Latest / Scene Projects Sports Network / Luke Gaydon on Streaming Evolution, Community Sports, and Immersive Broadcast Experiences

Transcript

Luke Gaydon on Streaming Evolution, Community Sports, and Immersive Broadcast Experiences · Scene Projects Sports Network

• 0:06
  SPSN.
• 0:14
  Welcome into an exciting episode of the Scene Project Sports Network.
• 0:18
  I am your host, Bubba Starts.
• 0:19
  And with me today from Accredo, Luke Gaiden.
• 0:22
  Luke, welcome to the show.
• 0:24
  Bubba, thank you for having me.
• 0:25
  It's good to be here.
• 0:27
  Yeah.
• 0:27
  Well, we're gonna have some fun sports talk and more on the media side and where things are
• 0:32
  going.
• 0:32
  But before we get into that, I would love to just give you the floor and get a little bit of
• 0:37
  your backstory before we talk about the company as a whole.
• 0:40
  Sure thing.
• 0:41
  So so I am, gosh, now a twenty five year veteran of the of the media industry, which is
• 0:48
  a horrific thing to to have to admit to.
• 0:51
  But I started working with a broadcaster broadcaster in in UK Channel four is relatively
• 0:56
  well known.
• 0:57
  I was there for a few years, this was in the early 2000s.
• 1:01
  I then spent a number of years at a company called Brightcove, which was the first online
• 1:08
  video platform of its kind, a SaaS company headquartered out of Boston.
• 1:13
  You know, there are now any number of different companies that you can buy video streaming,
• 1:17
  video players, encoding, all that kind of thing.
• 1:19
  But Brightcove was one of the first, I was there for nine years doing various roles
• 1:25
  running account management, media sales.
• 1:28
  And then the latter part I helped incubate a joint venture between Brightcove and Excedo.
• 1:34
  We brought a very, very cost effective, very flexible OTT video platform to the market.
• 1:42
  Again, one of the first of its kind and that was how I got to know the folks at Excedo.
• 1:47
  Jump ship went and did some consulting, worked for companies like Sony in The US doing a
• 1:53
  little bit of business development work, looking at new initiatives, new revenue
• 2:02
  streams, but then Excedo offered me a job, came back, did a couple of years with them, went off
• 2:06
  and did about four years of entrepreneurialism in the sustainability side of things, which was
• 2:14
  kind of scratching both a business and I guess a personal itch, very rewarding in every sense
• 2:21
  except commercially.
• 2:23
  And then about eighteen months ago, I got a call from Excedo while I was skiing funnily
• 2:28
  enough.
• 2:29
  So I was kind of on a chairlift in France having a call with them, which is great.
• 2:33
  Saying would I come back and help them take their product portfolio, the Silvio product
• 2:39
  portfolio onto the next stage.
• 2:41
  And I said, yes, I've been there for the last year and a half and loving being back.
• 2:45
  It's a great company, great people, very well respected, wonderful culture and I think we
• 2:51
  work with some really interesting brands, media entertainment in sports obviously, which we'll
• 2:56
  talk about.
• 2:57
  And I think, yeah, really, really exciting future for us.
• 3:01
  But, yeah, I guess that's that's the last twenty five years and what do we what do they
• 3:05
  do that in?
• 3:05
  Under sixty seconds?
• 3:07
  Yeah.
• 3:07
  I more like two and a half minutes, but pretty darn good.
• 3:11
  I can get it I'll get it tighter if we have to do a rerun.
• 3:16
  No.
• 3:16
  What a what an interesting, career that you've had working in the streaming space in the early
• 3:22
  days when no one really knew what it was, and it seemed like broadcast giants were going to
• 3:26
  be around forever and and fast forward now a a decade and a half, and they are crumbling right
• 3:33
  before our eyes.
• 3:34
  And the only thing that's really keeping them on the air right now are sports.
• 3:38
  Right?
• 3:38
  But there's fragmented, attention, has created an opening for, you know, companies like Exito
• 3:48
  and I'm sure other competitors as well to bring OTT streaming and the video players on our
• 3:55
  phones and the apps and just everything that you guys are doing.
• 3:58
  I know you're pretty much a full stack, you know, creative and player side and development
• 4:04
  and the business and creating a lot of things for these brands on the back end, but it's it's
• 4:12
  crazy that you've been on the forefront of this the whole time.
• 4:14
  Like, you've been able to see this moment coming for at least a decade.
• 4:20
  Yeah.
• 4:21
  It's when I think back to the, you know, to the early two thousands when I was at channel four,
• 4:28
  like, was, gee, I wonder if we can get some kind of, like, two to five minute clips of
• 4:34
  programs up, you know, on the Internet.
• 4:37
  And, you know, you we were using Flash Player.
• 4:40
  Do you remember Flash Player?
• 4:41
  Probably not.
• 4:42
  Like, there was no there were no standards.
• 4:45
  Everything was super expensive, everything had to be had to have unique and custom workflows.
