Summary

• The “Moment” vs. The “Window”: Why the NFL is bringing a massive roster of creators to the Super Bowl—not as an experiment, but as a core distribution strategy that prioritises “owning the moment” over owning the camera.
• The Death of the “Gun for Hire”: Why “Creators” are officially replacing “Influencers” in the sports ecosystem, and how the NFL is using “distributed influence” to scale content faster than any in-house team ever could.
• Manchester United’s The Crown Moment: As the club partners with Lionsgate for a scripted drama, they are moving past “fly-on-the-wall” documentary fatigue to unlock a new tier of casual, global fans.
• The $100k Data Leak: With the Anonymous Fan Index revealing that 76% of fans are unknown to their clubs, massive revenue is being left on the table through a lack of infrastructure investment.
• The “Speed-Run” Trap: Why Germany’s Baller League hit the pause button despite massive reach, proving that you can’t scale sports fandom like a tech startup—affinity takes years to build, not just a viral creator roster.

Transcription

Ed Abis (00:01.25)
Hello and welcome to the attention shift, your weekly source of opinion, debate and hopefully quite a bit of news. Normally it would be the three of us, but Lee has come up with a multitude of excuses to not make it today. I think he’s strategically avoiding getting involved in the new format and he’s hoping we’ll crash and burn, but he’s got no chance, right Joe?

Jo Redfern (00:19.563)
No, no way. We’re going to show him up. Hello again, Eduardo. How are you?

Ed Abis (00:22.392)
Great. Hello and great to see you again, Joe. It only feels like literally minutes since we last spoke.

Ed Abis (00:31.288)
Good stuff. So here’s the thing, Lee, Joe, myself, we are often in WhatsApp groups, debating, moaning, loving things that we see in the sports media world. And we thought rather than just doing a WhatsApp group, why don’t we try and bring it into the podcast? So from now on, you can expect us to bring some of the biggest sports media and culture stories every Wednesday at 7 a.m.

And then other week, we’re going to bring some interviews with some sports media professionals similar to the ones we’ve already done with Tony Pasta of Goalhanger and Joe Darkins from Burnley Football Club. But before we dive in, if you’ve got any questions or any stories you think we might have missed, you can email us at helloattentionshift.media. You can find all the past episodes at display.com, Forchard podcasts. Or if you really want to talk to us, you can DM us on LinkedIn or if you’re part of the inner circle, you can even WhatsApp us.

Right then, Joe, shall we crack on with the first story of the week?

Jo Redfern (01:27.097)
You’ve had some media training Ed. Bravo!

Ed Abis (01:30.966)
Well, producer wills been careening me for the last half an hour about how I should and shouldn’t do this intro. So hopefully, hopefully we’re proud of that one. Right. So we’ve got five stories that you and I have picked over that we thought would be interesting to chat through. So I’m going to kick off with NFL. So NFL have announced that they’re bringing 160 creators to the Super Bowl.

Jo Redfern (01:39.129)
Right.

Ed Abis (01:56.63)
Not as an experiment, they see it as a core distribution strategy. They’re words, not mine. You’re talking fashion, food, lifestyle, gaming, comedy creators, loads of names, Joe, that you know way better than I do, quite frankly. It’s not the first time they’ve done something like this, but it’s probably going to be the biggest execution that they’ve ever done. The question is, has the NFL cracked something here or are they just really good at making noise?

Jo Redfern (02:09.483)
He

Jo Redfern (02:22.807)
No, I think they’re cracking it. You can tell that this has been a staged process for them. So they had some creators around the Super Bowl last year. Then when they had the NFL season opener in Brazil, they seemed to step it up again. They welcomed more into the fold. You’d got Jesser, you’d got others that were pitch-shied, each doing their thing. That was what I thought was really interesting with the last one with the season opener in Brazil was…

they were letting different types of creator from different genres do their thing. That’s interesting, given that sports organizations are not normally very good at seeding control. We’ve discussed this before, but I thought it was really interesting. And now they’ve gone to the next level, which shows this growing confidence, which I think is really interesting. So they’ve got this huge creator lab that they work with.

and they really see their creator strategy now as the NFL, as this always on strategy that’s alongside their existing media strategy, not something that they just do in campaign, they might up weight it when it comes to the Super Bowl, of course. But this is always on now. They’ve got this rolling roster of creators. This is part of their distribution strategy and I think that’s really, really smart.

What I wanted to point out when we were deciding why we thought this was really interesting is this notion of distributed influence that came up once before when we were chatting. We talk about influencers and I actually think the word creator is better than influencers because I think influencers has got a bit of baggage. It was famous people. Yeah, a gun for hire. They weren’t really invested.

Ed Abis (04:03.638)
Almost like a gun for hire. Yeah.

Jo Redfern (04:08.289)
A lot of these creators that the NFL are using are fans. They’ve been creating content anyway, but this distributed influence is really interesting because if the NFL was managing it all in-house, this is a media strategy they’ve got to control. They’ve got to resource and they’ve got to run and coordinate. Now, they’re offsetting actually having to manage that internally by distributing this influence. Again, the trade-off is,

Seeding a little bit of control, a bit of trust of your creator roster, but actually it means you can scale this distributed influence much quicker and much wider than if they managed it internally. So I think that’s an interesting shift, don’t you? This trust that actually now creators are an embedded part of their infrastructure.

