Summary
- Why DAZN Just Bought Its Way Into Every US Sports Bar: DAZN has acquired EverPass Media, the exclusive distributor of NFL Sunday Ticket to US bars and restaurants, and is rebranding it as DAZN for Business under CEO Alex Kaplan. EverPass also carries Peacock, Netflix, Paramount and Apple. The NFL’s 32 Equity, RedBird Capital and TKO now become minority shareholders in DAZN. It’s the first company to control both the consumer app and the venue-side infrastructure for US premium sport.
- Why Red Bull Are Racing Verstappen Against 100 Amateurs on Disney+: Disney+ and ESPN are staging Max vs 100 at Silverstone on 16 September. Verstappen starts last in a purpose-built 101-kart race against Red Bull athletes, streamers (TheGrefg, Caedrel, TheDonato), gaming personalities and members of the public. Mo Gilligan fronts the broadcast, with live data, drone footage and radio comms baked in. Red Bull chose Disney+ over its own YouTube for the credibility of a live rights-style broadcast.
- Why the Lloyds Tour of Britain Women Just 5x’d Its YouTube Audience: The 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Women drew nearly 250,000 views on its official YouTube channel, five times last year’s figure. British Cycling Ventures MD Darren Henry confirmed the growth. Nine of the world’s top 10 ranked teams competed. First year the women’s race matched the men’s for number of stages. All achieved through free YouTube distribution rather than a broadcast rights deal.
- Why the BBC Is Now Live-Streaming Watch-Alongs of Fights It Doesn’t Own: BBC Sport ran its first-ever live boxing watchalong for Moses Itauma vs Filip Hrgović on Saturday 29 August, streamed on YouTube, website and iPlayer simultaneously. Olympian Pat Brown and boxing YouTuber Steph Kamale hosted. 79,000 live viewers, down from the 107,000 the BBC pulled with a previous Sidemen watchalong. Sits alongside the BBC’s YouTube-first documentary fund (“BBC deepwatch”) offering £50,000 per film.
- Why Bundesliga Just Handed Jamie Vardy Seven Live Matches on YouTube: Bundesliga has expanded its UK creator distribution for 2026-27. Vardy’s YouTube channel “Having a Party” gets seven Friday-night matches, beating a rival bid from Gary Neville’s The Overlap. Mark Goldbridge’s “That’s Football” retains its 15-match Friday-night slate. Two parallel creator-led distribution channels into the UK, reaching fans who may never tune into a traditional broadcaster.
- Every Story This Week Is About Someone Rewriting Where Sports Content Lives: DAZN goes into every US sports bar. Red Bull goes onto Disney+. Women’s cycling goes direct to YouTube. The BBC goes into watch-along territory it doesn’t own. Bundesliga goes to Vardy’s channel. The distribution stack in sport is fragmenting in every direction at once.
Shownotes
Transcription
Ed (00:12.482)
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Attention Shift Podcast. As ever, I’m joined by Andy Marston. Andy, good to see you.
Andy Marston (00:30.68)
Yeah, good to see you too.
Ed (00:32.494)
Plenty going on. Just obviously now we’ve got into the full throes of Premier League season, a number of other sports season. There’s a lot starting to kick off. But let’s jump straight in to the first story of the agenda today. Dzone have made another acquisition. so they have acquired Everpass Media. Lots of people might not know what Everpass Media is, but they are the exclusive distributor of NFL Sunday ticket to US bars and restaurants. So to a certain degree, that’s rebrand rebranding DaZone.
as a different kind of business now ’cause they’re looking to get into that bar and restaurant area. Everpass also carries Peacock, Netflix, Paramount, Apple and tens of thousands for tens of thousands of venues across the US which DZone wouldn’t normally access. And it also means that the NFL Investment Arm thirty two equity plus Redbird Capital and TKO now become minority shareholders in Dzone, which is an interesting development in those kind of relationships.
So Andy, I know that you were chatting about this at the back end of the last week across your network of people as well, and there’s lots of people had opinions on this, but where do you think Dazona headed now with this one?
Andy Marston (01:40.141)
Yeah, I mean I think it was an interesting deal when I first came across it. And then the more I’ve looked at it, the more kind of different strands or different strategies you can kind of pull out of it. I think the initial one that piqued my interest was the strategic investment piece. So the fact that they the fact that Everpass had investors like Redbird, like TKO, like the NFL investment group, thirty-two equity, means that they all now become
shareholders in the zone, which strategically aligns DeZone with a lot of the most influential rights holders in the US market, like the NFL Sunday ticket obviously being the primary one. But obviously NFL then having additional kind of incentive to want to work together with the Zone is significant. And then also TKO obviously being combat sports led and DaZone making a lot of its
initial progress through combat sports, I think is pretty significant as well. So that was the first that was the first part that caught my attention.
