How TikTok is helping sports and broadcasters reach the fans that TV can't touch

0:00Hello everyone, welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone. The community lead joined as always by my CEO, Nick Meacham. And if you're watching the video, you can also see that we are joined by TikTok's Global Head of Sports, Rolo Golsev. Rolo, thank you for having us, because what I can say is this will be the highest altitude in which we have ever recorded a podcast. Definitely. We're on the 57th floor. The TikTok of us in New York is insane. You can walk all the way around and see an amazing view. But thank you for coming along and a busy week for you guys with your events, a really great shot. Sure is, but also this is part of the nicest backdrop we've had, I think as well. So that's a couple of boxes ticked. I don't know if we'll be able to beat 57 floors up. Have you drawn an amount on at some stage? Yeah, no. I think we might have to just make this a bit of an annual thing. Yep, I'm sure. I'm happy with that. Yeah, well, Rolo, I appreciate you joining us today. We're going to talk all kinds of things around sports media, things that TikTok are

1:00specifically doing. So we want to keep this a bit conversational, but I think maybe the kind of place to start this off is just to kind of set the scene a little bit, and think a little bit beyond TikTok, and just you've obviously been in sports media for a long time, multiple different organizations, not just strictly with TikTok, but perhaps just on the way you see sports consumption, particularly over the last five years across digital platforms. What are some of the biggest changes you're seeing in terms of consumer behavior? Yeah, of course. I'll be cheeky and extend the five years to maybe seven to when TikTok kind of started right out. Yeah. And I feel the massive change was before TikTok, everything was landscape, everything was like click to view in some way. You might have a homepage which was suggested to you, you might search for something, you would click and choose, and then the biggest way you'd ever engage was that something would be to comment or to reply to a comment and like, and that was about it, and then TikTok comes along, and now everything's vertical. The feed is completely sub to you based on your interest and what you're watching, and

2:02the majority of all of our traffic is in the few page. And then the level of engagement, of course, you can comment, you have a great discussion, but really true engagement is co-creation, where fans are getting an original piece of IP from a publisher and creating content relating to it. And so that's where like trends and cultural movements start on TikTok. And so we've just gone from this to this, and a completely different way of engaging. It's interesting, you frame it that way. I do some of the onboarding at Sports Pro for some of our new employees, and I talk about some of the changing trends. And one of the things I talk about is exactly what you mentioned, which is, you know, I ask them, I was like, hey, where did you consume most of your content five, 10 years ago, and the answer is on my TV or on an iPad in a horizontal format, whereas like one of those changing habits is vertical, which has a larger impact than I think people think of, like we talk about sometimes, like, Bundesliga is now, you know, filming things vertically. We talk about cricket, it's been really successful because of the way Nick, you're going to have to help me with the cricket terminology where they do the whole bowling, you know, works itself out really well for a vertical space. Don't do that again, don't do the bowling, but yeah, I got the point. I think, yeah, the bowling thing works quite well, but they've done really well, there's,

3:08I think I sport like cricket works incredibly well, but not only at cutting down the horizontal and just going there on the vertical, but they've also done a really good job, and you see more of this, that the two shot view, so the two horizontals on top of each other, one might be the wider, the wider shot of the whole field, and one will close up all the stats and data on the bottom screen, and that I think's been a really good evolution of how people haven't been forcing stuff, they're making something a bit more purpose-built and it really, really works on the platform. Completely. Yeah, the split screen, two element, it makes so much sense, tennis is like cricket really lends itself well to vertical without minimal editing from the original broadcast. We can see it in a future world where you have the vertical live rights and the horizontal live rights. It's not happening yet, but it's definitely, I think, on the way. Do you see those sports that sit as a more vertically friendly style sport? Are they also performing better, not just aesthetically, but they actually get the numbers as well? The tennis is having a real boom on TikTok, but I don't think it's just because the court

4:10is the right shape. It's really the athletes, Sabelanka, Alkaraz making amazing content after when in the US Open, the athletes are probably the most special element of tennis, and they are embracing TikTok in a really big way. We've had some great efforts to onboard as many new tennis players as possible, and we're just continually seeing whether it's ATP, WTA, or US Open, the growth of their accounts coincide with more athletes coming onto TikTok. It seems to be all about athlete content. I'm just going to talk about onboarding. What typically goes into onboarding an athlete? You give them the brilliant basics of how to use the platform, what goes into that? At the very basic level, there's the making sure they're verified, so they are the official version of themselves, and making sure we also remove any other accounts which are in personation of any kind, giving them the best practices of exactly what to create, supporting them in any production tips, guidance on trends, and information on how best to use TikTok.

5:10And setting them up with other companies that you could help as well, potential agencies around production, and really then the ongoing account management from members of my team, who will work with a large portfolio of athletes as well, so they're regularly checking in, regularly continuing to give them advice throughout that time. So it's a process of getting people comfortable with TikTok as well. Sometimes people feel like you have to be really creative, and that is true in some ways, and you can find your way of expressing yourself on TikTok. It feels like you don't need to necessarily have a huge production behind things, although I say that with the biggest production set we would have behind us, but you don't need that big production behind you. Just to curious, what do you guys see where it comes to? I don't want to jump too far ahead in our conversation, but that dynamic between athletes and the personality side that seems to be every type of media is looking for more of that, to what teams and leagues are doing. The teams and leagues, I wouldn't say struggling, but they are finding it difficult to get the cut through in the same way, and the athlete publishing something similarly might.

