20How fast is the puck going?
33:21How fast are they skating?
33:22How hard was the shot?
33:23How much ice time do people have?
33:25And that was opening up a whole new world of stats and storylines.
33:29And so that's another area for us to lean in.
33:32And then thirdly, it's just bringing in new and different talents.
33:35So we did one with Spittin' Chicklets with TNT, but also bringing in
33:39additional athletes who are interested or know hockey or
33:42just learning it for the first time.
33:43Those are all learning and experiences that we can all have together, and
33:46they bring in their own audiences.
33:48So I'm really excited to continue to lean in on that kind of
33:52alternative programming, if you will,
33:53while you're still driving the core metrics of our business.
33:56We had the privilege of creating an alt-cast for
33:59Prime Video on Thursday Night Football with a brand that we have called The Shop.
34:03It's a barbershop show where LeBron James and
34:07Maverick Carter, our CEO, meet with other entertainers, celebrities,
34:12athletes, have conversation.
34:14And what we did is we used that insight to talk to Amazon and say,
34:19hey, we're connected to culture.
34:21We are connected to the younger audience.
34:23They're not interested in listening to your traditional broadcasters.
34:26Why don't we simulcast alt-cast the game where we have them talking about the game,
34:32but also talking about something else similar to how we are up here
34:36having a conversation for watching a sport game.
34:38We're generally having a conversation amongst each other while also watching
34:42the game, and I think we brought that to an audience in an authentic way.
34:47And we saw dividends.
34:49They had high volume viewership, and it just changed the game on opportunities for
34:55us to create content and push sort of the live sports in a different way.
35:00We haven't really talked about gamification, but
35:02I feel like this is also a younger fan thing, right, is creating.
35:08You're talking about making sure you watch the whole game.
35:11Ways to build community around consistent patterns and coming back to and
35:17feeling like you have a stake in what's happening as opposed to just watching as
35:20a fan, and whether that's sports betting or
35:23some other form of gamification that is not betting, winning, and losing.
35:26I do feel like that is a big piece of what young fans,
35:31how they're consuming sports nowadays.
35:34Maybe I'll start, it's maybe an offshoot of what you're saying, but
35:37we've, for a long time at Snap, we kept a lot of our technology in the app and
35:42on the app, and our thought was you gotta come to Snapchat to use Snapchat lenses
35:45and do AR experiences.
35:47What we realized is that we're holding back some of the amazing creativity from
35:49our community, and from our partners and folks that we work with,
35:53where we're leaving that technology just on the platform.
35:55So one thing we started doing, I have my Rams family here somewhere, but
35:58we started this at SoFi a couple years back,
36:01where we actually reinvented the Kiss Cam with the Snapchat Cam.
36:05So the Kiss Cam can be very awkward at times, of course.
36:08The Snapchat Cam takes our library of lenses, it plugs into, in this case,
36:12SoFi's amazing infinity screen, and
36:15then allows their in-game team to kind of overlay it on fans throughout the game.
36:19So you can imagine that experience enhancing the fan experience.
36:23There's obviously many stoppages in a football game, and
36:25kind of adding really fun, creative ways to keep people engaged throughout the whole
36:29time.
36:30With WWE, we did this at WrestleMania last year as well, both in stadium and
36:34in broadcast with some of the pre-game talent.
36:36We've done it at Crypto.com Arena as well.
36:37Seriously, we've got a bunch of folks.
36:38But I think the AR experience, from our standpoint,
36:42allows folks to enhance and amplify their fandom.
36:46And as everyone in this room knows, the vast majority of sports fans never get
36:51a chance to actually go to their favorite team's stadium and watch the game.
36:53They're at home on their couch.
36:54So how do you bring that experience to them at home with technology to kind of
36:57keep them hanging around?
36:58So we've got about a minute left, so
36:59I want to cast things forward real quick in kind of a lightning round to end it.
37:03In ten years, we're gonna have this same conversation about Gen Alpha, probably.
37:07But I am curious, what do you think is gonna be, what are we talking about then?
