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Overview
In this StreamOn session, experts from across the sports ecosystem share perspectives on how technology, social engagement, and evolving business models are changing the way live sports experiences are delivered and monetized.
The discussion explored how to overcome legacy challenges, meet the evolving expectations of modern audiences, and shape future sports experiences that drive deeper engagement and new growth opportunities.
Featured speakers
Carlo de Marchis (Founder @ A Guy With a Scarf): Carlo De Marchis is an independent advisor and content creator working at the intersection of sport, media, and technology. After more than three decades in senior leadership roles in the global sports-tech industry, he now focuses on strategic advisory, thought leadership, and industry storytelling through his platform “A Guy With A Scarf.” Carlo regularly speaks and moderates at international conferences and collaborates with leading companies on topics such as fan engagement, live digital experiences, streaming innovation, and subscription strategy.
Paul Boustead (VP, Cloud Product Strategy @ Dolby OptiView): Paul Boustead leads the cloud product strategy for Dolby OptiView. With over 17 years at Dolby, he has advanced video streaming technologies across live sports, gaming, and entertainment. Paul founded Spatial Voice, acquired by Dolby in 2007. His expertise includes WebRTC, SIP/RTP, real-time streaming, and advertising technology. Paul holds a Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the University of Wollongong and is passionate about innovation in audio and video technologies.
Cyprien Castanedo (Head of Media Platform and Innovation @ LFP Media): After completing a Master’s degree in Innovation and Project Management at HEC Paris, Cyprien gained experience in sports and media at Olympique de Marseille and Canal+. He then joined the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP Media) in 2022, where he now leads the Platform and Media Innovation team, focusing on the development of Ligue 1+ and media innovation projects across the department.
Transcript
00:00:06:09 – 00:00:26:40
Welcome to this episode of StreamOn presented by Dolby OptiView. I’m Carlo de Marchis, a guy with a scarf. It read it on the opposite, but I can tell you this is “A guy with a scarf”, then to have with me Cyprien Castanedo from LFP Media, possibly in Torino, Italy you are in, imagine, Paris, France. In Paris.
00:00:26:47 – 00:00:53:04
Hi, Carlo. Hi, everybody. And Paul, you’re somewhere else. So I’m in Sydney. Product strategy at Dolby Optiview. You’re in Sydney, Australia. Which means you are. Sorry, I’m so ignorant. You. What weather do you have? Because I had 27 degrees last week and the rain 12 degrees yesterday. So I was… what time of the year is there?
00:00:53:08 – 00:01:20:34
Ah, it’s summer is over. It’s still reasonably warm. The water’s nice. So the beach is great! Okay. That’s a good starting point. So, let’s, the idea today is, StreamOn in the past at formula one, OBS and a lot of other clients. Also lately, my friend Dan Rayburn with Paul talking about the ads experience, etc..
00:01:20:38 – 00:01:43:12
So. Oh, my Alexa is telling me something. Sorry, I switch everything off in the house, but the Alexa. So hopefully, I need to be careful, don’t mention that name again. And now, I think the focus is, because of the passion and the experience of the three of us, is, the title is ‘Beyond the broadcast’.
00:01:43:12 – 00:02:03:02
Redefining fan engagement live sports. We will definitely be talking about the video experience. Right. But quickly, I mean, Cyprien, more than your official role title. What are you doing there at LFP Media? Then we’ll talk what happened last year, etc. blah blah blah blah. But tell me a bit about you in the current, what you’re doing now?
00:02:03:06 – 00:02:32:09
Yeah. So basically, at LFP Media, I work in the media department, and to be like fully concrete, my day to day job is coordinating all the technical and project activities regarding our DTC offering at Ligue 1+. So it goes from like the technical relationship with our vendors, to like being sure all the content is distributed the right way to like analytics of the performance of the week.
00:02:32:13 – 00:02:56:10
So it’s basically an end-to-end job on the DTC streaming platform. Then you also managing the roadmap for, I can imagine, for next feature, next version, and then next season. Yeah. Exactly, because everybody wants always more so. Actually, meaning that was this. From the vendor side, but it’s a… we are on the same team in the same ocean with little with different boats.