Ed (02:46.113)
Yeah, it’s interesting and and and this is on the back of the made they made another acquis look, they’ve been making a number of acquisitions over a number of years, but ViewLift recently that they acquired. with the collapse of the RSN business as it was in the US. And for anyone who doesn’t know what the RSN that’s regional sports networks, where across the US sports franchises, basically the the spa the franchise can go and do a deal with their regional sports network, or could go and do a deal with their regional to do with their regional sports network to distribute their live rights.
The economics on that hadn’t worked and there was a number that did collapse and DeZone have looked to get into that space and the access of Vulith means that they can go in and effectively work with these franchises to create direct to consumer streaming businesses. So you can see all the different gaps that they are looking to try to plug, but also the kind of you know, they’ve got all the content coming in the building, so they are effectively getting economies of scale here, distributing to different different distribution points.
And I think that’s part of the big play here, that there is massive savings by doing that and reusing that content that they’ve effectively already got access to. The and this will probably give them more content as well they’ve got access to that they can then distribute in other ways too.
Andy Marston (03:56.259)
Yeah. And I think as well, like they’re gonna rebrand Everpass the zone for business. So essentially they now have a like a B2B and a B2C arm to the business. And I think that all sitting under one roof gives them more negotiation leverage when they’re speaking to rights holders because they can say, We’ll take care of your distribution to c to a consumer network, but also we can make sure that you’re visible in all of these bars and restaurants, which particularly for combat sport rights
is particularly important because of the pay-per-view element and the fact that a lot of people will go out and watch like big fighting events in bars and restaurants because, you know, rather than pay a subscription at home, go to the bar, spend your money there. A lot of restaurants will pay the fee basically and take the hit on the upfront cost because they know that it drives a lot of traffic into the into the location. So I think, yeah, that one being that one stop shop gives them differentiation. And I think, you know,
every week we’re talking about another streamer entering the market or another kind of big tech company dabbling in streaming or dabbling in kind of shoulder content. And if the zone wants to compete on a purely digital sort of level, it’s gonna really struggle. So I think them kind of creating these other ways to kind of create value, give them a kind of more rounded proposition. So I think it’s a really smart move.
Ed (05:20.695)
Yeah, and similarly as well, obviously Desone have been building out for a number of years their own fanzone as well, which obviously when people are playing within the Des Design environment, they already knew they are. If they can start driving people from within these venues to be playing along in fanzone and ultimately then start to convert them into Design Betters ’cause they’ve got Desone Bet too, you can see how they can start to transition those people that are watching things casually in a venue back to Dizone’s own products and services to sort of become known.
fans to them as well. So y you can see how bringing all that ecosystem together should all drive e each other round. it’s a big old task to do, but they’re getting all the right parts in place.
Andy Marston (06:01.272)
Yeah, and we’ve talked about this pretty much every week in one of the stories has been kind of like the shift back towards physical as well, right? So the fact that AI and digital content is so prevalent means that people want physical experiences. So you’re probably gonna see more and more people wanting to interact in real life with real people. And so the bar and physical location becomes potentially more important as a differentiation. ’cause you may also see things where like a lot of these streamers
Ed (06:07.746)
Yes.
Andy Marston (06:30.124)
maybe go back on paying big media rights for everything below the top tier assets. And so it actually becomes a bit more like about the the way that you’re presenting and the way that you’re distributing the content, right? So something might get streamed on Disney Plus and YouTube in the future. And ultimately then maybe the zone also has the rights. But if the Zone’s able to get you visible in the bars and restaurants and YouTube, for instance, wasn’t, then that gives them a reason to be
carrying the the rights. So yeah, it’ll it’s interesting to see how it potentially plays out. I don’t have enough of an understanding of kind of how YouTube currently goes about getting its stuff into bars and restaurants. Cause I’m I’m assuming that the Sunday ticket must be streamed to bars and restaurants, but don’t have the the context on that. But yeah, I just think it’s a I think it’s a smart acquisition and another proof point that people still want in person experiences.