6:15Is that somewhat accurate, and they're actually really trying to get the athletes to come to them and to do stuff on their own channels, or how do you just see that dynamic? I think there's just this element of what access they have. So the league may have retained rights of the action. The broadcaster might have the majority of the match rights, and then the teams will get that closer access at the training ground, where there are so many great examples, especially in American sports, where the football or the basketball team are coming out to training, and they ask them a really simple question, and it's a really great way of getting behind the scenes of the chiefs or the laykits or whatever it might be. And then what the best way to marry up, the England goalkeeper described to me was, they then get the access in the hotel, where they can film with their other player at the tournament and do some really fun, interesting stuff, and so it's just different levels, and you wouldn't expect UEFA to then want to try and do the bet which marry ups is doing with her teammates. So there's such a range of what they can and can't do, where we do see great successes

7:20is where the leagues are embracing the teams in a more meaningful way, and that's what we've seen with WTA and ATP, where they've lent in with us to work with the athletes, and then broadcast as well, where they include the athletes in the post-match and do more interesting things with them, and of course things like CBS, Galatso are incredibly successful on really Caragher and that kind of thing as well. That's a show that just seems to be bigger than all the parts combined, beneath it, even the sport almost. But I just find interesting about that is that's the same crew that does, or largely the same crew that does Champions League coverage in the UK, and it's just to me interesting how you have the same set of top talent, but to paint on who the broadcaster is, it's seemingly the American side allows them to be a little bit more funny, how you can have two completely different end products just by having the same talent. So I find that really interesting just in terms of seeing some of their stuff, because like I have friends sharing me all of their stuff, but you don't get that same coverage, I don't think we need to go down the route of how football commentators work in the

8:23British scene, because that's a whole other thing we start thinking about, or the Gary Neville's and all that, but we won't get into that conversation here, I don't think. So Roller, off the back of what Nick said there, and you sort of touched on a little bit, one of the things we've spoken about is rights holders, their IP is quite valuable to them, and sometimes it's difficult to maybe relinquish some of that control, but ultimately we know the fan ecosystems, they thrive on authenticity and having genuine voices. So kind of along with you, the lines you're talking about there, opening that up for athletes, what's maybe some of maybe a misunderstanding by sports organizations, or something they're not taking enough advantage of in terms of understanding the power of, you know, maybe you can relinquish a little bit of control over your IP, because I kind of understand that balance of, you've invested a lot to build up that value you have, but also there is something about you need to let people be themselves. Yeah, of course. I think this is the biggest question for social platforms and rights holders, what fan

9:25creation rights look like in the future, and probably more in the short term, what athlete IP rights could look like, because it's obviously a much smaller trusted cohort, your own athletes of your sport, and allowing them to post their goal clip. The NBA allows any of the players to post their highlights, right? So that's a more forward leaning organization who's a bit more flexible towards IP being spread out and recognising it as a massive marketing benefit if Steph Curry's posting his highlights from the night before on TikTok, that is huge, and they see it real benefit. And you know, the IFC, a very traditional organization this time around for the Winter Olympics gave more rights to the athletes to post on various parts as well. So we're going in this direction, and it's where some rights holders want to lean into it more, and then where others, and rightly so may feel, and you know what, this is just infringement, and we're going to be more cautious. And so from our perspective, it's about helping different rights holders with what they're comfortable with. Our game plan products, one of them is just linking across any content which has a hashtag

10:31of that sport. So LeLiga, any content where someone's used hashtag LeLiga, so regardless of what the actual video is, they've used the hashtag. The link can then go through to a LeLiga destination within TikTok, which also has the ability to link out to the broadcaster as well. Interesting. It's fine that dynamic so perplexing that we're still taking so long to inch forward, but obviously the dynamic between the rights infringement issues, and no surprise at the ISEs a little bit slower these things, but they also have a lot of long-standing rights deals. I remember one Olympics where athletes were sharing clips that were being shared by other broadcasters from other markets that had the rights to show, this was not on TikTok, this is on other platforms, but the right to be seen, so that the post was being shared, but it was that not available to watch in your country, and everyone was just getting like, these athletes are sharing this stuff, it is available somewhere, we're just not for us, and that creates a really predicate sort of a messy environment to navigate, but

11:31I think inevitably you're going to see way more relaxation over that over time. Hopefully so, I mean, that's the kind of content I think builds it out, because one of the questions we had off the back of the event that we hosted at your offices in London was the social media need sports, or sports need social media, and I think all the time where Nick and I landed was they both mutually need each other just as much as the other does. We always kind of talk about live sports rights, where the amount of money is invested, because that's where the eyeballs are, but ultimately, if I'm a bangles fan, I'm only watching the bangles for three hours for live content, I've got to fill in the rest of my week with other content, so whether that's the build up in the anticipation to the game, where there's a whole conversation taking place there, followed by the analysis that happens after the game, the two sides, it is interesting where the money goes in terms of the rights deals, but actually sort of which side needs to more, and I think we'd argue it's probably 50-50 pounds in terms of like, well, I'll say, I don't know, you might have said it. I think sports needs social, or the social needs sports, I think social has enough impact

12:35in like, through culture, to do okay, but I have also seen that most of the major platforms are really investing a lot of time to educate nubskill sports, because there is such a strong resonance with audiences when they do have sports rights on the platform, so there is a value there, I don't know if it's 50-50 though, maybe it's off. But someone working at a social platform only focused on sports, I think we need sports 100%, so we definitely need all those partners in that content, it's critical for us. That dynamic between, because we talked about sports content, actually before we go into that, I was going to say, come back to the point I was suggesting about the infringement issues, and you were saying, or more, which platforms are publishing what, and the example that I come to is the DeZone Club World Cup example, which you shared, some study, some insights around, can you just talk us through what were some of the stats that you did through that project, with the Club World Cup that was hosted in the US last summer, and that notion of, I guess, being measuring more closely the impact you're having on the

13:39audience funnel. Yeah, we've had an interesting product during our last year or two, to really hone in on what TikTok's value proposition is to the sports industry, and the case study we now have with DeZone is a really great way of reflecting that. One of the products we have is an anchor link, and DeZone posted, I think it was about 4,000 posts, and they had around 5 billion views, and on all that content, we had a link which could go through to a Club World Cup page, and on that page, you could click once more to watch life, and so our argument or our proposition is, we can take you from the few page to watching live on a partner's app or website within two clicks. And we're okay, and really, like, that's part of our strategic direction. One because we know how important that is to sports organizations, to own customer, understand their information, but also make sure people are still watching live sports, especially younger or female demographics who aren't.

