The way we watch sports is rapidly evolving. Last season was the first in which NFL fans could live stream all local and primetime games for free—no cable authentication required—via the Yahoo Sports app. This season, games are also live streaming through the company’s fantasy sports app.
Yahoo’s parent, Verizon, originally signed a five-year, $2 billion streaming deal with the NFL in 2017. A year later, the average user spent 41 minutes watching NFL games per visit on the Yahoo Sports app. According to NFL chief information officer Michelle McKenna, the league had hoped for even greater consumption of live NFL games through its deal with Yahoo. The expansion of live games into the Yahoo Fantasy Sports app could help boost that viewership, and is perhaps a step towards integrating games with the emerging betting ecosystem.
SportTechie recently spoke to Geoff Reiss, general manager of Yahoo Sports (and formerly head of sports at Twitter), about his company’s mobile content sports offerings, the strategy behind streaming football, and the potential for adding sports betting.
SPORTTECHIE: What are the new features in the Yahoo Fantasy Sports app?
REISS: We’ve added some new social features to make it easier for fans to talk to each other. One of the fun things about working on fantasy football is that Yahoo fantasy drives the highest NPS [net presenter score] we have in our company [but] that doesn’t get us off the hook in terms of trying to make the product better for fans. One of the pieces of feedback that we’ve gotten in terms of how we could make it better is in terms of helping fans communicate with each other over the course of the season.
The other big change for the fantasy football player is that this year you’re going to be able to watch NFL games live in the fantasy app. We think that’s a huge development on a product that somebody’s already incessantly looking at over the course of the day. To be able to dip in and out of games while you’re checking your scores and checking your players means that we feel like we’ve really kind of propelled that product head and shoulders beyond anything else that’s in the market. There just isn’t another place where you can simultaneously watch a game and keep in touch with what you’re doing in fantasy out there.
SPORTTECHIE: Can you explain NPS?
REISS: NPS is something called net presenter score. It’s something that’s not unique to us. It’s a measurement that a number of businesses use. Hospitality companies use it, automotive companies use. Basically, it gives you an idea of measuring consumer sentiment with a particular focus on the high end of avidity around a particular product. Like anything else it is not a perfect metric, but it is something that I think has directional accuracy to it.
SPORTTECHIE: How does the experience of watching an NFL game in the fantasy app compare to the regular Yahoo Sports app?
REISS: It’s going to be the same core experience. It’s the same feed. What will be interesting to see is what folks do during things like commercial breaks. In the Yahoo Sports app, we have an incredibly high level of ad completion. We have something like a 90 percent level of ad-completion there, which is amongst the highest that we have in our company, which means that people are not doing what they do in front of TV, which is just hitting a bunch of buttons while the commercials are on. One of the things about being a sports fan is we have those commercial breaks just timed out in our heads. On the phones, at least last year, they didn’t do that. I suspect that there might be some level of jumping around looking at scores and looking at what else is going on.
SPORTTECHIE: What is behind the shift to mobile streaming of sports?
REISS: I think one of the reasons the NFL was eager to work with Verizon was that they’re committed in terms of being able to reach younger demos than they necessarily do in linear television. During the first season of NFL Live on Yahoo, we saw a median viewer of about 39 years old, which is significantly younger than the NFL is reaching through linear television. What that suggested to us is that there’s been a lot of discussion in the industry as to whether or not the NFL has a demo problem, and they don’t have a demo problem. They have a use case problem.
The younger fans that they want to reach aren’t necessarily cable subscribers. They aren’t necessarily sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon. But if you make it easier for them to take football with them, to make football frictionless—not requiring cable authenticated subscription, not requiring a specific wireless carrier—but basically make it as simple as hitting a play button and having a high-def video stream come within seconds of doing that, you can start to reach younger audiences. That was a theory a year ago and something we proved out last year. I expect us to see some significant audience growth this year and I would expect those demos to hold.
SPORTTECHIE: Are fantasy users participating in drafts on their phones, or sticking to their laptops?
