From Threads to WhatsApp: How sports organisations are making the most of Meta’s platforms.

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Sportsloft podcast, where we talk to the senior execs who are leading the charge of innovation across the world of sports media and entertainment today. As always, we're joined by Andy Selby, head of strategy at Sportsloft. How you doing, Andy?

Speaker C: Good to be back, Charlie. Hopefully bringing a lot of insights from our trips to the us. Uh, looking forward to diving into this one.

Speaker B: Yes. So, for those of you who didn't know, myself and Andy were in New York and then Andy went to the cold bit in Boston and I went south to south by Southwest where it was an awful lot warmer and a lot more breakfast tacos, which were also great. And today we're also joined by Will Pithers, who's the strategic partner manager for sports at, uh, Meta. I think we've heard of them, they seem to be quite large, who actually also worked with Andy when they were both at City. So Will, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Correct. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And yes, as you say, years ago now, Andy, five years ago he and I were working together at City Football Group. So it's nice to be reunited here today.

Speaker C: You're the first of the grad scheme to get invited onto the podcast.

Speaker A: Uh, well, honour.

Speaker B: We are an illustrious company. So Will, just to start us off, can you just talk about a little bit more about your role at Meta, what you do, what you focus on, also how it's evolved, because there's been an awful lot of changes, I imagine you've seen.

Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of change. So I joined here fresh, uh, faced, 26 year old, just over five, five and a half years ago and whilst the name of my team has changed a few times since then, broadly speaking, our remit is kind of fairly similar and our role really is helping sports, uh, teams, leagues, federations, athletes and creators to optimize what they're doing from an organic content side of things across meta platforms. I think that the top line thing that has changed is where we focus the majority of our attention. So when I started here five years ago, I would say probably 80% of my time was on Facebook and the other 20% was Instagram. And these days it's something like 60% threads, 35% Instagram and then the last 5% sort of Facebook and WhatsApp and other exciting things that I know have sort of come down the track for Meta. So it's, it's a varied beast, but it's a very interesting and challenging one and it's uh, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.

Speaker B: Cool. And what are when you look at sort of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, AI VR, I mean the amount of stuff that's going on at uh, Meta just seems to be endless. It seems like another press release all the time. So there's so many different places that you can start. But what's top of mind for you at the moment?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think probably the two priority items for us at the moment in my team anyway are in threads and in Instagram. Instagram obviously kind of evolving over the past couple of years to become what we would like to define as a sort of creative hub of online life. And then threads really interestingly I think, ah, we launched just under two years ago as a text based social platform trying to fulfill that need for people to connect and kind of coalesce around their favorite communities and their favorite passions. Had this very publicized early growth explosion. I think it was the fastest social media app ever to hit 100 million users. Did so in 5 days. Then I think it had this very well publicized drop off, as people said. Okay, in the months following that. Is anybody actually using this thing? And many, lots of iteration product development since then has kind of seen it kind of roar back into life and it's kind of being taken seriously by a lot of sports properties now, which is very exciting to see. And so, you know, just to give you some numbers, the we're at 320 million monthly active users globally now with over 100 million daily active users. So people using Threads app every day to publish content and growing by a million users a day. So it's a really kind of exciting growth phase for us and we're very kind of bullish about where it might go.

Speaker C: Um, and give us a sense from a sports perspective. How did you guide sports properties through it when the platform launched, how did you advise people on, um, when was the right time to launch on the platform? Do they come on straight away? Do they wait and see what works? They copy the same content they're using on Twitter onto threads. Like what was the process you used to guide rights holders through that?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first thing to say is that you cast your mind back. I think it was July 4th or July 5th, 2023 when it launched and it kind of. You think that it was something that would be planned amongst my team for months and months. It came really suddenly and the reality of the situation was that we had a minimum viable product ready to go, but we were kind of looking to see what else might be happening in the market at that time. And certain changes over there on another text based platform that happened around that same time basically expedited the launch and it was brought forward. And so it launched. It was kind of sudden and kind of basic as a product, I think it's fair to say. And you know, I've been here, been here a long time, like I said, and it isn't really my style to push everybody, you know, on day dot to say you've got to be there from the off. With some products that we launch, I think there is value in being a first mover but generally with these things having, like I say, been around the block a bit, the sports publishers that I work with sort of advise them, you know, if you're keen to try something new, jump in. But also don't be afraid to take your time, Give it, give it some weeks, give it some months, understand how the platform is developing and really to be fair to them, to give them the comfort that Meta was actually going to be serious about this because I think it's fair to say that social media platforms track record is a bit spotty when it comes to launching new products. But three months down the line when it became very clear to me as an employee and I think to a lot of people externally as well, that we were not just sort of, it wasn't just a flash in the pan actually. It was gaining momentum and was going to be something that we were going to be investing a lot of time and resource into. Became a much more easy conversation to have with sports partners that I work with to say, look, you know, this is, you got to jump in here because there's a growing, growing audience and things are moving in the right direction for the long term, not just for the short or the medium term.

Speaker B: And you mentioned all the, a lot of the different platforms there. How do you think about those platforms? I mean when Instagram was first launched it was a photos platform and now it's an awful lot more than that. I can't remember the last time I was almost looking at a photo on Instagram. It's virtually always, always a video. Do you look at them as platforms for different types of content or do you actually look at them as for different demographics that Facebook has an older demographic may maybe than some of the others? How do you think about them in the way that you talk to a sports organization and about how that translates into how they should actually maximize it.