14:41And then for us, we know that TikTok's this kind of cultural trend-based app that people keep going back to each day anyway. So we're all right to, like, that balance and trade-off, with that, over half million users went out to DeZone's app. And so, from a customer acquisition standpoint, that's massive, and becomes a really, really critical part of what we're trying to achieve. Well, it definitely just completes the, or removes the challenge or question mark about what role is social having, if it's for a broadcasters perspective, if it is being measured, and they're able to see those numbers play out that way, have DeZone share anything in terms of how, of those half a million, how many they're actually able to turn into actual subscribers, users, actually watching a live experience, because it's one thing to get them there, and it's another thing to get them to commit to it. So when some of these do, the key thing now is to make it like a deep language, go straight into the live. So if they've clicked that, they should be watching live. And the club or couple, I think, was free to air on DeZone. And so obviously, then, that experience, we don't know how many later became paying

15:44subscribers, but we know that DeZone definitely want to work with us in the future. So we're hoping that there's a positive outcome from a case study we're both proud of as well. That's the importance of reducing all that friction in the experience, because just a couple of more little barriers to entry, even not just the paying part, but, you know, user name, user email addresses popping up and so forth, we'll add extra friction to that experience and you're going to lose people all on the way. Absolutely. And in terms of the live sports, one of the things we talked about again, the then was whether or not social media was about you add a distraction to live sports, because you talk about second screen applications or do you want people tuned in all the way? But with TikTok, in terms of, are there any data or any insights you have in terms of how people use the app while live sports is taking place, you know, are there, is there a change in consumption habits when live sporting events are taking place that are not noticeable for you? From our sense to confirm the first part of the question, we know that 85% of the users we serve a used TikTok as a second screen during live sports.

16:47So we know that that is a pattern which is happening. The part we're very sure about is the products we built are now designed to have a sports information element to them as well. So a year ago, you'd come to TikTok and you watch any content and that'll be great. You can see in parts of sports, but now when you go to these match hubs, these pages they'll have live scores, they'll have stats around the players. So we're transitioning from a point of general sports entertainment to a place people come regularly to check their sports content. But it's also, I think it's about the creative moments. We have some broadcasters posting near live highlights. So as soon as it's happening, so you might use TikTok as a way of seeing a more creative edit of the same thing you're watching. So there's definitely a clear length in element and the other part I would mention is what I'm noting and maybe realizing in the last few years is that from a sports perspective, we are a very like temple event based app. When there's loads momentum around a world series, a finals, the Olympics, it's like all

17:50the different users posting about it, all the creators, the athletes, it creates this massive wave of momentum. And so for us, we're encouraging rights holders when their live moment is on, that's when it's really important to post, relating to your marriage as well. I'm going to keep going in sort of the data and trend side of things that you see. We've talked about how you can drive people to a design platform, but then terms of TikTok being a source of discovery for people, what do you see in terms of data trends of how do you go from someone that's just naturally just kind of scrolling to a more deeper set of fandom? Are there particular characteristics that you can identify to say that you're helping me? I hate to use the funnel analogy, but you know, sort of, yeah, the stickiness, you know, because you know, for example, for me, I started golf. I found a Bryson Nation bo video and then I went and bought a set of golf clubs and then I went to get lessons and now I'm golfing like that sort of, I think, you know, for the PGA tour or someone like that, like the dream scenario or the prototype.

18:52Yeah, exactly. Someone catches the peach's content and then now all of a sudden they're a golf player and for the first time ever, I've watched a Ryder Cup and stuff like that for you guys like on TikTok. There are things that you guys see in terms of how you can, like I said, from just someone who's just accidentally scrolling to, they're now really into this. I think we see this at like the entire time and the way TikTok's discovery mechanisms occur is you can have a friend who's interested in something else or you watch something and then you are served a video based on what other people might be interested in and if it's the same kind of content you're watching. And so from that, you can be, I have no interest in sport whatsoever, but you could be watching a certain show. We saw this with Summary Time Pretty, I don't know if you guys watched this, isn't it? Not on my out watching. No, no. It's an Amazon Prime show and it was a like teen dramas and maybe that's why you guys were watching. Where there was like a romance element between Team Conrad and Team Ajay, no, I'm going

19:53to budget. I don't remember the second one, there's definitely two romantic interests and all of the sports teams in the US especially started jumping on this trend of asking every player when they came out, are you Team Conrad, are you this kind of thing? And so what then ends up happening is people who are watching a teen drama or an Amazon Prime and coming to TikTok who are then consuming content around that show suddenly start learning about the Jacksonville Jaguars and like suddenly might then watch a bit more. So for us, a lot of this pattern is how any entry point can become fandom, but it's also all about then content which will keep people watching. So when we work with publishers MLB at the moment during spring training, they had a crata who was really explaining the fundamentals of baseball. And that then appeals to other female audiences of that female crater, but it meant that if you were just getting into baseball, you were learning about the sport instead of trying to come in at this final point where, you know, I think at elsewhere, sports can be

20:55quite intimidating. It can be like, okay, you either know the offside rule or you don't, like you can't break into football easily. TikTok's this very friendly, happy, interesting place where you can get into any sport. And you can be interested in Charlotte Clerk based on this personality. You don't have to yet know about downforce and tire degradation, but that's kind of probably one of our bigger USPs as well. And I think it's kind of the dynamic between learning about someone's personality, the culture side, the non-sporting part. It sounds like it plays a massive role in building that fandom for you. You're watching content, but wasn't anything to do with the official tournament, right? No, it was just him. He set himself as challengers where he's like, I'm going to break the course record or can I do this with a set of golf clubs that I bought from Walmart? They're usually, it's not him taking you through like, hey, these are my, you know, top tips for how to become a really good golfer. Like, they're usually just him like, I'm going to set myself out and try to do something fun and interesting. And the difference there is he's had a lot of flexibility given to him by Liv Goff, which was his partner, which is the PGH was much more restrictive.