00:02:56:14 – 00:03:16:37
And Paul, I know you’ve spent quite some time at Dolby, but Dolby OptiView now. So what’s your focus now? So a late into the focus with just a little bit of background because it explains the focus now. So my background I was originally a telecommunications researcher. Then I was an entrepreneur for a while.
00:03:16:43 – 00:03:41:22
Startup, great great fun. And then I was in engineering product management. But where I’ve landed now is, product strategy and for product strategy from for my role, it’s kind of I’ve got one foot in research, one foot in the business group. And so I’m working to help define the longer term products within the Dolby
00:03:41:22 – 00:04:09:05
OptiView suite. I’m looking for the opportunities, and that’s where fan engagement is actually something that we’re super engaged with at Dolby at the moment. Actually, across the business group, we’re engaged in sports. Yeah, I’ve been at the Dusseldorf event, watching Splice Sport in your car. So. Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Allora. So let’s start with the big fun.
00:04:09:09 – 00:04:34:06
Let’s talk about the Ligue 1+. And I think, we have a little video to present what Ligue 1+ is.
00:04:34:10 – 00:04:53:46
Super emotional music as always in this case. So, last summer you were kind of in a lot of new cycle, Ligue 1 and Ligue 1+ was there, and I can imagine what it meant for Cyprien, but, I know even to me, you already told the story, so I hope it’s not too boring.
00:04:53:46 – 00:05:24:10
But summarize what happened and why this is a super case study for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) in live sports. Yeah. As you were saying, Carlo, I think this is a great case study, because in the past year and a half, we had like so many movement in so many directions, at LFP Media. So to summarize it, the project like Ligue 1+, was first built as a backup strategy for international markets.
00:05:24:14 – 00:05:46:26
So it was previously called the ‘Ligue 1 Pass’. And it was deployed in the UK and Ireland, one season and a half ago. The intent with that was like, okay, we have some markets internationally where we don’t have broadcasters. Let’s have a flexible tool that we can plug and play and activate and deactivate. Depending on the cycle.
00:05:46:30 – 00:06:09:01
And then the big movement was last year with the end of the DAZN and deal. That collapsed like for many reasons. But, we can dive into it a bit more later. But, we were in a situation where we had no broadcaster, no offer on the market. So the only solution was to go DTC.
00:06:09:05 – 00:06:51:17
And we used like the basis that we had in the UK, we twisted it with what we call like a hybrid model. And so not only DTC but also like fully dedicated on the distribution of the channel with lots of partners, telcos, streamers and so on. And we built kind of this offering with a linear channel, with VOD content, with a DTC platform, that we launched like on the 11th of August 2025, and then listen like we are like eight months after, already the time to have a small recap and furthermore to have like preparation of next season.
00:06:51:21 – 00:07:11:11
So, yeah, honestly, a very exciting project. And all the elements that you see like in those kind of events and some conferences and so on, like you have everything packed up in one project and yeah, and obviously the content is really rich. So the one thing that is fascinating that you mention quickly is what was the timeframe you had.
00:07:11:14 – 00:07:32:43
Yeah, that’s kind of the big news. Obviously, DTC is the big news. But from our side as product tech, from the strategy people, it’s okay. Now you have one month, even if you already had something in the UK or in Ireland, it doesn’t mean opening a geotagging, that was policy to allow everybody to use it. It’s the marketing side and everything and so on.
00:07:32:43 – 00:07:55:39
And also adopting obviously UK, Ireland and France are not that very different. But still it’s a different country, right? No, no, I think you’re completely right. So the timeframes were, the decision was made to launch Ligue 1+ as a platform, but as a project as a whole, I think on the end of May with the season start that was like mid-August.
00:07:55:43 – 00:08:21:22
So as you can imagine, everybody was quite busy during the summer. And we built everything from the tech to the content to the marketing to the pricing, to promotion. So honestly, it was quite a challenge. Also a bit scary to be fully honest, because like on every single piece of the project, it was brand new for us.
00:08:21:26 – 00:08:43:00
Like, we, because of the timing, we had to use internal resources. So, everybody kind of learned by doing all the steps from the DTC. But it’s also what makes it interesting because you have to learn, you have to be quick, you have to be resilient, and to adapt to a situation that’s brand new for everybody.
00:08:43:04 – 00:08:57:17
Yeah, absolutely. How long was that? Three months. Oh, wow. That’s super impressive.
