From Highlights to Creators: How the sports industry is innovating on YouTube

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Sportsloft podcast where we talk to the people who are driving innovation across the world of sports media and entertainment. This is our uh, first podcast of 2025. I'm joined by Sportsloft's head of strategy, Andy Selby. Welcome back to the podcast, Andy.

Speaker B: Good to be back, Charlie, and excited to kick off the year with a strong start on the podcast and a high quality guest as always.

Speaker A: Well, hopefully it'll be a stronger start than both uh, Hull and Wolff seem to be doing at the moment in uh, their respective league positions I think, uh, both of which are in the relegation zone as we currently record this. So not a great start. We're also in very good company this morning as we're joined by Donny Keogh, sports lead at YouTube for UK and Ireland. So basically the man who is responsible for my kids constant consumption of football clips on YouTube shorts. So uh, Johnny, welcome to the Sportsloft podcast.

Speaker C: Thanks Charlie. Hi Andy. Uh, thanks for having me. It's great to be on and looking forward to chatting today.

Speaker A: Now I'm assuming you're quite a happy man this morning, right?

Speaker C: I am. We've gone this day after Arsenal beating Spurs, so everything is a little bit better today. It's a weird time to be an Arsenal fan. Both men's and women's are kind of like, is the league, you know, is it achievable, you know, that you've got both runaway leaders Chelsea and WSL Liverpool in the men's league. So it's a weird time. I don't get too carried away.

Speaker A: Try being down the other end of the league. It's uh, it's a little bit, it's a little bit different. Um, so YouTube, I think it's fair to say has really come up on everybody's agenda in recent months. Seems to be having a moment in the sun, I think. So we wanted to use this opportunity to really dig into how YouTube is being used across the sports industry and especially how it's been used to drive commercial return. But before we get into that, Jonny, can you just give us a bit of background into your role at YouTube and, and what it entails?

Speaker C: Yeah, so My role at YouTube is to lead our sports content partnerships in the UK and Ireland. We work very closely with the rest of EMEA and in particularly the US as well. And what that entails is covering the full spectrum ofSports on YouTube. So that's working with rights holders like the Premier League, Formula one broadcasters like Sky, Dazn, tnt, clubs of which there are so many agencies that do this at scale as well. And then we work very closely with our creator team as well who, you know, have sports creators within that as well. So it's the full spectrum of sports. And to dig a bit deeper into that, I try and enable all of our partners and creators to get the most out of YouTube and whether that's you know, increased reach, revenue, engagement around innovation, that's my role, is to enable them and uh, make YouTube the most rewarding platform that they can be on.

Speaker A: So there is a lot to cover with YouTube. Right. So uh, I was kind of wondering where to start. But uh, as both my boys came downstairs this morning, the, the first thing that they did was to go onto YouTube on uh, our TV and start watching highlights from the Premier League games last night. I think highlights is as good a place to start with as any. How has YouTube effectively become the destination for highlights? I mean they were watching Premier League highlights, then they went on to watching some big bash highlights and it was the first place that they went to when they thought, I want to watch the highlights from last night. How has YouTube just got to this point as the destination?

Speaker C: Well, I'm glad to hear they're watching on YouTube. Starters. Uh, I think you can look at this twofold really. One, you can look at it from a rights holder and a broadcast perspective and secondly you can look at it from a user perspective. One from a rights holder and broadcast perspective. I think we again come back to this word enablement. We enable rights holders to put their highlights on YouTube, protect them. You know, so we have really, really robust anti piracy measures with content id. So they trust the platform first, you know, before we kind of go into reach and engagement and audiences, they trust the platform and that, that works for them and they know that, you know, they can monetize it effectively as well. YouTube's a global platform. So in a world where yes, obviously you're going to have your core audience in domestic markets, if you're a league, you can reach a truly global audience. And we know now that there's stars from all over the world in the Premier League, League, Serie A and all other sports as well. So to really reach those audience, YouTube is a perfect platform for rights holders and they can kind of control what goes out. It's, it's fully branded by them as well. If you look at it from a user perspective and a fan, you know, pretty much that if you go onto YouTube full time, within, within 10, 15 minutes the highlights will be there. And so Rights holders and broadcasts are doing a great job, uh, at speed of upload and that is crucial. We know we can see from search traffic across both YouTube and Google that speed of upload is crucial to capture that audience. It's a case of accessibility and trust in the platform from a user point of view. And then once you're there, you know you can get highlights in so many different shapes and form. If you're in the UK and you're watching Premier League highlights from sky, that's three minutes. But then a few days later you might have longer highlights, you might have analysis from creators. So I think in answer to your question, why have we become the home of highlights? I think we appeal to both companies that have the rights, but also for users we provide a hub to go to. And then I think Highlights is the gateway. Highlights is a gateway ForSports on YouTube. You can come in and then from there you can then choose to watch either more sports content or you can choose to watch other verticals. But Highlights, when I work with partners, is, is always the first place we start when we start building a content strategy. And then from there then you can start to branch out and start to diversify your content uploads and that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: And you touched on the different types of highlights. So the kind of the three minute edit, the eight minute edit, uh, longer versions of that, I guess you'll have a lot of instances where rightsellers are using YouTube shorts to have almost snippet versions of this. What's the kind of best practice right now? Who's doing this well and how has it kind of evolved over time, um, from the highlights packages of probably used to five years ago or is even still the case on much of the day.