• 4:50
  It was it was a technical challenge, Barbara, in those days.
• 4:53
  People weren't necessarily thinking mean, they were thinking far ahead about the monetization,
• 4:58
  but, you know, we were seeing that video was begin was gonna become the dominant form of
• 5:03
  communication on the Internet.
• 5:05
  The Internet was gonna become the dominant form of, well, kind of everything really.
• 5:09
  And so channel four was always a pretty progressive looking broadcast.
• 5:14
  I think they spotted if you wave if you will, the way that the wind was blowing.
• 5:18
  And so they kind of jumped on that.
• 5:20
  But when I got to Brightcove, know, that was when we first started seeing technology tools,
• 5:27
  platforms that could radically simplify the complexity of delivering online video.
• 5:33
  But it it took a lot longer than we thought it would.
• 5:36
  We thought that the big, you know, shift towards, you know, digitally distributed video
• 5:43
  would happen probably ten years, maybe fifteen years before it did.
• 5:47
  You should never underestimate kind of quite how slowly the media and entertainment industry
• 5:52
  can can move.
• 5:53
  I think what's so interesting about sports is, you know, the if you look back on if you look
• 5:59
  back at the history of video over the Internet, it was all on demand content, know, was like
• 6:03
  shows, it was movies.
• 6:05
  So you encode it, you you know, you wrap it up in this, you put it on a platform, somebody
• 6:10
  subscribes.
• 6:11
  So it's a model that is much less risky because it's not live, right?
• 6:18
  The difference between on demand content and live content in terms of obviously the risk
• 6:25
  profile, but in terms of the kind of operational care that you gotta wrap around it
• 6:28
  is is significant.
• 6:30
  Know, you you screw up on an on demand piece, and it's kinda difficult to screw up on an on
• 6:34
  demand piece of content to be honest.
• 6:35
  But like, you know, some people are like, oh, well, you know, maybe I'll go watch another you
• 6:39
  know, I'll go watch a different show.
• 6:40
  I'll go watch a different movie.
• 6:42
  Yeah.
• 6:42
  You screw up on the final or the it doesn't actually you know what?
• 6:45
  It doesn't matter if it's the final or not.
• 6:46
  But on a live sports thing, like, you'll hear about it.
• 6:49
  And it doesn't matter if it's college football, it doesn't matter if it's the World Cup final.
• 6:53
  Like, you get live fans going, what the hell?
• 6:57
  Oh, and you hear about it immediately.
• 6:59
  Immediately.
• 7:00
  Yeah.
• 7:01
  Yeah.
• 7:01
  I mean, literally, you got fans, you know, battering your door down.
• 7:03
  So I think that the, you know, the the where we're at now, is, you know, there is an
• 7:09
  expectation that is that has been achieved, is that you will be able to to to access pretty
• 7:15
  much every sport for pretty much every occasion via some form of of digital transfer.
• 7:22
  You know, that's that's taken a long time to get to that point where it is where the level
• 7:28
  of consumer expectation is actually matched by the technology and the operational excellence
• 7:34
  and resilience if you will.
• 7:36
  But it took a while.
• 7:39
  I think what's so interesting about sports is, there's no sign of sports becoming less
• 7:46
  popular, right?
• 7:46
  People aren't watching less sports, they're watching more because it's more accessible and
• 7:51
  you know, you then sort of layer over in my son, you know, we talk about football, soccer,
• 7:57
  right?
• 7:57
  Doesn't want to know how Chelsea's doing in the premiership and he should with fifth, thank you
• 8:02
  for asking.
• 8:03
  He wants to know whether like Ronaldo is better than Messi.
• 8:06
  Messi's better again.
• 8:08
  Does that sports plus celebrity equals the new kind of the new reality.
• 8:14
  So you have fans engaging with sports that weren't accessible to them before because they
• 8:19
  didn't know about them.
• 8:20
  You've got fans engaging with the athletes.
• 8:23
  You then think about all of the content that can be created out of that, not just video but
• 8:28
  audio, you know, on demand clips, live stuff, stuff on all the different social media
• 8:32
  platforms.
• 8:33
  It's huge and that is why I think sports, you know, as a I think all we can see I I think all
• 8:41
  we can safely predict is that the amount of sports content that's produced and consumed
• 8:45
  over the next years is just gonna go kind of up and up and up.
• 8:48
  Whether there's a like a threshold at which everybody goes, okay.
• 8:52
  That's enough now.
• 8:53
  That I don't know.
• 8:54
  But, it it's it's a very, very exciting time.
• 8:58
  And as a sports fan, it's wonderful.
• 9:01
  Well and I don't think there is a threshold for it because now the technology has become
• 9:07
  affordable enough to where not just the top echelon of leagues can afford to broadcast
• 9:12
  their games live over the Internet or an app or, you know, YouTube, which we watch a lot of
• 9:18
  games now.