00:08:57:21 – 00:09:20:20
Yeah. One thing that I wanted to ask is also what was, I’m sure you had so many fires or so many things to consider, but, what was the position in the ranking of things you had to worry about of the, you want to discover and with the experience you did something that you are sure it would work, or also that you had to do some adaptation.
00:09:20:20 – 00:09:44:00
So, yeah, I think what we started with as a strategy was, okay, like in three months, we’re not going to reinvent like video experience and so on. But like it’s not because you’re brand new that users are not expecting, like, a premium offering also in terms of, features on the video player and so on.
00:09:44:04 – 00:10:16:32
So we are the kind of, I would say, modest strategy was, okay, let’s focus on, the channel itself, the content that’s directly like merged into the channel. Let’s put some sparkles on it. Like, we had what we call kind of an expert mode that we’re packing, that we’re building with live like, which is like stats overlay rankings, live snips, like, you know, near live clipping, where you can have the highlights directly during the game.
00:10:16:36 – 00:10:52:33
But I think it stays pretty standard. No like revolutionary features or like something that stands out. The way we did the innovation to start with was more like, on other feeds, like additional feeds. To give you an example, on all the big games of the Sunday evening, we had what we call the expert feed, which is actually a feed that’s intended for people that are like data addicts and that likes to merge into all the small metrics of football.
00:10:52:37 – 00:11:24:41
And we had like L-bar shaped with statistics. And you had the names of the players directly into the game. You had sometime like the passes, the speed of the shots, typically we saw it in the quick video. So I think we wanted the first season to be kind of an experiment, but without like pushing this to all the users because we still wanted to gauge the appetite for those people.
00:11:24:45 – 00:11:45:47
And without spoiling everything, we will be trying to push it more on this, on the season two, because we now have some metrics to justify some choices. I think, one thing is, and I’ll start with Paul very often, there are two little visual provocation that I want to bring in that Cyprien already touched upon little bit.
00:11:45:47 – 00:12:05:25
So on one hand, there is this kind of after many years, because I started in 2008 with the Olympics, as I imagine, my live streaming career. And that was super special, the video was that we need to make it work and then Olympics, imagine all the channels. So, now in theory, there is kind of this common sense of, okay, but the video experience is commodity.
00:12:05:25 – 00:12:22:49
I mean, get a video player, whatever. Just put it there and stick it, get the discovery like Netflix and we are done, which we may or not, in not agree on the other hand. Very often you talk to people, especially on this side. Yeah but, just put the match they will they want to stay on the couch and just watch.
00:12:22:49 – 00:12:48:33
They don’t care about your little feature that you asking me X or whatever media to develop for you. So for me. So where are you in that? So is this commodity? And does it make a difference to user? What’s your position, Paul? If you want? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about it. Yeah. And I think the what’s not solved there’s a bunch of things that aren’t solved with delivering video.
00:12:48:41 – 00:13:15:20
One is consistent and low delay that works when people are connected via mobile and on bad networks, etc.. That’s that’s definitely not solved if you, and mobile, is increasing in terms of a platform that people connect by, people connect usually for a short of time by a mobile to watch what’s happening in the game as they’re out and about.
00:13:15:32 – 00:13:40:37
So we see a lot of mobile connectivity and streaming on mobile isn’t at low delay, It’s definitely not solved. Also getting a consistent video experience. So if you want just the same as broadcast video, you can get that working on smart TV’s, connected TVs. But as soon as you start adding features, you start wanting to multiview.
00:13:40:46 – 00:14:13:39
You start wanting to do stats overlays. You want to do dynamic ad insertion. It gets more and more complex to do that across the different, the different platforms in the ecosystem. And also both of those really combined, actually creating fan experiences that engage the viewer. You need to be able to do features like multi-view. You need to be able to understand what’s happening in the video stream so you can overlay stats in the right place.
00:14:13:43 – 00:14:46:27
There’s a lot of complexity that you stop adding when you create those personalized experiences. So I think there’s a lot of work for people building video experiences left to do, which is great. Yeah. And I think what’s interesting is that to them and we’re like experimenting that with the first season like it’s a mix between what you think is a good idea in terms of experience that you will provide to the users and what the users are actually going to buy or not.