Ed Abis (04:56.418)
Yeah, I agree. think, I think, look, broadcast partners are clearly very, important for the NFL, right? And they make a huge amount of money. I saw a graph once when you compare the NFL to other US sports, you know, like the NFL are up here and everyone else sort starts down here. But what they are building is this parallel distribution network. So they’re understanding, I say this all the time, know, write message, write people, write place. They’re understanding where the different…

Jo Redfern (05:10.873)
Mm.

Ed Abis (05:23.906)
demographics, psychographics, however you want to term it, states, and they’re making sure that they are giving access, creating content that reaches all the different groups that they need to reach.

Jo Redfern (05:35.534)
Yeah, and I’m sure some people listening would think, yeah, but there’s a risk to that, right? You’ve got hundreds of creators that you’re allowing access to your flagship event, there’s a risk. But I think that you can hedge against that unpredictability because this is the NFL. If you’re a creator, and moreover, if you’re a creator who’s already been making…

related content because you’re a fan. What creator would want to risk their reputation by screwing things up? So it’s almost self-policing. There’s a kudos and there’s a credibility and legitimacy from being invited into the NFL roster, which means that the NFL without guarantees, but they can be a little bit sure that these creators

are gonna follow whatever loose guidelines that they’ve given them, but they’re gonna create that native content that we know is so important. But what I also, yeah, I mean, just back to that influencer thing, what it means is that they’re also content originators. They’re not just amplifying a message that the NFL’s given them. The NFL is saying, no, you do what you do best. The thing that you’ve done that’s already created an audience, and you go and create more of that, but within…

Ed Abis (06:33.006)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jo Redfern (06:53.089)
our Super Bowl framework and I just think it’s really smart and I can see others copying it.

Ed Abis (06:56.558)
I really like a quote that was taken from the release, where they said, we don’t need to own the camera anymore, we just need to own the moment. And we discuss this a lot in the office as well about, don’t think of a game as that window of two, three hours, I think about a moment which extends over two, three, four days. And I think they’ve totally understood that they are ultimately

Jo Redfern (07:07.353)
Nice.

Jo Redfern (07:20.953)
Mm.

Ed Abis (07:26.368)
making sure that they reach the audiences around the moment, extending that window. And I think that’s what’s clever about it. And I expect to see more and more starting to follow in that mold. Everyone’s got the resources that the NFL have got, but there’s million different ways you can do these things.

Jo Redfern (07:32.878)
Yeah.

Jo Redfern (07:41.21)
Well, that’s, mean, any listeners who want to get in touch, I’d love to know who else is doing it well. Even on a smaller scale, I think it would be really interesting to hear who else is doing it well. Because obviously the NFL are getting all the plaudits as we come up to the Super Bowl. Right, I’m going to go on to the next one because it’s something that I posted about on LinkedIn and I think it’s really interesting because Man United are reportedly making the Crown-style drama with Lionsgate. Obviously, Man United.

Ed Abis (07:47.308)
Yeah.

Jo Redfern (08:10.627)
huge backstory, history, over a hundred years worth of stories to be told. And interesting that it, finally, we’re moving away from Drive to Survive and welcome to Wrexham Style Documentaries, woo! So what do you reckon to that? What’s interesting about that for you?

Ed Abis (08:29.23)
I’m praying that they’re not going to use actors to try and do football because it always finishes badly. It could be terrible. It’d be interesting to see how much they are going to lean into the entertainment side of it because I’ve actually liked how Welcome to Wrexham has been done. It’s interesting because you’ve almost got the first series that was almost like comedy skits and stuff like that. And then they realize that actually when they got to the second series, when they started telling stories about the fans and about

Jo Redfern (08:33.73)
Yeah

Ed Abis (08:58.21)
the culture of Wrexham and also the bad times that Wrexham had been through, that that was the thing that really, really started to cut through. And I think, look, if you look at Man United’s history, there’s so much that’s happened. You talk about the Busby Babes and you talk about them winning the European Cup and recovering from that and Old Trafford getting hit by bombs during the war. And then you get onto the Trinity. There’s so many stories and there’s ups and downs.

Jo Redfern (09:10.203)
so much.

Mm.

Jo Redfern (09:25.209)
Mm.

Ed Abis (09:27.406)
It is like a, you know, a soul pop or a telenovela, right? So there’s plenty of stories there.

Jo Redfern (09:29.625)
It’s not. Yeah. You can already see that there’s multiple seasons in it that will hang around one key moment in the club’s history. And what’s interesting for me, I I happen to be married to a Man United fan, so I know some of the stories around it. But given the right treatment, this is going to explode that new casual fan acquisition.

Ed Abis (09:44.526)
Sorry.

Jo Redfern (09:55.908)
that are maybe curious, but not really bothered about the football itself, but are interested in all of that rich story and history that Manchester United’s got. And by tapping into that, they can delve into the archive and they can also get global audiences. Because again, global audiences are gonna want to tuck into this. They’re gonna wanna peek behind the curtain and know what went off.

