Sportsfinda

Jason moved from a technical background into the media, working for Australia's largest publishing and news companies. Then the sport bug bit while at the Seven Network. He project managed a world-first Aus Open tennis live-streaming project and the genesis of Seven's 2016 Olympics offering. He then joined the QRL, building a team that brought Queensland's premier code into the digital age. He then left to build and launch The Siren, a game day content monetisation platform, and Siren Media, a digital agency for sport.

Adam Mussa is the Founder of Benchvote.com.  Australian startup Benchvote delivers innovative and proven 'fan-first' engagement solutions which captures leads, increases revenue and delivers fan insights to publishers, sports teams and their sponsors. Some of the recent sporting rights holders, brands and sponsors Benchvote has worked with include: Australia’s NBL, 2017 Rugby League World Cup, A-League, AFL clubs Western Bulldogs and Adelaide Crows, NAB, TAB and more. We spoke to Benchvote’s founder Adam Mussa who has a multi-disciplinary background in Digital Marketing, having worked in Social Media, Customer Acquisition, Product Management, and Project Delivery at the startup, agency and enterprise level. He also is an avid educator – teaching classes at General Assembly and Academy Xi in Product Management, Startup Strategy, Digital Marketing, and UX.

We lead with the news that the Video Game Entertainment and New Network (VENN) raised US$17 million in seed round funding to launch a 24/7 network dedicated to esports and gaming entertainment. Rugby Australia does a partnership with Amazon where fans can use Alexa to get exclusive content, live commentary and more for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. The fourth edition of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Sports Survey came out through the week and we discuss some of the highlights of it.

In a very short pod for this edition we talk: Reddit and the National Football League’s (NFL) strike a partnership. The deal will see Reddit host a monthly series of ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) Q&A’s on its platform with assorted current and former players, team personnel, executives and more. Intriguingly, the NFL will also produce a digital video series featuring the guests, to be distributed on Reddit as well as on their own channels and outlets. And we talk about the AFL continuing the Shanghai fixture between St Kilda and Port Adelaide in 2020.

Melbourne are soon to open Australia’s largest, and dedicated, esports Arena at the Emporium in the city’s CBD. Set to be the largest video gaming and esports entertainment venue in the Southern Hemisphere it will be developed by Fortress Esports. Two very strong Australian sportstech companies, LIGR Systems and InteractSport, consolidate their partnership. FIFA to stream African World Cup qualifiers worldwide. We wonder if that is the potential for the Asian Football Confederation, seeing as we’re big Socceroos supporters. We close with a bit about Eliud Kipchoge’s attempt at a sub two-hour marathon.  

Ahmad and Clint recap their time and experiences at Sports Tech Week taking in the Sports Tech Week, Startup Day and more and then ramble and argue about data, cricket and more.

 Show Notes:  Esports business Gfinity Australia is ceasing operations in November. Parent company, Here, There and Everywhere (HT&E) have cited difficulty in making this “sustainable,” profitable and getting value in the local market. We discuss if there is a problem with finding value in the esports sector in Australia? Lifting off from there, Supercars plans to keep investing in their eseries even though their partner Gfinity Australia is ceasing local operations. We talk through the possibilities of Super Rugby if they decide to offer more matches in front of a paywall and sell direct to fans. And we revisit Ahmad’s cricket bet from a fortnight ago.

 Show notes:  With the EPL kicking off this weekend, the rights in Australia are fully paywalled behind Optus. No EPL on SBS for 2019-2020 season! Then from there, Optus have said they have 700,000 active subscribing accounts watching Live & VOD football on Optus Sport. We talk about the telco’s strategy in taking on some many football rights and if it makes financial sense in our nonsensical way. The Nine Network continue their summer tennis push with the rights to the ATP Cup. Ahmad and Clint then close out with a ramble about OTT and digital broadcasters in Australia.  Learn more https://sportsfinda.com.au/podcast/  