Speaker A: So let's take Facebook and Instagram first because I think it's fair to say that over the past two to three years, what works on Instagram and what works on Facebook is just kind of like a bigger overlap. And so, and frankly, basically what I mean by that is reels are the key to success. We understand now that short form video is the thing, um, and the way to get your content seen by as many people as possible on Instagram is basically this very similar to the method you might use on Facebook as well, which is basically post as much short form reels content that you can appear in the reels feed, optimize for recommendations to get your content seen by as many people as possible. And that's the kind of the key foundation for everything. I think the key difference between those two apps, just taking them in turn, is that Facebook, to my mind, when I speak to sports rights holders, is one of those ones. Actually. It's sort of like a sleeping giant. People kind of forget about it because to be fair, it's not so culturally relevant here in the UK or in the US or in Western Europe as it used to be. Um, but actually I sort of have to remind myself, and frankly, the people that I work with, that the real value in Facebook is tapping into international audiences. And you take a typical top six Premier League club. I don't think I'm sharing any secrets here to say that, you know, probably you dive into their Facebook follower numbers and 98% of their followers are outside the UK and probably only something like 20% of them will have English set as their first language. Um, and so it's important reminder to say, look, we know whilst we think that Facebook in the UK is just for old people, gross simplification, but, you know, actually when you look at other parts of the world, when you look at Latam, when you look at North Africa and the Middle east, when you look at India, it's like the central focal point of, you know, the online social digital experience. And so if you want to tap into international audiences, and there is still, I believe, no better platform today to do that than Facebook, by contrast. Instagram obviously still has this global reach, but I would say, I think it's fair to say that it is kind of more English language dominant and is more about esthetics. Uh, Instagram is what people want. You know, it's your front door of your house, right? It's the first thing that people look at much in the way that a website used to function for a brand. I think often your Instagram does now when people want to get a sense for your brand and who you are and what kind of content you're creating. Instagram is the first port of call for that. So it's vitally important, but maybe in a kind of slightly different way on,

Speaker C: um, that one about Facebook then. It's very classic for people at sports teams or leagues or industry commentators to say, uh, Facebook's great, but you don't get a depth of insight about who those fans are. Uh, you don't have that first party relationship, you don't have the data to capture, et cetera. Speaking from the meta side of things, everybody likes to say that, but give us a sense of the level of insight that a Premier League team actually gets from the Meta platform in terms of its global fan base and demographics and all that sort of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it's pretty good. Those that are using it in most depth are those who are making use of the APIs. There's a very comprehensive API documentation where people have either kind of set up their own backend platform making use of the APIs or they work with a third party. But meta Business Suite, as it's now called, has gone through many iterations, but it will give you an overview of your audience demographics, their age, where they're from, what type, what other pages they're interested in. It gives you a kind of benchmarking section so you can compare yourself to other similar brands and other industries as well. Um, but I think it probably comes into its own more so on like the specific content level where it will really give you a good idea. It's similar to YouTube's analytics, which I think is second to none as well. It will give you a very specific idea how a certain video is performed at what second in the video someone has dropped off. Um, so you can make these very detailed editing decisions to say, okay, I need to tweak this here to ensure that I'm seen by as many people as possible. So yeah, I hear that complaint from people a lot. I can be at times not the most user friendly experience, but if you kind of put some time into Meta Business Suite in the back end, basically it can be very rewarding.

Speaker B: And I just want to take you back to, uh, threads for a moment. One of the things I think is really interesting is that how are you looking to actually almost change people's perceptions or indeed fan behavior. So for example, transfer deadline day was coming up. X, Twitter, let's call it X, was the place that I was going to pretty well every day to check if there were any rumors about the player being signed it was almost like it was a great destination. Now I think that x for 99% of the rest of my life is an utter cesspool and I don't like spending time on there. But for that bit around sport, it was just incredibly strong. From a sports perspective, how do you start to get Threads as part of the consciousness that I would start to go to threads to check out those transfer rumors rather than, rather than X.

Speaker A: Yeah, you fit on. You hit on exactly the right question. I read this piece in the New York Times probably about six months ago that said, you know, whilst lots of communities are leaving X sports Twitter, uh, endures. It's like one of those places where, you know, the communities are most sticky and it's something that we, we are certainly addressing and trying to kind of understand a bit better. I think being like super frank. The key difference between for sports on X versus on threads the moment is that their kind of live experience algorithm is surfacing content more effectively than threads. I think that's fair to say. And so it knows that you Charlie, support this team and you want to hear from these accounts and it serves you that content in a better way on a match day. Um, the way that we're trying to combat that a is kind of. Well, take a step back. The first question we're trying to answer is actually do we want to replicate that experience entirely? Because as you say, it's positive in many ways. But also when you have uh, a, when you have a super smooth recommendations algorithm that feeds you the right content all the time, it actually can facilitate the harmful elements of the platform, makes it easier to find someone to abuse them. For example, there's a question there of like, if we want to do this, we want to do it the same but different. Right? And how exactly does that look? But also we're focusing on, and I get this great privilege of my job that I get to work with stakeholders at every layer of the stack within sports to kind of bring communities across together and build, build the fan bases on, on the threads platform. And so the very best example of this is, is Formula One. I work with Formula One at the league level. Uh, myself and a couple of team members in my team work with Formula One teams and also drivers. And so at the start of last season, probably this time last year, we sat down with the whole ecosystem and sold the story to them effectively. Um, and it's been incredibly effective. If you go onto threads today and you search F1 Threads, the topic tag, which is kind of threads is equivalent of hashtags, you'll see a really thriving, buzzing community in a way that it kind of never really was on X. I mean, it was strong on X and it still is. But I think it's. I think it's fair to say that all of the teams, drivers, and the league themselves are seeing more value come from Threads today than they do from X. So, um, it's really exciting to see. And the way that they have done that is that they've all come on together, they're all using the same terminology, and they're specifically really focusing on replies. And this is where our algorithm is perhaps a little bit different to X's, Although I confess I don't really know what goes into theirs. Ours is essentially, if you want success on threads, at least 50% of your output should be text replies, should be you replying to someone else or you asking a question. And so we will basically up rank accounts that are seen to be driving conversation and building community.