Speaker C: It's a really good question. I think there's many ways that we can look at this. Sometimes people forget that YouTube is owned by Google. And so to capture the world search traffic around sports highlights is crucial. So we have a tool there. You know, you mentioned about best practices. We have Google one box where if you search for, if we just take last night's game, for example, Arsenal, spurs, if you put that Into Google, Google OneBox will then appear in the search results with official sources of highlights. And so our, uh, broadcasters and rights holders are tagging that and then they are served up from there and then within one click you're watching the highlights on YouTube. So in terms of best practice point of view, I think that is a really key traffic source in terms of diversification and different highlight types. If I take a step back. There's a few themes of where YouTube as a platform is going regardless of sports. And I think there's three buckets where multi format, so you can have vod, you can have shorts, as you mentioned, you can have live, you can have podcasts, can watch on multiple different devices. So I'm sure we'll speak about a bit. The TV is, you know, fastest growing device. You can watch highlights on there and then obviously from mobile desktop via app on games consoles. And then thirdly, there's multiple different revenue streams. So there's ads, subscriptions, there's fan funding, pay per view. And so when you look at that and you have the IP of a, uh, sports, right, how can you tick all of those boxes that I've mentioned? So if we go to the multiformat piece, I'm producing it as a short and then I use our tools, our uh, bridging tools to then make people watch a longer version of it, whether that's three minutes or if that's eight minutes or that's 12 minutes. We're seeing on the TV where people are uploading super compilations. And when I say supercompils, we're talking like two, three hours. So the Premier League have done this recently where they've, it's just like amazing goals and you can watch amazing goals for one hour. Now we're seeing that a lot of that is coming from the tv. And I'm sure you'll agree as a football fan, I can watch one hour of amazing goals on the TV on my sofa. Um, and then, so if you're ticking all those boxes in terms of formats, how are users watching those highlights? Is it on the tv? Oh, actually, yeah, they're watching for longer on the tv, so I'll produce longer content. Oh, actually we're seeing a lot of traffic in a certain market, uh, come from shorts. So we'll produce more shorts because maybe strategically we want to appeal to that audience, uh, where shorts is really big. And then I think this, it comes into monetization. So is it ads? Is it branded content? Is it via behind our paywalls via pay per view? So gone are the days where you can simply just upload a 3 minute hire package and kind of hope it works and hope it reaches all the audiences. I think you need to do some true audience development and understand actually how people are watching your content and then build a strategy from there.

Speaker A: So on that idea, does that, uh, make the idea of assessing the success of a piece of content by the number of views far too simplistic and not nearly nuanced enough for what you've just described. So I was looking at a particular Premier League club quite close to your heart, Jonny, and There was some three minute highlights on there and they were getting 10 to 15 times the number of views that the 10 minute version of the highlights we're getting. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more successful. Right? Because if they were watching it for longer and in a different way, it's fulfilling a different purpose.

Speaker C: 100%. 100%. It's a really great point. I think in the social and digital world, people have become obsessed with views as a marker of success and if you're basing and measuring your success of views, then you're going to start going down paths that actually might not be there. So I was at sky Sports for 11 years before YouTube and I used to love from a partner point of view in this, in assets, sky sports, going into YouTube Studio, YouTube analytics and really diving into the insights. YouTube analytics is just a treasure chest of insights, more than you can imagine. If you're not a familiar user of YouTube or on the insights, it's remarkable. You can go really granular. And so to your point, Charlie, it's actually upload the piece of content and then take a step back, let it breathe and then start to go, actually, how are people consuming this? And in YouTube insights you can actually see where users have come from within YouTube, what other channels have they watched to then come to your highlights and then vice versa and then start to pick out themes from that. So I think it's important to not, you know, publish a highlight video, come back a day later and go, oh, uh, it had 10,000 views, that's rubbish. I'm not going to go back. It's a process of elimination. I think that's, that's actually where creators, the experts, that's their craft. They produce a piece of content and they'll continue to iterate. The amount of creators that I speak to that say, you know, I actually went into my archive and I changed the thumbnail and title on a video I did two years ago and suddenly it's got another 200,000 views. Now that is how you're getting the most of the platform. So yeah, views measuring success of it, not the best, not the best idea.

Speaker B: This stuff about thumbnails is fascinating. Like I've read so many articles about people testing YouTube videos where their face on it, the mouth is open or the mouth is closed and how that changes it like how are you working to advise sports rights holders in a scalable way on best practice in terms of that sort of stuff, but also the analytics type stuff that you've talked about. How are you making sports organizations aware of the best capabilities that are there?