21:58And he wouldn't have been able to do some of the things that he has been able to do. And it comes back to your point about enablement, right? No, you guys are trying to enable the sports properties, but in turn, the sports properties then have to chill out a little bit and relax so that it can open the fun gates for basically more audiences and more awareness of the sport. That'd be the summary? Yeah, pretty much. I don't, we don't tend to walk in and say, tell them to chill out, but I can do that. We try to like, what we do best is we show them the data of their own league and explain to them how much fan creation is out there or how much, you know, athletes, we tend to find that the athlete accounts have the highest female viewership of any type of sports uploader. And so it's like with tennis, but also whichever sport, if you're trying to grow a bigger female fan base, working with athletes, your sports is a great way to do it. And so let's talk a bit more about, obviously, one of the major partnerships you guys announced was the FIFA partnership. You also mentioned game plan earlier. I believe those, those, those launches were kind of linked together, maybe just talk

22:59us through all of that. Yeah. I'll wait, maybe I'll explain the game plan a bit a little on the FIFA as well, the chicken and egg there. Yeah. Which one first? So yeah, game plan stems back to Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, where we had a gamified page that had, and this is a big, on major, major events, we try and work out really in compelling gamification mechanisms. And so during that Summer Olympics, you could do some tasks, earn some own amount of points and win prizes. And that was our first foray into building really custom in app elements for the sports vertical. We fast forward a little bit to Super last February. And that's when we started doing it with league content, where we had this link which went through to a page, which went through to live broadcast. And that was the first time. What we noticed then was really surprising was the percentage, the click for rates, once people went to that, like, in-app destination was actually particularly high. So people were interested in going to watch more. And so we, that's when we kind of on to an idea.

24:00So the rest of game plan is a collection of different tools. And one of the key ones is a search up. And when you, essentially when you search on TikTok, if we've worked with a league to have an official search destination, the results are all related to official accounts first. So you'll have, what have we got on right now? Recently we had, so for the Super most recently, it would be NFL content, the teams in both contents and athletes. But it's essentially diverting away from the organic results to make sure that users are seeing the most official relevant content. And there was a click out element there which was used 3.7 million times. People went out to an NFL page where they could find out where to watch and how to engage. So these are all together, the kind of game plan part. And where we've now led to is to work with FIFA around the 2026 World Cup. As their first ever preferred platform, there will be the search other element, the matchup we were describing, and also some really interesting gamification layers.

25:01And elements that will, more of it will be announced soon. The exciting bit that we haven't spoken about yet, FIFA-wise is the creator part for us. So there are going to be 30 creators on the ground across US, Mexico and Canada going to all the different games. There are official FIFA creators, TikTok creators. And they'll have access to things which no one else has access to all in combination. So the bus arrival, press conferences, pitch side. And so they are getting that kind of accreditation as creators that we've never seen before. So that's going to be really, really cool and fun. And for us, it means globally we can connect creators from Japan, Brazil, around the world, or coming in. And then the one which we'll tie in into exactly what we've been talking about is we also have this kind of 500, the FIFA 500, these creators online, who will have access to a large portion of the FIFA's archive. So they'll be able to create content using FIFA's archive, the best Ronaldo Nazario goals,

26:03or the top 10 overhead bicycle kicks at all the World Cups. And so they have full rights to use that IP leading up to the tournament. And that's a great test for us to see how, you know, really unleashing fan creation to 500 really well-produced trusted creators. And it's all about that kind of cool walk run base. And so I think we're hopefully getting towards the walking part. And that's exciting for the World Cup. That is really cool. On the game plan concept, and basically creating a destination within the TikTok environment, most people associate TikTok with consumption of the video content and swiping through videos that you want to see next, so forth. But that notion of creating a platform within the destination, just how is that as big as it sounds for you guys to try and creating more of a complete experience? Or you already have been doing a lot of that already, and it's just kind of the next step and subtle evolution. So we had, I think it's something like 62 different game plan campaigns last year,

27:04starting with Super Balls, the first one. So we've been doing it across pretty much all major sports. The very few, if we missed out on the really top-top IP, which has relevance across two or more continents, let's say. So we're getting there. What's hard is we now are changing user behavior and pattern, right? So it's, people predominantly are coming to TikTok just to consume content. They may not expect to go look at the live schools or check the standings. One of my favorite things about game plan as a user is I can go to the Premier League's page, and I can see the table, which is great. I feel like I never remember who's worse. It's always fun to check back. I can look at the fixtures and various things. But the content now on that page is basically any official account, any account which has come through with the right hashtag in time-based order. So I can click into that destination, and I can swipe through that weekend's Premier League action from like a real different diverse range of uploaders. And so it's kind of like TikTok's version and match it today.