Speaker C: And how does that manifest for F1, then? Do you have drivers commenting on, um, their team's posts? Do you have the league, F1 commenting on team stuff? Do you have drivers posting on each other's, like, how, how do you drive that?

Speaker A: Kind of all of the above. It's most natural for the drivers. Right. So someone like Lando Norris is brilliant at this. Although I would say last season we saw like, equally good posts from, from George Russell, from Charles Leclerc, from Oscar Piastri. But Landon Norris, if you go and check out his threads, um, account, you'll kind of see exactly what I mean. He just fires off posts here, there and everywhere in a very kind of organic and natural way. And that's kind of easy, right? Easier, I think, for an individual than it is for a brand. The key difference, I think, between Formula one and something like Premier League or football more broadly is that there is a lot more banter between the teams and it's acceptable for the teams to kind of joke with each other. Right. So that's been. They were very often they will comment on each other's pieces of content with a, with a slide dig, but it's all kind of taken in good jest and kind of helps the broader pie. Um, and then Formula one at the league level basically does this really good job of sort of starting conversations. So their very first post on Threads, for example, was, um, something like, who Was your first F1 hero? What was your favorite F1 moment in history? One of the two. And not only did a bunch of fans reply, but all of the teams replied right. It really is the case of a rising tide, floats or boats in this case. F1's kind of really nailed it in terms of just building that community together and flooding the system with their conversation, if you like.

Speaker B: M. Do you want to move on to WhatsApp as well, which is uh, no small product as a messaging platform though, how do you approach it or do you approach it differently when talking to sports teams and leagues than you would do, say a more content orientated platform like an Instagram? Does the way that you think about it change?

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And this one was, ah, fascinating for me. Again, I think this launched, I think again, it was summer 2023 and it was um, something that I've been asked about personally by teams for years and years. And actually Andy, you may remember when we were at City Football Group, one of the projects that I worked on there was, we stood up a chatbot. Sorry, it wasn't a chatbot. It was a daily newsletter style thing via WhatsApp and it lasted about six weeks before our partner manager at Meta shut us down. Facebook as it was then, shut us down because it wasn't entirely legitimate. But you might Remember back in 2017, 2018, there was this early way where you basically, if you sent a text to a phone number, you'd get added to this sort of like one way bulletin board style thing, um, and you could get daily updates. And it was kind of nifty, but it wasn't. Yeah, it was not above board at the time. And it's something that people have been asking for, for years. So I was really excited when it launched. And I guess the key difference, Charlie, to answer your question, is that it's not algorithmically driven. What goes in your WhatsApp channels feed, right? Somebody hits subscribe and then every time you send a message to that feed they get a notification. And so you have, it's very powerful. You have a direct line into someone's pocket. And I won't name any names, but some people who launched early basically were like, great, this can be uh, our replacement for all the traffic that we're losing from Google Search. Right? It's just going to be pushing people to our website, pushing people to our YouTube videos. And to be fair to those people, actually I've heard from one Premier League club recently that they get more referrals today to their club website from WhatsApp channels than they do from Google Search. So clearly it's working somewhat. So it's working somewhat. But there were Others who just flooded it with so many links, right, that they soon saw a drop off. And people are not engaging with their content. There's a question of, you know, with great power comes great responsibility here. When you've got the power to send push notifications to someone's pocket, you gotta be careful with what you're sending them and not overload it. And so the interesting thing about WhatsApp channels is we don't recommend really that you send more than about three to five posts per week. Honestly, any more than that, and you start to see people drop off sometimes. And the other thing that we really champion is utility. Like, really think about what the, the unique offering is of your WhatsApp channel over and above your other channels, or what your competitors might be doing. And even if it's just one very simple thing, focus on that. Provide the utility. So, you know, I'm an Arsenal fan, and the thing that I love about Arsenal's WhatsApp channel, super basic. But I, I go there because they send me the team sheet now before kickoff for every game. And that's just the way I get it. And I don't get it from anywhere else. And during the game, they don't blast me with updates because I'm either at the game watching it on TV or getting updates from another social app or the Sky Sports app or the Premier League app or whatever it might be. They've understood that that's not their space. But they send me photo galleries from training a couple times a week. They do a, uh, quiz once or twice a week. They send me the team lineup and it has a very specific utility for me. So I'm in there, I'm in there once a week. And so that's, that's, that's where they work really well. If you're championing utility, a specific use case that will get people to basically get value from it.