Ed (07:29.805)
Absolutely, yeah. Cool. Right, let’s move on to the next story, which one that popped up on my timeline over the week and I’m sure yours too, that Red Bull have decided to do a carting event with a difference. So they’ve announced that Disney Plus and ESPN are gonna stage Max Verstappen versus a hundred at Silverson on the sixteenth of September. So Max Verstappen’s gonna start last in a purpose built a hundred and one cart race against Red Bull athletes, streamers
gaming personality, media figures, and members of the public. I mean what what could possibly go wrong? Comedian Mo Gilligan is going to front that broadcast. the production’s g look it’s going to involve live data, gaming style graphics, drone footage. They’re really going to go to town with it, right? And Red Bulls certainly know what they’re doing with this. But what’s really, really interesting this is because you look at this and you would think this has got YouTube distribution written all over it. But they’ve actually decided to go all in with the SPN
And Disney Plus and not necessarily stream it through their own Red Bull channels as well. Be interesting to see if they end up doing that and co streaming it. interesting to play this game right and go is this them trying to say we want to give if we put it out almost across tree traditional media networks, it almost gives it the cure that it is real sport rather than just a streaming execution.
Andy Marston (08:48.878)
Yeah, potentially. I mean I feel like this this format of like pro athlete versus a hundred, like is a fairly well tested format on YouTube.
Ed (08:57.889)
Yeah, we’ve got Luke Littler coming up shortly, haven’t we, the darts as well.
Andy Marston (09:01.356)
Yeah, and there’s one with Hyung Min son taking on like a hundred five fifth graders or something, right? Where he’s got got to try and score a goal against and so like the format’s definitely been kind of tried and tested and obviously must work to some degree in order for people to continue to keep copying it. But yeah, I guess it will be interesting to see whether there’s the same desire to tune in and watch it if it’s streamed on a platform where
The style of broadcast isn’t maybe typically like that.
Ed (09:33.56)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s un it’s unusual in that sense. I look and I I love the fact as well that they are gonna do it live. They’re not gonna ’cause a lot of the stuff you see, the Red Bull content you see, often is not live. And I do wonder as well, are they doing it like this with traditional media networks because they are more used to this kind of scale of things. ‘Cause look, it’s gonna be a a it’s a global production. It’s going out everywhere, it’s not just like s one specific territory. Is there an element of their
Andy Marston (09:57.338)
Mm-hmm.
Ed (10:01.099)
Because the nature of it being live, they felt like that was a best best place for it. Because also they know as well that it will be a massive clip for for them. They they’re you know, a hundred and one drivers, th that’s gonna be an infinite amount of content for weeks and months after.
Andy Marston (10:14.894)
Yeah, I mean we talked about it before, like the clipping strategies, right? So I would imagine that while the main thing is gonna go out on Disney Plus and ESPN, and ESPN obviously are experts at live streaming sport, have already done that for a number of years and Disney Plus shows a lot of live sports content now as well. so maybe the maybe the thought process is like giving the giving the live run to them makes sense and creates kind of greater validation for the product.
And then actually we can still get a ton of value on YouTube and Instagram out of clips and highlights and like reviews of different moments from across the from across the series because I would imagine that they’ve got a massively comprehensive strategy around how they’re going to utilize this, like you say, to create tons of content, not just a one off broadcast and then stop there.
Ed (11:03.445)
With that yeah, without a doubt.
Ed (11:09.293)
I think there’s a personal story in this as well that obviously, for anyone who’s inter interested in Formula One, Max Versappan’s been having his challenges over the l last six months, let’s say, with his opinions on what’s been going on in in F1. And I think look, it’s interesting that the fact that he’s not winning races also has been going hand in hand with as well. So I’m sure that’s not a massive coincidence. For him to do something that is fun based and him to show his personality, because when you see him away from normal day to day and you take the seriousness away, he’s actually a pretty fun person to
to to watch and listen to. And I think it’ll do him the world of good to show a different side of himself to the motorsport world. But also the world ’cause he is interested in gaming and other things too. I think I think he probably needs it as well.
Andy Marston (11:54.299)
Yeah, I think he’s I think as well, he just signed a new contract, right, with Red Bull. So there’s probably an element of kind of celebrating his new contract and his contract extension at Red Bull. I don’t know. I’m sure this one’s been in the works for a while, but then so would his contract negotiations. So I think it’s an opportunity for Red Bull to basically parade probably their most high value athlete IP.
Ed (11:59.98)
Yeah, that’s right, yeah.