Ed Abis (10:19.486)
And also to add to that as well, think whatever you do with this, look, the heritage there, man, know, right. And the history and, know, they’re definitely, if not the biggest club in the world, they’re probably in the top two or three, right. And this allows them to tell a story that actually it doesn’t matter if you lose games, right. And obviously they’ve been where they’ve been. And obviously they’ve had an uptick recently since they’ve had a change of manager, but the, the, the narrative that it drives and what you can mine.

It’s a different form of storytelling, which I think other people have trailblazed in that and I think they can benefit from now.

Jo Redfern (10:56.121)
you think about it commercially right? There’s an assumption that commercial success is very much driven by what’s on the pitch. Now I’m not saying it isn’t, but you look at this. If this works, this goes off, it brings a whole new raft of fans into the Manchester United brand. That opens up other commercial avenues that you wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tap into.

So like you said, regardless of performance on the pitch that yes, has an effect on commercial revenues, but if you start selling a ton more merch because you’ve all of a sudden got millions of fans globally who were obsessed with season two of whatever it ends up being called, then that’s another line on the balance sheet. And actually it’s a line on the balance sheet that isn’t.

as dependent on what’s happening on the field of play, which I think is really interesting. One thing that came to my mind, and it’s a slight bugbear having been an animation producer in a past life, is that why we’re so late to mining all of these stories, particularly in the UK and Europe, and maybe even in America, because you look at anime, anime having…

a massive resurgence amongst young people. They cannot watch enough anime. And anime has always been really good at telling stories around sport. You’ve got Blue Lock, which is a massive football anime. You’ve got Haikyuu, which is a huge volleyball anime series. You’ve got an iconic one called Slam Dunk from the 90s, which is credited as making basketball popular in Japan. Why are we so crap at telling stories around sport?

Ed Abis (12:36.858)
I think I think we think in certainly in the UK. I think there’s a purity to sport that anything else diminishes from the game on the pitch. And I think it’s a simple. I think there’s a when I say a purity almost like an arrogance to how we see professional sports. You know, look, that’s football, not necessarily other sports, right? Because they do what they need to do. And I think I think that’s why that’s the case. But I move on to the next one now. So prediction markets. We had a chat about this earlier. So

Jo Redfern (12:45.537)
I agree.

Jo Redfern (12:51.597)
Hmm.

Jo Redfern (13:00.889)
Hmm.

Ed Abis (13:07.618)
I know there’s not a lot of people who really know what’s going on with prediction markets because I’ve posted on LinkedIn about this for about four or five times now. And every time I do it, it absolutely crashes and no one engages with it. But for anyone who’s not aware, prediction markets such as Cal-Shea and Polymarkets, I can do a separate session if anyone needs to about this. They’ve been partnering with UFC and MLS and people like that. But what are they? They’re essentially where…

They’re polls where people can have skin in the game. They can effectively wager money against the outcome of a poll. And there are some weird and wonderful polls that are on there.

Jo Redfern (13:43.45)
It’s insane. I confess I knew very little about prediction markets until recently. And actually prompted by you making posts made me look into it. And then when we were prepping for this, you took me through, I think we went onto CalG, didn’t we? And we were looking at some of the markets. It is, I mean, I’m not a gambler at all. It’s insane what some people are predicting.

Ed Abis (14:08.526)
like tens of millions of people are waging on some totally random things that are even hard to understand whether there’ll ever be any outcome. And there’s a whole, I’d say, debate, argument going on in the US at the moment because the prediction markets have just popped up. There’s no regulation around it. There’s all sorts of talk, whether it’s legal or not legal. now because they’re, let’s say, getting away with it, other big organizations now in the betting industry are starting to do prediction markets as well.

because they’ve realized that actually people want the freedom to effectively just create a market for whatever floats their boat a particular time and do it. And the thing that really I thought was really interesting is Bryson DeChambeau now, he started as another individual endorser and I think it’s for Calcia that he’s done that. I just think it’s just going to run and run this as well. And I think for me, what I find interesting is he’s any organization sort of leans into this from a sporting sense.

Jo Redfern (14:55.299)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Abis (15:07.224)
They can use the content that’s being generated from it for storytelling too. It’s just whether they want to get in bed with what some might see as a grubby industry because it’s not regulated.

Jo Redfern (15:18.317)
Yeah. Do you think regulation’s coming? It feels like they’re going to have to do something.

Ed Abis (15:23.98)
I think the fact that think wall, you know, the company that owns Wall Street is investing polymarket suggests that they wouldn’t. mean, imagine going to be to the lawyer saying, we’re going to invest in this thing. It’s not been regulated. They obviously think it’s common. The fact that Dazon just did a deal recently. They said they’re looking for a license now. I think it will get regulated. I think there’s far too much money in it. And also, Kal Shee, one of the members of the Trump family invested in that too. So I think that probably answers your question.

Jo Redfern (15:49.914)
Is it going to be one of those things where they will proliferate in the next couple of years and everybody will have a prediction market or a partner? NFTs. Yeah.