• 9:19
  One of our cohost on the channel, coach Cody, he coaches a AIF team.
• 9:24
  So Amer arena indoor football.
• 9:26
  Right?
• 9:27
  And they had a game in Wyoming last week and broadcasted live on the YouTube.
• 9:33
  And, you know, I don't know what they're using to do that necessarily.
• 9:37
  I know we have some other things that our local high school is using.
• 9:40
  You know?
• 9:41
  And not to shout out other companies while we're here with Exito, but there are there are
• 9:44
  platforms out there that are allowing amateur teams to broadcast live over the Internet now
• 9:51
  and to bring these to there.
• 9:53
  So while the demands might not be massive for the individual teams, for the high school
• 9:59
  sports fan who has you know, a a kid who has grandparents who live in another state, they
• 10:05
  can watch their grandson or granddaughter.
• 10:07
  I know.
• 10:07
  Isn't that cool?
• 10:08
  That's incredible to me.
• 10:09
  It's just Like, there's never going to be a lack of demand for that.
• 10:13
  Yeah.
• 10:13
  And it's how do we bring this into every single school or, you know, smaller semi pro or, you
• 10:19
  know, even, you know, professional teams, but on a smaller scale and amateur sports.
• 10:23
  And there's just so much growth that can remain to happen.
• 10:26
  If there is a threshold, we may not see it for another decade.
• 10:31
  Yeah.
• 10:31
  Agreed.
• 10:32
  And I and to to your point, think with sports, it and and you know, amateur sports, college
• 10:40
  sports, you know, however you want to term it, The excitement that it generates is just as
• 10:45
  important, you know, the enthusiasm, the passion that that that game would have
• 10:49
  generated with the fans, with the parents, with the community is, you know, to have the
• 10:56
  technology available now to enable people see that.
• 10:59
  It doesn't matter that it's a small base.
• 11:00
  They're not out there trying to be the next, you know, NFL or what have you.
• 11:04
  What they wanna be able to do is to share those moments, to share that excitement.
• 11:09
  You know, you don't have to, you know, son, oh, dad, how come you're not at the game?
• 11:12
  Well, you know, I had to go to work or I had to do this.
• 11:15
  You don't have to miss it anymore.
• 11:16
  That's you know, that's that's exciting.
• 11:19
  And it's and I think it's you know, it speaks again to the passion that sports generates,
• 11:27
  which is which again, I'll use the word is enduring, it's not seasonal, it's not well this
• 11:32
  type of movie is in Vogue or that type of comedy is in Vogue.
• 11:36
  You're talking about the power of sports to deliver emotion And you talk about the
• 11:43
  importance of sports.
• 11:45
  I live in a small town on the island of New York or a small island in Spain.
• 11:52
  And the town football pitch, soccer pitch is busy six days out of seven.
• 12:00
  You know, there are kids practicing from the age of seven upwards, parents are watching,
• 12:05
  there are leagues, it's, you know, and this is a we the population I would think if we're a
• 12:10
  thousand people, I wouldn't have thought it's even that.
• 12:12
  And yet, that's how busy the soccer pitch is.
• 12:15
  It's probably also why they keep winning the World Cups and Euros because they, you know,
• 12:18
  they take it pretty seriously.
• 12:20
  But yeah.
• 12:20
  And that's what that's what you get from sports.
• 12:23
  No.
• 12:24
  And and for us, it's the, you know, the basketball courts and the baseball fields, and
• 12:29
  it's a lot different.
• 12:30
  Obviously, soccer and football not as prevalent out here, but I live in a town the same size in
• 12:37
  the middle of you know, we're not in the middle of an ocean or a a sea, but we are, very much
• 12:43
  small and in the middle of an ocean of cornfields and farmland.
• 12:48
  Right?
• 12:48
  Can be much the same.
• 12:50
  And our local sports are the epitome of our sports culture.
• 12:54
  We don't have yes.
• 12:56
  In Sioux Falls, which is, you know, an hour and a half away, we do have some, lower level.
• 13:01
  We have a USHL team, which is, you know, a couple steps down from the NHL.
• 13:06
  And we do have, you know, an arena football league team that plays there and some of these
• 13:11
  other things.
• 13:12
  But even they don't necessarily have access or they have access, but they don't invest into
• 13:19
  the broadcasting of these.
• 13:21
  Right?
• 13:21
  Using their rights to benefit them and to bring their game to their fans.
• 13:27
  And that's why I was so excited to get on a call with you is to talk about what's the
• 13:33
  bridge.
• 13:34
  What's the bridge between that?
• 13:36
  Or or is Exito for the leagues, or is Exito more for individual teams and brands to help
• 13:44
  them broadcast that, you know, their, I mean, their product.
• 13:48
  Right?
• 13:49
  On the field or on the ice or, you know Yeah.
• 13:52
  You know, in the stadium product to their fans, or is it more at a league level that Accredo
• 13:58
  works at?
• 13:59
  Yeah.