Andy Marston (12:19.492)
that they have in their entire roster. Because obviously Red Bull works with a lot of athletes in a lot of different sports, but they don’t really become they don’t really come much more high profile than Max Verstappen. it shows him in a different light. He’s he’s kind of openly spoken about being slightly bored of F one and like wanting all these other challenges. I’m not suggesting this is what he’s like looking to leave F one to do full time, but like he’s gone and done other races and he’s gone and done other motorsports. Yeah.
Ed (12:43.169)
Yeah, judging by his criticism yeah. Judging by his criticism of the Lego cars. Yeah, yeah.
Andy Marston (12:48.622)
He’s gone and done other motorsports and other races and things and like he’s looking at other other opportunities. And so I guess this is the benefit of being at a team like Red Bull that has these resources outside of just being an F1 team where they can lean on like their expertise in content creation and their expertise at working with creators and their expertise and creating new engaging formats that work on live stream. Cause I mean they work with so many challenger
Ed (13:17.601)
Yes.
Andy Marston (13:17.942)
competitions and kind of extreme sports that they’re probably about as well versed in this space as you could be as a brand. So
Ed (13:29.729)
No, definitely I’m excited about it. I think it’s a little bit different. I think, you know, you d w you hear this all the time about Formula One drivers that carton is all of their first loves to go back to something like that, but also do it you know, do it at Silverstone and the fact that, you know, they’re gonna be talking amongst themselves on radios as it’s happening, there’s gonna be there’s gonna be so many things going on with it. I’m excited to see how it plays out, how they bring the audience into it as well, when you can do whatever you want with it. So yeah, I think that’s definitely one to watch.
Right then, next story. So interestingly, this one is about, and interesting because of the numbers, the women’s tour of Britain. So the women’s tour of Britain drew nearly two hundred and fifty thousand views on their official YouTube channel, which was five times last year’s figure. So look, not necessarily that exciting in itself, the fact that, you know, those kind of numbers. But it was the first time the women’s race has matched the men’s event for the number of stages. nine out of the world’s top ten ranked teams have competed in this, so it’s very different, right, to the men’s
tour of Britain because the men’s tour of Britain I from memory is not at the same level in the the you might know more about this than me Andy in the overarching world of cycling but it’s starting to show now that the women’s sport in cycling in this and for this particular event is starting to move the needle more than the men’s. and they’ve achieved this they send themselves for a youth free free YouTube distribution rather than a broad broadcast writer still now I’ve had a number of conversations over the last couple of years so I knew they were going to go down this path with it.
So so that’s interesting itself that they are now using the women’s to be able to grow their own footprint.
Andy Marston (15:05.774)
Yeah. I mean we spoke about it with the WNBA last week, and the ability for them to leverage TikTok to drive and create new audiences and the fact that actually sometimes can be an advantage if you don’t have the traditional broadcast buy in on the product because you can be more experimentative with the way that you stream and the way that you go about distributing the content. So I think it’s great to see that they’ve taken the initiative to
To push this content on YouTube and good validation to see the the types of numbers that they’re that they’re driving within the competition. I mean Tour de Femme, which is the female Tour de France has been going for a few years now, heavily backed by Zwift as a sort of title partner. I think cycling as a sport from a participatory perspective does pretty well in terms of being sort of gender equal without having the stats in front of me.
And so I think if you can tap into a female audience, like I I see no reason why why it can’t be as engaging or interesting for people to wanna watch.
Ed (16:18.167)
Yeah, it’s given them an opportunity now, and my my hope here is is that that as these numbers start to increase, what they don’t do is do something along the lines of the Commonwealth games that we talked about, where suddenly someone comes in and says, actually, that’s quite interesting. I’m gonna offer you some cash here to do it exclusively with us, but we’re gonna put it put it behind a paywall and then hardly anybody sees it. ‘Cause I think then it diminishes what you’re trying to do with the sport. This certainly for the for the women’s side of cycling, this should be all about, okay, how do we now build an ecosystem around this?
And how do we work out how we get brands and sponsors involved in this? How do we understand who the audience is and own the direct relationship with the audience too? And then obviously what comes with that is all of the monetization you can bring around that too. That’s the opportunity for them here, because if they’d grown it five times now, it would have been on, I’m sure, a relatively modest budget. They’ve now got the opportunity to go, you know, we can do more with this now. We can if we can do it five times now, why can’t we do it five times again? And then you should see other women’s races around the world.