Speaker C: Yeah, good question. Uh, it comes back to YouTube is a toolbox of about 100 different things. It would be wrong of me to kind of have a one size fits all approach to partner management of sports partners because they all have different objectives of why they're on YouTube. So some one partner might come to me. Actually, you know, 2025, there's a real strategic push to break APAC, for example, because you know, we might be launching a product there or you know, an OTT service and we want to use YouTube to build awareness there. Actually, uh, it's quite topical because Bundesliga did that recently in Vietnam. They partnered with creator and then they've launched an OTT platform out there as well. So I think it's a case of listening to partners and then from there then I go into the analogy of the toolbox and then I pick out the four or five things actually. Okay, you want to do this? Well then I can provide this. And here's how we can get there and together, uh, we form a business plan to work towards. Because if you don't have objectives, you're going to so many different Rabbit holes on YouTube and you actually, and you're not actually going to kind of grow in where it matters. So thumbnails. I think we spoke last week, Andy, about thumbnails and how leagues and clubs are using it. The Women's Super League are using that fantastically. They're doing some myth busting. Should I have the score line in the thumbnail or should I not? Should I have the goal scorer, their face as a close up shot within the thumbnail or should I have a team shot? And thumbnail testing is doing is actually, you know, you upload free thumbnails and then YouTube will pick the best one for you based on click through rate and watch time, that kind of stuff. So that tool is available for everyone. But for sports there's certain unique opportunities that you can then start to, to

Speaker A: build on and um, jump to. One of the big things that obviously people talk about a lot with YouTube is monetization. You know, it's uh, a, an opportunity for people to actually genuinely create a new revenue stream. Can you just talk us through a bit more about how monetization works on YouTube?

Speaker C: Yep. So it's most basic kind of Principle, you have to reach certain thresholds so you can't just create a channel and then suddenly you know you're going to get a check at the end of the month. You have to reach certain criteria that we have to join the YouTube Partner Program. So that's a minimum of a thousand subs. And then there's certain thresholds with watch time, hours and views from there and then from there that's where you can start to earn um, revenue. But there's, it comes back to what I was saying. YouTube, such a diverse platform now we have so many different ways that you can monetize. Believe it or not, there's 10 ways that you can earn money on YouTube. One is, you know, the one that everyone knows is around uh, traditional AVOD and advertising. And then within that there's certain different features that we have. But there's fan funding which is growing especially in the creative space. So I think that's an untapped potential of channel memberships. There's svod, so we have, I guess memberships come under that. But we've also got primetime channels that's kind of premium content behind the paywall built on YouTube's unique strengths where you know, if I watch AVOD highlights then I can actually subscribe to the OTT platform via YouTube, watch it on YouTube and then watch the live game on the weekend for example. Um, so there's multiple different ways you can monetize and then within that you have control. Right? You in the sports world where sponsorship and brands comes with exclusivity, more often than not you can control within your um, YouTube AdSense settings which categories are blocked or shown which and then even within that categories you can choose by the specific brand. You can imagine we're just, you know, in 2024 we had the Olympics which you know, when you think about the exclusive categories and brands that were involved with that, that's where that becomes really, really important. And we are really hand holding partners and the IOC and the broadcasters go, okay, so Samsung have excused in the IOC case. Samsung have exclusivity over uh, this category. Well okay, let's together double check that you have got that applied and that kind of stuff. So you don't just earn from day one. You have to uh, build an audience. But when you do there are multiple different ways that you can do that. But fundamentally you've got control of that.

Speaker A: So let's say that you're a Premier league team with 4 million subscribers. Some content's getting 20,000 views, some of it's getting millions of views, maybe a highlights clip of a win or something like that. Is this a viable revenue stream for somebody then to almost be putting in their budgeting process to be able to expect? I'm going to make enough money off of YouTube that it's a, you know, it's a proper thing to put targets around.

Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. I think you should definitely have targets. I think it helps everyone in the digital team, not just in the digital team, but the wider org, understand the value of YouTube, not just with audience but also with revenue. And I think what's crucial here is understanding what content is bringing about the most return on investment, whether that's highlights or actually whether that's branded content. So if I'm a club at the beginning of the year and I'm speaking to brands, I'm speaking to sleeve partners, front of shirt stadium, how can you bring YouTube into that conversation? How can I not only attract a sleeve partner, for example, but how can they then also actually add ah, value to the overall campaign and go, oh, and within this deal we'll do 10 uploads throughout the year which will be branded content. We'll work with you on the brand content, which is really, really important in this aspect. So it's a true partnership. Branding content is very, very hard to get right. It's hard for it not to just become an ad. Um, so there has to be a meeting in the middle of. Yes, there's brand awareness and engagement, but also will people actually watch this and will they watch it until the end? And there's good examples of this in the uk. Top of mind, there's TNT Sports. They had a great partnership with Xbox and Football Manager last year. They won awards for this where they had a football manager player join Bromley FC and be part of the coaching setup. But based on his work on Football Manager, there was then with the team, it was fascinating to watch. I highly recommend you watch it. That was a proper partnership.