 Show notes:  Fortnite World Cup is the biggest sports tech news of the week. We give shouts and ramble on about it. NBL’s new multifaceted, shared rights deal sees SBS offer the entire season via their OTT platform ‘On Demand,’ selected matches will be on free-to-air on SBS Viceland with ESPN televising 59 prime time NBL games as well under a two-year agreement. The NBL will absorb the production costs. It’s a long-term play, by investing in owning and producing their own broadcasts it keeps the sport visible. Basketball is a healthily participated sport with huge fandom means visibility of the NBL alongside the NBA develops a nice alignment between the two. Speaking to the TV Blackbox podcast this week, Foxtel's CEO, Patrick Delany stated it was time sports governing bodies "got realistic about the value of rights generally and the utility of them because the market's no longer rising, it's contracting." We talk about the lessening of the value of rights and Ahmad makes a bet on cricket.

Show Notes:  Cricket Australia’s participation figures have been revealed to be false according to a Fairfax investigation. The issue does speak to poor data and record keeping, and what does constitute participation? Tennis Australia and TechStars to collaborate on a sportstech accelerator and incubator in Melbourne post 2020 Australian Open. Tennis Australia is maintaining their evolution as a tech focussed governing body and have found a way of safeguarding their future by collaborating with and leading sports tech companies and potential top startups to help with their on and off court technology. One year to go to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Channel 7 have begun their hype, hype, hype. Seven will launch another six channels across its broadcast video on demand (BVOD) platform 7plus for the Games. Up to 40 live streams of every sport will also be available on 7plus, with the network touting more sports! more events! more gold medals! "THAN ANY PREVIOUS GAMES!!!". In other news, and very interesti

 Show notes:  Rolled out in Australia this week, local Instagram users won’t be able to see how many likes other posts receive, with the social media platform implementing a trial that was first rolled out in Canada in May. Australia will be the second market in the world to participate in the test to remove the total number of likes on photos and video views in the feed, permalink pages and profiles. On the off, the emphasis should hopefully move to quality content and engagement. Indian OTT service Hotstar sets global streaming record during India’s Cricket World Cup semi-final against New Zealand. The OTT service set a staggering number of 25.3 million concurrent viewers for the match from England. US sports data company STATS has formalised its merger with Perform Content to create a new company (STATS Perform) which they have dubbed as the ‘world’s leading’ artificial intelligence-driven sports data platform. The merged company would provide massive data-led solutions including: sports rese

Show Notes:  Canberra-based digital agency Unbnd has finalised a partnership with the NBA to broadcast the NBA’s dedicated 24-hour channel in Australia and Singapore using its immersive mixed reality broadcast platform. Unbnd’s MIA mixed reality platform will allow viewers to watch live games, highlights, and original programming through a 360-degree virtual theatre environment that displays real-time game statistics and interactive branded content. The MIA app will be available before the start of the 2019-20 season on most VR headsets, mobile devices, and tablets. Website to check them out: https://unbnd.com.au/ Rugby Australia is looking at a range of streaming options to increase distribution of domestic and (reportedly!) Super Rugby content when its broadcast rights are renegotiated in 2020. Games such as the NRC, Junior Wallabies matches and more could be available for free in the next broadcast deal as the governing body looks to bring more rugby to different platforms for free. The problem has

Guy started his professional athletic career as a cricketer playing five years for the Victorian Bushrangers, Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades, having signed his first professional contract at just 17. Many professional athlete careers are interrupted by injuries, which Guy has experienced, with multiple back injuries and shoulder surgeries. At these times Guy focused on his rehabilitation and desire to get back to playing the game he loved. After losing his cricket contract due to long term injury, which was unsustainable for a fast bowler, Guy successfully moved codes to secure a contract with the Melbourne Demons. The ability to move codes is a testament to the perseverance and character Guy upholds himself to, and his desire to be a professional athlete despite a challenging career which has been so heavily influenced by injury. However, he also saw the opportunity in using his periods of rehabilitation to acquire new professional career skills outside of sport, including working for the Channel

