The way audiences want to be served today is worth its own discussion. Beyond just traditional broadcasts, there’s also demand for a variety of alternate broadcasts. And Yardley said digital platforms can be a great way to provide those, especially for the most dedicated fans.
“I think there’s always a hyper core segment of people, regardless of the sport, that want all the bells and whistles. And that’s where traditionally a lot of the sports direct-to-consumer streaming platforms have been. F1 TV is a good example of this, NBA League Pass to a certain extent, or probably even better, things like ClipperVision, the Clippers’ version of it. All the overlays on that, they do different language broadcasts, they do all of the things that you could possibly want.”
But Yardley said Two Circles’ research suggests that while alternate broadcasts like those are important, they’re still a minor part of the overall broadcasting picture.
“That’s really only targeting the niche,” he said. “We do research around the different segments of sports fans. Broadcast is mostly about capturing casual audiences, I think, and casual audiences want ease. They don’t necessarily want loads of choice.
“If you’re in a supermarket and you know what you’re going to buy, it’s very easy to go around, and in and out in half an hour. You go into a supermarket, you’ve got no idea what you want for dinner, it takes you much longer.
“And so that kind of philosophy applies to sports media. That’s why the cable model is so impactful. That’s why networks are still a huge deal. Because you want to turn your TV on, you’re not really thinking about it, ‘Oh, the NFL’s on, I’m going to watch the NFL.’ And that will drive the lion’s share of NFL audiences, because everyone knows it’s on a Sunday between the hours of 1 Eastern and whenever.”
Along those lines, Yardley thinks predictions like the one Genius Sports’ Steve Bornstein made earlier this year on the future of broadcasting being “one feed for every individual” go beyond the actual demand, and don’t reflect how much work goes into alternate feeds.
“There’s a bit of a myth, I think, around uberpersonalization. The effort and energy cost, these are not AI things, right? These aren’t things that you can just turn on at the flick of the switch. They need production.
“Even if you think about personalized emails, you still need to create the segments, you still need to have different creative, you still need have different copy, which for the time being, if even if that can be automated, it still needs manual oversight. So I think there is a bit of a myth around the personalization of one.”
But Yardley does think we’ll see more and more personalization options soon.
“I think there’s still a long way to get to an optimal point, which is you should have three or four different ways to watch a game, and you should have options for the commentary that you hear and the level of stats overlay and all of those things,” he said. “I think we’ll get to a point very soon where all those options are available and people can kind of choose their own adventure. But I find it hard to believe that we’ll get to a point where it’s a level of individual personalization, because I’m skeptical in the amount of actual physical manual labor that’s required to deliver that.”
And while Yardley believes most current altcasts are more about engaging current hardcore fans than growing sports’ audiences, he sees value there, and sees further value to some of the cartoon altcasts specifically looking to bring in younger generations.
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Another place where Yardley sees potential audience growth coming from altcasts is in golf, a sport that’s seen some recent success with alternate broadcasting approaches, personality-centric content, and more.
“If you think of the way that golf is presented at the moment, golf is very much targeted at the existing broadcast audience, which, the median age of that is in the 60s,” he said. “If you’re a 20-something golf fan or a teenager filling in, it’s just not for you. Whereas if you knew that on ESPN+ or whatever, there was a stream that was available for younger viewers, it doesn’t need to have slime everywhere, but, you know, more targeted towards younger viewers, you’re probably more inclined to watch it.”
That factors into an overall point of emphasis for Yardley and Two Circles: while broadcast TV still matters, still has massive reach, and is still part of the picture, the digital side is going to get more and more important when it comes to attracting younger viewers, including cord-cutters and cord-nevers.
“All sports are going through this transition where their audience on TV is aging, and they’re trying to get younger and more diverse with audiences. And that won’t be delivered through traditional cable or broadcast packages.”