Speaker A: Didn't they actually end up getting to like a cup final with him in the team or something crazy as well?

Speaker C: Yeah. Was it one of the Football League Cup? Uh, they did really well. I do remember seeing them. They was at Wembley recently. Or was that the National League playoff final or something? But yeah, the content was amazing. I highly recommend you watch, uh, it Sky Sports in the uk. They're doing great stuff with eafc. I've got an admiration for Thomas Frank, but I watched 20 minutes of Thomas Frank giving a coaching masterclass on a whiteboard and actually how they've Integrated EAFC and player stats within that was absolutely fascinating. I do think clubs, leagues, broadcasters should be putting YouTube front and center of sales packs and pitch decks and then proving the value of YouTube within that is really important. And then I think from there, once you've got poc, then you've got the ball rolling, then you can start to attract more sponsors, do stuff in different markets and then go from there really.

Speaker B: So there's obviously, uh, there's a big case to be made for how for partners, YouTube is the platform to be creating content because of the reach that you can get. Um, but one trend that we're certainly seeing is lots of teams setting up their own OTT platforms and starting to hold back content so it's available exclusively on the OTT platform and almost, you know, stuff that would, could arguably make sense to have on YouTube no longer sitting on YouTube. Can you talk to me a bit more about how YouTube actually allows you to integrate a membership and the OTT platforms into YouTube in a way where clubs shouldn't be seeing them as one or the other, it actually should be. YouTube should be feeding people to those platforms.

Speaker C: Yeah, we've done multiple studies with broadcasters across different markets to prove that YouTube drives audience to your platforms. It drives audiences directly via videos, whether, you know, with a QR code, with links in description. So you can do that directly or indirectly. Just the wider marketing awareness that you have of being on YouTube and then driving people down that funnel, whether that's through advertising, whether that's organic content, whether that's working with creators. And we've proven, we have proven with third party studies that YouTube drives audiences to your platforms and drives viewing to your linear games on the weekend. So what I would say is yes, we can drive traffic, but if I look at Liverpool in the UK, so they have channel memberships on YouTube. It's an extension of LFC TV. Uh, essentially it's exclusive content for when we talk about sports. There's different types of fans, isn't there? There's the hardcore fan, the season ticker holder that will watch everything. You've got the person at the other end of the spectrum that's either just maybe not interested or just wants to watch a 30 second clip of a wow moment and then kind of that's their hook into it, I think for channel memberships, if you're willing to pay a monthly subscription for, you're probably at the other end of the spectrum where you're, you know, your fan and your, or your interest in the players. So with channel Memberships. What you can do is combine the two. You can combine your via API, you know, work to have members who have, uh, come from your OTT platform and then funneled them through to channel memberships and vice versa. And memberships is a really strong way of using all of our YouTube monetization models. We've seen it in Turkey. Turkey is a great case study. It's a recent one as well. So Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Bektas, they are really smashing channel memberships at the moment. And there was an activation there just before Christmas where they put a QR code sticker on every seat in the Galatasaray stadium. You scan it and then you're taken to the join page of channel memberships. I mean that activation, when you think about YouTube being valued in an organization and seeing the value of it across reach and revenue, that's perfect. That is a really deep integration. Using it perfectly.

Speaker A: You mentioned there that the membership's almost the extension of the sort of the OTT provisions. Now for a club, often though, having your own OTT service is expensive. Not just the content but all the technical management that goes around it. And maybe not all clubs have the skill sets around maximizing those, uh, sorts of products. Is there a point though where you could almost look at the memberships and go, actually this is just a much more cost effective route than having an OTT service available to my fans?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it can be one and the same. You can work in conjunction with your OTT platform, It can work exclusively on memberships. I think you make a great point, Charlie, and you'll know a lot more about this subject than I do. But launching, maintaining an OTT platform is very, very costly. It costs marketing across engineering, across all the different components that come with that. With YouTube, we're doing the engineering, we're doing the marketing for you. And actually, so you remove that cost and then you also got the upside of earning revenue off it. YouTube can be used excl. I think what we want to do is offer as many different tools to partners as possible and you can pick and choose. Uh, it's a sweet shop. You might not be interested in YouTube shopping, but you may be interested in working with creators or our, uh, SVOD projects and products. Ah. And that's crucial, I think, I think for creators, if we take a step back in the sports world, membership is a really, really good revenue stream for them to build a really deeper connection with fans and um, provide another revenue source. Um, I think the, you know, the fandom that is involved in creators is nuts. And if you, if I'm a fan of a creator I understand, you know producing content is costly. Right. And takes a lot of time. So how can I financially directly support my favorite creators and channel memberships might be one of those routes on top of obviously the AVOD revenue that they'll get. One of my favorite creators I guess is a channel called Bunch of Amateurs. So they, they follow an infamous I guess manager called Mark White. He's uh, Dawkin Wanderers International. I mean he's, he's comedy gold and they, you know it's a real raw behind the scenes they follow Dawkin and channel memberships is a way that you can get extended cuts of that or exclusive interviews of Mark, uh, Mark White. So it builds more of a one to one relationship with creators, channel memberships in this aspect and clubs can do that as well.

