Summary

• Can You Actually Buy an Engaged Community? Gary Neville’s Overlap has acquired Mark Goldbridge’s YouTube channels in a reported seven figure deal, with Global’s ad machine sitting behind the whole play. Ed and Jo break down why the real asset isn’t the content, it’s ten years of daily trust built with close to four million subscribers. But with Neville and Goldbridge having clashed before, can that authenticity survive new ownership?
• UEFA’s Quiet Power Play: UEFA is exploring a direct to consumer Champions League pilot in India and Indonesia ahead of the 2027 rights cycle. It follows the Premier League’s move in Singapore and Ligue 1’s existing D2C service in France. Ed and Jo ask whether this is the beginning of a portfolio strategy that slowly squeezes broadcasters out of smaller markets entirely, with an upside that has no ceiling.
• Soccer Saturday Opens the Doors: Sky is opening up integrated brand sponsorship across Soccer Saturday for the first time in its 30 year history, spanning broadcast, digital and social. With £6.7 billion spent on Premier League rights, Ed and Jo ask who actually buys it and whether audiences will accept brands being woven into one of British football’s most sacred institutions.
• The Ad-Free Era Is Already Dead: Every major subscription streamer now has an ad tier, and ad-free viewing is being priced out of existence. Ed and Jo explore why the shift towards aggregated, reservation based media inventory could finally unlock truly integrated sponsorship across TV, streaming, YouTube and social in a single buy. Is this the model that makes integrated sponsorship actually work at scale?
• Sport Is TV’s Last Safe Harbour: Sport now accounts for 60% of all US TV upfront commitments, up from 30% five years ago. With only 12% of primetime entertainment viewers under 50, but 33% of NBC’s Sunday Night Football audience under 50, the demographic case is overwhelming. Brands not already in sport are competing for a dramatically shrinking pool of premium inventory. So where does that leave everyone else?
• YouTube Is Coming For TV Money: YouTube’s Brandcast lands at Lincoln Center on May 13th with Chappell Roan performing, Dude Perfect, Savannah Bananas and Alex Cooper on the creator lineup. With $40 billion in ad revenue and Moffat Nathanson naming them the world’s most valuable media company, Ed and Jo ask whether YouTube staging an upfronts event is the clearest signal yet that the TV ad budget conversation is already over.

Show Notes

• The Overlap Acquires Mark Goldbridge’s The United Stand & That’s Football!
• UEFA eyes D2C platform for the Champions League.
• Soccer Saturday open to sponsors for the first time in 30 years.
• Sports now accounts for 60% of TV upfronts.
• YouTube’s 2026 Brandcast.

Transcription

Jo (00:02.904)
Hello and welcome to a transatlantic episode of the Attention Shift podcast, Ed’s on another continent. But anyway, this week, Gary Neville’s overlap bought Mark Goldbridge’s YouTube channels in a reported seven figure deal, raising the question, can you actually buy an engaged community? We’ll see. And UEFA has started exploring whether it needs broadcasters at all, eyeing a Champions League director consumer pilot in India and Indonesia. I we’ve heard that story before, haven’t we?

And YouTube’s brand cast will be telling ad buyers it’s not competing for social money anymore. It’s coming for TV ad money. We’ve got lots to say. So without further delay, you know the drill. Five stories, five minutes each. Are you ready, Ed Abbas? I was born ready. Okay, you’re kicking off this. When we were in Lisbon last week, this was Hot Topic.

Ed (00:30.813)
Mm.

Ed (00:44.954)
Always.

Ed (00:54.799)
Yes, so Gary Neville’s The Overlap acquiring Mark Goldberg’s YouTube channel. So yeah, I mean that broke in the morning and my phone blew up as did yours and everyone was chatting about what had just happened. So yes, so Gary Neville’s Overlap have acquired Mark Goldberg’s channels and Mark will now be part of that group. But I think the interesting story is obviously for anyone who missed this that Global had bought a controlling interest in The Overlap earlier this year and clearly…

Jo (00:59.694)
I’m

Jo (01:19.982)
Mm.