Hopefully speaking to British Cypher and going, You’ve done something pretty clever here or interesting here. How can we learn from you so we do the same? And then you start to see women’s sport, as we s like we said, as we saw with with other ones, starting to have that that parity that it didn’t have before. And that’s the only way you get true equality. But the reality is people will will give it that kudos because they’re seeing that it is there is parity parity there. People are interested in it and it’s viable.
Andy Marston (17:41.113)
Yeah. I mean I previously had Maria Norman from ES Cycling on the podcast and she was talking about just how out of balance I guess the revenue streams are for a professional cycling team. It pretty much all comes from sponsorship. So if your business model is predicated on sponsorship, then it’s predicated on how many eyeballs and what are the viewership numbers and what size of the audience to a large degree, right? and obviously there’s nuance to that.
Ed (17:53.613)
I’ll bet, yeah. Yeah.
Andy Marston (18:10.298)
and there’s nuance to how much of that audience you own if it’s on YouTube. But I think in general, at this point in time, for them to be able to say 250,000 people are watching, for them to be able to get to the broadest audience is more valuable to them than trying to get a small broadcast fee because ultimately what drives revenue for the cycling teams is visibility on the teams and the jerseys and the sponsors, who will then renew because they can say,
Well, we got you five X visibility versus what you got last year, so now can we can you pay us two X more than what you paid us last year?
Ed (18:44.705)
Yeah, probably and you know more about this, I mean, probably more than any sport, right, from a from a sponsor perspective. They are so reli as you said, they are so reliant.
Andy Marston (18:49.602)
Yeah. I can’t remember the exact statistics you shared, but I’m I’m pretty sure it was it was upwards of eighty percent of revenue coming from one stream, which was sponsorship. And a lot of that comes from the title partner. and so you see like a lot of turnover in title partnerships within cycling, despite it not being a sport I’m particularly familiar with. So I think because of the fact that sponsorship is such an important part.
of the of the kind of revenue mix. you’re probably driven even more so than like a a WMBA or some of these other leagues that are trying grow additional broadcast distribution or visibility to to overemphasize on like getting the biggest numbers of viewers. because that will help you the most in those conversations.
Ed (19:44.354)
Yeah, makes sense. Cool. Okay, next story. So don’t know if you watched us at the weekend, the Atoma Ergovic heavyweight fight, which was like watching a Rocky film, quite frankly, the way they were like going at each other. An amazing fight. Everyone thought that Atoma was gonna win it, Urgovic just kept taking punches, punch after punch, and he j and basically just gassed out Atoma. That is not the story though. so
The BBC at the weekend decided, and they’d announced that previously, that they were gonna actually do a live watch long. So they had Olympian Pat Brown, boxing YouTuber Steph Kamali react live throughout the fight. So effectively they did a YouTube watch long of the fight themselves where they didn’t have any rights, certainly from a T V or from a video perspective. And I think this is building on that wider shift that we’ve seen from the BBC and the approach that they’ve been taking. And we’re seeing now that they are now offering effectively
commissions fifty thousand pounds to be able to make content specifically for YouTube that they can put out on the BBC platforms themselves. So they dabbled in the World Cup as we know with some creators and now they’ve decided to do this. Look the Watch Along itself did about seventy nine thousand views. that’s not as big as what they did with the Sidemen, but ultimately like the Sidemen they were doing something around the World Cup where they did actually use some of the rights. where there was this this didn’t have any
But it’s interesting, right, that the BBC are now just going down the road of making this content where they didn’t have any rights at all to make sure that they are getting a piece of the pie, so to speak.
Andy Marston (21:17.282)
Yeah, and for context, like they were streaming the Watch Along live on YouTube and also to was it also on any BBC channels or was it purely through YouTube?
Ed (21:22.155)
On YouTube. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah.
Not that s not as far as I’m aware. No, no, no. I I watched some of whilst he was streaming ’cause I was watching the fight as well. And obviously that’s ’cause I’d seen the release and I was watching a bit of that as well at the same time as well. And as far as I’m aware it was just on YouTube.
Andy Marston (21:36.836)
Okay. And who had the actual rights to the fight?
Ed (21:39.971)
God mixture. where did I watch it? ‘Cause it was a friend’s house.
He’d organised it. Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to think of it. I can’t remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can’t remember.
Andy Marston (21:47.832)
Yeah. Try not to get yourself in trouble with any of the any of the broadcasters.