Speaker C: How do people, how do you recommend people balance with WhatsApp content, which I can then look at, uh, and consume within WhatsApp itself versus linking to other content that you referenced earlier? If I'm doing three to five posts a week, how much of that should be linking off platform versus. No, just let people consume it within WhatsApp.

Speaker A: There's no easy answer. There's no silver bullet here. I think it kind of, it really is a case of trial and error. And it depends. To be clear, I don't want to tell people what their business priorities are. Uh, like, if your objectives as a business are to send people to your YouTube channel send people to your website. Like far be it from me to tell you what your business is. And it's interesting that that is a very different stance for me on WhatsApp than it would be on Instagram because. Or Facebook actually is a better example here. We recommend on Facebook that you should never post. No more than 20% of your output should be linked posts because the algorithm hates that. If you make 100% of your output on WhatsApp channels, a link post, no algorithm is going to say you can't do that or they're not going to crush the reach of your content. If you've got your audience and that's what your audience wants to see, then by all means go for it. I think what we see frankly is that uh, very link heavy strategy doesn't work. Um, the accounts that do really well are the ones that A, provide utility like I said, and B, combine that with a sort of authentic closeness of WhatsApp feels more native in the way that you or I might use WhatsApp with friends or family. So someone like, Ah, AC Milan does a great job of this. They really lean into voice notes. They opened their channel in the most brilliant way. It was a player, uh, speaking to camera players, sending a voice note that said, which chant would you like me to sing? Then there was a vote underneath and you could vote, you know, this common AC Milan chants. And then after the vote was concluded, he sent another voice note with him singing the winning vote. And it was nice, it was really, really kind of native to the platform. So they're a great example to look at. Someone like Mercedes F1 team is also just brilliant. They give you this really unique insider's perspective to their post race staff meetings on a Monday. Like I'm a kind of casual F1 fan so I didn't even really know that these took place. But since I've been following Mercedes, I see that and it's like you really do get a kind of inside view of what's going on in there. So that's really exciting and I think so, yeah. Those accounts that are treating the app natively and behaving like you might do in a group chat with your friends and your family, they're the ones that are kind of ticking the boxes and seeing highest retention.

Speaker B: And there often seems, when we're talking to a number of companies who are very much focused on the sort of the, the messaging space, almost a perception that WhatsApp is for the rest of the world, SMS is for the U.S. true.

Speaker A: Uh, we just hit 100 million MAUs in, in the U.S. i will, I will say, basically, yeah, right. Um, historically, yes, and the kind of green bubble, blue bubble debates have been raging in the US for years. And it's funny, us Europeans, we kind of just, we don't really get it right. Everyone uses WhatsApp. Why wouldn't you? I will say, look, US is the number one target growth market for WhatsApp. They're super bullish on it, and it is growing massively. 100 million is not to be sniffed at. Uh, but clearly there are many more to get. I think personally take your question kind of in a broader context. The value that I see in something like WhatsApp channels is a kind of more long term strategic value associated with private and group messaging scenarios. And by that I mean we've seen a very interesting behavioral shift in how people come to apps. So if you wind back 10 or 15 years to early years of Facebook, think about the reason why you might open Facebook. On any given day. You opened it generally because you wanted to post a piece of content. We call this the broadcast driven flywheel, where you open it, you upload a photo album of you in the nightclub last night. That's what we did when I was at university. Or you updated your status, or you put up a photo of you and your nephew, whatever it might be, right? And you uploaded that content, you got feedback on it in the form of likes and comments or lack thereof, and it gave you the impetus to go, I'm going to tweak what I'm doing so that next time I get more likes and comments. All right, so it was kind of, that was the flywheel you want. You test and learn and you post again. And what we've seen in the last couple of years is this big shift in the really the reason why people open our apps, I think is the frankest way to say it, where more often than not today, the reason you will open your Instagram app is because somebody has shared a piece of content with you. They shared a reel with you normally. And I feel this anecdotally right, if I saw a reel that I loved a couple of years ago, I'd probably tag my friends in the comments and say, hey, watch this. Whereas now, you know, nine times out of 10, I'll take that link and I'll send it to the WhatsApp group where my friends are. Or I might, you know, send it in SMS in imessage. I might put it in a Facebook group, in a subreddit forum, wherever it might be, but it's a smaller, uh, um, community driven group of friends or family members. Right. And then people open the app because they want to view that reel and then they're in the reels feed, right. So then they just short form video viewing mode, right. They're just flicking through them. And if you extrapolate that out five years from now, I kind of see this trend continuing. Five years from now, the majority of a, um, social media user's time spent online is not in feeds, but rather in private and group messaging conversations. As a brand, you are still going to want a seat at that table, right? You're still going to want to be part of their Internet diet. And that's where I think something like WhatsApp channels kind of strategic value in the long term is vitally important because you still want to be there.

Speaker C: It's super interesting because one of the things I've been wondering for a long time with WhatsApp is when are we going to have the WeChat ification of WhatsApp and all this incredible depth functionality that WeChat would have? And it was a good while ago now that Meta took WhatsApp and we've kind of left it relatively untouched. But in the context that it's the key platform for driving people to other platforms and that's why you monetize them and that's where you feed them content, it kind of makes sense to keep it. This is this nice, clean messaging experience, albeit one where you might get a few notifications from Arsenal a week.