Ed (01:21.917)
This is a means for global who’ve been growing more and more in this space recently, acquiring these kinds of creator channels to obviously offer access to audience that advertisers have not been getting probably around the sort 16 to 34 mark. So it’s interesting. Obviously we’ve worked with Mark and his team now for probably about four years and we work with Rob Bilal and the team over at GFN as well. The challenge always is how do you access

proper ad money. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube obviously delivers a lot for them, but where they want to do sponsored executions, it’s a challenge to try and get towards the brand. So what Global now gives them access to is scale from an advertising money perspective.

Jo (01:54.03)
Mm.

Jo (02:09.026)
Yeah, I mean, this is something that we’ve seen in other parts of media, right? If you really wanna make some meaningful ad revenue and sponsorship revenue on YouTube and on those digital channels, which tend to attract lower RPMs, you’ve gotta have scale. You’ve gotta aggregate it. And this is, yeah, I think you’re a spot on. I think this is a play by global for scale. It’s scale, but.

What’s interesting is obviously they invested in the overlap. Now they’ve bought the United stand and that’s football. I mean, they’ve clashed before Gary Neville and Goldbridge, haven’t they? So, you I’m sure they’ve managed to get over that if there’s some nice dosh attached to it, but it does, it begs the question and it’s a question that we’ve spoken about before. Does the audience follow? Who’s going to have creative control? Is Goldbridge going to step back a little bit? mean,

Ed (02:46.471)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jo (03:05.56)
That’s, they’re the questions that people were asking us and particularly you in Lisbon last week.

Ed (03:10.769)
Yeah, I’m like, and obviously I don’t know, because it’s not like I’m party to the deal. But I think, you know, look, it’s incredibly hard for Mark, right, to scale something more than he has, and he’s done an unbelievable job in doing what he’s doing. How does he make this bigger than it is without having the infrastructure in place to be able to do it? And I think, you know, people, you know…

Jo (03:15.008)
No. No.

Jo (03:25.646)
Mm.

Ed (03:34.461)
you know, people will say what they want about him, but he’s very much tied to his studio and can’t really ever go anywhere because he’s obviously streaming multiple times per day. And I think there is that want and that need to try and bring some other creators into his network to give him some breathing space too. Because what think what people don’t realize is actually he’s incredibly creative with hand scenes in terms of thinking about what he wants to do. And as part of the announcement goal, they announced that there were going to be some new formats that they were going to create as well. So it’d be interesting to see.

Jo (03:41.165)
Hmm?

Jo (03:55.544)
Mm.

Ed (04:03.354)
how they start to weave other creators into it, how they start to cross-pollinate across the different channels as well. I think that’s a great opportunity. But it is, it’s an about turn because, you know, think Mark has been trying to reach out to that world, you know, the footballers’ world for a number of years. And to be brutally honest, they’ve never given him credibility. And now this is a massive endorsement for him that regardless of whether they believe in his football knowledge or not, they believe in his audience and that’s why they bought in.

Jo (04:07.766)
Mm-hmm.

Jo (04:32.214)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. And it’s something that I’ve seen working with creators over the last few years. For a long time, they were dismissed as low quality, low rent. There was a bit of an inherent snobbishness from traditional media in that somehow they weren’t legitimate, they weren’t credible. And then now everybody wants a creator. And this is great validation actually and kudos to Mark Goldbridge and the team behind those two channels for

Ed (04:44.55)
Totally.

Jo (05:01.058)
for getting to this stage. It does, I hope it marks a sea change with how creators are looked upon by, I say traditional media, but you know what I mean. And it does beg the question, know, maybe not to his scale, but every major club’s got an equivalent of a Mark Goldbridge. What does this mean? Are we gonna see consolidation of these fan creator channels now?

Ed (05:21.158)
Yeah, absolutely.

Ed (05:26.812)
Well, the overlap and global made it clear that that’s their intention. So they are going to go and look for other sports center. I don’t think it was just football, by the way, sports center it creates and they can bring into their network. clearly think that look, and they did a global as a business. They are, they are, they’re an ad business. They, they control advertising on the tube. They control advertising because radio networks, they’ve been building this model for a number of years. Now they’re moving into this space because ultimately it’s a new space that they can move into to try and dominate and control.

Jo (05:30.254)
Mm-hmm.

Jo (05:55.949)
Mm.

Ed (05:56.345)
It’s totally an advertising play and they’re doing the same thing that we’re going to talk about a little bit later where YouTube are going after TV money is the same. Global are doing the exact same thing. I think we’re getting to that point now where it’s not going to be about whether it’s TV. It’s just, can I access an audience and where do I spend my money? And I think that snobbishness is starting to actually, took forever, but melt away in a very short space of time.