• 13:59
  No.
• 13:59
  That's that's a great question.
• 14:01
  So we have two parts of our business.
• 14:04
  One, the bit that I work in, we we more work with the leagues.
• 14:09
  We work with broadcasters.
• 14:10
  We work with, you know, marquee events, marquee sports brands.
• 14:16
  The other side of the business is looking more at helping the smaller companies whether
• 14:23
  they're broadcasters, whether they're niche OTT players, whether they are smaller sports teams,
• 14:30
  smaller sports full stop, I guess.
• 14:32
  And there the difference really is twofold.
• 14:37
  Number one is how much investment is available to spend on the technology and that's obviously
• 14:44
  very, very different.
• 14:45
  But I think almost more important is kind of how, you know, how to make it as easy as
• 14:52
  possible, you know, to a better operational overhead and stuff like that.
• 14:55
  But really, you're a if you're a small team, you know, if you're a team, sorry, supporting
• 14:59
  from a small town and you want to be able to get your you want to be able to distribute your
• 15:05
  games over the internet, you don't have somebody whose job it is to do that five days a
• 15:11
  week, right?
• 15:11
  You're going to have somebody who's going to be running around and doing a bunch of other stuff
• 15:14
  and they just want to be able to kind press a couple of buttons, set some things up and you
• 15:19
  know, and it's delivered.
• 15:20
  So it's also how much, you know, how much time, how many resources you have to kind of manage
• 15:25
  that.
• 15:25
  The difference between somebody something that is all about business and versus something that
• 15:30
  is more about delivering content to a very committed, very passionate, but probably very
• 15:35
  small fan base.
• 15:37
  The guys over here, they're not looking to generate dollars.
• 15:39
  Right?
• 15:40
  They're looking to deliver something to fans, to a community, to people who are interested.
• 15:45
  Guys over here, it's business.
• 15:47
  So I think that's probably a good way of looking at the, you know, the difference
• 15:50
  between the two audiences that we, you know, that we serve typically.
• 15:54
  Yeah.
• 15:55
  It it's so incredible that we find ourselves here that the power to broadcast these sports
• 16:02
  and everything that it means, these moments.
• 16:05
  And what we've now done with the Scene Project Sports Network is we worked very closely with
• 16:10
  our high school football coach this year to do a weekly coaches show like you might see on a
• 16:15
  larger network, but it was just to bring more of this to there.
• 16:20
  And we broke down the tape that was broadcast on the YouTube channel with the app that they
• 16:26
  had and used that would break it down into the highlights of the game.
• 16:29
  Coach was able to, you know, go and pick these out.
• 16:32
  Hey.
• 16:32
  This is what we're gonna use.
• 16:34
  We'll throw it up on a big screen in his classroom and then go through them one by one.
• 16:39
  And I thought that was just so cool to see where technology has come because in my day, we
• 16:45
  had VHS tapes that we were we didn't watch a lot of tape because it was nearly impossible to
• 16:50
  do anything with it.
• 16:53
  Well, they made pretty good paperweights.
• 16:54
  I've still got some v h tape VHS tapes.
• 16:57
  But just on the content point is is is super interesting.
• 17:00
  So what I think we've all realized is that proximity to the subject, in this case the
• 17:09
  football game, and the authenticity of the person delivering the content or wrapping
• 17:15
  around the content like the coach, trumps production quality like it's not even in the
• 17:21
  same league.
• 17:21
  What you want is somebody who knows what they're talking about, is close to it, who is
• 17:25
  he's the coach.
• 17:26
  Like if it's not backed up by a thousands and thousands of dollars worth of production
• 17:33
  quality, it doesn't matter.
• 17:35
  I think a really, know, there's a great example of this where this was years ago, like almost
• 17:41
  in the early days where, you know you'd get like a grainy piece of footage of like the
• 17:47
  stealth bomber coming over an air show and that piece of content because it was proximate,
• 17:54
  because it was authentic, because it was I mean exclusive because you're not supposed to be
• 17:57
  able to film Stealth Bombers probably, it's not a brilliant analogy, but like that was gold to
• 18:03
  fans of the air show.
• 18:05
  You wouldn't put that on the news, know, you you know, it's not a it's not a you know, it's
• 18:09
  not a high end piece of programmatic content or even news content but it didn't matter.
• 18:15
  It resonated with the audience and they loved it and there was it was a light bulb moment for
• 18:19
  a lot of people broadcasting going, call it the rise of good enough content.
• 18:22
  That's not intended to be a sort of judgmental.
• 18:26
  It's intended to say depending on the audience, depending on the topic, you don't have to spend
• 18:31
  thousands of dollars on production value.
• 18:33
  You give somebody what they want, you package it in in the right way and you know, and that's
• 18:38
  good enough and people will love that.
• 18:39
  So I think I think what you've done with the coach is a great example of that and, yeah, and
• 18:44
  what you see is that, you know, people aren't looking for lots of green screen and I don't
• 18:48
  know, you know, fireworks and Janet Jackson singing in the half time interval.
