Yahoo’s Big Sports Play

put sports correspondent in the host of this podcast.

“Ryan Spoon is a president of Yahoo Media Group and he's here today to break some news.”

You see Yahoo Sports and see 15 studio are launching the Yahoo Sports Network today. It's an ad-supported streaming TV channel that's going to feature shows like the Arial Hobani show. Inside coverage hosted by Andrew Sicilliano, Josh Pates, College Football Show, the Kevin O'Connor show, and a network with rich climate. It's going to be a fast channel available on services like Samsung TV Plus, Fire TV,

Fubo, LG channels, Prime Video, the Roku channel, all that stuff. We're going to spend a lot

of time talking about why Ryan is launching this now and how the overall market is evolving so that this is a right time for him to do this. But before we get to Ryan, today is Wednesday,

“August 20th and here's what I'm launching. Tomorrow is going to be one of the most important”

days in modern sports media history. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Yes, pian and fox are launching their direct consumer services tomorrow. And that means you're going to be able to see ESPN and FS1 programming without needing to subscribe to a cable bundle. Now, this is such a big moment to me because ESPN and Fox were the last two media companies to fully support the cable bundle. Until tomorrow, you weren't able to watch any of ESPN's college football schedule

without a subscription to a cable or satellite service. Same for baseball playoff games that were relegated to FS1. Now, that strategy stood in market contrast to CBS, which screen most of its sports on Paramount Plus, or to NBC, which put its sports on the peacock service.

“Seeing Fox and ESPN embrace direct to consumer really highlights the move from linear TV to”

screaming more than anything else I can think of. Now, importantly, ESPN and Fox still support that bundle. It still provides billions of dollars in revenue to those media companies each month. The high cost of the ESPN app and Fox sports one should ensure that most bundled subscribers keep their subscriptions. That plus a fact that most of the bundled subscribers will have access to the ESPN app as part of their overall subscription.

But there is an aspect to this week that I find particularly fascinating. You see, Fox and ESPN are bitter rivals. They've spent decades competing with each other for viewers, for advertisers, on-air talent, sports rights, you name it. But in this new streaming world, those two companies are now partners. They've agreed to provide a discount to anyone who buys both the streaming services, sort of a streaming bundle. Look, Fox and ESPN, they still compete. But now,

they have a common enemy in the new digital guys, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube. It's the enemy of my enemy concepts and how this partnership develops and who else joins that type of bundle with ESPN and Fox is really going to be one of the biggest storylines to watch going forward. Now let's get to Ryan's point. Well, I am excited to have somebody who I have known for a long time on the pod. Ryan's spoon got to know when you were just a kid over at ESPN Ryan and now you're

basically running the business. That's great. You're not great. It's all in pepper. It looks good.

My first question to you, I just kind of want you to step back, because we're going to get into the idea that you're launching a fast channel, which sounds fascinating. We're going to dive into that. You're investing heavily into college sports. You bring over people like Josh Pate, Andy Staples, Ross Delinger, Yahoo Sports Daily, you're launching as well. Step back and help me out. Before we start to get into everything, what does that mean? What's the overall strategy that you're

employing here from all these different moves? First off, thanks for including me and hosting. Yes, it's been well over 10 years. It's probably longer than that. What's the strategy? The strategy it starts really simply with comprehensive, smart, content for sports fans. There's lots of ways to

It is. What was Yahoo originally? It was showing you the best stuff on the internet each day,

each moment. That's kind of still our approach to all our different verticals. On the sports side, we have great pride in the quality and in the voices and the talent sport by sport.

“I can talk about that. That we create. We have really, I think we've done pretty phenomenal work”

with partners and has been forging partnerships that are all very different from someone like Ariel Hawani and an uncrown to a one football to a motor sport, and I can keep going there, and then we have hundreds of different publishers that fill out that come and work with Yahoo on distribution, monetization, and also fill out personalization. You're a very vocal orillist fan. We are going to create really good stuff for you as you play the Red Sox and with the cool

against and Jake Mince and Jordan who do phenomenal work. We have partnerships with MLB to fill that out. We have fantastic fantasy experience, which improves day by day at this point. But we also then have a whole long list of partners that will help build what we believe is the most comprehensive offering there. We are really unique in doing that because we just have a

different model. We've always been very open to working with the rest of the internet. That's part

of our ethos. It's also as we talk about fast, that's part of Echo's both ways. We pull in and we push out as opposed to saying we need to create everything ourselves or we need to own everything

“ourselves. That's what you mean by a different model. You're willing to take in other”

publishers and publish it under by Under Yahu. I think it's a very core part of what we do. And if you think about it from a pyramid, obviously we create on a scale less, but that is the bulk of our consumption, but it's surrounded by tons and tons of or tonnage that fills out variety and partnerships. And we look at certain verticals and we say where do we need to be stronger? And so there are verticals like soccer where we have great writers but not the scale.