28:06So you'll have the TNT content, the Sky content, Premier League, your NBC and the US, wherever you are, right? And that is a really fun experience. But maybe most people don't know that quite yet. And I'm obviously probably a heavy user in the most. I was working here. But what we're trying to do is over time change that behavior so where I, a destination, not only sports video content, but just sports as a whole to consume. Do you use that notion of like creating this experience and destination to point people to? Are you doing that in any other sectors? Or is it really sports kind of the litmus test for TikTok to do that? We've got an amazing proposition in entertainment around movies. And so that's where there'll be IP relating to movies. And it drives through to these ones and you can buy tickets to go see in the cinema. And so it's a similar concept and definitely in the entertainment world, really successful for TikTok. Do you think that at some stage, maybe this is a bit further down the line, but you would have a notion of, let's say, a major of sports property leading into gameplay and heavily enough

29:07that they wouldn't even need their own app and destination that could just be pointing to their TikTok platform or product. Because it seems like the platforms that I look at and use, major events ones, the main reason I go to them is looking at some of the stuff that you guys are having. And why not have it in just one destination rather than fragmenting that experience and having separate Apple together? Maybe, honestly, I haven't thought of it that way. So maybe after this, think about it that way. Right now, for sure, it's about complementing both the leading broadcasts of the official offering. Because we are very aware that by doing that, we are making sure that we're building their critical business. And broadcasts are the users best on their broadcasts. So that's how we see ourselves as a really, really driving value. But from a live perspective, that's probably something which has surprised me just at the beginning of this year, is how successful rights holders and broadcasts are using TikTok live. So all last year, we had like kind of tests

30:08to try and prove out some live concepts. So we had an IsoCam stream of Just Messy with Apple. We then developed that further of Apple where it would follow, you know, five different players. The MessyCam was viewed 6.4 million times live. So that was, we knew that there was definitely an appetite. But a really great example is Fox Sports. They are almost going towards a point where they could be live 24-7 on TikTok with something, where, so just straight after a live golf tournament, they live stream the exact same tournament straight away the whole thing, after we finish. And so it still didn't cannibalize their broadcast audience at all from the live perspective and had like a secondary replay factor. Or they started a lot for the euros in Copamerican 2024, where they would live stream all of their pre-match content. And then they would leave like a live look in for the first 10 minutes. And that's a critical part of our FIFA platform agreement is where broadcasts globally can live stream the first 10 minutes of every game.

31:09And that's to be fair, come from like the genius of the team working at Fox Sports. So they're consistently seeing it as either a great way to build an audience on TikTok or be they're very aware that it can drive through to their own and operate it as well. The example that you gave with Messi and Apple, we've seen a few examples of particularly soccer and football trying that initiative of having either a single player came or the vertical broadcast live. We haven't seen that, it seems to be that we have not seen that pick up as a consistent ongoing action like the Fox Sports example you gave. Why is that? Is there been more just trial and error or trial and testing at the moment only? I think it's one finding the partners who want to lean in as well. Like it's not the most immediate thing that everyone's thinking to do. So it's finding really adventurous and fantastic partners to collaborate with. And it's also, if you boil it down into marketing mechanism, you are someone comes to TikTok, they see a bit of Messi and if they want to watch the whole game,

32:09they know then that they can go to Apple to watch the full game in that experience. And we're very happy for that to be a key part of our value proposition. And so I think that's quite unique to TikTok as part of what we want to do. And then it's hopefully actually something where we do start to broaden the sound more. And I think the World Cup would be the perfect environment to see how successful that first 10-minute live has worked for such a critical tournament around the world. One of the things you talked about was highlights. Certainly something we've talked about. One of the things that came up was the event that we had with you guys was around the importance of getting highlights out as soon as possible. And you know, there were clear success markers for how soon you get a highlight out. But I think one of the other things as well about highlights and interesting of your commentary on this is TikTok being around the community, the content creator side of things. Obviously one of the key features, you could stitch a video, something like that where there's the original highlight that's gone out from the rights holder, but then someone has stitched something

33:10additionally to that. So I guess how do you see the performance of when something goes from beyond just the own channel to a separate creator's gone on and stitched something? You know, are there examples where the actual, the conversation that was led through using those other features on the platform have actually outperformed the original highlight or sort of what you see in terms of that having the ability on the platform for the community to engage with content that's already been put out on official channels? Yeah, I don't know if I have the exact example of the stitch one being more than the original, but I'm sure it has happened. What I could do the other way around is take when a user has done something really interesting with the original sound and then the rights holder has taken that original sound and put it into their content. So there you've got like the user creating the IP technically and the rights holder is using it to make that video more interesting. There was this amazing one where just a creator like hit that hit bone against the banister and the stairs and made like a yelp sound and then people have like edited that into like so many different songs mashed it together

34:10and then I've seen lots of Premier League football clubs use the mash up of that song and this is the weird and wonderful cuffuffle mix of TikTok where like things kind of merge together to create something beautifully creative and fun. So I would say the original sound side definitely bleeds in really well to the rights holder and then from a stitch and duet point of view it's all about when you encourage users to have that enabled as well. The rights holder to keep that on as well. And I guess adding to that we were talking about discoverability and I'm going to loop this back in. There's intentionally going out in searching for something, you know, for example we were just talking before this like I used TikTok to find recipe. So there's sometimes like I'm very specifically putting in biriyataka recipe. But then also I can also find things just organically they come up through my feed. So there's sort of that difference between like being served content because you have organically gone out of your way to find it versus the algorithm has found what you want based on that. Just like you're actually for TikTok in terms of because some fans might go looking for sports content

35:12versus some fans just might be served it because of what's gone on there. Is there any sort of strategy you give to them thinking about how they think about their content? They're not all their content is necessarily going to be something that people are directly searching. It may just be something I think Nick and I have called it stumbleability which I don't think is a real word. But like is there any sort of thought for those rights holders or sports broadcasters that not every piece of content they make is something that someone's explicitly searching for? It might just be something they stumble across. I think most of TikTok is stumbled across. Also one of the I think mobile the amount of searches TikTok is now number one. So there's a huge amount of people searching for content that's definitely there. Especially recommend like an educational content. So people learning about a sport and that's why when you have those creators out there explaining how the MLB rules work so valuable for the sport and I think it's so underestimated by everyone really, how much that gets people through the door. So a lot of the stumble upon element is there

