StreamTime Sports

This special edition of the StreamTime Podcast celebrates its 50th episode. Hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone reflect on some of their favourite conversations, review previous predictions to see what they got right and what they got wrong, and consider what's in store for the sports streaming industry.

This week’s two-part StreamTime Podcast also sees Nick Meacham and Chris Stone reflect on Amazon’s opening TNF broadcasts before Peacock’s chief commercial officer outlines the role of sport on the platform.

Harish Sarma, TikTok’s global head of content business development, hops on this week’s StreamTime Podcast to outline the video-sharing platform’s sports strategy.

This week's StreamTim Podcast explores the specialist ecosystem of US college athletics and regional sports networks (RSNs). SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone are joined by William Mao, senior vice president of global media rights at Octagon, to discuss the niche, yet big money, world of US college sports. At a time when conferences are realigning, the College Football Playoff (CFP) is becoming a major force and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is diminishing in power, the podcast takes a deep dive into the where student athletics fits in  the US broadcast space.  Mao also helps to try to find an answer for the question of how college sports broadcast deals compare to soccer across Europe and what the future looks like for RSNs in the US. 

SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone return to look back on another week of sports media news in what is a two-part episode of the StreamTime Podcast. After Wrexham’s celebrity co-owner Ryan Reynolds called on the National League to allow its clubs to stream their matches, the pair discuss the merits of the Hollywood actor’s argument and explore what the next steps might be. In addition, they react to reports that Disney is considering making its Disney+ streaming service part of a wider membership offering, ask whether celebrity boxing is a sustainable model for DAZN, and take a closer look at FanDuel’s decision to launch its own linear and over-the-top (OTT) platforms. There’s also time to discuss FloSports’ rugby strategy after it secured a landmark deal in the US. In part two, technology editor Steve McCaskill speaks with Jan Umansky, chief executive of video solutions firm VideoFlow, about the potential of Web 3.0 as part of a wider content strategy, as well as how the blockchain can offer secure authenticated access to video.

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 for another roundup of the week’s major sports media news. After DAZN once again encountered streaming issues on the opening day of the Serie A season, the pair consider whether the platform’s latest struggles could have bigger implications for its partnership with Italian soccer’s top flight. They also react to the Big Ten Conference’s huge new media rights deals, which will reportedly see Fox, CBS and NBC pay the college sports organisation a whopping US$7 billion between 2023 and 2030. There’s also time to look at a series of soccer developments in recent days, starting with reports that Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs could be allowed to sell games on a pay-per-view basis under a domestic broadcast extension with Sky. In addition, Meacham and Stone cover Uefa’s new Champions League deal in the US, Inter Milan’s decision to launch on Recast and more free soccer content coming to the UK.

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.

SportsPro chief executive Nick Meacham and community lead Chris Stone are joined by Marion Ranchet, founder and managing director of The Local Act Consultancy, for a deep dive into FAST channels. Ranchet, who offers consultancy services to companies launching OTT video services, explains precisely what a FAST – or free ad-supported streaming television – channel is, and highlights how the model differs from advertising-based video on demand (AVOD).   Then, the trio consider the opportunities the FAST approach presents for the sports industry, what organisations should do when setting up their own FAST channels, and whether the model could even replace linear television in the future.