And so we work with one football to be the US arm and they have a ton of scale. We work with the athletic and the New York Times to build a women's sports hub. We obviously do great work. They do excellent work together. We can create a more robust destination. How do we cover motorsport with motorsport? Because we just don't have the scale to do that ourselves. We want to work with leading folks and build something that's really robust there. And again, we've gone

down that vertical by vertical. We'll continue. And there are other instances where we look at something like MMA and I'm known aerial for as long as I've known you and think he's remarkable

and amazing in the voice of MMA. That's a different structure. We launched Uncrowned together and

“that's filmed out of our office in New York. But really, that's a partnership with aerial, right?”

It's just a different form of a partnership. And then there's sports like college football where that's another really good example because you have a bunch of things happening to all combine to be something special. Ross DeLinger is the best in the business and amazing. We have our own talent and shows with the college football and choir. You had Josh Pate last week. That's a really unique example. That's also part of the relationship that we have with on three, which is part of

a history and relationship that we have with rivals that they acquired. All those things combined Andy Ross, Josh on three, created really robust college experience for our side that we think is unique. And each of those arrangements are created in unique ways. And that's fun. It's great. You don't have the scale, but you're partnering and being so broad. It's almost like everything for everybody. If you're interested in sports, there's going to be something

on Yahoo that you're going to be interested in. Who would you say you compete with? I don't think about competitors. And I'm being honest. We play a different game than ESPN,

100 million plus unique some month. It's it's large. Fantasy is enormous and growing. Yahoo itself, on a given month in the US commscore is the second or third biggest website. And then if you go down property by property, sports is number two. Finance is number one. Mail has tens and tens and tens of millions of people every day. You have Yahoo news. There's

real scale there. The most important part that we've spent time with is on sports. What do we

want to be? What's our mission? Our mission is comprehensive smart sports content. Make you a smart sports fan. Make you more engaged sports fan. And figure out what we can do in areas that are just different than others. Because we're playing a different game. And so I don't think a lot about competitors. Other than one area, which is fantasy. Because in fantasy, getting you to play your league on Yahoo versus others matters are great to you. And getting you to play your next

“league or your next format or your next so forth. I think that is a more directly connected piece.”

But for everything else, look, I still use parts of ESPN. I use parts of other folks. And I spend

a lot of time on Yahoo too. All can coexist. I didn't know I was going to go here. But I got to talk about fantasy. I'm going to I'm going to league 26 year of this league with a bunch of high school friends. And we started off on CBS Sports line or whatever was called back then. And to try to get the 10 people in this league to agree on the color of the sky is is virtually impossible. So it is by pure inertia. We're still on CBS. How hard is it to to to to draw new get people to come over to

use your fantasy. Because it's impossible to get us off CBS where you used to it. And that's just what

we do. So we think a lot about not necessarily moving you. I think that's hard for a bunch of reasons.

“There's also other things like history that are there and important. I think about getting you to play”

your next league on Yahoo or to play a different format and or a new sport. So we're seeing growth across every vector. Last year we redesigned the app in a way that was pretty meaningful. And we had to do it one I think it's better. And the numbers prove that out. But to it laid out the ability for us now to be doing what we're doing, which is merchandise new game formats, new ways to play different sports are the folks who are now playing multiple sports as opposed to just football.

It's up 50% year of year. Like huge numbers. And so getting you more engaged in different game formats. We released a new game called Daily Draw around Christmas. We did that with Mr. Beast. Different getting you to play different games and different engagements. But yes, having you move nine people who've done so for 26 years. That's probably not the easiest place to start. We actually have talked about it on the cage. You know what the one thing that CBS does it keeps us is 25 years of

records. People don't want to give that up for some reason. It's a funny anecdote. This is our 28th year of fantasy at Yahoo. We found a press release in the original iconography. It's really funny and great. And the gentleman who runs fantasy on our side said we're going to launch 28 different features for our 28th year of fantasy. And we kind of thought it was a joke. A month later we have a whole calendar today's day 16 every day. We've released an August of brand new feature. Some

really big. Some very just different. Like today, we released the ability to change your app icon on your home screen of your phone with awesome artists who you'd recognize any any sports card collector would recognize because these are folks who've been involved in cards and collectibles and

“tops to going from there to different tooling, different formats, different I think the most impactful”

thing we're going to launch is a new way to view your matchup every week where just every place coming in what we call fantasy feed. It's highly visual. Every person who plays, which is millions

person. So we're really pushing the boundaries both in a volume of what we're doing, but also

some of the visuals. You said a lot of growth in fantasy outside of football. What are some of the sports that you're seeing the most growth in? NBA has been a really great success over the last year.