Speaker A: Baby steps, I would say. M, we're moving very. I think we recognize how powerful it is. I think it may have 3 billion daily active users. I might need to check that stat. But it's a big number, right? And we recognize that if we go too fast, too soon, that you ruin the experience of people and they leave and there's plenty of good alternatives out there. Right? And that's why very, very consciously, if you look at the app, WhatsApp channels is not put in the same tab as your chats with your friends and your family. Right. It's in that updates tab, I think it's called on the left hand side of your screen. It's kind of church and state. But yeah, I think we're entering a very exciting era for WhatsApp. To your point, Andy, it's kind of been untouched. And I will say, you know, in other parts of the world, business messaging has started to become an important thing in Brazil and India and other places like that. But There is so much more that we can do to expand WhatsApp's functionality for the vast majority of users around the world. I think that's where we're going to see, yeah, really interesting growth and development in the coming years.

Speaker B: I just wanted to move on to a bit that you mentioned earlier around some creators using the different platforms and how you're working with creators as different from, um, say a football team or a Formula One team. And by this I'm thinking of the influencers, like sidemen and things like that within the sports context. Where do you see them getting the most value out of it? And what do you think that teams can learn from some of the stuff that they're doing as well?

Speaker A: When you ask that question, do you mean out of WhatsApp in particular or just kind of the broader suite?

Speaker B: I think across the broader sort of meta suite, yeah.

Speaker A: So I think we're entering this very interesting phase for European sports, where I see that European sports properties are starting to understand themselves as entertainment properties rather than sporting properties. And you've never had a problem with this in the us, right? Like US sports, teams and leagues understand themselves first and foremost as sport, as entertainment. Right? That's their role, is to entertain. And in the UK in particular, I can't really speak for the rest of Europe, although I think it's fairly similar. We have these holy ideas about, you know, the sanctity of sport and sporting prowess and all that stuff, which is of course important and part of our brand. But I think occasionally in the past has been, uh, to the detriment of really figuring out what we should be doing here, which is, frankly, to entertain people. And as a result, some sports, some more than others, have become kind of siloed. Right. They've only really spoken to sports audiences, people who already understand that sport, know the rules, enjoy it, um, and have not really reached out to, you know, to other parts of the, the online ecosystem and creators, the best, number one way really for them to amplify their reach and reach these kind of new audiences. So. So for teams, the sell is very obvious. It's like you work with creators, you piggyback off their audiences, and that's how you can grow your footprint. When I was at a City football group, I set up our, uh, esports offering, Man City's gaming offering, and then the other City Football group clubs as well. And my pitch when we did that back in 2017, 2018, was that it would enable Manchester City and its sister clubs to access those audiences in what we Call parallel interest areas. So if you take football, there's like we used to think about three areas. We used to think about gaming, we used to think about fashion, and we used to think about music. Um, and we'd say, okay, if you primarily identify as a gamer, but you like football because you play FIFA, then Man City should be your team. And this is how we're going to speak to those people through this activation that we're doing. Psg, probably the best example of this in the world of fashion, where if you primarily identify as a fashionista, someone who's interested in fashion and you like football, chances are, uh, you're going to be a PSG fan. Because they've done such a good job of leveraging the identity of Paris. Their tie ups with Almain and Air Jordan, whoever else it might be, has enabled them to speak authentically to that audience. And uh, creators, influencers, whatever you want to call them, enable you to speak authentically to those audiences. And then the flip side of course, like, what's the value for creators? Well, the very obvious answer is money. This stuff didn't come for free. It's, it's still amazing to me how much a decent creator can earn from, from brand collaborations that they do. But that's, that's the way of the world and good on them. And secondly, like money can't buy experiences really. Right. If you are uh, you know, a mid level creator and a uh, football club reaches out to you and says, hey, we want you to come to this game and you get to meet these football players and yeah, by the way, we want you to film everything. You kind of think great, right? It's a content opportunity for my channel to give my viewers something that they haven't seen before. So if it's done the right way, it can kind of be a win win for both sides.

Speaker C: And how are you luring content creators to your platforms? Because if I was aspiring fantasy football creator, uh, as I spent too much of my time listening to podcasts on, there's all the platforms that I can be on, right? Like I'm putting out, uh, podcasts across YouTube, but I'm thinking that I should probably be on TikTok then I've got all of the meta platforms and a lot of these creators are uh, single individuals that are trying to figure all of this out alongside running a day job. How are you luring uh, that profile of creator onto meta platforms and then maybe creators who've got a team around them. How are you making sure that they're Coming to meta platforms with their content, even getting creators exclusively on meta platforms.

Speaker A: I think the first thing I'll say is you speak to, you speak to anyone who works at a social platform and none of us will say we want them to be on our uh, platform and nobody else's. Creators got to earn their money. Right? Go wherever you feel that you're creating value for yourself or your brand. Clearly to your point, Andy, they have limited time and resource and we obviously want as much of that as we can from a creator's perspective. We try and basically build features or tools that make platforms more attractive to create content for than uh, competitors. One area on Instagram for example, that we've traditionally been less strong in, shall we say, is like native video editing within the app. TikTok has, has a terrific in app, ah, editor with Cap Cut. Um, it makes it very easy for someone to create content for TikTok and frankly historically on Instagram hasn't been as good as that's being addressed. We're actually rolling out a standalone editing app for kind of video editing on the go in the next couple of months called Edits Quick Plug. You can pre order it on.