• 18:54
  Sorry.
• 18:54
  It's Bad Bunny this year, wasn't it?
• 18:55
  Sorry.
• 18:56
  I'm a little out of date.
• 18:56
  I'm watching this
• 18:57
  Well, and what we saw during the halftime show both in the stadium and, you know, with the
• 19:03
  Turning Point USA show, next year, because I have connection to the music world with the
• 19:08
  scene projects and everything that we've built there, I'm going to do my own show.
• 19:11
  We did a we did a
• 19:12
  It's a Super Bowl.
• 19:13
  Watch long.
• 19:14
  We did a Super Bowl watch long party.
• 19:15
  So why would I say, okay.
• 19:17
  Well, we're gonna take a break.
• 19:18
  Go watch the halftime show when I can just run a half hour of my own content, people that have
• 19:24
  been on my shows and my songwriter showcases, and just run you a reel of all of the things
• 19:29
  that we did during the year.
• 19:30
  Now granted it might not be live and in your face maybe one day, but until the need for more
• 19:36
  than good enough arises, good enough is good enough.
• 19:39
  Good enough.
• 19:40
  Yeah.
• 19:40
  Yeah.
• 19:41
  I had so many people and granted some of our you know, we weren't doing thousands of views
• 19:45
  on these coaches shows, but there was hundreds of views.
• 19:49
  And I've had so many compliments from parents and grandparents that were like, oh, well, you
• 19:54
  do this other sport.
• 19:55
  And so to your point, like, I can't really do the show without somebody knowledgeable, a
• 20:00
  coach, or access like that on the others.
• 20:01
  So if the coach doesn't wanna do it, I'm kind of on the outside.
• 20:04
  I'm not covering, you know, high school girls volleyball because I don't know anything about
• 20:08
  it.
• 20:09
  Right?
• 20:09
  Yeah.
• 20:09
  What I will show authenticity. Up
• 20:10
  Up Yeah.
• 20:11
  Produce.
• 20:12
  Yeah.
• 20:12
  I will show up and host and produce the show and to talk about them and to, you know,
• 20:16
  question the coaches and things.
• 20:17
  But without their involvement, I I have no show.
• 20:20
  Right?
• 20:20
  Like, it's about you and your team.
• 20:23
  I'm not building a show just to cover it.
• 20:25
  Nobody's watching it.
• 20:26
  Right?
• 20:26
  Like, there's no monetary value to me.
• 20:29
  And, really, if you don't wanna talk to me about your players and and what our head coach
• 20:33
  had touched on was that this is so good for these players.
• 20:37
  It's getting them an extra bit of, juice out there when it comes to all conference
• 20:41
  selections.
• 20:42
  They have a little bit more tape that's out
• 20:44
  in the world.
• 20:44
  They just draw
• 20:45
  their name or and and for me, we were kinda talking about this before we ever sat down and
• 20:50
  did an episode, but that was the light bulb moment for me.
• 20:52
  It was like, now we have to do it.
• 20:54
  You know?
• 20:54
  Where I was just putting out an offer to spend some time with the coach and thought it would
• 20:58
  be cool to try and just see and for me to get reps in doing it.
• 21:02
  Once he was like, oh, this will be so good for the kids.
• 21:05
  It's like, well, now we have to do it.
• 21:06
  Yeah.
• 21:08
  No.
• 21:08
  The kids into it, now I gotta do it.
• 21:10
  It's Right.
• 21:11
  Right.
• 21:11
  Right.
• 21:12
  And, you know, we did maybe, I think, six or seven episodes.
• 21:16
  It was really lovely to be able to spend the time with coach to learn more about the game
• 21:19
  for myself in a selfish way.
• 21:21
  Right?
• 21:21
  I was like, this is just cool to
• 21:23
  learn It's like one to one tutorial you got in
• 21:25
  Forty years of experience, man.
• 21:27
  Yeah.
• 21:27
  He he crested his two hundredth or three hundredth win this year.
• 21:31
  Right?
• 21:32
  Like, this man has an incredible in high school football, he's been doing it for a long, long
• 21:37
  time, and I thought it was incredible.
• 21:40
  And now I found out he's an avid golfer as well.
• 21:42
  So now I get to take him out on the course and shoot some content this summer as well.
• 21:45
  So and coach Cody is is one of our cohost for our Vikings United show and is kind of our
• 21:50
  professional analyst on that end.
• 21:53
  But now we have he coaches three or four other teams.
• 21:56
  So now we have an in to cover those teams as well and to see it grow.
• 21:59
  And, yeah, that's why I was excited to to have you and to form a relationship with Accredo and
• 22:05
  the XRA and everything that's growing in sports now, not necessarily to have the opportunity to
• 22:12
  cover the massive leagues.
• 22:14
  How do I bring this knowledge and these people together with the people that I'm already
• 22:18
  connected to?