Jo (06:05.976)
Yep.

Jo (06:20.76)
I agree, I agree. And I think when you’re global and you control such a huge amount of media inventory, and again, you’ve got YouTube who are after TV ad budgets, and it’s been hard to try and wrest those away, then the way you’re gonna do it is by one, scale, and two, providing good quality audience, highly engaged audience, high intention audiences. And that’s what Mark Goldbridge has built, that perhaps more traditional media…

Ed (06:49.414)
So, yes.

Jo (06:50.83)
companies have struggled with. he, he answers, you know, he ticks that box from which is, is a positive. Okay. Let’s talk UEFA. So they’re, they’re looking at a DTC streaming trial for Champions League matches ahead of the next rights cycle, which starts in 2027, I believe. So, Guardian broke the story. Sounds very much like the Premier League and their, Premier, is it Premier League plus or just Premier plus in, in Singapore. So,

Ed (06:56.646)
Definitely.

Ed (07:17.35)
Yeah.

Jo (07:20.802)
I mean, interesting move, another D2C play. I don’t necessarily think it’s about getting rid of your broadcast partners. I think what these leagues and governing bodies have spotted is that potentially in markets where there isn’t a significant broadcast partner, or you could perhaps afford to do without said license fee if it’s a smaller one, there’s a play pad in D2C, getting that first party data.

looking at how you can roll in subscriptions, memberships, betting, gaming, those other kind of experiences and much easier to test and learn and do that in smaller markets than do it in a big one. So I think this is very much feels like exploring that in the same way as Premier Premier League is doing to me.

Ed (08:08.86)
Yeah, I think also, I think the way the content is produced as well, because as much as major leagues do deals with broadcasters in certain territories, like you’ll have done it like I’ve done it, you travel around the world and sometimes you watch the coverage and either they’re just taking the central produced feed, so if you’re in a local market, it’s really hard for you to find a connection with it because there’s not a local flavor to it. And we all know that the actual local production matters to that audience.

Jo (08:30.563)
Mm.

Ed (08:36.924)
or the local market produces it and it’s even worse because it’s so poorly produced. what it does, production costs are certainly decreasing these days as well, like what the Premier League are doing and what UEFA are doing. It gives them the opportunity to really target how do we produce this in this local marketplace so it really fits with the audience. And it may be that both of them think, you know what, there’s certain creators that are bigger than the sports presenter personalities on the local TV channels that would be better to

Jo (08:41.24)
Yeah. Yeah, there is that.

Ed (09:06.908)
drive the coverage in these territories, but behind the subscription wall, they might take some of those kind of people to do it, who’ve got bigger, more invested and engaged audiences than the broadcasters themselves. Because you know what it’s like, like Singapore as well, it’s been happening for a number of years, it just flits between one provider and the other. And people just know they just need to keep changing the subscription, but the coverage never really changes. So I could…

Jo (09:25.474)
Mm-mm.

Jo (09:31.503)
Yeah, and the ceiling, the revenue ceiling is kind of set, isn’t it? You’re only ever going to get a certain level of licence fee from that broadcaster. So you set yourself a ceiling. And what I think is interesting is by going into these markets and saying, no, we’re going to test a DTC product, you remove that ceiling. You know what the downside is? It’s whatever the value of the licence was, but the upside is potentially huge. And it does allow for that.

Ed (09:36.048)
Yes.

Ed (09:55.952)
Yeah.

Jo (10:01.304)
kind of testing, okay, can we run a DTC service? How much is it gonna cost us to produce in those local markets? But what can we layer on in terms of that, you know, whatever we’re talking about, know, can gaming and betting and gambling come to life? But what can we layer on and we can take that data and we can start refining that product. So I don’t think it’s summarily, you know, they’re gonna flip a switch and there’s gonna be broadcasted deals left on the table.

Ed (10:17.209)
Yeah, yeah, Predictions, yeah.

Jo (10:30.742)
I think this is the beginning of a portfolio strategy, which I suspect is what the Premier League are looking to do. Maintain broad cash relationships in premium markets and then dabble in those smaller ones.

Ed (10:36.141)
And you do want to, yeah.