Speaker C: I think we mentioned, uh, that in the newsletter already actually.

Speaker A: Oh, you have? Well then you guys are on top of it. But on top of that also that we're kind of improving the in app editing tools as well to just make it easier for you to create content. I'm not like a massive reel creator myself, sorry. But I have, I've gone through the process of creating reels and I, you know, it's not, it takes a bit of, a bit of a knack. So it's things like that. Right. So how do the features we create improve the experience? The other one that's coming fast down the track is, is AI and how we've got, well, how many minutes have we got through before we mentioned the word AI, but how actually that comes to life in our platforms and how that can kind of rejuvenate your content. There's a bunch of interesting things we're doing in that space as well to try and encourage creators to lean in more and create more content for our platform platforms.

Speaker C: That might be quite a natural segue. Then let's dig into the AI point. I think with a sportslaughter hat on some of the best applications of AI that we've seen and um, that is applicable to sports organizations has been around content creation. How do I make the editing process slick and stuff like that? What is the role for Meta in offering those tools and how is it Meta's focus around AI being something that's actually affecting sports properties on a day to day basis.

Speaker A: So um, I'll caveat all of this by saying it's still early days. I mean everyone's got very excited by AI, but I think that the world over we are still looking for the golden use case that everyone's ready to kind of jump on and say, yeah, this is the thing. But we really Meta kind of thinks about AI in different buckets depending on who the AI is serving. So on the one hand you've got Gen AI and we're talking obviously about generative AI. Here you've got Gen AI for consumers and that's kind of like large language model based stuff. We have a text based model called Llama that kind of works in the same similar way to many of its competitors. Our image generation equivalent is called emu, but it has, it's basically Imagine tool where you can kind of imagine yourself with a different backdrop or effectively sort of Photoshop yourself into funny situations or whatever it might be. And we also enable users to use AI to generate their own unique stickers, which I think is kind of fun, adding kind of additional layer to your content output. Generative AI for businesses much less sexy, but I think probably the most important of these three and actually probably the one that's making the biggest leaps at the moment, albeit you don't really hear about them because they're a little bit more complex, convoluted, really important. Right, and basically refining ads to improve performance, enabling you for example, to create an infinite number of campaign creatives that, you know, served to uh, different users depending on what will resonate most with them. Again, that kind of stuff doesn't really happen on my side of the house here at Meta, but it's a kind of hugely important part of what our sales teams work on with, with our um, with our partners and then thirdly the Gen AI bucket for creators. And I go back to the LLM as a good example. I was speaking to one of the top European clubs recently who said that they've started to lean into using ChatGPT as a way to combat creative fatigue. So you get a social team come to you saying, oh, we posted all the goal compilations, we posted all the, you know, the best ofs. And he was saying to me, look, just open Chat GPT or Meta AI or whatever it might be and type in there, hey, give me the top five five goals that Terry Henri ever scored for Arsenal, right? The LLM spits out those goals for you and voila. Uh, like you've got go delve into your archive and pull that stuff out. It really can be helpful in that way to just kind of like breathe new life into, into your archive. Your evergreen, evergreen content strands that you might have access to. And then the second thing, and this is kind of more in the creator bucket, I suppose, albeit I have some, some sports teams taking an um, interest in it. Albeit still early days. We are launching this thing called AI Characters, which is effectively, it sort of lives within Instagram dms and with kind of a few clicks you can create a AI driven personality that will be, that will have a specialist subject. Think of it as sort of like an egghead, an egghead type person with a specialist subject. And so if you are a sports team with a mascot, you might create this kind of character that uses your mascot head and is called something like, I don't know, Gynosaurus expert, who is then the font of all knowledge on your club. And so fans can go to it and it kind of works through Instagram dms. They can chat with it, they can say, hey, what are Arsenal's greatest victories in history? Or who is their best manager ever? Uh, or they can't do this yet, but it's coming soon. Where can I buy tickets? How do I get there on a match day? So, you know, the entertainment side, but also the utility side and you can put yourself in a creator's shoes. If I'm Mr. Beast and I, you know, yes, I create a lot of content, but I also sell chocolate and T shirts and whatever else. I upload a video and a fan of mine likes what I'm wearing in that video. They could message my AI version of me and say, hey, where can I buy that T shirt? Send your links to the Shopify and there you have it. So it can be, it's got the potential to be a kind of really powerful business results driven tool.

Speaker C: I'm very excited to see AI give Mercedes George Russell the personality for the first time.

Speaker A: No comment. That's mean.

Speaker C: Um, and then let's dig on to the, the monetization piece as well. Because I think a lot of the way that people think about social content in its broadest sense, but I guess, you know, across lots of meta platforms is very much around fan growth. And I feel like in a lot of sports organizations you almost have the bucket, which is fan growth, which is basically marketing spend, where, uh, there's only so much science to how you decide how you're doing, how you're going to do what you do. And then there's the bucket of stuff in the sports organization which is direct revenue generation around ticketing and subscriptions and other bits and pieces. You alluded to earlier how Facebook and Instagram and stuff can actually be a good source of monetization for creators. Talk to me about how I as a sports property should be thinking about meta platforms for a way that I can actually drive direct revenue for the business.