“I think we have some fun things coming planned for the upcoming season, which take a little bit”

of homage from what we've done in football, but with some twists specific to basketball. Baseball is doing really well hockey is growing. And then we introduced a new game format called Daily Draw, which is every game of the different game every day. So this weekend it was UFC. And then it goes to MLB and then it goes to WMBA. It can go to any you can it can apply to any sport which is a really interesting compelling twist on instead of season long fantasy, which we all know

is great. It takes a lot of effort and work. This is something you can play at any given day and be engaged in what's the game of the night. That game might be on ESPN, might be on CBS, might be on NBC, might be in Europe somewhere. And so all those are different formats. Ryan, let me take a quick break and come back. I want to talk about the news of the day and the fast channel, which I think for what you've described is fascinating to me.

Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough? Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called

“"Becoming You." People think OK in A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way.”

We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to "Becoming You," wherever you get your podcasts.

What I want to start with is the concept. How did this concept first come up?

So this is very related to the discussion where we started with on the being really comprehensive on our side, pulling in other partners content. We have the same opinion as to where we need to exist, which is we need to be where all the fans are. And each person, each fan, probably is a different definition of where that is. It could be the mobile app. It could be our website. It could be YouTube. It could be

one of 10 different fast environments. So we think it's really important that we are where all the fans choose to make their home. This has also been two years in the making. When I got to the company a little over two years ago,

“I think we had one show that was live in originally, which was around fantasy, which is our”

kind of bread and butter. Very good show, but that was done a couple hours a week. We're now at 60 hours of original live a week. Notably, and importantly, that's not licensing games or live rights, that those are our shows and so forth.

So the idea was always that we wanted to build out our offering and our voices and our talent

and to do that sport by sport. But we couldn't have done this a year ago. We needed to get to some scale that is meaningful to allow us to create what we're calling the Yahoo Sports Network and have that exist in a meaningful, deep way on sling, roco, Samsung, Amazon, etc. So this is not a new idea for us, not a new idea for others, but it's the right moment in time. It's also the right moment in time for us as it's that right ahead of football, which obviously we

think we have really robust offerings around a daily show, around NFL, around college, around fantasy, and our partner content, which is, you know, that kind of pre-mear partner efforts, our part of this, Ariel Hoani is a huge part of this with Uncramped, really important, and by far the voice of MMA, you have shows like Network with Rich Climate and Borbroom. And so we're

That's awesome for us. I was a little bit snarky in my question, you know, the pivot to video that everybody talked about. But I do have a question, like, what video works, what type of video

are you looking to produce? What we've had success with is on our video side, first of all, at the

“highest level, it is, and I think this rings true when you go sport by sport with us, smart,”

comprehensive analysis. And so Nate Tyson, just a tremendous example of that in NFL, Justin Boone, new to the company in Matt Harmon, example of that in fantasy, KOC, Kevin O'Connor for NBA, awesome example of that, the SESPIT is brothers for our baseball shows, awesome example of that. So there is a thematic that's really important to us, and a voice. There's multi format, some people choose to listen to this via audio, some people choose to listen

to this via video, or watch a via video. So it's not just a pure quote unquote pivot to video. There is also the ability to cut down into videos and into clips that then tie into what we know

“about you as a user or a personalized user or a fantasy player hypothetically. And so I think right now,”

we have a new daily show with Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz and they go live every morning. It's a week old for a couple hours. Andrew Sicilliano, who does our late show, is on it right now, breaking down the news from the Cleveland Browns and you know, they have a lot of artifacts, naming Flaco, so on so forth. That will make its way, you can watch it live on video. You'll watch that tomorrow. Hopefully on YahooSports.tv or one of our partners on fast. You could, but that will

also make its way into clips and alerts and our articles and so forth and connect the rest of the engine. So it's not just a, just like we say, hey, where you want to consume this is your choice, and we want to make sure we're there to satisfy that. But also how you want to consume this, which could be lean back experience visually. It could be audio while you're commuting or running, or whatever. It could also be alongside our article on Joe Flaco today and Caroline Jason and Andrew

are the three to put a, you know, that three-minute clip resonates. The fast channel strategy always