• 22:19
  And that's what I'm excited about for the future.
• 22:22
  Luke, I would love to have you tell us kind of from your position in the company, you know, as
• 22:27
  you said, kind of head of product.
• 22:30
  What does the future of Accredo look like for the next, you know, maybe two to five years?
• 22:37
  Well, you know, world domination, obviously.
• 22:39
  That's that's a given.
• 22:41
  No.
• 22:42
  So we we are on a journey to kind of change our business model so that we are becoming more of
• 22:51
  a managed services provider.
• 22:53
  So what that means is that we will build your service for you, we'll use our software, we'll
• 22:59
  use our services.
• 23:00
  But you know, over the last twenty years we've picked up a little bit of knowledge about what
• 23:04
  it takes to run a successful streaming business.
• 23:07
  And so as a managed services partner, we can really bring all of that knowledge to bear to
• 23:12
  help our customers figure out technical, operational, commercial challenges.
• 23:18
  That is, you know, that is a a body of knowledge, a body of insight, body of
• 23:23
  experience learnt the hard way.
• 23:25
  Until you've been responsible for a live sports event where the viewership is in the hundreds
• 23:34
  of thousands if not minutes, you just don't know what it's like.
• 23:37
  You can have all of the smarts and you can have all of the answers, but like you need to you
• 23:41
  need to have those scars in order to be able to to really speak knowledgeably and again
• 23:46
  authentically about, okay, you do want to do this, you don't want to do this.
• 23:50
  There's a lot of harder knowledge there.
• 23:52
  So we're looking to become more of a managed services provider.
• 23:57
  We're looking to become more of a partner in our customer success.
• 24:01
  I think in terms of the areas we work in and the markets that we focus on, sports is an area
• 24:07
  that we see nothing but growth in.
• 24:09
  It's an area where I'll choose my words carefully.
• 24:14
  I think with sports particularly with rights holders, rights holders are very good at
• 24:20
  monetizing and protecting.
• 24:22
  They're good at monetizing their rights and protecting their brand.
• 24:25
  They know how to fill a stadium, they know how to sell merchandise, they know how to negotiate
• 24:29
  good rights deals for their content.
• 24:32
  What they don't necessarily know is about being a streaming business.
• 24:36
  And so there is more I think more interest and more of an open minded approach from sports
• 24:44
  rights holders to the idea of that kind of a partnership with a company like Exito, who's
• 24:49
  got twenty years in the streaming space, who knows the technical, the operational, the
• 24:55
  commercial kind of pitfalls, also the opportunities and say, okay, well that is a
• 25:00
  partner whose core expertise is a complement to ours as opposed to being somewhat competitive
• 25:07
  to it, which in the case of some kind of media entertainment and pay TV operators, there's a
• 25:13
  little bit of you always get and I listen, I did this when I worked at Channel four, it's
• 25:16
  like, we do some of that here, why do we need you?
• 25:20
  You don't get that so much in sports because like, we don't do that here.
• 25:24
  So yeah, we do need you.
• 25:26
  So I think in some respects and particularly in a sort of managed services capacity where if I
• 25:31
  can use the phrase probably more natural bedfellows.
• 25:36
  I think as well you look at the investments that we as a company are making continue to
• 25:42
  make around the use of AI, the use of data, the the ways that that technology is being deployed
• 25:50
  but will be deployed to kind of really drive some incredible advances in the in the
• 25:57
  experience, the user experience for sports fans.
• 26:00
  That's super exciting, like that's innovation, that's being at the sharp end of creativity
• 26:05
  within the space and that is somebody's running product, that's kind of the fun part of my job
• 26:10
  if you will.
• 26:11
  And so I think the direction of travel for us is very much towards becoming partnering up
• 26:19
  with our customers, really helping them deliver successful profitable businesses and services
• 26:26
  that kind of delight their audiences, their fans, whoever they may be.
• 26:31
  And the next three to five years, a lot of the fun stuff is going to be around seeing how the
• 26:35
  latest wave of technology, whether it's artificial intelligence, whether it's immersive
• 26:40
  formats AR, VR, etcetera, seeing how they are really going to transform the user experience.
• 26:46
  And that's that is our we come out of the user experience.
• 26:50
  That's where we started building delightful user experiences on a bunch of different form
• 26:55
  factors, mobile, laptop, connected TVs.
• 26:59
  And so thinking about the changes that are coming, how do you switch from like a sort of
• 27:08
  standard sports broadcast into an augmented reality broadcast?
• 27:11
  Like, you're wearing the glasses.
• 27:12
  Like, how do you do that in a way that isn't jarring?
• 27:15
  How do you make it seamless?
• 27:16
  How do you make it seem part of the overexperience?
• 27:18
  These are super fun things to be thinking about.
• 27:21
  Yeah.
• 27:22
  I can't wait.