Ed Abis (15:59.971)
what like NFTs and crypto? Probably, probably. Yeah. And then it’ll become the norm. But at the moment it’s, know, I suppose some of the braver ones are cracking it. And interestingly, NFL supposedly, because they’ve not said anywhere publicly at the moment have got a no prediction ban on advertising. So you won’t see anything prediction related. So if you go on calcium polymarket, there are markets on there at the moment for the Super Bowl, but they call it the Pro Bowl.

Jo Redfern (16:20.249)
Mm.

Jo Redfern (16:29.305)
No, interesting, interesting. It feels slightly off in the sense that you can literally manufacture a market out of anything, which feels a little bit, you you use the word grubby, so we’ll use the word grubby. But what I wanna know, aside from the obvious, as in cash, what else does it bring to sport?

Ed Abis (16:30.606)
Can’t use the name.

Ed Abis (16:54.638)
Good question. Cash.

Jo Redfern (16:56.877)
I mean, were talking, no, I mean, the thing is that there’s a value, there’s a financial value and people will put money against everything as we saw earlier when we were looking on one of the prediction markets. But there’s a data play, isn’t there? There’s this, there is a certain amount of user behavior that is belied by the kind of markets that pop up. That’s, I mean, that’s almost live sentiment tracking.

Ed Abis (17:13.036)
Yeah, there’s a-

Ed Abis (17:24.62)
Yeah, there is a theory that if you’ve got skin in the game, you’re going to be more honest about the horse that you back, so to speak. If you’re doing, you’re, if you’re, know, I suppose choosing between a two option poll and what UFC have been doing is they’ve been using a lot of the data that’s been generated by people who’ve been voting on these different outcomes as part of their production. And what’s also interesting as well is from what I’ve read that calcium polymarket are doing as well.

Jo Redfern (17:37.837)
Mm.

Ed Abis (17:53.423)
Because so many people are creating so many different markets and so many different things. The insights that they’re generating are supposedly now being sold to the advertising industry and all manner of other industries because they’ve got unbelievable insights on what people think about everything. Yeah, everything.

Jo Redfern (18:02.713)
Now we’re getting to the good stuff. It’s the secondary value of what people are actually, the data that they’re actually creating.

Ed Abis (18:12.248)
Supposedly they’re making more money than the anonymized data they’re selling than the actual markets themselves because they don’t take a lot of money on the markets themselves

Jo Redfern (18:20.557)
There you go. Interesting.

Ed Abis (18:22.326)
Right then, next one, we’ve got two to go. BBC.

Jo Redfern (18:27.757)
BBC, getting into bed with YouTube. I mean, goodness, it’s not as if, yeah, I mean, I was at the BBC over five years ago now and YouTube was something that was hotly debated in BBC Children’s and now, yeah, 2026, the BBC and YouTube have made an official deal. So yeah, headlines. I mean, it was very, there was a piece of data.

Ed Abis (18:28.972)
I’m gonna- this one’s close to your heart being an ex-Bieber, so to speak.

Jo Redfern (18:57.102)
released recently that actually YouTube viewing at Outstripped the BBC for the first time in December. So that’s a big flip.

Ed Abis (19:06.062)
Yeah, 52 million versus 51 million, I think the number was.

Jo Redfern (19:08.939)
Yeah, now slight differences in measurement, but it makes for good headlines. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the BBC is struggling to reach and engage young social first audience who head to YouTube for everything from their creative content, as we said, to their news, their sport news, their entertainment. The BBC has struggled to reach and engage them there and moreover has struggled even if they have managed to reach them there.

Ed Abis (19:13.536)
That’s another, that’s a different story.

Jo Redfern (19:36.801)
to convert them over to iPlayer. That’s a problem. That’s a problem when you’ve got your charter renewal coming up and when the way that you’re funded is being scrutinised by successive governments.

Ed Abis (19:47.096)
Just just explain sort of if you could as well because obviously because you understand this very well having been there for anyone listening outside the UK, what is the charter renewal? What does it mean? What’s the purpose of it?

Jo Redfern (19:57.742)
The charter is a royal, kind of a royal contract really that states what the BBC is able to do and how it’s able to do it. Now there’s some principles that stretch back right to the very beginning of the BBC, the Rethian principles, which is to educate, inform, entertain, I think. But it’s mainly been built on

owned and operated platforms, which is the only way that the BBC could reach all of the UK in the olden days. But now, obviously, you’ve got YouTube, which is not headquartered in the UK. It’s a commercial platform. So there’s always been this existential issue with, can you put license fee payer funded content on a third party commercial platform? And there’s been various debates as to whether you can and can’t do that. Anyway, now they’ve resolved that.

It’s been accepted that actually the BBC can make content that will be commissioned and created in a way that is YouTube first and not for iPlayer or BBC channels. And it will even go on YouTube before it goes on the BBC. That’s a big shift. Everything used to have to premiere on BBC owned and operated platforms. So that’s a big shift.

