58 HAPPENING SportsPro OTT Summit
league is also venturing into TikTok. “We think we’ll kill it with TikTok. We want to be on YouTube. We want to be on all the social platforms. We want to be everywhere that people are consuming media… We spent a lot of time studying the esports space. Almost a third of our sponsorship revenue comes tangentially from gaming.” Brody underlined the great advantage WWE had in being fully scripted. For one, it allows full control over the game content, including the trajectories of the athletes. It also allows for freer integration with sponsorship. “In the middle of the Super Bowl, it’s hard to stop the game and do a stunt that sells KFC. But in our ‘Super Bowl’, we say: ‘Let’s sell some chicken!’” THAT LEAN-BACK EXPERIENCE HAS BECOME SOMETHING TO LEAN INTO
His secret recipe for the company’s success continued the theme of corporate partnership: “Leverage technology: don’t take yourself too seriously, deliver with data. Your corporate partners promote you better than anyone else.” Brody summed up the WWE worldview with an observation that could have been the central theme of the summit: “The day of it being just a sport is over. The reality is that people want to be entertained.” VALUE OFF THE COURT Bringing a full entertainment experience to the fans, with athletes as entertainers off the court as well as on, was a theme picked up by Women’s Tennis Association president Micky Lawler in a session on OTT saturation. When viewers are swamped with channels, what differentiates a rights holder or content owner from the competition? And one deciding factor seemed to be the ability for fans to engage directly with rich content around the athletes, beyond watching matches. Lawler noted that the content produced by the social media-savvy WTA athletes was a vital part of the success of the organisation and the WTA worked actively with them to give them the best material
possible for posting. She said: “One thing we do differently is we really drive content from our athletes. One athlete can drive an enormous amount of value in a country. We give highlights and photos to the athletes to put on their social.” She cited tennis pro Li Na from China who, though retired, is a megastar ambassador for the sport in China. The strength of Li Na’s following alone has spearheaded WTA’s partnerships in China and opened up a whole new landscape for women’s tennis in the region. In the session, Craig Hepburn, head of digital transformation at UEFA, seconded how important the fan-athlete relationship was in distinguishing a media brand. “We do think about the match, but you also have to think about the data, analytics, the engagement. How do you innovate with fans, how do you build a better relationship? That lean-back experience has become something to lean into,” he said. “Sports have always been for early adopters. Sports have always been for innovators. It’s the killer app,” said Turner’s Scott Doyne, senior vice-president of sports data strategy and insight, during a keynote discussion of innovations around the NBA’s March Madness games.
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