• 27:23
  And I'm so happy to know you and to, you know, be connected to Axito and the XR Alliance and
• 27:29
  everything that is moving forward because I might not see this stuff for twenty years in
• 27:34
  South Dakota as the technology slowly trickles further and further out.
• 27:38
  But it's exciting to be here and to have an opportunity to bring it maybe to some of our
• 27:43
  people here in the Midwest, ahead of the curve And to really start turning people onto that
• 27:48
  immersive experience, which I just think is so cool where it's going.
• 27:52
  To to put on the glasses or the headset and to feel like you are front, you know, front row
• 27:57
  Front setting.
• 27:58
  Yeah.
• 27:58
  On the sidelines.
• 27:59
  I I think that's a truly incredible, you know, direction that media is going.
• 28:04
  And very happy that I took the dive into media myself and out of the welding career that I had
• 28:10
  built for myself because this is this is fun.
• 28:14
  And and I love sports so much, and I love live events so much.
• 28:18
  But how do we bring that experience to someone who can't necessarily get there because of the
• 28:22
  constraints of travel and and everything else that comes along with, you know, attending
• 28:28
  these live events?
• 28:29
  How can we create that user experience and elevate that experience from home?
• 28:34
  And I think that's, really exciting what's gonna happen over the next, you know, eighteen
• 28:39
  to, you know, fifty some months.
• 28:42
  Yeah.
• 28:42
  I agree.
• 28:42
  I mean, I think the the ability to kind of have that stadium experience from your home, like,
• 28:49
  okay.
• 28:49
  We we thought that the way to do that was just to build bigger and bigger and bigger
• 28:52
  television sets, and then you got curved television sets, and then you get surround
• 28:56
  sound.
• 28:57
  And to be fair, you know, it's it's night and day.
• 29:00
  I remember the first, you know, sports event I watched in HD.
• 29:03
  I remember the first one I watched with HD and surround sound and it is a step change up in
• 29:08
  the experience.
• 29:09
  But, you know, the point at which these wearables become, you know, frankly affordable,
• 29:16
  which for the most people including me, are not right now.
• 29:20
  Like, when they become affordable, they enter the kind of mainstream.
• 29:24
  And I think, I don't think that's a long way off.
• 29:27
  I'm like, you know, twelve, twenty four months, I hope.
• 29:32
  Then you will be you know, you will be able to experience that, you will have that stadium
• 29:37
  experience in a way that is again an a complete step change from just watching it in you know
• 29:44
  in traditional video if I if I can say that.
• 29:47
  And the ability to kind of you know go, okay, I'm watching my favorite player right now.
• 29:51
  Let's have a look at their stats.
• 29:53
  So look at his stats, her stats.
• 29:55
  Like, let's have a look at a clip of the last rush they made or the tackle they did or the
• 29:58
  interception or the touchdown or the three pointer or the foul or you know, the the and
• 30:03
  that ability to kind of switch context to switch between different forms, so you know,
• 30:10
  you go into a short form piece of video back into the live live feed, know, all the time
• 30:16
  with this sense of kind of a different sense of spatial awareness that's, you know, again for
• 30:21
  sports fans, that's like, That is super cool.
• 30:23
  So imagine, you know, you'd be sitting in I I don't know if you're a Chiefs fan, guess you
• 30:27
  probably are.
• 30:28
  It's I don't know what the anyway, but let's say you're a Chiefs fan, it's a how far is it
• 30:34
  to Kansas City from where you are?
• 30:35
  Like five and a half hours
• 30:36
  Okay, so you're not gonna make the trip for every every game even if you could afford to
• 30:40
  and I you know I know what soccer tickets cost I can't afford to go to every game like that's
• 30:45
  gonna be not a bad a bad alternative.
• 30:49
  And so that's you know, I think again the you know, the power of video of the internet was
• 30:56
  always to be able to bring content to the user in a way that was in a way that made sense to
• 31:04
  the user at the time, to the audience, to the fan.
• 31:07
  And this is just taking that a step further and a step further.
• 31:10
  So yeah, I think that those that particularly immersive technologies will unlock you know, a
• 31:16
  a a a different type of experience that will get you much closer to that live feeling, which
• 31:22
  is, you know, again, exciting.
• 31:25
  Well, and better than live because you're gonna be able to overlay the replays and the stats.
• 31:30
  And, like, I I don't think people understand how close to the future we are and and to what
• 31:37
  we used to see in movies with the overlays on these glasses and what's gonna be
• 31:41
  Again, all the way back to, like, minority reports.
• 31:43
  Right.
• 31:44
  You remember that?
• 31:45
  Yeah.
• 31:45
  A great example.
• 31:46
  Ago was that?
• 31:47
  That was twenty five years ago.
• 31:49
  A long time ago.
• 31:49
  I I would say, yeah, almost fifteen years ago that you had something like that.
• 31:53
  But, yeah, we are not far away from the closing things and it being that augmented reality and,
• 31:59
  you know, a conversation with mutual friend of ours, Lucy, from XRA, and and having her being
• 32:05
  like, oh, we're like, we're there.
