StreamTime Sports

SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone sit down with Kenny Gersh, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) executive vice president of business development, to mark the 20th anniversary of the MLB.TV streaming platform. Two decades after MLB became the first professional sports league to live stream a regular season game, Gersh discusses how the organisation went on to build BAMTech Media, a robust streaming technology business that was eventually acquired by Disney in 2017. Gersh also outlines MLB’s media rights distribution strategy today, how it differs from other sports, and its decision to put some live games on Apple+. There’s also time to look to the future, with Gersh explaining how streaming helps MLB reach younger audiences, the role of Web 3.0, and the league’s international growth strategy.

SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone return to wrap up some of the major news stories in sports media from recent weeks. With the race for the National Football League’s (NFL) Sunday Ticket package hotting up, the pair consider Google’s reported interest in the rights and what it means for the football organisation. They also explore whether the Premier League could follow the NFL in launching its own streaming service in the near future after Richard Masters, the top-flight soccer competition’s chief executive, said that the organisation has options to go direct-to-consumer in some territories. There’s also time to look at digital sports media company Overtime’s US$100 million Series D funding round before the conversation moves on to FC Barcelona’s rush to raise funds after the club sold yet another stake in its media hub.

Peter Scott, the vice president of emerging media and innovation at Warner Bros Discovery, joins SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone for a deep dive into the future of broadcast technology. The trio discuss what technologies will have the biggest impact on sports broadcasting within the next three to five years, while they also consider how organisations should evaluate which innovations will create value in the long term. Then, hot on the heels of Discovery merging with Warner Bros, Scott offers some insight into the opportunities that union will create for Turner Sports and Eurosport to leverage each other’s technologies across their sports coverage.

Nick Meacham and Chris Stone analyse the past week’s sports media news before Sean Conroy, EVP North America at Genius Sports, joins Tom Bassam for part two.

Minal Modha, consumer research lead at Ampere Analysis, joins the StreamTime Podcast to discuss the growth of women’s sport and the role broadcasters and brands have to play in driving it forward.

SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone return to review some of the past week’s major stories in sports media. After Uefa announced new broadcast deals in some of its key markets for the next Champions League commercial cycle, the pair assess the implications of the governing body’s agreements in the UK with Amazon, BT Sport and the BBC. In addition, they consider Formula One’s rising value in the US after reports emerged of a three-year media rights extension with ESPN worth as much as US$90 million a year, a figure driven by competition from the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Comcast. The episode also covers YouTube’s future areas of focus, how Netflix’s adoption of AVOD could impact sport, and the addition of Fifa+ to connected TVs.

Seven League’s Charlie Beall sits down with SportsPro’s Nick Meacham and Chris Stone for an in-depth discussion about the opportunity for sports properties to drive engagement in virtual environments.

The guest on this week’s StreamTime Podcast is Lucas von Cranach, the chief executive and founder of soccer media platform OneFootball. In part one of the show, SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone reflect on a landmark ten-year broadcast deal between Major League Soccer (MLS) and Apple, which has made its biggest play in live sports to date by securing global rights to every MLS game for a reported US$250 million a year. Then, after seeing the business he founded in 2008 secure unicorn status back in April, von Cranach joins Meacham to discuss the evolution of Berlin-based OneFootball, which has rights in various territories to show leagues such as Portugal’s Primeira Liga, the Belgian Pro League and Liga MX. Plus, having recently secured a deal to become the Bundesliga’s non-fungible token (NFT) partner, von Cranach also explains how OneFootball plans to tap into the expertise of new investors such as Animoca Brands and Dapper Labs to maximise the Web 3.0 opportunity.

This week’s StreamTime Podcast sees host Nick Meacham and SportsPro community lead Chris Stone catch up on some of the big media stories in golf and motorsport.

SportsPro’s media and technology editor Steve McCaskill returns to the StreamTime Podcast with chief executive Nick Meacham and senior content manager Chris Stone. The trio discuss what BT and Warner Bros Discovery’s joint venture means for the UK sports rights market, how the pair will work together in the short and long term, and whether the combined effort poses a threat to Sky. Then, Meacham sits down with Arielle Chambers, the founder of HighlightHER, Bleacher Report’s multi-channel media brand shining a light on female athletes and teams. In what is the latest instalment of the StreamTime Podcast’s Gen Z series, Chambers discusses how HighlightHER has built an audience around women’s sport, collaborating with Bleacher Report, and creating content that younger fans want to see.