Yeah. And you do wonder, as you ever felt the need to try and do this as well, because the Premier League are making their move as well, is it a little bit of an arms race as well? Well, if they’ve done it, we need to do it now too, because otherwise, if everyone starts to build these, where do we go with the content?

Jo (10:52.28)
Yep.

Jo (10:56.034)
Yeah, yeah. The interesting thing, and I don’t suppose it will happen in the short term, is what happens if the model starts to outperform the old one, then that puts a bit of pressure on the TNTs and the Amazons and the skies, doesn’t it?

Ed (11:10.873)
Well, then it’ll be interesting see, well, you know, how much does money talk? And actually, are they going to start then thinking about the long-term owning the audience being more important than the short-term cash? Or like I say, or do they try and find a hybrid model? Like obviously what you’ve got with Champions League at the moment is you’ve got Amazon, certainly in the UK, Amazon Prime have it on a Tuesday night, TNT have it on a Wednesday night. So they’ve been kind of splitting it up. And even like around the World Cup qualifiers, when the playoff games, FIFA, you could pay £2.50 to watch them on Amazon Prime as well. So there’s lots of these little

Jo (11:19.96)
Yeah.

Jo (11:29.315)
Yeah.

Ed (11:40.847)
tests are already going on and people have been dabbling in it to see what works, what doesn’t work.

Jo (11:40.862)
Mm. They are,

Jo (11:46.67)
Yeah. Okay. Next one.

Ed (11:49.2)
Cool, right then, number three. So Sky posted about a week ago on LinkedIn that they were looking to open up sponsorship of Soccer Saturday and some associated shows for the first time in 30 years. Now I know everyone will be saying, now what do you mean, Gillette already sponsored Soccer Saturday? What they’re talking about trying to do is they’re saying it’d be more integrated in terms of how they go and sell a sponsorship or potentially multiple sponsorships.

that it’s not just about the bumpers, front and the end of the show or when they go to ad breaks. How can they start bringing brands actually into the show, but not just in broadcast, all the associated clips, digital, that they distribute as well? And we were having a chat earlier about this, Joe. I know you’ve got quite a bit of experience with this as well, from some recent work you’ve done. The UK, certainly, and anyone listening to us or watching this is not from the UK, or more like in America, everything’s badged up right on TV.

Jo (12:28.107)
and

Jo (12:46.669)
Mm.

Ed (12:47.171)
Even though the rules and regs changed a number of years ago and anyone doesn’t know, there are some pretty strong rules around what you can and can’t do in TV programming, which is why you see a lot of people doing a lot of stuff on YouTube now because they’re not bound by the same rules and regulations. And I think because of those rules and regulations, even though you can do product placement and things like that, it’s never quite caught on at scale in the UK. And then you’ve got the other thing, which is, the audience be having it?

Jo (12:58.04)
Mm.

Jo (13:14.062)
Well, we have talked about that before, haven’t we, with the rugby? Yeah. It’s interesting, this one. firstly, I’m gonna quote Marion Ronschett from last week. She pulled out a data point. I forget whose data point it was, but it struck me to the point I wrote it in the notes on my phone. I mean, we’ve spoken before about how we live in an ad-funded world now, and I’m just looking at it on my phone.

Ed (13:16.805)
With a rugby, right? Yeah.

Jo (13:42.893)
the ad-free viewer is going to go extinct in 2026. That’s this year. So even if we say within the next 12 months, the ad-free viewing experience is gonna go extinct. I mean, that’s insane. You we used to pay subscriptions so we didn’t have to watch ads. And now every single subscription streamer has an ad tier and they’re increasing the price of their ad-free tier much higher because they want everybody on the ad tier. So the ad-free…

Ed (13:56.581)
Yeah.

Ed (14:04.069)
Yes.

Ed (14:10.651)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo (14:11.884)
The ad free viewing experience is going extinct and I can completely see that happening within the next 12 months. What does that mean? Well, yes, we do have very different rules and regulations per Ofcom in the UK to elsewhere, but I can see that that’s being kind of relaxed. And what it also means, having spoken to a few people who work in that kind of ad tech business, you and I went to Little Dot Studios to a breakfast a few months ago where we were talking about this.

Ed (14:38.5)
Yes.