No, that’s all good. but it was a pay-per-view fight, right? Which means the barrier to entry is quite high and therefore a lot of people would have been listening to a watch along. Probably more emphasis on more emphasis on kind of like free content around something that is behind a paywall versus I don’t know, a Premier League football match that’s on Sky and a lot of people have Sky if they have
Ed (21:57.653)
It was a pay-per-view, yeah, yeah.
Ed (22:15.713)
Yeah, look, and the vast majority are now a lot of the vast majority of fights are pay for you right. Skye, Skye actually had boxing on as well on Saturday night. I was watching some of that as well, which was an all all women’s lineup as well, and and they had some big fights themselves Saturday night, so there was quite a lot going on. but yes, th there is a barrier to entry there and and like I said, my friend paid for it, so I don’t know what it costs, but it’s it’s not cheap these days to watch boxing right for the big fights. so it makes sense to do this kind of thing, I guess.
Whether the audience really needs this wants is from the BBC remains to be seen. because there was another creator out there, I can’t remember the name of him now, who was doing a watch along as well, who did double, triple the audience that that the BBC were g doing. Now look, yeah, the BBC don’t have the heritage of doing these kind of things. But is it really the BBC’s domain to be doing these kind of things, right? It i is this what people expect of the BBC? We have a very unique relationship in the UK with the BBC where we pay
our God, what’s the name of it now? the licence fee for the BBC, is that what we are paying for?
Andy Marston (23:21.114)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Marston (23:25.338)
I don’t see the harm in it.
Ed (23:26.835)
No, no, I mean neither. but there’ll be people will be asking that question, I’m sure.
Andy Marston (23:31.0)
Yeah, potentially, but I I I don’t see any I don’t see any issue with them trialling new formats and new ways to see what engages different audiences. And it seems like a fairly low stakes way to to test the waters. and like you said, they they dabbled in it with the World Cup. It’s better to see the BBC taking swings to try and connect with a new audience versus just continually doing things in a completely traditional way and
not engaging at all with a large demographic that’s going to be become increasingly important for them over the next decade.
Ed (24:07.915)
I agree. And what they did what they did prove as well, they did some pretty good interactive stuff over the World Cup as well. And you could interact with this watch along via the different BBC digital channels as well. so they were ’cause I I was keen to see was this going to be a broadcast or were they actually going to be interactive with the audience? And they were. They were trying to understand what the audience is saying and wanting and they were communicating with the audience throughout this as well. I I it always
Blows my mind a little bit when they do these things as well. Because look, you know, you know you we we know what Mark Goldbridge and Robbie Lyle does and the way they do it. Mark very much you are always front and centre with Mark and and I keep seeing these studios where you’re miles away from anyone. It it wasn’t too bad to be fair, they did qu have l quite a lot of close ’cause I think these things only really work when you are quite close with with whoever the creators or or the talent is. When you see them at a distance at a depth
Andy Marston (24:43.098)
Mm.
Ed (25:04.533)
I it just feels like you’re just peering into someone’s living room and it doesn’t feel quite the same kind of experience.
Andy Marston (25:10.264)
Yeah. I I’m not somebody that watches a ton of watch along, so probably hard for me to comment on that. But I do think it’s interesting that they picked a fight that didn’t include a British fighter. I w I would be curious to see what
Ed (25:21.099)
No, it almost it almost British.
Andy Marston (25:24.654)
But the two main fighters in this case weren’t British, right?
Ed (25:27.275)
Yeah, yeah, he told us British, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Marston (25:29.056)
Okay. For some reason I just looked him up and it says he’s born in Slovakia.
Ed (25:34.987)
He was born in Slovakia, but came here at an early age. Naturalised British. But yes. No, similarly I had to do I had to do I had to do a bit of digging. I had to do a bit of digging at the time as well, so yeah, yeah.
Andy Marston (25:39.224)
Okay. So that’s why they were showing it because there was an article.
that’s all right. I just I hadn’t watched the fight so I just googled him and it’s a Borne Slovak.
Ed (25:48.383)
Yeah, he moved here at a very early age.
Andy Marston (25:50.85)
Okay. So the narrative was all built around a British box up and coming boxer going for a heavyweight title.
Ed (25:59.084)
Well the b yeah and the big thing was is the his age, twenty one, you never really get anywhere near a world title fight at that age. You’re normally late twenties and there’d been so much noise about him because he’d he’d you know, he’d he’d knock so many people out and the whole Hergovich thing was is like you’re twenty one years old, you’re gonna you’re basically gonna run out of steam ’cause I’ve been in this game for a long, long time and that’s exactly what happened.