00:14:46:31 – 00:15:09:16
And I think like to your point, Paul, at some time, you have also to make some market push because you know that this is an innovation that on the long run is going to bring value to the fans. Because I think you mentioned with Carlo like some users will just say like, I just want high quality streams, no feature, just want to sit on the couch and watch the 90 minute game.
00:15:09:20 – 00:15:34:13
But if we stay like that, you’re not bringing any value. And I think you’re just like stagnating in the same area all over again. So it’s honestly not an easy balance to find between. Okay. Like, let’s ask the user for what they want. But on the other hand, like I work in the media business, I know what the tech is capable of,
00:15:34:13 – 00:16:00:16
the users don’t. So maybe if want to push something. Yeah, I need to to show a bit the innovation and what can be achieved. Yeah. On that point, I think it’s really, it’s really hard to understand whether a new fan experience you put out is actually engaging the fan. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re in this space, because we want to create compelling fan experiences.
00:16:00:20 – 00:16:28:35
And at Dolby, we’re in an experience company, so we actually care about the experience. So we’re coming from the experience side in. And one thing that we’re spending a lot of time on is trying to understand what engages fans and then drive the experience from that. And I think we’re at a stage at the moment where there’s enough data around particularly with over-the-top services, with enough data about the users to understand what engages them.
00:16:28:39 – 00:17:00:46
So then you can use that to drive the experience, as opposed to just trying something and seeing if it sticks. And that’s yeah, we, I’m spending a lot of my time on that, fan experience. But understanding the fan and using that to drive the experience. Yeah. And I think it’s even sometimes, like a a bit funny as some people will be asking for things more because it’s now a requirement rather than because it’s an experience increase.
00:17:01:00 – 00:17:32:48
There was like if any parts as season start with Ligue 1+, where when we launched the service, like on the 11th of August, the top one comment was, okay, are we going to get 4K? Are we going to get like Atmos sounds? And it was kind of the number one ask. And we know because we have the data in terms of the devices that people are watching the streams on, like that 95% of the users, even if they get 4K streams, they cannot like watch it 4K.
00:17:33:02 – 00:17:55:32
So at sometime it’s a, it’s more a marketing tool, to say like, okay, we are a premium service and we are offering 4K streams on the football game, even if we know that most of the users will have like either an old TV that’s not supporting 4K or watching like on the subway on their small iPhone.
00:17:55:35 – 00:18:16:33
So it’s also like the investment that you would that you would be putting in 4K or like Dolby Atmos sound is something like for promotion for marketing to say, listen guys, we hear you. We are like the best quality you can put. But then on the usage, it’s not much, but that’s almost a pull away from marketing to you.
00:18:16:37 – 00:18:47:13
What that my experience has been, sorry Paul, has been a lot of I create, I have invented, or something more or less, designed three new things, features or experiences. And I’m trying to convince the marketing team of my client, which is even if it’s a vendor, is more difficult to invest what I call marketable features, so select 2 of the 15 we designed, the side where we implemented, select two that you help us push to the client.
00:18:47:13 – 00:19:04:19
So the users, because it’s not obvious. I mean, whatever I was doing with the NFL, it was that feature that nobody had knew. If you don’t push it with the marketing, the direct to consumer, nobody will use it, then it doesn’t mean they will use it. But if they don’t know, you kind of have to educate them.
00:19:04:22 – 00:19:15:11
It’s a balance of you know, where you put your money both on in terms of product and marketing, obviously, with the support of the content available, clearly.
00:19:15:15 – 00:19:35:12
Oh, sorry. I just stopped. Oh that’s okay. Oh, just one point for Cyprien on the what users are asking for, I think when, what when users ask for 4K videos are generally asking for better video. Yeah. And one thing that we learned a long time ago is that, people want, you know, better pixels, not more pixels.
00:19:35:16 – 00:19:59:02
So you actually want the, you first want it to be stable. So not interrupted by network issues, but you then pretty quickly want the colors to be accurate, particularly in a sports, because you want to see the face of the player and you want to see the face of the player, not red, because your TV’s, you know, a little bit off of its on its color balance, but you want to see the natural face.
00:19:59:02 – 00:20:21:22
And that’s where I think we get a lot of traction with Dolby Vision in sports because we can, help get that natural experience on the video side, because we work with most of the panel manufacturers and we understand the capability of those panels, and we can map the video from the camera to the panel, which is, an end to end thing, which is pretty hard to do.