REISS: Starting two years ago actually the predominant use case was to have drafts happen on people’s phones. I was surprised by that because I know I’m one of those guys: I like to have like nine windows open. I like having a lot of information. But I think that it is testimony to both the way that folks, particularly in your generation are changing the way they consume sports and do things.
And also I take it as a positive affirmation as to just how tight the app is that somebody feels like they’re not flushing the whole season by being able to draft on their phone. But starting in 2017, we actually saw the majority of drafts take place on people’s mobile devices, which really surprised me. And the proportional share grows a little bit each year.
SPORTTECHIE: Earlier this year, Yahoo also launched The Bounce, a mobile-first studio program covering the NBA. How does that fit in with your strategy?
REISS: We’re actually working with the NBA right now on Season Two of The Bounce. I think that there are a couple of interesting takeaways. One was we were surprised by what a large proportional amount of consumption of Bounce content came out of VOD as opposed to live viewing, which again speaks to the fact that audiences want to dip in and out of stuff. I think the other surprise was that folks came in for a little bit longer than we would have expected. And now what we’re working on is how we can get them in a little bit more often.
From the point of view of imitation representing a form of flattery, the fact that DAZN ended up doing a deal with Major League Baseball for a similar show to The Bounce shortly after we debuted The Bounce suggests that we’re not the only ones thinking about this stuff.
The NFL invented the category a little bit with Red Zone and we wanted to take it in a slightly different direction with The Bounce just in terms of the way we hosted it simply because we felt like the beat of the NBA is different than the NFL, you know. Red Zone is on six hours and 20 minutes once a week. They needed it structured that way but because The Bounce was on more often we felt we could have more personality into it than necessarily the way the NFL built Red Zone.
SPORTTECHIE: Are there any differences in iPhone user consumption versus Android users for the NFL streams?
REISS: Not specifically. The numbers reflect each other fairly closely, I don’t think there are any significant differences. From a contractual point of view, there is a use-case difference between the two devices, which is that we’re able to serve iPhone users with a mobile web live NFL experience, but we cannot provide that to Android users simply because we don’t have the same ability to manage the digital rights around that. And we can’t manage the territorial blackouts on Android mobile web. So that was the biggest difference: that we had no Android mobile web consumption. But demographically speaking they’re just not that dramatically different.
SPORTTECHIE: Have you considered giving Yahoo Fantasy Sports users NFL broadcasts that are tailored to fantasy football?
REISS: I think that’s an area that we’d be enthusiastic to explore with the National Football League. As part of their ongoing efforts to find new ways of engaging audiences, I think that some form of an augmented gamer broadcast is absolutely something we’d be very interested in pursuing. And whether or not that was a dedicated kind of talk track where you had specific talent against that or some form of interactive overlay that you put over that game are all things that we would be excited about exploring.
SPORTTECHIE: FOX recently launched a sports betting platform, FOX Bet. What is Yahoo’s stance on developing a sports betting app of its own?
REISS: We’re looking at it as a very interesting possibility in terms of how we could round out our gaming offerings to our fans. And we know both through third party research around people who play fantasy games as well as our own research on our own audience that not only do these fans have a high level of predisposition towards sports betting, but the majority of them are actually already doing it. Most of it through illicit means. If we can find a way that makes sure that the experience is made available to fans who want it, who are of age, and are living in a legally addressable market, I think it’s something we’d be interested in.
SPORTTECHIE: Finally, as a sports media executive, do you ever worry about users spending too much time on their phones?
REISS: I know that if you asked my wife, it’s a profound concern that I spend too much time on the phone and I’m sure she thinks that there are lots of people who do. But I mean, honestly, of all the things that keep me up at night about this business, that really isn’t one right now.
But it is an appropriate question for SportTechie to be pondering. One of the reasons that [Major League Baseball] has to put those damn nets up is because people aren’t paying attention to the damn game. They go and they spend however many dollars to sit in the eighth row and they’re on their damn phone. But the reality is that what it means more than anything is whether [we should be] focusing on more video-on-demand content or focusing on UI or user experience that works on the phone. It’s why we don’t produce a lot of long form video because long form video is stuff that we want audiences to watch, not necessarily what audiences are telling us they want to watch.