Jo (14:41.038)
Ad tech, very hot topic at Stream TV Europe yesterday. And I have done a little bit of work in this area. This idea that you sell sponsorships, you sell your TV sponsorships, you sell your digital sponsorship, you could literally sell it as separate inventory, your website sponsorship. And now we’ve got YouTube. There is a big shift towards looking at your inventory and aggregating it together so that you can charge a brand a premium.

Ed (14:55.162)
Yeah.

Jo (15:09.966)
price to advertise against Soccer Saturday, Love Island, Hell’s Kitchen across your TV, your streaming, your YouTube, your social, your gaming if you’ve got it. That actually, if you can coordinate that, can command a much higher price point with your partners and you can be much more integrated, can be much more creative, quite frankly. And it’s something that the structures haven’t been set up to do to this point, but there’s a shift now.

Ed (15:33.147)
Do you know, I was going to say, do you know? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say like, look, think partly is because in a lot of these different distribution models, the content that gets distributed don’t have standard ad formats. So the end industry line, oh, it’s not a standard format. I can’t put it in a box. I don’t want to do it. Which is why then you don’t get truly, which is why truly integrated, which is why you then see.

the creators who are willing to do non-standard formats and be creative with it, doing some pretty cool stuff because standard media don’t want to do anything that they can’t just automate.

Jo (16:11.246)
Yeah, and a lot of it is that black box automation. You want to buy some inventory online? Completely, and a lot of time, you lose control against which your ad is appearing. So, you know, there is a brand safety risk because your ad could appear next to something that’s either not relevant content or something that materially harms your brand. But, you know, that’s been allowed to proliferate again, just in this kind of scale, put it into the black box and your ad.

Ed (16:16.3)
It stops creativity ultimately.

Jo (16:40.238)
your ad is fed out across that inventory. Now there’s pressure on return on advertising spend. Advertisers and sponsors want to know how effective their spend is. They want to know how much business it’s generating for them and where it’s going and what effect it’s having. So now that’s putting pressure on this just kind of spray and pray approach. What that also means is if you are a media, well, an IP owner, Soccer Saturday or any of those other IP I’ve mentioned,

Ed (17:01.166)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo (17:09.902)
Now you could look at actually pulling that together and selling it as reserved media, reservation media. You wanna buy against Love Island or you wanna buy against Soccer Saturday, yeah, you can have the whole thing. It’s gonna cost you X amount. And actually we could do this over here and that over there. We can get really creative with it and fun. This is what I think will typify that next stage as a way to increase the revenues and actually be able to measure it and also

justify the amount that you’re charging your sponsors and your appetizing.

Ed (17:43.643)
Yeah, and just one final point on that because look, you’ve worked in, you’ve been a program maker, right? A lot of program makers that I’ve dealt with, obviously you’re not one of them, often they don’t want, they see getting in bed with ad money as dirty, so they don’t want to make the content in a way that would suit itself to have brand association, because it’s almost like it’s spoiling their art in some kind of way, shape or form.

Jo (18:08.332)
Well, unfortunately that’s a necessary evil now, because the funding ain’t coming from anywhere else. now, I mean, this is very live conversation in the world of kids media at the moment. So now you’re looking at how you can work closer with brands. you look at Crocs, I think we’ve spoken about Crocs before. Crocs is funding a mini series rather than actually create ads because the ad load is increasing, therefore ad effectiveness is reducing.

Ed (18:15.225)
Well…

Jo (18:37.176)
They’re going into branded content. Anyway, we’ve just had a note from our producer we’ve been telling. So, I’m gonna wizz on to the next story then. It’s TV upfronts season, which is always an interesting thing. Interesting thing for me. So, US TV upfronts coming up. Ad buyers heading into the upfronts this year expect sport to account for 60 % of ad commitments. No surprise.

Ed (18:41.146)
Cool. We’ve been hooked on that one.

Ed (18:51.066)
Yeah.

Jo (19:05.886)
Everybody wants sport, sport rights, hotly contested, as we know. And it just goes to show, you know, when YouTube rollout, who’s gonna feature at their upfronts, they’re bringing out the sports people. That’s actually, we’re gonna talk about that in the next story. But yes, kind of, yeah, sports is where all of that ad money is gonna flow in the next cycle.

It’s not just the most valuable content in terms of media rights and we’ve talked about how NFL is seeking a massive uplift. It is the thing that both generally streamers, specialists, everybody’s wanting sport. So we’re gonna see this massive shift of brand money and add money towards sports, I think.