36:14but the search aspect of TikTok is really powerful as well. I was going to say it's probably the other way around. The stumbling part is is TikTok almost in that sense but it's the how do you get people to take their journey of intentionally finding things and finding the right things. It's probably more the question mark I think I would have there on how you'd navigate that journey which game plan and stuff is probably what you're part of that. That's a critical part. So that's taking TikTok is an absolute reach machine of finding audiences. That's really like a major part of the USP and then the game plan products are there to amplify but also divert. So like divert search users to an official destination. Divert people from the few page to their match destination. This is all part of that plan and then when we advise rights holders there's for example creating content around trends. So there's a really wonderful trend which is unexpected edits. I don't know if you've seen this but it's where it'll be like a viral clip of something which has happened before and there's one with someone falling down the stairs and they're falling

37:14along their knees and it immediately cuts and you don't realize to Didier Drogba celebration where he slides on his list of things. And so that's an amazing trend where the video I just described the secondary element was the FA Cup account taking the Drogba that element. So if one of the ways you can try and capitalise the stumble upon us is definitely not an official word. If you want to capitalise on that few page TikTok side working across trends is definitely effective as well. I was just going to say that unexpected edit one one this podcast was over because I can't describe it on this show. There's a great one with Harry McGuire that's exactly like that. We're like it's a curveball. It's not what you're expecting and then Harry McGuire comes in. I have shared it with a few friends. I don't think I can share it on this podcast very funny like form of content 100%. So you're working with a lot of sports, broadcasters and sports properties themselves. Naturally, there's ways I always hear this is like how much is enough? How much resources is enough to put

38:15and commit to content? And I'm sure you're having lots of conversations about how to approach using the platform but also there must be looking for signals on how to make the most bang for their buck in terms of resource and time, particularly in this world. What are some of the tips perhaps that you're giving them around that? Is it basically just some of the stuff we're being talking about in terms of letting your fans do the work for you in a sense and doing those things or as other things that you give advice and tips to those broadcasters and platforms? Yeah, I have a world-class team here who are fantastic at working with each of those types of organizations. We work on some business review process where we will do an amazing analysis of past performance. And so one of the best ways to encourage what should they do more is not on a whim, not unlike our opinions. It's just to look at the data of what's worked and encourage those partners to do the same thing again. We've done that before with a partner who's was posting their highlights but way later than others or that on the same topic.

39:15And we showed them if they posted earlier how much more effective that would be. We showed them their own data of when they did, but also the fact that after 30 minutes a large amount of the interest in a specific match has already declined. So a lot of what we do is trying to only base it on empirical facts versus just encouraging people to do more for the sake of doing more. It's very much more scientific to say, we think if you do this, this will succeed. And that kind of side. But what is so well, that makes loads of sense. And using data always definitely helps to help the story. So why is your mission to therefore help them get more out of the platform is the end result that you're measuring the TikTok is just trying to drive up engagement on the platform and more time spent on platform or more users or is it all of the above or is there a specific mandate or what's the greater goal with all this work that you guys are putting into? So overall is to be a really primary destination for sports content.

40:15So if you're coming to the app for to be entertained with sports but also to catch up on the action or to see the later scores that kind of side overall with that, you know, how long people are watching sports content will matter. And that can be one of the ways we just checking in to see how successful we are and achieving that longer-term goal. I think for me, one of the things is around trying to connect all the different TikTok revenue streams towards the rights holders. So we have TikTok shop which could be really effective for teams in selling their shirts. There's a large live revenue gifting side of TikTok where that could be quite effective for broadcasters. We have some ad monetization solutions as well. So for me, goal wise, this is less TikTok's goal but more my goal towards partners and any entity we work with is seeing how we can drive greater revenues as well. That's always the big question I have with any social platform, TikTok especially, is that monetization piece. You mentioned a bunch of them there. How far along are they to be able

41:16to really provide meaningful direct ROI and return on the investment of resource or some of the platform versus inching up its impact? I think it's a balance tune for some sectors, some partners really meaningful. Some areas still growing and then the combination of the four I mentioned, that's we haven't cracked that yet, of really combining it. So there's a unique value proposition of different sources that partners couldn't get anywhere else. And that's something where if that's the right elements, we know we would be valuable in that sense. I also think all of what we discussed around half a million users for DeZone going to their website and app. That is in itself, in many ways, much more important than any revenue platform can drive. So if we can do it all, that's amazing. And we're trying to grow all of the different pies at the same time. Well, innately if they're driving audiences from the platform of choice

42:16in TikTok directly to their platform, the cost of that acquisition of a potential subscriber is going to be frictional to the amount they're spending on potentially acquiring. Audiences, if you look at some of the numbers you see from some of the major streaming players, so that is obviously going to be innately much more valuable than making a bit of money out of the e-commerce platform that's marginal on the panel. Yeah, well, I think that's one of the challenges sports has at the moment is you often hear the younger generations aren't necessarily as interested in sports, which I don't know how true that is or isn't. But there's the balance between monetizing today versus growing fandom for the long term and just what that appropriate balance is. And I don't know for you at TikTok, if there's a view on that in terms of balancing that out, because obviously I don't think you want to, I don't think fans want to be felt like they're just, you know, an empty wallet for organizations to be turning money over, but you're also trying to find that right balance between the two. And I think to the next point, like there are the features that you could turn on the monetization tabs, but also how you balance that out, which is growing fandom because you need

43:17that base, particularly with younger generations coming through. Yeah, like TikTok has over a billion users. So as you can imagine, there's going to be lots of young people that's going to be middle age people, older people all using the app, there's going to be a real diverse spread. But the rights holders are aware that like there are, there's a great cross-section of Gen Z and millennials using TikTok that they can access. But more interestingly, around more female demographic sports, we had a research of the app source, which shows 62% of women chose TikTok as their primary destination to go to for sports content. We also know from our own data that almost half of all US viewers on sports-specific videos are women. And so if you looked at any stadium in New York, any stadium around the world, and you had all the seats and you coloured half one and half the other, you would not get 50-50 of male and female viewers of a given sport. So we have a unique point of view on both the youth audiences, but also female, that all of the revenue-generating side,