• 32:08
  The the technology is there.
• 32:09
  Now it's not affordable for the every man right now, but the technology is very close to being
• 32:16
  available to the public, and it may be five years from now that it, you know, it it comes
• 32:21
  down and it's commercially available, I would say, to, you know, the the more general public,
• 32:27
  the working man, if you will.
• 32:29
  But it's right here, and it it's pretty incredible to be, you know, for me on these
• 32:35
  conversations now and knowing what's coming and being able to see some of this tech as it rolls
• 32:40
  out and to be a part of it is incredible because I wanna bring that experience to the
• 32:44
  Midwest USA sports fan ahead of, you know, a couple decades from now.
• 32:50
  Yeah.
• 32:51
  No.
• 32:51
  For sure.
• 32:51
  Well, as soon as we have a set of glasses that I can ship without them getting broken, I'll
• 32:56
  make sure we put a we put a package into you.
• 32:58
  But yeah.
• 32:59
  I mean, the the sort of the the dream is, you know, you you you order your headset, you know,
• 33:04
  it comes, it's I don't know, dollars.
• 33:07
  That's it's like hundreds of dollars now, sometimes thousands.
• 33:10
  That's just, you know, that's a very very that's a small subset of the overall sports fan
• 33:17
  base.
• 33:18
  It needs to get down to the tens, maybe higher than that for it to be truly afford.
• 33:23
  But but I think, you know, the technology is there.
• 33:25
  It's just how do you make it, you know, how do you bring it down, make it more accessible,
• 33:29
  which is, you know, it's it's the same process that we went through with the infrastructure
• 33:35
  that supports video over the Internet in the first place.
• 33:37
  First, it was only the big players that could afford it, you had to have very very deep
• 33:41
  pockets.
• 33:42
  Now it is broadly accessible to everyone, know, it's pennies on the dollar.
• 33:47
  So I don't think we're I don't think we're far from that, which is which is exciting.
• 33:52
  Excellent.
• 33:53
  Well, Luke, let everyone know where they can find more about, you know, Accredo and, you
• 33:58
  know, talk about the products and purchase the products for brands and leagues that are
• 34:03
  watching and consuming this content so, you know, they can become clients and partners of
• 34:08
  yours.
• 34:09
  And anything else you wanna add before I let you go?
• 34:12
  So we're at www.excedo.tv, and you can find us there and you find about all the things that we
• 34:19
  do media entertainment and sports with the XRSA.
• 34:23
  You can hit me up at luke.
• 34:25
  Gaydenexedo.
• 34:26
  Tv, love to hear from anybody, but really just great to be on the show, Bubba, thank you.
• 34:32
  And I think for I talk to a lot of sports rights holders, we talk to a lot of big brands.
• 34:39
  I think what I've always loved about sports though is how broad it is, like how passionate
• 34:45
  people get about it and that isn't, know, again I come back to the little, you know, the little
• 34:50
  town soccer pitch over here, like listening to, you know, my son's the worst soccer player on
• 34:55
  the field to be honest with you, but you know, he's he's two years behind him.
• 34:58
  But listening to the parents, like, the passion when, you know, they're watching a game or even
• 35:02
  they're screaming at the coach going, how come you didn't do this and that?
• 35:05
  You know, that's that's what I really enjoy about sports.
• 35:09
  Like, that's the enthusiasm and the kind of energy that that you kinda get up for.
• 35:12
  So yeah.
• 35:14
  It's a universal language.
• 35:15
  Just It is a universal language.
• 35:17
  Yeah.
• 35:17
  You can understand sports no matter what language you speak.
• 35:20
  And I you know, we talked a little bit about my international travels and for you as well that
• 35:27
  it's all the same.
• 35:28
  Sport is the same wherever you go.
• 35:30
  So even if you don't speak the same language, you can you can step onto the field or the
• 35:35
  court and to be able to communicate and to engage with people of all cultures.
• 35:42
  And I find that to be truly inspiring.
• 35:44
  I will I was walking down a street in Singapore in 1999.
• 35:49
  It was the first time I'd gone on like a big, you know, journey by myself.
• 35:53
  And I just bumped into a guy and he looked at me and he said English?
• 35:56
  And I said yeah.
• 35:57
  And he said football?
• 35:58
  And I said yeah.
• 36:00
  And he said Leeds United?
• 36:01
  And I was like no.
• 36:02
  Anyway.
• 36:09
  Absolutely lovely conversation, Luke.
• 36:12
  I hope you can spend just a few more minutes with me off camera.
• 36:15
  I have a few, I have a few more questions for you, but I'm gonna let you go off the interview
• 36:19
  for now.
• 36:20
  Thank you for being part of, my day today, and thank you for being part of the scene.
• 36:25
  Thank you, Bubba.
• 36:26
  It's great to be here.
• 36:27
  Really appreciate it.
• 36:35
  SPSN.