Speaker A: So at a, at a basic level, what I said earlier rings true and I think is very important. So I will repeat it which is that our uh, superpower is on connected is lead generation really. Right. And your organic content, if it's, if it's good and it's optimized, gets people in through the door, creates your leads so that when you run ads they will be more effective. Um, that's kind of basic thing to remember but it is also important to remember that there are kind of various, various other direct and indirect monetization opportunities on our platforms, mainly focusing on Facebook. So Facebook enables you to monetize directly in a number of ways. And actually these have all been recently pulled together under the same umbrella called Facebook content monetization. Much more simple, but it's really made up of three separate components. One is video ads on your long form video content. So historically it was known as in stream ads. They work very similar to how they work on YouTube where you have a pre roll, mid roll, post roll format. Secondly, we have the same thing but for reels. So we've made very good strides in improving the monetization efficiency of short form video content in reels. So you're able to generate some decent revenue via ads on reels these days as well. Well and then thirdly, something that launched last summer and I think is a kind of industry first, I haven't seen it on other apps, um, is the ability for you to monetize non video content. So it is actually possible now on Facebook to monetize your link and your photo posts. And that's not done via ads, uh, that we serve. Uh, it's based on the engagement that you generate. So basically if you have a photo that performs really well, we will pay you for it. Um, so that's really exciting. And there are a cluster of sports publishers, rights holders that I work with who are really generating decent revenue, really strong numbers from Facebook via those means. And then alongside that you've got these kind of user pay options where, take for example stars, which is sort of similar to the bit system on Twitch. Kind of more geared towards creators m than it is towards sports properties. Although I do know a couple of rights holders that are using it where people sort of make donations. Um, and the other one that I think is severely overlooked and maybe is an opportunity for some sports rights holders to come back to the table on is it's called fan subscriptions. Just basically a way for you to put a paywall around some of the content that you're putting out there. Um, the Spanish giants in Barcelona and Real Madrid are ah, using this and have been for a few years and basically they put some exclusive content, some club shop offers, some other, you know, you get a badge next to your name so when you're commenting other users know that you're a proper fan. You get a specific Facebook group for those die hard fans. You can adjust what you charge people on a monthly basis. You can kind of create this tailored offering at a paid subscription tier. And so for many clubs who, I say football clubs, but also you know, across, across all sports really for those who have a pay TV offering or a monthly subscription, uh, membership model, this actually I think could be a really nice light version of that. Right. That gives at a lower price point, gives people a taste of what they might get, you know, via mutv or City plus or whatever it might be. Right. But is it kind of starting an entry point for, for bringing those people into your first party or a bit further down the line. So yeah, this is various, various different ways to monetize I suppose the third one that I haven't yet mentioned that I should is, is around branded content which I think everybody kind of feels instinctively understands where you don't, you don't generate revenue directly from us, but you do via your audiences. Right. So if I'm Tottenham Hotspur and I have, you know, I want to activate my sponsors on social media, I can take advantage of, of the size of my audience by creating branded content with them and fulfilling value in their uh, their annual sponsorship deals. So it's kind of various different ways really you can play it to uh, to ensure that you're getting value from our platforms.

Speaker B: I just want to jump onto pretty cutting edge stuff but also very fun sounding stuff and Meta's Orion glasses which launched with some fanfare I think it's fair to say at the end of last year. Can you just give an explanation of what the Orion glasses are and what do you see as the use cases for sports organizations with uh, technology like that?