37:11Is it some of the same themes, or are there things that you guys are looking at now
37:15that you think are gonna help solve problems that we're inevitably gonna have
37:19in a decade?
37:20Gen Alpha should be called Gen AI, because they will be the generation that
37:25grows up with it and shapes it and controls it.
37:27So I'm simultaneously excited and terrified by it.
37:31I don't know if you are following this whole synthetic or
37:34virtual influencer storyline, but character.ai.
37:38They said of the top quintile of people following a fake influencer and
37:44knowing it, these kids are spending two hours talking to somebody they know who's
37:47not real, two hours.
37:49And that's incredible, right?
37:52So could it be opportunity to expand our athletes to places and
37:57spaces where they don't have time to go?
37:59Or is it going to potentially replace them?
38:01Who knows?
38:01But I do think that we're looking into Gen Alpha a lot.
38:06And boy, there's a lot when you start to think about how the impact of life stage
38:11or your development stage when you're younger, parenting styles,
38:15along with socioeconomic, political, cultural influences and how that shapes them.
38:20So we're just going to continue to keep a thumbprint on that and
38:23experiment through Roblox, through Altcasts, and through AI.
38:27Yeah, I think the one piece that all of us have seen is the consumptional change,
38:31like the way.
38:32I mean, we've seen everything from the Apple ProVisions to what Meta's trying to
38:35do, and it's still clunky, it's still phase one.
38:37But once you get to phase two or three, you're talking 10 years from now,
38:40the consumption of everything we do here is like, you can feel like you're in
38:43the ring, you can feel like you're on the ice.
38:45Those things are moving faster than they've ever moved before,
38:48of the ability of it actually happening.
38:49So there may not need to be a watch TV anymore, they may just put on their
38:53glasses, they may put on your headphones.
38:54That for us becomes one of those situations of if I no longer have a way to
38:58reach them, because they're fully immersed, how do I enhance that immersive experience?
39:02And it's going to take a while for all of us to get it right,
39:04because all this stuff moves.
39:06And then you'll see the first people move into it as well, and we can't wait.
39:09And I think it's just going to be one of those things that you see a lot of
39:13the production companies shooting stuff in 8K,
39:15you're shooting stuff with a million cameras around to create those experiences.
39:19They're going to be used to it.
39:20All these kids now wake up on the iPad,
39:22they're going to wake up with headsets at some point.
39:25How we reach them there is going to be extremely challenging.
39:27Someone told me earlier today that there's about 60% of jobs
39:32that will not exist now that existed in 1940.
39:36So yes, the 1940 was a long time ago, but
39:39the fact that those jobs are literally non-existent means that in ten years from
39:44now, we're not going to be having the same conversation.
39:46Because ultimately, there's just so
39:48much new technology that's happening too quickly that we have to stay ahead of
39:52the curve.
39:54I was going to say personalization.
39:55I think when you go to a game in ten years, the team, the stadiums,
39:59get to know better what you like to drink, what you like to eat, what you want to wear.
40:02Instead of today when you walk in, you're kind of doing it on your own in your
40:05seating, so I think personalization and
40:06fandom is going to evolve substantially with technology.
40:09It's the same conversation.
40:12It was the same conversation in the 50s when Elvis Presley went on Ed Sullivan.
40:16The same conversation in the 90s when Madonna brought MTV to the masses.
40:20It's the same conversation when Michael Jordan was with the Bulls and
40:23they were doing record numbers.
40:24It's the same conversation.
40:26The conversation is, what do people care about?
40:29The only thing that will be different is what's the distribution channels
40:33in which they get their content.
40:34That's the only difference.
40:36It's the same thing as it's been for generations, and
40:38it'll be the same thing in the next generation.
40:40And it was then, too.
40:41The distribution channels changed.
40:42That's it.
40:43What's the distribution channel by which they're going to get access to something
40:47that makes them feel intimate to the content that's being presented to them?
40:52I feel like we could keep going, but unfortunately, we're out of time.
40:53Guys, thank you very much.
40:54This was great.
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