44:19but also that fan base, that fan base you haven't tapped into yet, all the fan base you may be at risk of losing or not acquiring at all. So that's where I think we can really have a meaningful value exchange, which is recognised and understood by the partners as well. You're really good at this, because I was the next question I was going to bring up was talking about that female audience, specifically, they came up in that presentation from the data from 2025. What do you think you can attribute that to, because as you say, there's multiple platforms out there, what specifically about TikTok is driving that usage from female sports fans? Yeah, it's the content. Like, there's a lot of different things, but we were talking on it like the... It's an acceptable place to learn about a sport, and you don't feel like excluded because you don't know about the tire degradation I was mentioning of F1. There's a great example of an NBA-related video, which is like the baddie index made, where it's like, if you go see this, where it's like a really great statistical analysis of how well a basketball player plays when a famous celebrity is on the bench.

45:20So it's like, Rihanna's there, and X-Player scored 10 more points for whatever it is. And that was just a really great, funny, interesting, well-made piece of content that could be enjoyed by anyone, even just completely non-sports fans. And that sums up TikTok. It's an easy but fun and accepting way to get into a sport. And that's why I think those stats around female viewership, audience, and coming to TikTok for their sports content is maybe also because the sports content on TikTok isn't anywhere else. Trends start on TikTok. You know, the Jet 2 holidays. Everyone in America knows what about a British package holiday company. It makes no sense, right? Like that, whatever it might be over the years, all of these trends are starting on TikTok. So it means that like the cultural side of entertainment of sports is happening. And so you can enjoy a sport without really needing to get deeply invested, or you can also become a mega fan as well. But this, so that is obviously clear

46:23that it's driving new audiences to the platform. The one of the challenges that I hear that sports say is that, sadly, they're actual sporting content, because you guys use the definition of sport content that encompasses stuff like that. All the content we've been talking about in this. The bad news is an example, which is great. And I think it is sports content, but from sports properties, typically what they see gets content is the live match and the highlights only. It feels like that everything that tells the best on these platforms typically is not those things. And it's all the stuff around the edges, the fan-created stuff, the more creative ideas like that. Just how do you talk to sports about that? Can you say that they just accept it and embrace it? Or do you say, you've got a bit of a challenge with your sporting product, but you create some really cool stuff around the edges and just focus on that instead because that was working better? So for us, it's actually the opposite, in the sense that all of the user research we've done, both in-app, off-app, shows that the number one type of content

47:25uses once he has highlights and recaps. Whether it's someone who watches a couple of minutes a week of sports up to like 20 hours from the super casual to the hardcore fans, that's the number one type of content. And on TikTok, it's about the creative highlights we mentioned, like split screen where the bottom half is the goal and the top half is the family reacting or a mic-top celebrity in the audience. Like, it highlights, but we've like a TikTok creative spin on it. But that is so needed and so desired. All of our research is how important that is. And we're working with our partners to increase that supply on the platform. So there's that part. And then whenever we have gone live, we're noticing a really big effect. So like, messy six and six point four million unique viewers on that one stream. The, all of the Fox examples, those are performing really well. WWE, for example, they live stream, so for WrestleMania, they're live stream the year before, all the way leading up to it. They'll go live for four hours. And the amount of viewership on those is staggeringly high,

48:27considering it's a year-old content. So I think it's a myth actually. Like, from a right sort of perspective, the core product is critical on TikTok. But we're also, as mentioned quite a lot, and I don't want to overhang the point, we're quite happy to drive to their core products so that it's sustainable and really healthy as a sport as well. It's a creative full value loop back. I thought that when we had the European tour on the event, they were pointing to most of the examples they did have, however, were more the side content rather than the actual highlights of their work best. But they also are very good at creating that showed a shoulder content or more fun stuff. I'll say not to promote the sports program media awards. They did win the best short form content. And it was what they were doing with TikTok. They set up a program as the sports creator, sports content creator that they ran. We're basically running classes for the golfers on how to make the best content, but it was sort of behind the scenes. It was set up, like it wasn't true behind the scenes, but it would be, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they did really well there. But yeah, again, it was all sort of shoulder-y content.

49:29I remember that was saying that was the best performing stuff for them, which maybe just because they do a really good job with it. But you can also have these massive viral videos, which may be really like sometimes we don't even know why. And then sometimes it's because it was a really funny behind-the-scenes element. One of my favorite sports, for example, is Pekaya Sacka, 2020 World Cup. His Sack is spelling school. Him going to all his other teammates see if they could spell certain lines. Like, just gold. It's a comedy. It's amazing. It's fun. And what we've got is these big viral moments, but also your standard business is usually great content that people want to consume. So it's a bit of both. And if you ask an organization just to look at the mega hits, then yes, you may see more of that kind of like side as well. But the content strategy we talked to partners about is hitting all the different notes. Well, just a lot of the people we've talked about, the big organizations, the NFL, FIFA, what about for maybe some of the smaller, tier two, tier three organizations? Because they're not going to be getting money from broadcast deals.

