Since FloSports was founded in 2006, the streaming platform has served mostly smaller sports, like rugby and bowling. But this year, the company secured multi-year local rights with two MLS teams: D.C. United and F.C. Cincinnati. Those regional broadcasting deals marked FloSports first with teams from one of North America’s major professional sports leagues.
FloSports aims to help clients produce additional content alongside the streaming of games. The company was present at D.C. United’s training camp prior to the start of the 2019 regular season to produce behind-the-scenes content showing player workouts and coaches breaking down film. “People want to have authentic content that’s not glossed over. You want to feel the sweat as a fan of these teams and sports,” said Mark Floreani, co-founder and COO at FloSports.
“Our deal has allowed D.C. United in particular to really step up their production, ” Floreani said. “We had multiple people embedded with D.C. United at the start of their season until today. If you’re only focusing on the live experience you’ve lost. In a soccer game, it’s the 22 other hours in between the live broadcast everyday where you’re really engaging your fans.”
According to Floreani, the data FloSports is able to learn about its subscribers is another major selling point. Teams and leagues can’t access the same sort of information through traditional broadcasting methods.
“We’re working with these teams to make sure they understand who their customers are. Media rights up until this point has really been a sell your rights and then the media company is going to do what they want with it. In the direct-to-consumer world where we’re going, you need to have a relationship with your media company. You have to learn who your customers are and figure out how to engage with them on a daily basis,” Floreani said.
However, streaming technology isn’t yet quite as reliable as the broadcast infrastructure used to produce linear telecasts. During the first match of D.C. United’s season in March, a number of FloFC subscribers who were located in the eligible region were blocked from accessing the live feed. The issue was fixed by halftime and Floreani said FloSports has not encountered any streaming issues since.
“There was a geo-blocking issue where we were more restrictive than we should’ve been,” Floreani said. We tried to fix it during the first half and that impacted viewers in the first half.”
Even given glitches like that, Floreani is confident that sports teams and leagues will leave cable television in favor of digital platforms. He anticipates the amount of total competitions streamed on FloSports across all sports will double over the course of this year from 10,000 to 20,000. This past week. FloSports announced a four-year deal to become the primary media partner for the Colonial Athletic Association, spanning 22 sports and more than 300 games annually.
The company’s soccer offering should also continue to grow. In January, FloSports signed a four-year exclusive English-language broadcasting rights deal to stream the CONCACAF Nations League, a soccer tournament featuring men’s national teams from countries across North and Central America.
Floreani said he’s in communication with the 22 other MLS teams who don’t currently stream on FloSports. And Austin, where FloSports is based, will be the home of an MLS expansion team in 2021.
Sports Business Journal reported in March that MLS instructed all of its teams to not sign local broadcasts deal that extend past 2022. That is the year the league’s current national broadcast deals with ESPN, Fox, and Univision expire, and the league is reportedly considering packaging local media rights with national rights.
“I’ve told the MLS when their deal comes up I want it,” Floreani said. “We’re continuing to go up the food chain in terms of soccer rights.”