00:20:21:26 – 00:20:48:40
And getting that right, I think makes it a much better experience. Yeah, definitely. One thing in terms of interactivity, I’ve been working on Interactive Player since around 2010-12, so, and we never I think, found the holy grail of, you know, getting millions to use a certain feature or not. But I’m observing now, my, my son is 11 playing in a football team, so I have a 20 kids around me that I can observe.
00:20:48:44 – 00:21:19:44
And in Italy DAZN has a little interactive back that even on the mobile ask you. Okay, so we been super like super simple interactivity. And I was impressed by the reaction. This is like pure anecdote. But they loved it. So like and I was right. So even for this, for this generation, for the people that are using digital devices in a, you know, in a very advanced way, it’s amazing how they appreciate, interactivity.
00:21:19:48 – 00:21:57:10
And, so you know, there’s a lot of blah, blah, blah about young generation, etc. but I saw it. They really loved it. And it’s a small thing. So obviously they’re not designing product, we are. And you’re young, I mean, I’m older, but, sorry. Go back to, what’s interesting in that Carlo is that, obviously what was also not a struggle, but the challenge when we launched the 1+ is that, like, you’re targeting, obviously younger generation because as you were saying, everybody’s saying, okay, like the young generation, they’re not watching football anymore or like they’re watching it differently.
00:21:57:14 – 00:22:32:28
So we tried to have an approach that’s heading towards those, younger generation. But on the other hand, like the core football fans that are ready to pay like 20 euros a month to watch football. They are more like male people more than 30 years old. So in terms of also the interactivity and the features that you’re putting on the platform, it means you need to be smart because you don’t have to lose people that are just going to say, okay like there are too many things on screen.
00:22:32:38 – 00:22:53:25
Why is there a chat? Why is there like some quizzes and so on? But on the other hand, if you’re not trying to offer something new to the younger generation that are most used to interactivity, to speaking to people while watching football, to have like some polls, some quizzes with the man of the match, ranking the actions and so on.
00:22:53:29 – 00:23:24:44
So I think this is also something that’s not easy to master. And on our side, you know, because we have the OTT on one side, but we also have the Ligue 1+ channel that’s carried by the telco, by DAZN, by Prime Video, and so on. We are kind of heading towards the OTT itself being kind of the innovation lab, and then like the people that want to watch it on the traditional TV, they just like to go on their set-top box.
00:23:24:44 – 00:23:48:41
They have the bundle with Ligue 1+ and they watch like the linear channel without any like sparkles. Absolutely! And just to make things more complex than you already touched about it, let’s talk about multi-platform. How many platform is directly the Ligue 1+ streaming service on at the moment? So that’s a good question. So there is two things.
00:23:48:45 – 00:24:29:37
There is the platform with the distributor. So typically, if you have a Prime Video or DAZN, they’re like on many platforms, but our OTT is web, mobile, smart TVs. I’m not going to list them, but most of them, PlayStation, Xbox. And I must be like forgetting somewhat some of them, but now it’s one of our approach where, because Ligue 1+ was also a project where we wanted to recreate the bond with the fan, our perspective was okay, no matter what device you were streaming on, you need to have Ligue 1+ available.
00:24:29:41 – 00:24:53:37
And, I think… Paul, how do you manage that? Because obviously is already what you said, the Cyprien said, you have to go a minimum common denominator. Obviously, you need to find there will be some feature on certain platforms, etc.. Is there a way to support this kind of because that can kill your product. In the end, you won’t have any product roadmap, effort time?
00:24:53:37 – 00:25:17:49
Or days to create because you have to, they changed some things, Sony launching new stuff. So how do you manage that. Yeah. So it’s the reason why we got into the player. Because creating experiences across platforms is super difficult. So if we want to create an experience that can be delivered across multiple platforms, we have to have more control over the player.
00:25:18:03 – 00:25:38:19
However, our strategy here is the player is there to help if someone else hasn’t solved the problem in their existing server. So we have the player so that we can engage, but we also work with people who solved all those problems across their platforms and then sell our products, into those platforms. So we have a multi-pronged strategy.