Andy Marston (26:09.551)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Marston (26:20.111)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (26:23.404)
Yeah. Okay. But the BBC’s probably thinking we’ve got although we don’t have rights for this fight, we’ve got rights for things like the Olympics where he’ll probably be well, could potentially compete, or other events where he could potentially compete in the future.
Ed (26:26.081)
Cool.
Ed (26:40.333)
And and also they’ve got they’ve got a massive heritage in boxing. So, you know, they they would argue that they are well within their rights to have a view on this because they’ve been they’ve been covering boxing for as long as they’ve existed. they’ve had a number of fights down there down the years, they’ve got a number of people who are experts within that organisation who will be covering this. I I think Five Live would probably have had it’s either Five Live or Talk Sport right that would have had the rights to it from an audio perspective.
The BBC would certainly have been covering it anyway. So yeah, that’ll be their viewpoint, I guess. Cool. Alright, and the last story. So, Bundesliga. covered Bundesliga before. So Bundesliga have renewed and changed their distribution in the UK this year. So last year everyone would have known that Mark Goldbridge and the overlap alongside BBC on the red button, were aro awarded the rights by Bundesliga to be able to stream a certain number of Bundesliga games on the Friday night, that is.
and this year they’ve done the same again, but they’ve tweaked it and changed it slightly, and they’ve actually awarded seven games to Jamie Vardy’s YouTube channel, which is relatively new and relatively small at the moment. Jamie’s coming towards the back end of his career now, and he’s now looking at how he moves into a media world. Mark, he’s gonna get fifteen matches on a Friday night. I think Jamie’s is seven. there’s been a lot of news out there saying that Vardy beat the overlap.
To the I’m I’m not sure that is the case, right? Because the Bundesliga will be doing this non exclusively and they’ll be able to place it whatever with whoever they want. interestingly though, I’d again similarly I’d been I mean, my family were delighted that most of my weekend I was watching these kind of things while I was supposed to be away holiday. I watched a bit of this too and it didn’t really land for me. and the numbers were relatively small too. Like you look at what Mark was doing, it was significantly higher. And I
I’m s I’m sorta sat here thinking to myself, is Vardy the right conduit to do something like this? I don’t know if you got like I said, you don’t really want watch watch watch alongside. I know if you got a chance to have a look at it. Or if you’ve had a bit of a think about, you know, what are they trying to achieve with going down the athlete creator distribution?
Andy Marston (28:48.802)
Yeah, I mean I think, like you say, it doesn’t have to be exclusive, right? So I don’t see any harm in trialling different creators in different approaches. The people that want watch Vardy might not be the same people that want to watch Mark Goldbridge. And so ultimately if you can stream across both, and maybe they’re not doing that yet, but maybe they have plans to in the future, then I don’t see any harm in kind of having multiple creators all providing their own take on it and then basically letting the market decide who they prefer.
’cause there might be some people that prefer Vardy. I think where it’s slightly strange is that he’s not ever played in Germany, as far as I’m aware. So he’s obviously recently played in Italy, played a lot of his career in the UK. I think if he had if he’d got the rights to Syria rather than Germany, I could see kind of like a clearer through line. But if he’s gone after the rights or approached the Bundesliga kind of with the intent to get rights,
Ed (29:27.127)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (29:48.505)
I kind of applaud the Bundesliga for being creative with it. And ultimately Vardy does have resonance in the UK market. So maybe they’re thinking he can bring validation to to a UK audience that aren’t already watching Bundesliga because he can provide an athlete’s perspective and a recent a recently retired athlete’s perspective in terms of like well sorry, he might even still be playing. But the fact that he’s
Ed (30:13.037)
Well he hasn’t got a club at the moment, yeah, so we it yeah, it remains to be seen whether he does end up
Andy Marston (30:17.38)
But the fact he’s only I mean he played last season, right? So you can’t get fresher perspective than that in terms of somebody looking at it with a with a view of how a current athlete would be perceiving the like gameplay. So I think from that perspective it’s interesting. And there are more and more English players going to the Bundesliga. Like you’ve had quite a few transfers over this summer of like young players going out on loan or being sold to the Bundesliga. I mean, I’m a Tottenham fan. Mikey Moore literally just signed
Ed (30:21.1)
Yes.