confuses me a little bit. Will I be able to see this channel on Yahoo.com? Or is this going to be exclusively through like the app on the connected devices? Both. So as we've launched these partner networks on our site, we've created show pages. So starting today, we have a new, we have a new video experience, which is YahooSports.tv. It's a really attractive new way to put all of our video together. That hasn't existed for us before. For the same reason that we think

now is the right time to launch the channels. It's the same reason to do this as a web destination, and make that a really kind of beautiful experience. Obviously, content will traverse from there to other areas of YahooSports, including other areas of Yahoo.com. But not like that, not the main channel, though. The channel will play on YahooSports.tv. Okay, you know, with a live bug that tells you what's next and upcoming and the next hour. And again, if that's where you choose to consume it,

lovely. Amazing. If you choose to consume it on your Samsung TV or LG or Sling,

Roku or Amazon Fire, we want to be everywhere. I love talking to you, Ryan, because you're so strategic and in terms of just the jobs that you've had. But spin this forward. I don't know. Three years, five years. How do you anticipate this growing? And how do you see the YahooSports video application sort of what's it going to turn into? Even though it's taken a couple of years to get here

“from a content and a scale perspective, it's the early innings for us. And I think we have a chance”

the same way that people come to us every day. And there's partner discussions every single day. If there's one thing that I really strive to be, it's a creative, great partner for all sorts of folks.

building out our own voice and developing voices. And hopefully we measure everything on time spent,

“growing the eyeballs, growing the time spent. But I think we have the chance to help”

distribute and share other people's content too in a way that is not at all different than how we do that on articles and so forth than news and analysis. So I'm excited about what it means from, hey, we went from two hours to six hours of our own stuff every week. That will continue to grow. But for the same way that we over the last year have launched efforts with boardroom and motorsport and athletic and Hawaii and so forth, that's going to continue.

And that can take a lot of different forms from web to so forth. But video is going to be a big component that we now have a big destination to play roller. You have a lot of story. But you don't have it. Egal, it's just a challenge. Make it a bit like this. And when you then work, it's a chain. That's right. Save. Like this story.

Hold it down, girl. It's back. Now, let's try it out. Five years past that. And ESPN is launching a direct consumer app. Five years, I know, especially in digital is a generation. It's a long time ago. Could you ever, haven't, not ever, of course. You could have seen where this was headed. How difficult was it in your mind that to get ESPN to change its mindset

from being a linear first company? In terms of just the people that are working there. I remember talking to you back in the day. And you're trying to do social and

your boss is kind of what they always wanted to take the broadcast experience and put it on social.

“And it's like, no, no, you have to be native to social. You have to be native to digital.”

Well, now ESPN's entering a world where it's in, you know, it's a direct consumer world now. How difficult was that process in those five years in your, in your estimation just based on based on when you left? I'm going to guess that, look, the challenge I think is more on the business side and whatever that means or how that works. I think they're there from, I think from the cultural and the people, and Jimmy's a fantastic and the best. And there's a lot of people there who are just

fantastic and understand and live digital every day. So I think that is probably pretty natural at this point. Very different than it was. Was it natural when you left in 2020? Yeah, look, again, there's business pressure and those parts are can be natural and natural and great tension. And so for that,

“that's true for any business of just when you have to make turns. How you decide when and how to”

do that with being future driven and also respectful of the current business. But there was a shift somewhere in the, that was very different early on, right? And now I'm like really dating myself,

but when I first got to ESPN, even within digital, there was a different mobile team versus web

team and there was a different, both of those were different than the, including content creation and programming. And that was different than the studio side. That doesn't, that broke down, it wasn't instant, it wasn't easy, but that broke down certainly somewhere well before 2020. And at this point now, content's content. And I think the interesting part is going to be for us all to see what the app experiences and the same approach that I outlined with our strategy

we have less complicated decisions to make there. But that's the root of this is for a subset

of users. This will be the default usage. And for a subset of users, this might be a component or supplement for some set of users. They might be totally fulfilled with what they get today. And so figuring out that balance will be tricky and fascinating for us all as business, but also as we're all fans and consumers of this stuff. But it's the same approach that got to be everywhere. When you say content's content does that mean that there is no linear TV mindset,

these are the social, these are the digital. I still see them as three different buckets.