Speaker B: So one of the arguments for uh, we want the interaction to happen on our own operated platforms is around data and data capture. And I think at a very high level people who are not in the weeds of it see social media as it's a great way for getting reach. But I'm m not getting the data and insights that I get if I do that interaction myself. And there seems to be a push around partnerships where now actually having fan data and knowing who those fans are is increasingly important for selling partnerships. Can you talk to the level of data and insights that you get from using a channel membership or using YouTube shopping or these are the functionalities.

Speaker C: Yeah, I would pose the question how much are you actually doing with that data? Uh, you know, for all of the benefits that come with you know, having OTT platform and the PII that you get with that, you know you're not going to get PII on YouTube but I can guarantee you that you are going to be amazed if you haven't seen it already the insights that you're going to get as soon as you upload a piece of content. And so I guess my question back would be yes, you can get first party data, uh, but how much are you really doing of it? Do you have the CRM team involved? Do you have different activations that you're using to monetize it? If the answer is actually we're not making use of this and actually when we take a step back, um, it's really really hard to do. You know it's really really hard to do proper, you know CRM with YouTube what you get outside of PII is and we could be here for an hour telling you each metric that you get, and I'm a geek for this, I love this audience development stuff, is where are people watching who are watching by different audience cohort? I think this is crucial for sports as well, by the way. And it comes back to our Personas and what type of fan you are, and then building strategy from that, uh, understanding. Is the content I'm making actually bringing in new viewers? Is it actually only appealing to returning viewers? And so I'm not actually growing my fan base. What are the CPMs on my content? Why is the CPM hiring this market and that market? Where have people come from in YouTube to my channel? And so if one of my viewers has come from a creator channel, for example, and you can see this, then actually there's an overlap there. Why don't I do a collaboration with that creator and why don't I then start to connect the dots and then build this map where the reach then suddenly skyrockets? Because you're not just working within your own bubble, you're working in the creator ecosystem, that kind of stuff. So the value that creators have in the sports industry, I think is still untapped. I think some people are doing it really, really well. Our CEO, uh, Neil Mohan said that people still think there's a tired and lazy view that creators are in their bedroom on a webcam doing vlogs. These creators are producing broadcast quality content in every aspect, right? In terms of production quality, in terms of storytelling and that kind of stuff. And actually they should be recognized at the Emmys. There should be a category. If the MES is going to develop, then there should be a category for creators in the sports world. I think that's the same. I think how can, how can we tell the story of our club with creators and go from there? There's great examples. So Juventus in Italy, they created a creator lab. It's in house, it's at the training ground. Creators can come in, they can work with the players. You know, when you think of Udventus marketing team, suddenly you're going, this is a new marketing channel here. This is a new marketing stream that we can get behind. Man United did something recently with creators. They created a cohort there. We worked in partnership with Warner Brothers in the summer at the Olympics. And I think Warner Brothers and Eurosport in this case truly appreciate it. Actually, there's a role for creators in how we tell the story of the Olympics. So, yes, we'll be at every stadium, will have tons of cameras there, and we'll produce the official version and on our OTT platform. But there is a role for creators here to be in the stadium and be at, ah, our TV studios to tell the whole other story of the Games. And I think they really respected the creators. They went above and beyond. I remember they, Igor Wiertek, the number one tennis player at the time, Polish. We had a Polish creator with us and Eurosport had access to IGA to do after she won the bronze medal, uh, exclusive interview of her. And instead they said to me, said, how about we send Aga, the Polish creator, uh, to interview IGA for us and actually tell a different story about iga And a bit of a more informal chat. We sent Agar to interview Iger. And what our creator got out of IGA Schwartek was something that I think a normal broadcast, you know, sit down interview would never have got out the answer that she got. And after the interview, Igor Schwartek said, that's actually my favorite interview I've done this week at the Olympics. And that's because Eurosport trusted the creator, sent her there with exclusive credentials and then told a story for her. And then that sat on both Aga's channel, but also Eurosports channels.

Speaker B: That, uh, trust piece with creators is an interesting one though, because if you think of like creators in terms of arsenal to fan TV or something, those channels are definitely driving fandom for the clubs. But in difficult moments they're also the harshest critics. So like how, how do you see rights holders striking the balance between incorporating those characters into their own content with the fact that they are going to be critical of the club and they are going to call them out?