Ed (19:51.954)
I mean certainly you see it more in the US than we do in Europe but you know when you look at sports men and women in the US now around multiple sports and how almost like the arrival at the venue has become the catwalk which has become the culture and the lifestyle what they’re about that’s almost become as people looking for that as much as they’re looking for the game itself well that allows then any

Jo (20:12.663)
Yeah.

Ed (20:20.011)
media organization that’s bought into that right to do a lot with that because ultimately they know that the cultural eyes are on it so they can sell advertising around it so that’s why it’s become more important so in a lot of ways because it’s funny like because when you see all of the these sportsmen and women now who really started to lean into being athletes as creators they do that kind of stuff because they’re creating their own content too but that’s having a halo effect for media as well now because that’s them making

that programming more relevant to these brands who want to be part of it that wouldn’t have been before. I I used to sell sponsorships 20 years ago and it was damn hard. And the narrative that I’m seeing now that people are selling into all manner of FMCG brand, I was banging my head against a brick wall trying to go, like, you can do this kind of stuff. Because no one was really thinking like that then or leaning into it. Now I look at it I think, God, I wish I did that easy back in the day when I was cold calling people. God, it wasn’t.

Jo (20:51.926)
Again, yeah.

Jo (21:03.874)
Okay.

Jo (21:14.318)
Yeah, and it opens up this whole different way again of selling media inventory with you look at athletes. I mean, it used to be that you were obliged as an athlete in a league to show up and do your sponsor thing. You know, were an, you know, kind of Nike athlete or you were, yeah, under duress because it wasn’t within your gift. But look at how the power has shifted now towards athlete creators.

Ed (21:34.177)
under duress.

Ed (21:38.83)
Yes.

Jo (21:42.573)
And now they’re doing deals, you know, their own personal deals. And that’s really interesting to advertisers and sponsors because it gives them a way to, again, we’re talking about integrate and embed more natively into these athlete creators. And actually they’re invested, a lot of time they’re really, really invested in those brands rather than just showing up and trotting it off, you know, looking vaguely bored. So I think it’s interesting.

Ed (21:42.681)
Yeah.

Ed (22:06.585)
Yeah, and look, there’ll be people listening to this round, they’ll be banging on about creators again. The reality is these sportsmen and women that have lent into being more than just a player out on a pitch or a court because they want people to know what they’re about is ultimately for me driving up the value of these properties because it allows the content to seep out of just that it’s a game.

Jo (22:32.728)
Yeah, kind of throw in a conspiracy theory that’s just a pattern just to get to it.

Ed (22:36.089)
You absolutely should. You absolutely should.

Jo (22:39.148)
Well, brands not in sport are really looking to try and get into sport now. And it’s usually been the preserve of the, you know, the Nikes and the technical wear kind of manufacturers. I was just thinking about the pelters that Nike has been coming in for around the Boston Marathon and about how they hijacked Parkrun. I wonder if there’s other brands who want to get into sport who trying to discredit Nike. I mean, Nike.

Ed (22:44.695)
Yeah.

Ed (22:58.198)
yes.

Ed (23:02.264)
Yeah.

Jo (23:08.11)
you know, screwing up their own company pretty well by themselves. But I wonder if the knives are out for brands like Nike because that opens up inventory for other sports brands or other brands that want to advertise in sport. I’m planting that seed.

Ed (23:09.239)
Yes. Yes.

Ed (23:20.057)
Yeah, Obviously, just to be clear here, we’re saying allegedly. It wouldn’t be surprising, would it? I mean, like you said, they’ve, yeah, no comment.

Jo (23:37.898)
It literally just came to me anyway. I just plucked that out, didn’t it? If it ends up being right, I look like some kind of genius. Anyway. I mentioned Brandcast. Yeah.

Ed (23:38.553)
It’s good one that.

Yeah, well, we’ll clip it up and post it if ends up being right. Right, there’s a last story. Yeah, go on. Yes, last story. Brandcast, yeah, you’re right. So, YouTuber.

Jo (23:52.931)
I did, mentioned Brandcast, yeah, because it is upfront season, which is always interesting. the last story kind of merged with this one and I got ahead of myself, but YouTube Brandcast, which I always think is a really good watch. I mean, they really do set the of the tone YouTube. So we’ve got Chapel Rowan performing while she’s on a massive high. So when you can pull Chapel Rowan into your…

Ed (23:56.312)
Go for it.