Speaker A: So the two kind of metaversey Metaverse based initiatives that Meta's figuring out at the moment. One is in the VR space with the Meta Quest virtual reality headsets, which I think are very interesting, do very well. They sell as well as the most successful game consoles. So There are about 50 million users globally of Meta Quest headsets. But I think probably more exciting. And the thing that's sort of generated buzz in the last 612 months or so is the kind of augmented reality use cases. And our V1 of that, or V2 actually now is the meta, the Ray Ban meta smart glasses. What they are right now is effectively a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses with cameras in them, with a microphone here on the bridge of your nose, with, with speakers here on the stalks above your ears so you can listen to music or podcasts while you're wearing them. And they're, uh, very exciting. The lenses themselves don't really have any technology in them. Right. They're kind of typical lenses with cameras bolted on. And they're amazing piece of design, right. They're only very slightly heavier than a typical pair of Ray Bans. Very slightly thicker. Honestly, uh, if it weren't for the flashing light when the camera went on, which isn't important, you might not even necessarily know that they, they were smart glasses. Um, so that's very exciting. And they're selling incredibly well at the moment. It's kind of the thing that's driving a lot of the buzz in the company and also outside of the company. But the next stage and what you were referring to, Charlie, which was called Orion, I think it now has it as another code name, I can't think of it off the top of my head is the version of these smart glasses where the lenses themselves kind of have one of the better term like holograms, basically things that you see in your vision that people who aren't wearing the glasses don't see. And so in the example on stage that you're referring to from six months ago or so, you're able to kind of play a very sort of simple version of Pong with someone else standing across the other side of the room from you. If both of you are wearing these glasses, they come with these kind of a wrist attachment and a little nunchuck that basically enables you to pinch and drag and control what you're seeing. Real science fiction, futuristic stuff. There isn't a release date yet. And I think frankly, if they came out today, they would be prohibitively expensive. So our job is to basically try and figure out how you get those things that you See today to a price point where they can be consumed by as many people as possible. Meta's stance on these things generally is we want to create technology that, you know, as many people as possible, basically everyone in the world can use if they choose to. And I think we're, to be fair, we're away off from doing that a couple of years. Again, don't quote me on that. But once that does come out that it's. The use cases that I see aren't just for sports. They're just kind of revolutionized how we experience the world and how we experience each other, I guess. And not to get kind of too science fiction about it, but if you are at a boring kind of clinical level, walking down the street and you see billboard, there's no reason why those billboards should be the same for everyone. Those billboards could be tailored to who you are and what you might be interested in. Right. So the value advertising ad, sports like that massively increases from a communications from it. From a sports viewing perspective. Let's say you're watching the TV and you're watching a Formula One race and you have an, uh, F1 bolt on app and you look down from the TV to your coffee table and you see a kind of hologram of the track and you see where all the cars are in their position moving around the track like you might do on a video game. Um, you're basically able to open up a multi screen or a multi, yeah, multi screen experience where like, actually F1's a great example of this, where the TV can only really show so much and there is like a lot of crap on the screen. When I was watching the race this weekend, right. There's so much there. Imagine being able to have another version of that. You could sort of stand up and peer and say, okay, this driver's catching up with this one. Completely revolutionized the way that you view sport. And then I suppose the third bucket is in the, is in the communication. And the Ray Ban metas at the moment, they allow you to make WhatsApp calls. And so my sister's just had a baby and when I call her, I don't really want to see her, I want to see the baby. So I'm going to buy her a pair of Ray Ban metas so she can turn the camera on the baby and still have a conversation with me, but I get to see the kids. So that the kind of next layer of that is that feeling of, of closeness of being in the room with someone even when you're not able to physically be there. That I think is going to be hopefully something that excites everyone and kind of we all see the value in something like that.

Speaker B: So at the next Sports Loft Summit, somebody could be wearing a pair of these Orion glasses and see all their email interactions with the person that they're talking to or something like that.

Speaker A: Actually, this the example. I love sports networking events when I'm

Speaker C: at so and so is walking up

Speaker A: to me and I think, I know this man. I just, I don't know his name. Uh, if his LinkedIn profile popped up above his head, what a lifesaver that would be.

Speaker C: 100%. The conference that I was at in Boston the other week, they made everybody's organization on the badge super tiny. I could still see everybody's name, but good Lord, it would have been slightly helpful if a nice big logo popped up as I could see them crossing the room.

Speaker A: Exactly that.

Speaker C: You've given us a little flavor of where you see the future of content consumption. Being with the Orion Chatsa, where do you think sports properties should be? Invest in their content budgets over the next five years and how do you see that changing?

Speaker A: My first answer to this is the same as where I think they should have been investing in the last 10 years. Which is. Which is tools that enable them to really take advantage of their archive. I've lost count of the number of rights holders I talk to who I believe are just sitting on a gold mine of content, right? And you ask them, you go, hey, you've got 30 years of match highlight full matches here. There are people that want to see that, especially in the world, like I say, where the way our apps are created now, it's, it's about getting people in front of new audiences. You know, you have to assume basically when you publish something to Instagram or Facebook that at minimum, at minimum, 60% of people viewing that content do not know who you are, not come across you before, or they don't follow you, right? And so those people, they don't care if the amazing tennis rally they see is from a tournament this weekend three months ago or three years ago, right? They just want to see the thing. And it's amazing how many sports rights holders I talk to, they go, oh, yeah, I don't really know. It's on sort of DVDs and VHS and it's all over the place. And so I would basically say investing in tools and maybe it's an AI tool, right, that helps you comb through that archive and surface the video that you want, but being able to kind of turn that gold mine into, into money is, is into great content. And then obviously money is something I think is really important. And then the second one, maybe I mentioned it earlier, but I do think it's really important thinking about this, the long term value of, of, of messaging and having a strategy that really says, to the point I made earlier, if five years from now we see that people are spending less time in public feeds and more time in group messaging conversations, how are we going to reach them? What's our strategy? Um, yes, one part of that answer is we need to grow our first party offering for sure. But a second part of that still has to be we've got to meet these people where they are, where they're already consuming content and be relevant to them in their Internet diet. So those two would be the most important ones for me.

Speaker B: And with that, Will, I want to say an absolutely massive thank you to you for coming on the podcast this afternoon. I think there's been some great examples of organizations who are doing some really great stuff with meta and also some pretty good, uh, tips and tricks as well for a few people who are listening. And I hope you had a fun time on the podcast.

Speaker A: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, guys for having me. Thank you.

Speaker B: Andy, thank you for joining us this afternoon.

Speaker C: Thank you, Charlie, good to be here.

Speaker B: And then the last thank you obviously goes to all our listeners. Hope you enjoyed what you heard. If you want to find out more, check us out on our website, Sportsloft co, or check us out on various social media channels as well. And we'll be posting, uh, some video clips of Will over the next few, uh, days after we put this live. So with that, thank you very much and see you soon in the sports loft.

Speaker A: Sam.