Speaker C: I mean, there's a fine line. There is a, there is a fine line between being strategic and creative, doing analysis of the games and actually just getting personal and it just being a bit of a jo. So I think it's on the clubs to take a step back. Okay. If we want to work creators, how can we work with YouTube to identify who those creators are? And then actually from there then we start to work with the creators, Understand what's the creator scene in the YouTube world that we can then bring into our content and be in partnership rather than the broadcaster telling the creator what to do? In answer to your question, yes, it's a really fine line. People love seeing Robbie from AF tv. He's one of our best creators outside the Emirates at full time, especially last night. I haven't seen it. They really value a different take on events. Ah, a more raw take. Of events. There's definitely more room for organizations and broadcasters and clubs to work with creators and, um, truly realize the potential of that. You can't have a creator turn up on your live preview show and then start absolutely slating the team and getting ridiculous, you know.

Speaker A: And, uh, what about the athletes as creators as well? You've obviously got high profile players such as Bellingham m having their own channels where obviously they're able to control the message, but then also they're able to commercialize another asset for themselves. Right. I mean, Bellingham, um, with Adidas seems like an obvious sort of route for that sort of thing.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's actually a focus for 2025 is. We've seen the success of Ronaldo. He broke every record going. I think it was 19 million subscribers in 24 hours, which is remarkable. And we've seen Bellingham. And actually when you look at the two channels, they're quite different. You know, Bellingham's is really. I mean, they're both high production, but Bellingham is, you know, really long form, four episodes, and then content's come from there and then Ronaldo's more kind of regular 10, 20 minute uploads and that kind of stuff. I don't think we've scratched the surface with athletes. I think, to your point, Charlie, around the commercial benefits, but I also just think allowing them to tell their version of events is crucial. How can they do their own analysis of their game and how can they work with broadcasters, rights holders to get their own highlights? And then on YouTube, suddenly you're seeing, in this case, Bellingham's take on how he played that game, uh, and then go from there. There's an educational aspect to it, I think for the commercialization part, Adidas and Bellingham was a great fit. And then same for Nike, Ronaldo. I think brands want to extend the value of their deals with these athletes. And athletes need to, you know, be aware of that and respect that. And I think YouTube is a great platform for them to extend the value of that. With the Bellingham example, you know, we had those conversations, we worked out what the content strategy would be and then we started to connect dots on the monetization piece. So we worked with our sales team, who worked very closely, Validazz, and then they've got 100% exclusivity of the ads on Bellingham's channel when that launched. And so, you know, when you think about Bellingham, so he plays in Spain, obviously the league is a global, global league, but YouTube is a global platform. And suddenly you're seeing Adidas are getting their awareness and reach and engagement across comes back to multiple different devices in multiple different markets and extending the value of their partnership with Drew Bellingham. And so I think for this year is we want to, I guess, educate athletes on the value of YouTube, making it the most rewarding platform that they can be on and showing them that yes, they can reach new fans, engage existing ones, but also monetize their content, uh, and build their profile. I think that's particularly important for women's sport as well. I think, I think the Women's Super League, they've shown great innovation and being on the front foot with this. I think they can see the trend and they've allowed, you know, the new media rights deal, they've allowed players to use their highlights. And so, you know, what that opens up, especially for commercial reasons, is absolutely huge.

Speaker B: And I guess, you know, we've talked a lot about the UK and Europe, but actually the US with nil stuff for college athletes that's just going to be, uh, uh, you know, already is but fascinating space to watch evolve. And so much of the best practice we're going to see from athlete creators is going to be those where, you know, being frank, they're at a point where they don't know if they're going to make it as a professional athlete or not, but they can make an absolute packet as a creator and set themselves up for a career as an alternative to sports or alongside the sports.

Speaker C: That's a really good point, I think. And you'll know more about this, you know, working with organizations like Greenfly and how they, how they can make, how can they make accessibility of content and then, you know, end to end publishing process even easier for athletes. What we've seen on YouTube is actually a halo effect of series on other platforms. So the Drive to Survive effect, which is everyone's favorite and you know, example to use in the sports industry, very

Speaker B: much a meme at this point.

Speaker C: We've seen that there's people who have never watched an F1 race in their, in their life has come to YouTube to watch more of Carlos Sainz or Charles Leclerc or, you know, Lewis Hamilton. And we've seen that effect come to YouTube. And so if you're an athlete or if you're one F1 driver, in this example, you've seen the growth of Drive to Drive on Netflix. You've seen, you know, F1 on YouTube who are best in class, uh, when it comes to motorsport. How can I tap into some of that and how can I get a slice of that pie and slice that audience as well? So, uh, yeah, I think we're only going to see that grow.