Jo (24:22.318)
Brandcast, then you’re doing pretty well. Creator lineup includes Dude Perfect. They’ve got Jessa. We’ve seen Jessa performing, performing, showing up at Chicago Bulls for their Kid Nation game, which was something that I was really chuffed about recently. My beloved Savannah bananas apparently are gonna be there.

Ed (24:34.51)
Yeah.

Ed (24:40.857)
That’s the only reason you spotted this story because they’re turning up.

Jo (24:46.068)
see Savannah Bananas with Neil Mowen. It’s a match made in heaven.

Ed (24:50.403)
then we’re going to have to do you an all-in expenses pay trip to go and see them just to get out your system.

Jo (24:55.65)
Well, listen, I don’t need to convince people that I’ve been bullish on YouTube for at least the last six years. yeah, mean, there’s Nielsen’s gauge is that its fortunes are mixed recently because they’re under a bit of criticism on how they measure streaming.

Ed (25:04.665)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (25:15.799)
Well yeah, Marian and Medley, Evan have been a right go at it.

Jo (25:19.52)
Yeah. Yes. So, so let’s not reference Nielsen’s gauge. Let’s talk about Moffat-Nathanson, who I really, again, rate, rate as analyst. So Moffat-Nathanson are saying that YouTube is the world’s most valuable media company. So, you know, move over Netflix, move over Disney. And their ad revenue is edging out Disney’s full year. I mean, 40 billion in ad revenue for YouTube.

Ed (25:26.872)
Yes.

Jo (25:44.675)
when you roll in their YouTube TV subscriptions, which are primarily US, it’s up to 60 billion. So they are a behemoth. It’s difficult to get away from it. And they have redistributed a lot of the ad revenue to creators. Yes, they keep a chunk, but they have redistributed a lot of ad revenue. So it’s no wonder that their brand casts are so important. Yeah, so this is, know, but the fact that they’ve got Dude Perfect,

Jessa and Savannah Bananas on stage next to Neil Moen, again, tells you everything you need to know about their approach to sport. They’ve dabbled in some sport rights. I think they’re gonna come in for an expanded NFL package. But again, they are selling sports inventory on YouTube as premium. That’s the way it’s going.

Ed (26:33.388)
No, and he’s looking at things and like I said, we were at Stream TV last week in Lisbon and Pedro Pina was on stage there and you just know now when you get someone on stage from YouTube, like they’re on a crest of a wave at the moment and they can do no wrong and everything they say makes total sense and the session that you and I both loved, which was the TF earn session that Pedro Pina was part of and it’s rare that there’s stuff that happens that we haven’t seen but we’ve not seen that previously and I wrote about it last week as well on LinkedIn actually and just how the

Jo (26:39.982)
Next.

Ed (27:03.638)
Because we talk about sports creators all the time, but to find a news creator that’s credible, because news is very different, it is based on facts and less on opinion. And TFN have done that and YouTube were part of that. So what YouTube are doing here, connecting dots, left, right and center, and then just going, there’s the platform, your boots. And they’re getting very, very good at it. But as ever with these things as well, they are becoming what they are becoming, and they’re becoming what they’re becoming, and I still think there’s massive growth in it. But it…

Jo (27:11.534)
Thank

Jo (27:23.438)
Mm.

Ed (27:33.489)
Weirdly, they are helping to change what the ad world and video distribution looks like. But mark my words, it will create space for other entrants to come into it over the next five to 10 years. Now look, we know that Netflix are there and Spotify are doing stuff. Someone else or something else will come along because it always does. When that change happens, they will get to a point where, where…

Jo (27:55.436)
Mm-hmm.

Ed (27:59.993)
The reality is we’ve seen so many these businesses, they hit start at the bit of a buffer and then someone thinks of something different and comes in. So I know there’s lots of people looking at this at moment going, they’re in control of too much. You know, they don’t want to do our, you know, they don’t want to share their numbers with us. It’s not fair and all that kind of stuff. It’s kind of like, yeah, but they are where they are at the moment because they’ve built something that ultimately people want. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no opportunity. All the entrants will enter, they always do.

Jo (28:30.126)
I agree, I agree. And it’s only bound by the limits of imagination. If you can figure out how to activate on there or you can figure out how to aggregate, build scale, little bit like what Global are doing. I mean, are creator networks. You’ve got electrify video partners who require YouTube panels and help them scale. Again, it’s not unusual.