00:25:38:19 – 00:26:01:24
But the reason we got into the player side is it’s just so hard to get experiences out across all of the platforms. You have all sorts of problems where you can say on some platforms you can only decode one video stream. So trying to do dynamic ad insertion on some of those platforms becomes quite difficult. And also, multiview becomes difficult there.
00:26:01:24 – 00:26:25:27
So our strategy is dual pronged. We try and get the best we can out of the platforms. If there are things we need to do then we have, that we can’t. We just fall back to other solutions. So we’re very focused on server guided ad insertion, which requires control over the player, but we seamlessly fall back to server side ad insertion
00:26:25:31 – 00:26:46:13
or platforms which don’t support it. So we can get the best experience out. So it just is a lot of work to do it, which is our job. And also you mentioned once, and I was talking before the webinar with Cyprien. They’re working on something. So, Cyprien, I’ll let you explain. What’s your position on us.
00:26:46:13 – 00:27:07:08
No, I think, like when we first launch the service, like, you look at the revenue stream that you can get from DTC, the first one is obviously like, okay, subscription times, number of subscribers times, number of months of the year. But then obviously it’s also like, okay, how are we going to monetize ads on the platform?
00:27:07:12 – 00:27:32:17
The first way we did it, is a very old fashioned way. Like, you have like a partnership with another agency. You’re waiting the first month to get, like, the audiences and some insights and the number of viewers, and then you’re selling the ads the old fashioned way. The reason we did that is because it was something that we already knew.
00:27:32:20 – 00:28:01:18
Like, we had some partnership with some ad agencies that knows how to sell ads on the TV channel. What we’re considering for next season is trying to be a bit more creative and trying to put the ad insertion differently into the platform. The main reason for that is like, it’s no secret, like the rates that you can get on linear TV ad insertion is like decreasing every year.
00:28:01:22 – 00:28:34:12
Whereas if you’re taking like digital ads, it’s still increasing. So, we are still like discussing about the best way to do it. What I would say is that adding ad insertion into the homepage to promote some partners, to promote some special events of, I don’t know, like McDonald’s, which is the namer of the competition, or like other vendors like Decathlon, that you do the partner for the Ligue 1 ball.
00:28:34:16 – 00:28:59:19
So we’ll definitely be looking at ad insertion directly on the platform with one small twist. That’s the reality of our model, because the OTT is just one part of Ligue 1+ distribution. It means that all the innovation that we could bring in terms of ad insertion on the platform is not common to the whole Ligue 1+ project.
00:28:59:23 – 00:29:17:19
So it’s something also that you have to manage, so that the experience that you’re offering on your DTC is not like fully crowded with ads. Whereas if you go on Prime Video or DAZN, you have something that’s a bit softer.
00:29:17:23 – 00:29:25:33
Yeah. So we have one question. Let me see if I can put it on.
00:29:25:37 – 00:29:41:37
So I’ll do, so from Cormac, question to all, how do you see the market demand for immersive video in both replay and real-time? For example, the likes of what you see recently in the NBA on Prime.
00:29:41:41 – 00:30:07:11
They told some that so I can start, yeah immersive video can be really compelling as long as it’s you know, there’s multiple parts of immersive media. There’s immersive video which is, you know, three degrees of freedom, two degrees of freedom, three degrees of freedom is really compelling, but super hard to capture. Two degrees of freedom.
00:30:07:15 – 00:30:34:17
It makes you feel a little bit nauseous when you’re watching. So immersive video can be really good, but it can also be just in a bit nauseating. But what I think really, where immersive video can play a really interesting role in the future, is being able to, if you’ve got this 3D model of the video, you could pull out different views, which is where I think, yeah, that’s super interesting.
00:30:34:21 – 00:31:19:15
Because, but the more we’re looking at personalization, the more different camera angles, can tell better stories with, for a particular viewer. So, that’s from my side. That’s where it becomes interesting. Yeah. I think, I agree with you, Paul, in the sense of what was kind of the boundary in terms of the experience that you’re providing to the user is that typically if you dive a bit into the, like the football analytics, you see, like a big play of, I don’t know like PSG or Marseille, you can explain it, you can say, okay, like, the angle of the pass is quite interesting.