50:29They have to be relying either on their own D to C platforms or driving things via social. How can TikTok work as a platform for some of those? Because ultimately, the people that listen to us or people that come to Sportsport New York in less than 24 hours time, the majority of them aren't necessarily in those big organizations. They're representing the different federations in GBs across the globe. How would you say, or even some of those emerging challenger sports, we talk about things like ballers, league and stuff like that, they do have to be social first. How does the game plan potentially not to use a pun of your product? But how does the strategy maybe change for those people that are playing a different game to others? Sure. In many ways, all the benefits of using TikTok dating back to 2024 still exist. Like it is an incredible destination for reaching large audiences and building fan bases. The hope is with a lot of these tools and these products, it becomes more and more scaled so that it's available to absolutely everyone. So that's one part. But for, there are great examples of, I think it's

51:30well-bammington federation here of like, absolutely exploded on TikTok. Again, enabling their athletes was one of the main ways and really leaning into TikTok creators. So it's all out there. Our teams also work with an array of sports publishers as well. So it's definitely, therefore, they're taking for all types of sports. When it comes to the social first leagues, they get it better than most. So they're definitely fine when it's the King's Leagues or ball of seats. I definitely watch more badminton and table tennis of late, and I think it's possibly because of, or that I also got them based in Sweden. And one of the best guys in the world is Swedish guys. So they talk about a lot. Well, it's interesting. You say that we interviewed, or I interviewed, her name is Stella Tran. She's a, she's on the world, badminton tour. Yeah. And she's, I think she's still a student. I think it's Stanford or UCL. I think one of those, and she's basically balancing her career, but one thing she did reference, the stuff that she's doing on TikTok. So the fact that you mentioned badminton aligns with an interview I had done back maybe a few months. So if you're listening, you go back in the archives and find that, but she did reference.

52:30So I'm not surprised that badminton is one of those that is taking off. Yeah, for sure. And it's like, you know, fifth division football clubs in England are doing incredibly well. Like it is, it is very much a platform available to anyone to succeed on. And then I just, we're wrapping things up. In terms of, is there anything you've learned in your times as you've been a TikTok or has there been a particular activation or something where there was a learning that came out of it, whether, you know, how users consumed it or, you know, is there something that surprised you, you know, coming in from when you originally came in to just how you've seen something perform? Honestly, I recently had the performance on live is quite surprising because we're not necessarily out in market being like, everyone must go live. It's not like a critical part of what we've been talking about the last year, but it's always been something we wanted to, like, experiment and find showcases, find good examples. And it's very much clear that that's what we've been doing versus it's the strategy. But it makes me think that more and more,

53:32our partners can use TikTok live to grow those audiences, but also find new ways of interacting with us. So just very recently, I'm actually quite surprised that some of those results. And then, I think, overall, what we've been able to build in just a year, all of these different products put together, I haven't mentioned things like post campaigns. There's a whole load of different areas where they didn't exist in 2034. So it's an amazing company when it comes to rapid development and very much entrepreneurial side. So all of this comes together like, what will you'll do this year? I'm quite excited as well. Well, I guess we'll have to, maybe that gives us a reason to come back in 12 months time. A, do you use this incredible studio, but also for you to update us on what might be rolling out? I won't put you on the spot to make you give us all the plans now, but because I think it is interesting, because retrospectively, the first ever episode of Streamtime Sports, Nick, you did with Rob Shaw at the time was at Facebook.

54:33And what was really interesting, that was nearly coming up on four plus five years now, is that the time Facebook was trying to acquire live sports, right, and back when it was Twitter before X, they were also looking to acquire live sports rights. Well, they had it, they realized that was not the right playbook. Yeah, by then. Yeah, very true. So it's just interesting that in that short period of time, we've sort of seen how social media has changed a different role where it plays within live sports. And like I said, going back to the original episode, they had live sports rights where they've now pretty much kind of agreed probably not the model for us. So it will be really interesting, just to sort of see like in four or five years, does that swing back around? Is it something completely different? I think it just goes to show like even on this show, or our show, how much that's all changed over the course of the years, and where TikTok could be in a relatively short period of time, based on what you guys are trying to innovate. And the key distinction is that we're just there to encourage and support broadcasters who are going to live with their content, versus like out to a quiet global rights. Or basically chasing roller and how to buy a live media rights.

55:34It's an enablement thing, rather than a platform purchasing. Thank you for doing that, just to let me know for you. That's very good. But it's about finding like just a tipping point that it makes sense for people to use it as a tool. And we may be getting towards that as well, which is a fascinating place to be in, having watched where the industry has gone through the last 10, 15 years as well. So I think it's, again, we're more complimentary side. It's the partial element that I'm interested in. The singular player, the first 15 minutes, whatever it might be, so that we can have this in or off another feather in our hat of being a fan building marketing kind of part of it. Final question I've got to wrap things up. I've talked a lot about data. You're giving a lot of data to partners. What are the main metrics that you are pointing to as measures of success on the platform? Oh, caveat why. Typically, when I see investor decks and social media

56:34performance decks and so forth, there's normally one thing. It's a follower base, it's normally the number. All just massive views is kind of the two main things they're always pointed, which is the big, the big shiny numbers. I'm, my thesis here or theory is that because of this, like giving over rise to fan creators, getting stitching of content, et cetera, that you're not following like priorities and really follower bases anymore, or it's it is visibility, it's viewership, and then the ability to track that more widely. Is that kind of the crux of it? Yeah, for sure. So if you just walked in and showed Lilliga the amount of video views they have on their own content, they know that information. That is, or in their own analytics, it's probably an authority analytics, you can check. What's more interesting is show Lilliga the size of the video views and watch time of every piece of content that's hashtag Lilliga. And then to say to them, okay, we'll take that entire funnel and put a link that goes through to your destination on it. So it's showing them that sport, they're total interests on TikTok,

57:36or even where possible, showing them the total number of creations. So how many people are posting content which Lilliga related? And then obviously, follow is a great, but follow is don't necessarily translate in the same way as how long people are watching content. Are they finishing the videos as well? These kind of metrics are the ones we want our partners to focus on. Awesome, well Raul, I appreciate you A for hosting us once again, but also sharing the stage with us and all your insights. And like I said, it sounds like we're gonna have to make this a thing. So hopefully this isn't the last time that we would do this year with you. Well, we said that a lot of times. Yeah, it's a great job. It's a great job and it's a great job. But at home, I'm looking to... Well, you're looking at the team in the background to get the schedule in there. Well, I know I see you all the things. That's all, that's fine. I appreciate it Raul, thanks for joining us. Right, awesome. Thank you.