WHEN: Today, Tuesday, September 10
WHERE: CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of the Changing the Game: Sports Streaming panel that took place today, Tuesday, September 10th, live during the CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in Los Angeles. The panel featured speakers including Lori Conkling, YouTube Global Head of TV, Film and Sports Partnerships; Rick Cordella, NBC Sports President; and Hans Schroeder, NFL EVP of Media Distribution.
Mandatory credit: CNBC x Boardroom Game Plan Summit.
HANS SCHROEDER ON SPORTS STREAMING
I think for us, a lot of times when we go into our deal process, the headlines are the dollars and cents, but what we and Rick can probably attest to and Lori to a different degree, we spend most of the time on all the other elements of the deals. And you know, for us, I think these latest steps are the latest in a journey that goes back probably 15 years ago, where we had a meeting with Steve Jobs and a small group of us, and he held out one of the first iPhones. He said, “You don’t know how much this is going to change the entirety of your business.” So, you got to think about wiring your stadiums. You got to think about people watching on this. And that led us, in part, to retain the rights for live games on mobile phone, and that led to then try cast streaming with Amazon, and then it led to this last deal cycle of really an important point of view for us that we don’t believe we’re in one world or the other. We’re in both. We’re both on linear and digital in a really meaningful way.
LORI CONKLING ON STREAMING SUBSCRIPTION
We are, we are seeing, you know, subscriber growth in line with trends we’ve seen in the past. But I do think that people are probably trialing other services. And, you know, the question in all these disputes is always, how long does it go on.
LORI CONKLING ON SUNDAY TICKET
One of the things we consistently saw was an avid viewership and avid fanbase for the NFL. And so when Sunday Ticket was available, it made sense to be part of those conversations. We wanted to be more expansive in terms of how fans could access Sunday Ticket. And so in working with Hans and team, we were able to come up with a distribution model that both allowed YouTube TV subscribers to subscribe to Sunday Ticket but also non-YouTube TV subscribers that wanted to buy it through our channels business could do that as well.
RICK CORDELLA ON TECHNOLOGY AND STREAMING
I mean technology overall. So some of the things we experimented with during the Olympics that, we call it the billion dollar lab, we will pull those out and use those elsewhere. Nothing to announce yet, but that enables us to sort of see the consumer feedback, can we actually pull it off technologically? Obviously, the game in January, the wildcard game hit a record number of streaming and you’re kind of watching it, seeing it go up, it’s like that mountaineer in the price is right like, how high can it get before all of a sudden it kind of hops over? But, you know, putting the effort in, putting the investment in, you know, we’ll see what happens but we feel like we’re in a pretty good base.
For more information contact:
Erin Kitzie
CNBC
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