Speaker A: You mentioned the WSL briefly about how they were innovating. Now they broadcast a number of games over YouTube and there's been quite a lot of coverage about how they got better audience numbers through YouTube than they did previously through the FA player. Do you see this as a broader trend, that there's a lot more opportunity for leagues to actually start broadcasting live through YouTube and start to drive real audience around those particular games?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think taking a step back, I think our first objective is to work with rights holders and broadcasters to get the most out of the rights that they've already got. We can do that around innovation. As I said, I'm really excited in 2020 of products that we've got coming that's going to help rights holders and broadcast reach new fans, engage new ones. And so I think our first objective is that. But where there is games in, whether that be, um, one off games, whether that be a series of games in certain markets where there isn't a broadcaster, then Absolutely, yeah. YouTube can be a home for your content and it comes back to this data and insights piece. Once you do put, uh, a live game on YouTube, that treasure chest of insights is there waiting for you and then you can start to make, if you're a rights holder or a league, strategical decisions based on that. You know, you might actually have uncovered that we've got a really big audience here in Japan, for example, that we never knew existed. And so then YouTube has allowed you indirectly to start making some commercial opportunities in Japan, for example, whether that's with a local broadcast or wherever that sponsors. So yes, there is definitely. YouTube is a stable, robust global platform. You can protect your rights on there with content id, so you're, you know, you can trust the platform, you can monetize it and you can engage audiences. And so I think for the Women's Super League in particular, I think, you know, as part of this new media rights deal, sky do an unbelievable job with the Women's Super League. The level of marketing that they put into it and the fact they've got a 24, 7 news channel, Sky Sports News, that uh, is, is telling the, the story of the Women's Super League is remarkable and it's fantastic. I think what's really unique, I guess, in the Women's Super League example is that in the new rights deal that there is a pocket of games that they want to retain and have control over. So with Sky Sports there's going to be games from 2025 onwards that will be both on YouTube and on Sky Sports. And we want to work both with Women's Super League and Sky Sports on this. How can we together as a trio really supercharge this? Whether that's using multi language audio, which I'm sure we'll come on to, whether that's working with creators on Watch Alongs, whether that's Watch with is uh, a new product we've got coming with creators and multi view which the NFL are using. Let's sit around the table and go, there's a huge opportunity here. How can we work together and use the best of everything that we have to supercharge these rights?

Speaker B: And how about on the commercial side? Because the thing, the wsl, uh, whilst there's been incredible progress, by their own admission, they're still kind of lacking their own platform and destination. And I'm sure that's something that's going to get built out over the next year or two. But um, I guess there's a lot on YouTube to be the destination for a lot of that engagement and then um, by connection to that, a lot of their partnership activation is going to be coming from YouTube. So can you talk to how the WSL has been appealing to commercial partners and activating commercial partnerships through YouTube as a platform?

Speaker C: Yeah, at the very outset when we started to build a content plan, we then start to look at monetization and we go, actually we have a number of brands that are interested in women's sport come to our sales team in YouTube and say what do you have? And telling us early enough allows us to go and seek sponsorships for them. So in the Women's Super League, uh, we had Google Pixel who have done a lot of sponsorship in women's Sport. They have 100% share of voice on their channel and they sponsor that. And obviously with that comes much higher cpms sponsorship rate, cpms versus usual. But what the Women's Super League really pushed the needle and innovated in in terms of commercial on YouTube in the live space is using dynamic ad insertion, you know, treating YouTube like a TV broadcaster and inserting halftime ad breaks that you know, two, three minutes long. They doing pre match stuff where there's an ad that you would normally see on a broadcast. And so there's the increased revenue that you get from a channel sponsorship. In this case Google Pixel, they're using our products like dynamic ad insertion to make it a TV like broadcast. And so they are really reaping the rewards of that in terms of getting the full benefit of YouTube just from reach, but also a commercial point of view. What they can also do, and this is what we've seen with um, BT Sport back in the day where they would live stream the Champions League final in terms of, you know, commercialization I guess is an indirect benefit. But you stream the game live on YouTube and you use our audience remarketing tool by Google to understand, okay, who's watched the content. Once they watch the live stream, wherever they go on YouTube, they watch more video or if they go to Creature, the advertising that they see will be upsell to subscribe to BT Sport. And so if you're women, super league in this case, and you're building a OTT platform somewhere else, how can you use that tool to go, okay, we know we've got an audience on YouTube, how can we more effectively, with an increased return on investment, use this tool to then market our paid product or paid opportunities elsewhere? Uh, and so commercialization of lifespan. YouTube is multifaceted. You've got indirect, like audience remarketing and then the halo effect of that comes from that. You've got direct. And we've got more and more products coming in this space. We have pay per view, so dazone use that perfectly. For boxing events we have live redirect. So this is another indirect commercial opportunity. So if you're, if you're dazone in this example and you're live streaming the press conference or the weigh in on the Thursday or Friday, you can automatically send all users of that live stream to then buy your pay per view on YouTube. And so you're bridging the gap. You'll make your commercializing your content even better. Uh, and then going from there. Really.

