How Gambling Impacts Sports Streaming
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Read the complete transcript of this clip:
Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen: Let's talk about gambling because. It's kind of the elephant in the room. It's something that, because of regulatory changes that are underway or have already happened, is going to become even more important than ever to the sports broadcasting and sports OTT experience. Where does that fit into each of your plans or each of what you are doing right now?
Aaron Nagler: It's funny, because that is something that Corey and I have been talking about and known the importance of for a number of years. A good buddy of mine, Nick Kostos, who I worked with at Bleacher Report and is now with CBS, was way out ahead of this. And he always used to tell me, "You got to get on the betting tip." And I always said, "Oh yeah, I know it's important. Whatever." Now you fast forward, and it is everything right now. It is only going to grow and is only getting bigger. And I recognize its importance. It's hard for me to wrap around how to add something without being the betting guru or what have you, because there's a million. It's like everybody does the NFL draft. Everyone's got a mock draft. Well, seemingly every content area has their betting expert. So I think that's already a saturated marketplace. I think the key is gamification of it. And it's just extending what your visit to Vegas might be to an online experience wrapped inside whatever specific content you're creating. So for us, obviousl,y that's around the Green Bay Packers and how can we gamify, and/or tap into whatever the betting angle is for the Packers, whether that's the game itself or, "will Aaron Jones put on the shades after he scores a touchdown and goes to the sideline?" Something that connects to your team that you can then engage with the audience in that capacity. Like I said, I think it's such wide open, fertile ground. It's hard to wrap your arms around it if you don't come from that world. And I think that's the biggest trick: finding something authentic, something that connects to your audience immediately, but doesn't feel like it's just kind of slapped on in a way that it's going to be easily dismissed.
Kristen Scott: That's why we're leaning into non-gamblers into our gambling content. If you're intimidated by the concept of gambling. You don't know what a spread means. You don't know what an over/under means. You don't know what a moneyline is.
Aaron Nagler: Sounds like a conversation with my father. That's good. That's good.
Kristen Scott: We want to make it approachable. We have our gambling experts who live and breathe this stuff, and we have our non-gamblers for. "Hey, like, I'm just getting into this world. Wanna make a $10 bet with me and let's ride it together and see what happens? We're trying to make it approachable from that standpoint. And then we're integrating it into all of our second-screen experiences from an overt and a non-overt standpoint, just graphically on a screen. Let's casually get into this conversation. And then, on the more intense side, we're creating full original programming around gambling with our product that's top of the line. That's our gambling product or show that we use specifically to talk all things gambling on any given event or sport. So we're leaning in hard with Fox.
Patrick Dees: I think that's really smart, making it approachable. So much of this was coming in hot for our first season, but we focused on just that: the. alternative solutions that a Twitch audience would just know and understand. There's a currency that you earn on Twitch called channel points, which are just like frequent flyer miles. You watch for a few minutes, you start earning channel points. And we would let them not only peer-to-peer bet, but also make predictions. You can bet a certain amount of your channel points on a prediction. And we saw tens of millions of channel points bet over the course of six games. And so I think that's one of our key learnings: If you can make it approachable, people are gonna engage with it.
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