 Here are the Show notes: The latest sub-Reddit for sports streaming has been shut down, this one is the NBAstreams subreddit. This follows on from the closures of the Soccerstreams and MMAstreams subreddits earlier this year. Staying with piracy, BeIN Sports has laid off a fifth of its workforce in Qatar, citing Saudi Arabian piracy and BeoutQ for a downturn in revenues. More than 300 staff have lost their jobs at the network’s headquarters in Doha. As reported by AdNews, the interactive games market is forecast to become the fastest growing segment in consumer media spending, driven largely by in-game microtransactions, according to PriceWaterhouseCooper. Their annual Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook forecasts that the games and esports sector will more than double to $7.1 billion in 2023 from $3.45 billion in 2018. In-game microtransactions, 5G and cloud-based technology are expected to be some of the growth drivers of the sector. ONE Championship have been spreading their production

  Here are the show notes: Facebook has secured key content deals with the NRL, AFL and Cricket Australia. The agreement between the sporting codes and Facebook Australia means video highlights of the sports will be shown on the social media platform, with extra content placed on video streaming platform Facebook Watch. The content includes live original programs, some matches, women's and men's game highlights and weekly wrap up shows. US media production company Thuuz Sports has partnered with Kayo Sports to integrate automated highlights into their OTT platform. The artificial intelligence (AI) driven technology, records metadata to measure fan engagement and sentiment around individual sporting events to tailor highlights packages for the use of rights owners and media partners. Thuuz’s partnership with Kayo marks the California-based company’s first venture into Australia. The PwC Media Report came out this week, the key takeaway is the idea of the power of companion media – podcasts supporting

The International Cricket Council (ICC) will broadcast content from this year’s World Cup across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for the first time as they build greater access and visibility to the tournament. The ICC will use its official Facebook platforms to enable fans to watch match recaps minutes after games have finished. There’s also exclusive snippets and preview shows for Twitter and YouTube.  ESPN live streamed game two of the NBA finals between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors via its app with a broadcast aimed exclusively at a teenage audience. If you see the images, the presenters were super-imposed at the bottom of the screen during the game, commentary was different and it looks like a stream you see on Twitch. In-game graphics were also used to highlight key moments, such as dunks, three-pointers or blocks. The graphics showing player names and additional stats were also used and is known as ESPN Mode. The stats were provided by Second Spectrum, the sports data intelli

Show Notes   Fox Clips, an innovation from FOX SPORTS and Rugby Australia lets fans share any rugby moments from TV. Viewers of a live sports broadcast can create and share clips of sporting highlights and share them on their social media channels. Available for anyone to use in Rugby Australia’s Xplorer app, FOX Clips uses proprietary image recognition technology to identify what program you are watching and then lets you turn it into a clip and share it .  Shout out’s to Spalk for winning of Think Sport’s ‘Startup Battle’ in Switzerland this week. Other local companies who attended were Blinder and Formalytics. Spalk is an NZ business which has developed software for virtual sportscasting and commentary, it’s agile and has the potential to be a low cost plugin for sports rights holders to bring value to their broadcasts. Football Tech Startup GoRout has been named a finalist in a NASA Competition, they are among one of 10 finalists of NASA iTech. The company’s in-helmet display system allows

Vizrt has installed Viz Story across the entirety of Seven News, the news arm of Seven West Media – one of Australia’s integrated media companies. Viz Story is Vizrt’s video creation and distribution tool that allows digital media companies to quickly create captivating and branded content and publish it simultaneously across multiple platforms. All of Seven West Media hubs in Australia’s major cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Maroochydore, and Brisbane) have dedicated Viz Story installations. Source: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/05/17/vizrt-enhances-digital-campaign-of-australias-seven-west-media/ BeIN Sports has secured the Australian & New Zealand rights to the Copa América in Brazil. The agreement was brokered by Japanese marketing giant Dentsu. The NBA was named China’s most popular sports league, beating out the EPL and Champions League. Ticketek and Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane announced that they will offer contactless tickets on iPhone and Apple Watch. Optus will

Foxtel suffers huge losses, which sports will suffer? Is cable Tv on the way out? Should leagues consider broadcasting their own content? Many talking points, Tune in to learn more!   https://sportsfinda.com.au/podcast/ 

 Welcome to Sportsfinda's all-new podcast, in today's episode Bullpen media Founder Clint Joins me on the show and we discuss all things Sports tech from all around the globe. Bullpen is Australia's leading Sports tech publication. Tune in for an awesome show!