Speaker A: How do you start to see the sports rights market developing as a result? The premium rights, the Premier League, the Champions League, they're only getting bigger, they're only getting more expensive. But it's not as if the budgets of the broadcasters are actually getting bigger as well. Surely there's a finite number of rights that actually are going to get those premium fees. Where does that leave everybody else?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's, I mean the sports rights market is worth $60 billion I think in 2025, but there's not an infinite budget from broadcasters to continue paying for rights. I think there's two different ways that you can look at. There's the Moneyball strategy where you go for undervalued rights, you go for up and coming rights where you can then start to build audiences there or there is the polarization especially where you go all in on core rights in domestic markets and there's a proven return on investment. But naturally uh, those budgets don't stretch forever. I think where there is a middle ground, I think the Women's Super League is a great example where we actually work with broadcasters and the Women's Super League directly to have that kind of co exclusivity. I think there's a world where if you're a rights holder or a league and you're struggling to attract a broadcaster, how can you use YouTube to effectively show that there is an audience for your rights and then go back to a uh, broadcast in this And I go actually look, we've, we've streamed on YouTube and we've seen that there is hundreds of thousands of people here, if not millions wanting to watch this and there's a proper engagement. The average view duration is extremely high. They are watching on TV for longer as well. When actually in partnership we can actually do an athlete, ah, creator program or we can work with creators. So the sports rights market is so complex. I think where YouTube comes in is first of all we want to work with broadcasters rights holders to extend their IP and boost the value of those rights. For those where there's not exclusive deals in certain markets then yes, let's work together to build an audience and then go from there and then use all of the different optimization and best practices that we have. YouTube Shopping, you know, I'm sure you know sports merchandise market is in the billions as well. How can you use YouTube shopping to connect your store and then suddenly you're watching the live stream but you're also seeing the option to buy the shirt or you know and that kind of stuff. So yeah, use YouTube to either boost the value of your IP or you know, attract new sponsorships and go from there.

Speaker A: Um, we can't really do a podcast about technology and um, sports though without mentioning AI. And Google's obviously investing very heavily in AI with Gemini. Some of the integrations into the Pixel phone, some of the stuff that's being sort of seen from, some of the research developments being jaw droppingly impressive. How is that manifesting itself within YouTube now?

Speaker C: So our approach to AI is to be frank is we want to enhance human creativity. That is our number one objective of AI. How do we make it easier and quicker, ah, and more inspirational to use our AI tools to produce content on YouTube and we've got really cool products. We've got the inspiration tab in YouTube studio where AI tells you actually what your audience is looking for today is this particular topic. So you're a sports creator and you're beginning to go actually people in your market, they like sports and they want to hear about you do this. So it saves you hours. You know, I used to be a producer. The amount of time that you would spend in terms of content planning and understanding what the story of the day is with the Inspiration tab you can type in or you can go into your thing and within seconds you'll be have three options. Which one do you want to pick? And it will tell you actually there's. This is being searched really high or actually in a certain market this is really popping off because of something else. And so you'll get, you know, we're trying to reduce the time that you're spending doing the content planning process, producing tools. So we've got multi language audio formula, uh, one use that perfectly. So they have for their race highlights they have five different audio tracks that you can listen to. And with AI, what we're seeing is uh, in this particular example with languages is people are watching for longer in their native language. Who knew shock. But AI is actually making that easier. So people are watching your content for longer. Uh, from a monetization point of view, if they're watching for longer and the content is over eight minutes, you'll see more ads, you'll see mid rolls. So yeah, we want to make it easier for our creators, we want to make it quicker, uh, we want to enhance your creativity to produce even better content.

Speaker A: So on that uh, monetization from the AI perspective, so you could have for example a piece of content, say the manager's interview, uh, translated into French, but it's Liverpool and Liverpool sponsor is Expedia. So actually you could sell ads then to expedia.fr and actually get a higher CPM rate I assume because it'd be better targeted and you're more likely to get those ads seen because people are watching it for longer. So actually the AI creates a whole new commercial opportunity.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. The export of content opportunity on YouTube is absolutely huge and then so does the commercial opportunities that come with that. If you're suddenly reaching an audience in another country and they're watching for longer, uh, then you can start to have those commercial conversations in that market to go, yes, we're producing English, but actually with AI, suddenly all of the content catalog that we have, the thousands of videos that we're uploading is now available. In your local language and we can speak to your customers on YouTube and target you that way as well. So, yeah, uh, the opportunity is absolutely huge with, with AI, both from a content creation point of view, but also from monetization point of view.

Speaker A: And with that, Jonny, we could go for absolute Yeager.

Speaker B: We could.

Speaker A: And I think we could probably work out a different monetization strategy for pretty well every brand, club, broadcaster, uh, etc. Johnny, thank you so much for joining us on the, on the podcast. Uh, it's been absolutely brilliant.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. We'll probably need two or three more podcasters to cover everything else, aren't we, in terms of what's going on Sports on YouTube, but thanks for having me. I've loved it. Thanks. Thanks so much.

Speaker A: Brilliant. And Andy, thank you as ever for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot. It was good fun, Charlie. And thanks, Johnny, for your insights. Massively appreciate it.

Speaker C: Pleasure.

Speaker A: And all that's left is to say big thank you to our, uh, listeners, as ever, thank you so much for joining us. Please do check out the newsletter and, uh, check out our content on social media. We'll be posting various videos of Johnny over the next few days and do check us out on the website Sportsloft co. And finally. So thank you so much for joining us in the Sportsloft. Goodbye.