Ed (28:49.26)
Yes.

Jo (28:54.38)
They were relatively new 10 years ago, but now there’s new ways of putting things together and plugging in. yeah, mean, again, we’re seeing this shift. Most brands buy separate ads for TV and separate ads for social. And for a long time, they put YouTube in the social media bucket. But now increasingly, YouTube is considered TV. It’s showing much more premium TV. You’ve got YouTube.

Channel 4 and ITV and BBC Studios putting up a whole ton of catalog, which was made for premium TV now on YouTube. So the quality bar is increasing, watch time is increasing, the number of ad dollars or money that used to be allocated to TV is flowing over to YouTube. And that’s the interesting thing. But sport is where they wanna put it next to, because sport is super premium, always has been. And even on YouTube, it-

Ed (29:30.306)
Yeah.

Jo (29:52.375)
it still works as super premium. So I’ll be excited to see Jesse Cole at Brandcast. Yeah, and that’s where we are at. We are bang on 30 minutes. Look.

Ed (29:55.042)
Cool.

Ed (30:06.434)
So just before we go, so obviously I just wanted to talk a little bit as well about why I am over transatlantic later in the morning. So I’ve been in Tampa this weekend for Premier League Mornings Live. Look, I mean, it was amazing to experience a footballing event where people are drinking lots and lots of alcohol and no one’s fighting. Like, the amount of different football shirts, not just Premier League as well, I met some great people who were fans of Watford.

Jo (30:15.221)
Yes, how was it?

Ed (30:36.124)
It’s Which Town, I even got on with the Blackman Rovers fan, which I thought I’d never say. And I spent quite a bit of time with it as well. No, well, a mixture. So some were Americans, some were just expats. I’ve been out there in Florida for 20 years and came along to it. But again, like the passion for the Premier League, the knowledge about it as well. The thing that the Premier League put on as well is such a well-organized event as well. No problems getting in, like I said, no issues.

Jo (30:41.39)
Were these all Americans?

Ed (31:03.864)
It was full of some ex players and some legends because not all ex players are legends obviously. I’m not going to name any names in that. But I was lucky enough to meet George Boyd who I would say probably is a Burnley legend actually. played in our, you when we were in the Premier League and he was consistently good in that time as well. Lovely, lovely guy and then having a few chats with him about the time he played at Burnley. But there was plenty of like every, you know, think half the Premier League did some kind of activation there and had…

players there that were going around mingling with the fans. Nothing was too much trouble. But yeah, great experience. And I think it was, again, I wrote about it actually today on LinkedIn as well. And I think this was, it’s not the first time they’ve done it, but it’s probably the best from what everyone told me. And this was a culmination of what they’ve been working with with, with MBCO last 13 years and all the work that’s gone into it terms of how the games have been being built in North America. And you can see how that’s come together because there were people all over Tampa.

Jo (31:52.27)
Hmm.

Ed (32:01.481)
in football shirts that I bumped into, because I’d go for a run in the morning with my Burnley shirt on and people just grabbing you and chatting. Yeah, actually, like I said, the most, I think the safest I’ve ever felt in a football environment with people from multiple clubs.

Jo (32:06.872)
You

Jo (32:18.094)
I mean, the weather looked good and the fan part looked fun. Yeah, I mean, it just shows how much the Premier League has invested in trying to cultivate that fandom in North America.

Ed (32:21.235)
I’m a bit burnt. I’m a bit burnt.

Ed (32:32.983)
Yes. You’ve got to commit to it, simple as that. And they have, which is so fair play to them. Right then, we’ve gone well over now and Dan is not happy with me because I threw that in and he didn’t expect it, but I just thought I should probably mention it. So, Joe, what’s ever?

Jo (32:35.85)
Mm. Mm.

Jo (32:42.124)
Haha, you’d… I’m gonna leave you to do the raffle.

Ed (32:48.523)
Thank you for joining me this week on the Attention Shift podcast. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. If you’d like to feature as a guest and we’ve got some that we’ve already pre-recorded that will be coming out over the coming weeks, can email us at helloattentionshift.media. That’s helloattentionshift.media. But other than that, I’ve been Ed Abyss. She’s been Joe Redfern. Goodbye.