Ed (30:47.373)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (30:47.626)
to go out to the Bundesliga, which again, like Tottenham fans are probably already watching the Bundesliga because of Harry Kane. But having like these young players go over there and and play does kind of create more moments that are gonna be interesting for people to kind of like check in on.
Ed (31:02.657)
Yeah, so Vardy did have a former Leicester player with him. I can’t remember the name of him now, who’s d a German player on that watch say again, sorry?
Andy Marston (31:09.38)
Wouldn’t have been Christian Fuchs, but he might not be German actually. Christian Fuchs has quite a lot of content. Christian Fuchs is Austrian. I don’t know if that was who it was, but Christian Fuchs does quite a lot of content.
Ed (31:14.113)
Yeah, I can’t remember his name or is he Austrian? I might be wrong.
Close close enough, yeah, it was close enough next door. so he yeah, he I don’t know if he’d played in the Bundesliga though, Christian Fuchs, so maybe he did have him on with him. but yeah, I I I I understand your point. He’s got an ability there, Jamie, to give a very different perspective and it’s not one size fit tall. That doesn’t mean that you can’t like that one and like that one at the same time too. So you end you do get that balance with it as well.
Andy Marston (31:40.517)
Yeah. I think F Fuchs looking here played for Bockham and also played for Mainz and then played ninety-nine games for Schalke before joining Leicester. So it looks like he had like at least four or five seasons, maybe more in the Bundesliga before joining Leicester City and then obviously having that incredible run with Leicester alongside Jamie.
Ed (31:47.597)
There you
Andy Marston (32:06.402)
So I actually saw something that he’d s recently started playing for a village cricket team as well, which is very random. But Christian
Ed (32:11.549)
Right, okay. it’s definitely p got personality, Christian Fuchs. I remember seeing plenty of videos when he was at Leicester, and clearly gets on well with with Jamie as well. So it it like I said, i it it it’s inter and the other thing point I was gonna make as well is like these things often become normal, right? How do you make some noise as you’re about to start your second season doing this distribution like that? Well, there’s a surefire way of doing that. You do something with Jamie Vardell as they’ve done there, it reminds everyone that they can watch these games on a Friday night on YouTube.
Andy Marston (32:20.234)
He’s got an easel in the world.
Andy Marston (32:33.911)
Ed (32:40.899)
so there’s an element of picking someone new as the name to append this to and remind everyone that Mark Goldbridge is doing it and other people too. because reality is like I said, it’s only seven games that Jamie’s getting, it’s not fifteen like Mark. There’s an element of it reminds everyone that this is happening and that’s where you can watch the games on a Friday night.
Andy Marston (33:00.738)
Yeah, and from Jamie’s perspective, gives his channel more validity straight off the bat, gives him a run at something on his own terms, maybe he becomes a pundit off the back of it, maybe he leverages it to get additional media rights in other markets like Syria or like other markets maybe that don’t have a direct kind of deal into the UK. and I think we’ve seen like a lot of experimentation more broadly with
Streaming to different channels because of the preseason, because of the nature of preseason and they’re not being broadcast rights, kind of agreed unanimously across it. A lot of teams have kind of dabbled in different things when it comes to preseason, like Tottenham obviously did a stream with Men in Blazers, which I saw I saw a headline that they’d tripled the amount of viewers that they’d expected to get for that. But I think the expected number was quite low, but still
Ed (33:54.988)
Yeah, but it always used to be i and and also it always used to be that and I know this because I used to sell the rights to it many, many moons ago, that it used to be that that teams who had Champions League qualifiers or pre season things like that would obviously go and sell their own rights and they would usually try and go to different media organisations to do it. But obviously there’s realisation now that n there might not be that many people watching it if you go and do that. And actually if some of these event some of these tours are
sponsor led. The reality is the sponsor wants some value out of this, like we talked about earlier with the women’s cycling. And a better route might be to go and distribute like this. So there was definitely a lot more of that this summer. I remember last summer as well, I’m assuming Barcelona did the same. You can watch all of Barcelona’s games through your YouTube membership, which really helped them to grow their YouTube membership too. There are lots of different ways you can do this and use pre season much cleverer way, which we’re seeing now.
Cool. That’s us done. Five stories. Nearly five minutes each. thanks Andy again for your time this week. as ever, you can like and subscribe. but that’s been the Attention Podcast. I’ve been Ed Abbott, and this has been Andy Marston.
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