THE CEO’s POV - Drive Phase Podcast
I was recently interviewed on The Drive Phase podcast from Coordinate Sport, which you can listen to in full HERE.
This month’s CEO POV features snippets from that interview.
On the inspiration for Joymo:
“My daughter is nine. She plays handball and she loves handball. My dad is in Wales and he's fully digitalized. He's got an iPad and is dangerous on eBay! I thought how can he watch those games? And just because Facebook exists doesn't mean it is the right place to put that content. Wherever Joymo is going to go in the future our route is, let's help that handball club film that match, deliver it to that individual far away in a way that that child is safeguarded. And in a way that that value around that content, be it advertising value, or monetary value through ticketing, exists for a club. Because if that club can sell 250 tickets to games a year and make a bit of money, then they can buy better handball kits."
“So it's a very idealistic place to start a business. Not surprising, considering I kind of come from the charity perspective, but one of the reasons why my colleagues work for this business is because they believe in the heart of it. That's where we started. And we've done really cool stuff. We’ve streamed thousands of games, tournaments and competitions in different countries, to viewers all over the world."
On what Joymo delivers to sports organisers:
“Think of Joymo as Twitch for grassroots sports. We enable sports clubs, teams, tournaments - you name it - to live stream content with low latency, direct to their fans and that they sell tickets to. So you can either have a season ticket to watch everything from that handball club, or you can do a pay-per-tournament model. The real product is that we collect those revenues and we distribute those revenues quickly, weekly back to the club's so it's just money into their account. So it's a really great way for supporters to financially support clubs and teams at the same time as actually watching something that they really want to watch."
“That's kind of where we started. That's the product in a nutshell: really good, really safe, live streaming. Urging sports organisers not to use Facebook Live or YouTube, but a platform where you own the data, you can understand the data, you can deliver that message direct to your fans, you don't have the wrong adverts layered over the top of your content. And we started getting customers in Norway, we started getting customers in Sweden and then the pandemic hit. Obviously, no events happening, that was quite challenging, but we started getting customers in other countries."
“Now we've moved to a position where we're in dialogue with rights holders, so governing bodies around the world that say: ‘We've now realised that if we are able to consolidate this content into one place, so take a little bit from YouTube, take a little bit from Facebook, create more content, bring it all together, distribute that to fans, that's of immense value to us but we can't build that ourselves’. So we now say to them, what do you want to do? What type of OTT platform do you want? Let's help you build that and democratisation at the very top.”
On the growth of OTT and benefits of Joymo for rights holders:
“I'm not going to name a customer, but we say to them that instead of getting a poor media rights deal that leads to coverage on the graveyard shift on a linear media channel, they could take all that content and start distributing their content themselves on their own platform direct to their fans. OTT has become a really big subject but what that is really about is the likes of DAZN and Eleven, pure-play streaming services, offering an alternative to traditional broadcasters. But what we're saying for the underserved sports and the under broadcasted sports,the basketballs and the fencing and the Judo and weightlifting - let's give you the platform that you want. And it's doable and manageable."
“If you look far enough ahead, owning the dialogue with your fans, owning the income from your fans, which is effectively what Manchester United is struggling with, is going to be very valuable for you. So whilst our heart is the same, and our core values are the same, and the people here are here, because of those core values. I think we're a really nice company to work with, we've realised that we can operate at a bigger level in a bigger space and deliver something really exciting.”
What content really drives engagement?
“Live sport is still key, but the argument that we're making to our customers is the more content you broadcast that is of interest to the fans, the more valuable your brand is going to be and the more engagement is going to increase, leading to more loyalty. The one thing that we have written here in the office is: fan passion, is fan passion. So regardless of whether you're a 75-year-old Welsh man supporting a Norwegian handball team or you're supporting Manchester United, it's all about passion and wanting them to win."
“It's a really exciting space and we are a very active player within that space. And we're a very collaborative player as well. We don't want to alienate, we want to work with different people, different rights holders, different organisations, different governing bodies, and even media players as well. We're very open and we're really enjoying ourselves in this space.”