The thing that will stay the same is on YouTube in the UK, no ads. That’s one of the defining things about the BBC is you pay your licence fee, no ads. But outside of the UK, ads will be shown on BBC content on YouTube. You can monetise outside of the UK. That’s what BBC Worldwide, now known as BBC Studios, that was their remit. Go and commercialise BBC content outside the UK.

Ed Abis (21:36.728)
that makes sense, right? Because that money that gets generated then gets reinvested into programming. Yeah.

Jo Redfern (21:41.006)
goes back. Yes. Yeah. So it’s a massive shift. We know that public service media is under pressure globally. You look at the geopolitical kind of situation, you look at the criticism that’s happening in the U S for their public service broadcasters. That aside, this really marks a PSP, the UK PSP embracing this platform native content model.

and it’s not their platform. So that’s the thing. It’s an acknowledgement that in order to reach young UK audiences, they’ve got to go somewhere else than the BBC first. And that’s really interesting.

Jo Redfern (22:34.007)
I think there’s probably people internally that are very resistant to it, but have had to acknowledge that they’re not having any success reaching young social first audiences. think there are, the BBC is trying to modernize, but like any massive corporation, it’s hard.

You know, you’ve got to, there’s internal competencies that don’t exist. And that was one of the things actually that came out in the press around it. They’re looking to try and upskill their internal producers, many of whom are very, very skilled producers, but they’re TV producers. They’re not social first producers. So having recently BBC Sport ran an RFP process for external support in running BBC Sport YouTube channels.

Ed Abis (23:06.158)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jo Redfern (23:19.957)
Again, on the RFP, was, we want some help running our YouTube channels and helping get our sport content out to young social first audiences. But as part of that RFP process, we also want…

our suppliers to help upskill our internal producers. So they’ve realized actually they need that shift needs to happen internally very quickly and so in the intervening period they’re going to use external suppliers but they’re also going to help upskill internal producers which I think is a good thing because it just speeds up that modernization.

Ed Abis (23:52.515)
The question is then once the Vilskjöld does people, those people then just leave the BBC and go and do it privately for other people. But anyway, I’ll leave that one just to breathe. Right, next story, last story. Baller leagues paused in Germany. I know this is like shock waves for you having been to Baller League and I know that you watch quite a bit of it. So again, bit of background. Germany is where Baller League started. If anyone doesn’t know what Baller League is, it’s creator orientated. It’s football, but not as you know it.

Jo Redfern (23:58.288)
Cheers.

Jo Redfern (24:10.509)
and

Jo Redfern (24:16.96)
Yep.

Ed Abis (24:21.656)
They’ve posted operations in Germany despite having reached media exposure and sponsorships, but they’ve said essentially it’s just not profitable there. There’s a multitude of reasons with the German market, but also they’ve had success in the UK. They’re launching in the US and I just wonder, is it one of those we like, do we keep trying to flog the German market, which is the size it is, or do we just focus all our attention on the US, which is really the golden goose for them?

Jo Redfern (24:47.469)
This is a really interesting one because I really got into Baller League in season one in the UK. Not watched any of the German original Baller League, but was so fascinated with what the proposition was. I watched all of season one on YouTube, went to the Copper Box, I went to game day nine, thought it was really interesting. I actually thought it was a better viewing experience on YouTube than it was live for various reasons. And it was the way that…

Ed Abis (25:14.042)
I remember you saying that and he’s that. He’s that because ultimately it is orientated towards a video creator audience and in venue entertainment is not really their sweet spot.

Jo Redfern (25:28.545)
Yeah, and maybe that’s one of the reasons it hasn’t worked. And I don’t know what it’s like in Germany, what it was like in venue in Germany, but it was a little bit flat between matches in the UK because all of the production is geared towards the viewers on YouTube, the creators. So when you’re watching at home on YouTube and you cut to the interviews and the little skits side of pitch, none of that is relayed internally in the copper box. So…

You’ve got literally dead air for 15 minutes as they switch between matches. So there was that little disjoint, but I mean, it does beg the question. And much as I am willing these new kind of formats to work, I think there’s a couple of things that we can see emerging here. And it’s interesting, like talking to a couple of people when the news broke, more than one person made the observation that they’re trying to scale Ballerleague like a tech startup.

Ed Abis (25:58.457)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo Redfern (26:25.221)
You can’t scale a new sports format like a tech startup. You can’t speed run it. You can’t speed to scale and expect that affinity, that affinity that, what’s the word I’m looking for, that kind of grows and nurtures over years and becomes fandom, sometimes obsession. You can’t speed run that. And I wonder if their attempt to use creators and to…

rent the creators’ audiences and bring them along for the journey. Fun though it is, and I love the game changer, I wonder if that was just, they were trying to move too fast and the assumption that actually scale equaled affinity was wrong.

Ed Abis (27:11.148)
Yeah. Well, and if you, if you’re trying to build it like a, like you said, like a tech startup rather than a content startup, the reason for that is, cause tech startups value, your valuations are higher than, than content, right? Cause there’s, there’s a lot less margin in content than there is in tech. That would probably make sense. I think, I think also as well, think there are relatively from what I understand from outside looking in that they’re not a massive team, relatively small team and

Jo Redfern (27:25.017)
Mm.