Although there still is, and there's nuances, there's nuances that every platform. Someone who's expert in YouTube will tell you the different strategies between programming to that versus TikTok. I'll just mean vertical horizontal. There's other pieces with how you program schedule and and lead in and all and how you hold the tune in and so forth. But the end of the day, there's clearly awareness that voices are able to traverse all these if they welcome it and

and I think that's very clearly working at ESPN's working for others. We're very different, but

“talent gets it, TV gets it, the executives get it, and most importantly, what matters most is”

the users get it, like the watch time is there to support all of that. What specifically should we be looking at? Are you looking at to determine whether or not I don't want to pick on ESPN because you work there and you still have a lot of friends there. So let's pick on Fox 1, which is also launching tomorrow. But what is success? Is it down to just subscribers or how would you like what are you looking for in terms of something that's important that might be

flying into the radar? So for me it's not, look who am I to judge subscribers and I don't know that any of us understand what a good or bad number is. For me it's, and this is true again of any product.

“It's using it, playing with it, and answering the why? Does it answer the why do I use this?”

And why should I use this? And why should I? That gets more complicated when it's hard enough to say why should I download this? Now they have a huge footprint and it's part of that. That's a huge benefit. But if I want you to play on Yahoo Fantasy, I have to answer the why here versus elsewhere, why now versus a different sport. That gets harder when you put down a credit card. And it gets harder when it asks you to keep the charge and not, you know, turn it off two months later.

So for me, what I'm always looking for is what value do I describe to myself or understand in

some cases, it could be different sports, different sport fans. I think there'll be a betting

“angle and so forth. It could be different types of fans. And so that's what I'm most interested in”

curious and watching. Ultimately, that will drive the subscriber number, whatever that number. I've been talking about this for months, actually. It just seems like it seems to me that having ESPN and Fox launched direct consumer, it's just such a sea change in traditional media because those were the last two that were the the cable bundle holdouts. We're not going to let our programming spill outside of the cable bundle. And now both are jumping in with both feet at this on the same

day. In fact, to run it. Well, and what happened last week last week, you have seen goes to a new destination with a new format, right? Lots of talk about paper views and so forth. And that will be tune in. And before that, you had things like WWE and ESPN. There's no shortage of change and no shortage of people exploring different models. I feel lucky and it is on the Yahoo side to bring back to Yahoo, like we know our role in the space. It's the you know Connor Shell and who I adore and had the

And ultimately, we all win when that happens. So our role is to support all those folks and

grow the interest in the sport in the fan. And there's examples like UFC or now, we think we have the best destination for hopefully millions and millions of fans who want to watch that every week. And so we just have a different role in the universe and the rest that's fun to watch.

“Is that, is that your, your north star at Yahoo, like it, like to grow sports fandom?”

I think that, I think for everyone that has to be your starting point, I think it has to be, because all the business, by the way, you sound like totally like an old ESPN or a George Bowdenheimer, like started every Saturday. We have to serve the sports fan.

We use the word fan all the time. And ultimately, any good business outcome, anything that is

a selfish outcome for us, a fantasy player, time span, add integrations, a fantasy plus subscriber.

“Those only are downstream of putting the fan first from a quality and a reach perspective.”

Ryan Spoon probably actually certainly the fastest winner of anybody I know personally. What's your right now? My kids are faster. Are your kids being human things are happening? I'm getting older and slower and they're getting older, but still very young and faster. So yes, it's humbling. What's your best stroke? I was only able to do one stroke. I was a very good breaststrokeer and miserably bad at everything else.

Oh, I would, I would get de-cute and breaststroke every time. I would be kicking my legs would be

“all over the place. That's the only thing I could do. It's always great to see you.”

Thanks a ton for dropping by and good luck with the fast channel and everything over at Yahoo. Thank you so much. Ryan's reasoning for launching Yahoo Sports Network a fast channel, illustrate Yahoo's place in the media world to me. Ryan said that he wanted to make sure that his content is available to fans wherever they are. That could be mobile or on the website, or via YouTube, or now via his fast channel. The launch of this channel also shows Yahoo's

development over the last two years. Two years ago, when Ryan first joined Yahoo,

it had one video show that focused on fantasy. Today, it produces 60 hours of original content per week. It's that kind of growth that made this channel possible. So I want to thank Ryan for taking the time to join the pod today. And I also want to thank Yahoo's top-notch PR exec. Will I'm cider-out for arranging all of this? Most importantly, though, I want to thank you for listening to the varsity and Odyssey podcast and partnership with Pock. I also want to

thank the executive editors from Pock, that's Gabby Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, the great team from Odyssey, Bob Tabador, Patrick Internetti. If you like this podcast, make sure to sign up for my newsletter, also call the varsity. Head over to Pock that news and use a code word diversity, all one word for a 20% discount. And I will see you on Sunday.