Jo Redfern (27:36.014)
Mm-hmm.

Ed Abis (27:36.995)
Focus, simple as that, right? And like with any business challenge, it’s kind of like, do we focus here or do you focus here? And I think the German creator economy is, and I think this could be a language thing as well, is not as well defined as that UK, US crossover. The language is a barrier and it just doesn’t have the same kind of scale, which makes it difficult. look, I suppose if we had the time, it’d be interesting to compare Baller League to Kings League, which I’m sure both of us hate us doing.

in terms of, because they’ve gone to lots of European countries with Kings League.

Jo Redfern (28:05.559)
Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing that I wanted to point out apart from this kind of, don’t necessarily think that creator metrics at scale equal affinity. Then, then there’s the track, the conversion into monetization, which was one of the issues that they had in Germany. They lost some key sponsorship contracts.

So that was perhaps the final nail in the coffin when they lost, mid-year last year, they lost a headline sponsor, Zing it was. So the unit economics have got to stack up. It’s expensive to set up a company. You’ve got to pay players, you’ve got to find venues, you’ve got to produce it. So high reach and yet even getting some sponsorship partners, you’ve got to look at…

Ed Abis (28:47.18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Redfern (29:02.453)
monetization beyond that reach. And if you haven’t got that affinity, you’re not going to be able to convert those audiences. And that’s where those unit economics break down because you, you know, just because you’ve got a load of creators doesn’t mean that you’re going to have a profitable sports media product. It’s a grind. And I do, again, I think this, comes back to the kind of the tech startup analogy is I think it’s going to, I mean, it could take six, seven, eight years for any one of Germany, UK or U S

Ed Abis (29:18.648)
Yeah.

Jo Redfern (29:31.534)
to really embed for the stories and the characters to come through. And the last point that I will make on it is using creators as the team managers, I think took away from the players. And I do think that that with hindsight, and it’s a wonderful thing, actually the players were largely anonymous. I can only really remember Marvin Sawdell in season one of Ballerleague UK. I didn’t watch as much of season two as I could have done. But.

Ed Abis (29:51.064)
Yeah.

Ed Abis (29:58.713)
So in a sense, all you’re doing is you’re continuing to grow the creators, but you’re not creating new personalities out of the players that anyone can build an affinity with.

Jo Redfern (30:06.167)
Yeah, and I think that is probably a miss in my view. Now it might have happened more in season two, but again, that takes time. Develop personalities, the different kinds of personalities. And I think too much of the focus was on the creators that were team managers and actually not enough focus on the players and allowed some of those player characters to come through. So like I said, who am I to sit and point out areas where I think they got it wrong, but.

Ed Abis (30:32.462)
Well, you’re the co-presenter of this podcast and we can say what we want. So that’s who you are.

Jo Redfern (30:35.385)
Okay, yes, that gives me permission. yeah, so Germany, US, UK, three massively different markets. There is no saying that because it’s been paused in Germany, the same thing is gonna happen in the UK and that the US is not gonna work. I don’t think that that’s the case at all. But you have to kind of look at what’s gone on in Germany and think, okay, is the potential to repeat those mistakes or is there something that they can do different in those markets that will…

perhaps make it more profitable and more successful.

Ed Abis (31:07.788)
Yeah. Okay. So that was the news as we’ve seen it over the last seven days. So on to the anonymous fan index. So obviously, John, this is a report that we effectively ran and commissioned where we spoke to a number of sports media execs about anonymous fans. Like, do they know who their fans are? And it was really, really interesting. And we’ve chatted to a lot of people about this, but the headline was pretty stark that

Jo Redfern (31:11.638)
You

Ed Abis (31:37.231)
76 % of sports fans remain completely anonymous to the organisations they support. I know you’re gonna ask me now, what does that mean? kind of like, they literally don’t, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you do that. They literally don’t know their name, don’t have any details about them. They know they’re out there. I mean, we’ve all heard the fable. We’ve got 650 million fans globally.

Jo Redfern (31:46.701)
Yes, I was going to put my hand up.

Jo Redfern (32:00.302)
That was gonna be my point. How can you claim you’ve got fans if you don’t know who they are? That means they’re not fans.

Ed Abis (32:06.286)
I totally agree, and I’ve worked in a sports business as well at Burnley a long, time ago, and I think if you don’t know who they are, I don’t think you can claim them as the fans, and that was always my view on it, and I think 20 odd years down the track, I still have the same view, and it’s all right making these claims. And I think the reason we did this is because we were seeing this disconnect and hearing lots of stories about sponsors not feeling like they were getting true value, frustrated to see some big checks being…

being signed and then actually you think to yourself, well, where is the pay through? How is that going to follow it all through? yeah, go.

Jo Redfern (32:39.225)
Question, hand up again. Why is it so bad? Why do sports organizations and clubs and leagues not know these fans? Why? Is it just down to systems not talking or have they not really given a crap?

Ed Abis (32:53.794)
I’m not sure the investment’s always gone in. I know from my experience, and it was a long time ago, but from people I’ve met down the years, on the whole, a lot of sports organizations are still not putting investment into the infrastructure of the business. Lots of money goes into, certainly at football, lots of money goes into the players and coach and stuff like that. But the actual business itself, you take away the trading in football of players, and actually football clubs are small businesses.

Jo Redfern (33:06.771)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Jo Redfern (33:18.061)
Yeah.

Ed Abis (33:18.574)
and the investment’s not gone into that and everyone’s seen the of the fabled CRM systems. I think change is coming and we’re seeing it more and more, but I think in a lot of ways investment has not been what it should have been and I think they’ve, in a lot of ways, if you think about the broadcast model, they’ve relied on that kind of money to ultimately fund everything they’re doing and as we’ve just been talking around the news,

Jo Redfern (33:25.944)
Hmm.

Jo Redfern (33:39.598)
Yeah.

Ed Abis (33:45.699)
The world is changing now and that same sort of check that was there for broadcast rights. I don’t think he’s going to be there in perpetuity and people have to start thinking differently now. So think it, you know, we’ve spoke to a lot of people in this and people are starting to change their view on this now. So.

Jo Redfern (34:00.538)
One of the things that I thought was interesting when we were talking about this earlier is Ben Wells from PTI Digital always talks about this and they do their own survey and report as you’ve probably seen. And when I first met him and chatted to him, it did kind of blow my mind at how unsophisticated the approach was to understanding fans and not just understanding what they love and why, which is important, the basics.

Ed Abis (34:07.885)
Yeah.

Jo Redfern (34:29.337)
of understanding them, where they are, who they are, and what they like to do. Even at the top level, do they like to watch? Do they like to attend? Do they play themselves? I mean, pretty fundamental stuff. Which is crazy when you think you’ve got organizations like Sainsbury’s who can email you and say, congratulations, Joe, in 2025, you were the third biggest purchaser of pepperami. I wasn’t, but pepperami in Hazel Grove Sainsbury’s. mean,

Ed Abis (34:33.453)
Yeah, yeah,

Jo Redfern (34:58.647)
that level of data, the capability is there, the ability to understand people’s desires and habits and then reach them and communicate with them accordingly is there. So why is sports so far behind?

Ed Abis (35:11.64)
Yeah, and you shouldn’t be difficult, I do it on purpose now when I do go and attend sports and buy tickets and I register and I give my details just to see how long it takes them to actually try and sell things to me. And I find that most sports across the sphere are almost universally as poor as each other in terms of doing that. I’m literally a captive audience. I will buy things from you, yet…

you’re not using the most basic data I’m giving you to be able to do that. So yeah.

Jo Redfern (35:43.961)
So what does the anonymous fan index help unlock then?

Ed Abis (35:51.641)
We’re looking at it as a conversation ultimately. We want to get people to start being open about the challenges that exist. We look at content as a means to ultimately find and convert those anonymous fans. They’re all consuming content in some way, shape or form. We think that driving community and engagement.

and off platforming those fans gives you the opportunity to be able to know they are. But you’ve got to give them something in return. There’s got to be a value exchange for them to do that. They’ve got to feel like they’re somehow shaping the narrative of the content they’re consuming. That’s one way, but there are lots of other ways too. Interestingly, Joe, I have got a few questions here on it and I want to see if you can guess some of the answers. So sorry to throw this at you. So I’ve only got a few. On average.

Jo Redfern (36:19.929)
Mm.

Jo Redfern (36:23.425)
Absolutely.

Jo Redfern (36:36.93)
I’m just…

Ed Abis (36:43.68)
what percentage of sports organisations, fan bases are identifiable or what they thought was identifiable. Now it’s multiple choice. Was it 24%, 62 % or 86 %?

Jo Redfern (36:57.123)
God, identifiable. Well, given what we’re talking about, I’m going to go the lowest, 24%.

Ed Abis (37:02.094)
To be fair, was a loaded question there. Yeah, 24%. Which is mad really, right? If you say you’ve got, I don’t know, 100 million fans that you only know a quarter of them, again, are they really fans?

Jo Redfern (37:10.79)
I am now, I’m now going to change my LinkedIn header. I’ve got 2 million fans. I just don’t know who they are.

Ed Abis (37:17.07)
Exactly. Next one. What percentage of sports organizations estimate losses of more than a hundred thousand dollars or pounds due to a lack of fan data? Is it 22 percent, 40 percent or 62 percent?

Jo Redfern (37:33.145)
I’m gonna go highest, 62%.

Ed Abis (37:35.694)
God, you already know the answer to this. You’ve read the report and remembered it.

Jo Redfern (37:37.69)
I’m such a swat. I didn’t know the answer, again, given what we’re talking about. I mean, I would imagine that number would be pretty easily reachable for a club or an organisation or a league of even medium size or scale, because just, it comes back to what we were talking about with the kind of the baller league thing. If you know and you can grow affinity with your fans and the…

Ed Abis (37:42.188)
Yeah.

Jo Redfern (38:05.177)
you know, knowing them is the fundamental part of it, then it’s not actually that difficult to monetise each one just a little bit better. And even monetising a little bit better is 100, 200, 300 grand back onto the balance sheet.

Ed Abis (38:14.723)
He shouldn’t be.

Ed Abis (38:19.01)
Absolutely.

Number three, what touch point provide the most fun data? Is it ticketing membership, loyalty program, social media? Is it broadcast viewers, YouTube content, social media? Or is it in stadium food, drink, merch purchases?

Jo Redfern (38:36.238)
Try this one.

Ed Abis (38:37.75)
Yeah, ticketing membership, which I guess is the obvious, right? Because generally speaking, you want to go and buy tickets these days, you have to give you details. It’s probably the easiest touch point to do that for a variety of reasons.

Jo Redfern (38:39.074)
You

Jo Redfern (38:44.579)
Mm-hmm.

Although in theory, if you’ve got a decent system that links all of your social and community platforms back to your ticketing, then you get a better quality, richer data set.

Ed Abis (38:59.126)
Yeah, and I think the point that we found really interesting is, and I guess obvious, right, but why should it be that, you know, yes, content’s going out on broadcast. They don’t own that channel. So that is anonymous to you. And they’ve got no way of knowing who that is. But content that’s then produced for social channels that they do own access to. Again, we see this time and time again, people are making content to drive reach, but not necessarily engagement and then conversion. You don’t see a great deal of that.

if I’m being brutally honest. Last question. What percentage of sports organisations are facing moderate high pressure to deliver measurable fan engagement data? Is it 21%, 87 % or 43 %?

Jo Redfern (39:46.271)
87%.

Ed Abis (39:48.655)
Yes, 87 % said they’re under massive pressure to start delivering measurable fan engagement. And when I say fan engagement, and I think I wrote this on a post on LinkedIn in the last couple of days, it’s not fanning, like anyone who ever comes out and says, oh, this is our fan engagement strategy, don’t do that. Like, cause if engaging fans is not cool to what you’re doing, then I don’t know why you’re in the game anyway. I mean, that should just be cool, right? Center of the organization.

Jo Redfern (40:13.113)
Mm.

Jo Redfern (40:17.709)
Yeah.

Ed Abis (40:18.146)
Well done, you’ve passed.

right? We’ve got a couple of questions and then we’re to wrap up. So we’ve had a couple of questions in.

Ed Abis (40:29.154)
Which is a bit from Adi.

Ed Abis (40:35.254)
Okay. Mark, cut.

Ed Abis (40:55.117)
Okay.

Ed Abis (41:07.074)
Right, let me give it a go.

Mark, we’re starting again here.

So the point is Joe that look, sponsor pressure is real now. You’re getting fans who are going everywhere but on the official channels to access content that is not controlled or owned by the sports organization that they support. And this is why we felt like we needed to create the anonymous fan index for people to understand that ultimately they’ve got to work better to be able to engage with their fans and ultimately drive that conversion for the brands that invest in their businesses.

Ed Abis (41:47.192)
think that was all right. See, I can remember stuff from time to time.

Jo Redfern (41:48.345)
Light on.

Jo Redfern (41:52.509)
Ha ha.

Ed Abis (41:59.939)
That’s because I’ve had a really enjoyable conversation with Joan, she’s inspired me.

Jo Redfern (42:04.685)
you

Ed Abis (42:05.166)
Do we need to do these questions? Because I’m mindful we’re 42 minutes already.

Jo Redfern (42:09.208)
Yeah.

Ed Abis (42:15.5)
Wrap up. Right, let me find the wrap. OK, cool. Right. OK, ready? Right, Mark, this is the end now. Starting now. Joe, that was great. I think we should do this every week without Lee. I feel like we were riffing. Like it seemed to go really, really well. I don’t know what you thought. Absolutely. We’ll let producer Will deal with that.

Jo Redfern (42:31.97)
you

Jo Redfern (42:35.865)
Lee’s going to find out he’s been fired on Wednesday morning at 7am.

Ed Abis (42:43.34)
Look, I think that was a good first attempt to try to do the news. I enjoyed it.

Jo Redfern (42:46.585)
Pretty, yeah, we galloped through it, didn’t we? So yeah, this time next week, we’ll leave back on probation. We’ll let him come back for one.

Ed Abis (42:50.786)
Absolutely.

Ed Abis (42:56.384)
Absolutely. Well, let’s let him pitch us on WhatsApp for the reasons that he needs to be part of the podcast moving forward. Thanks again, Joe. So hopefully everyone who’s listened has found this useful. The things we talked about, the points we touched on. We’ll be looking for four or five stories every week that we think really moves a needle in the sports media industry. If you could do us a favor though, in the meantime, like, follow, subscribe, share to anyone you know about the podcast.

We’d love to gain more listeners. just need a few more to reach a couple of centuries of subscribers. As I said earlier, you can find all of our episodes at display.com forward slash podcasts. You can email us at hello, attention, attention shift dot media. That’s hello at attention shift dot media. I’ve been at Abyss.

Jo Redfern (43:43.129)
And I’ve been Jo Redfern. See you next week.

Ed Abis (43:44.812)
And this has been the Attention Shift Podcast.