00:31:19:19 – 00:31:50:19
You make the pass without seeing it, but with 3D models and 3D recreation, you can like, illustrate the saying with like, okay, let’s look at Vitinha or ‘João Neves. And you see in his eyes what he was seeing was like the 3D models. And I think on our side there is two perspective and those kind of immersion, putting this directly into the video player somehow, or like, the second screen experience is interesting.
00:31:50:23 – 00:32:16:21
What we could be looking at, for next season would be a more phased approach, typically using those 3D recreation on them, like on our weekly shows, like you get a journalist that is using the tool to illustrate some of the actions, you know, when they do, like do the technical analysis, it’s kind of a first step so that users can get used to.
00:32:16:21 – 00:32:36:05
Okay like, I see the player in 3D, I see the angles and so on. And then as a second step and you’re using kind of step one to just also educated people about the future. And then step two would be, you remember the nice feature that was on our weekly shows. You can then have a customized approach.
00:32:36:09 – 00:33:05:43
You can just play with the tool directly in the app. And I think, like the full immersive with the glasses or like whatever, is maybe like, just I would say an innovation, initiative just to show what’s feasible. But I think the real use case for the moment is more, okay, you cut just the linear 2D feed and you put it in 3D.
00:33:05:47 – 00:33:26:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, I mean six degrees of freedom and three degrees of freedom before. But, Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. It, an immersive video on a 2D screen or cutting out a view from it is really what’s compelling to me. Yeah, but there’s, by the way, thank you, Cormac, because I wanted to talk about ambition and innovation.
00:33:26:38 – 00:33:54:07
So perfect timing, with this question. I think what I’ve seen recently watching a bit more football with my son and also at the stadium. When there are these new cameras, like, it’s now 2 or 3 years where they go very close and they do the bokeh effect. So the way immersive doesn’t only mean that glasses is the way the referee can for whatever it bit sketches feel.
00:33:54:11 – 00:34:25:40
So there are a lot of immersion and we’re talking about football, obviously, NBA different sport. Also immersive is easier because you’re closer to the action. But the lot of way that and then and not because it’s all about with audio with so the the concept of immersion can be declining in very many dimension. I think, one if you in the last topic or question, I don’t know if Cyprien wants to talk about a bit, the roadmap for next year, but whatever you want, if you can, or more the ambition.
00:34:25:41 – 00:34:50:34
So forget for a moment that you are at Ligue 1, LFP Media, etc.. So I heard things they wanted to see happening and some are happening, some not through the years, but what’s so roadmap and ambition. And then if you want proper ambition also for Paul. Yeah. No I think I would say roadmap is an ambition is kind of a merge into the same area for us.
00:34:50:38 – 00:35:15:17
I think the first ambition that got it that way for next season is how you make your recap of everything that did well, and not well on the season one, and how you correct that on the season two, without like, giving any secrets. But I think, the number one priority for us is everything that’s going to be about churn prevention.
00:35:15:21 – 00:35:49:23
How do you get better rates in terms of the people that are like, committed on the platform, the people that are not committed or you make some retargeting campaigns and so on? I would say it’s pretty basic when you sell it that way. It’s kind of the, number one rule when you were going DTC, but because it was brand new for us, like we’re just following the traditional path of, okay, first priority, how you get like people on the platform, second priority, how you keep them, especially with like the summer break that’s coming.
00:35:49:27 – 00:36:16:32
That’s I would say the churn and the, like the technical part. But in terms of the ambition, there is also like how you use the platform to get, as I was saying like, an innovation hub for like the streaming as a whole. So the idea is also to, put on the platform things that people haven’t seen before.
00:36:16:36 – 00:36:36:28
So we are still in some, like, brainstorming phase where, we want for next season, maybe not for August because the roadmap on the empty churn and so on, these are pretty full. But I don’t know, like maybe in September, how you put some features that have not been seen anywhere in terms of the video player in the DTC.
00:36:36:32 – 00:37:01:36
I cannot give you the feature because it’s not on the site. But the idea is, it was kind of a groundbreaking, I think, for a top five league to go DTC on the domestic market. We’ve seen a couple of weeks ago that Premier League announced like Premier League Plus. So it’s quite funny because the Ligue 1+, the name is not too far away.
00:37:01:40 – 00:37:28:28
But I would say we will be trying as a Ligue 1 to use this position where we now have more flexibility. We are now in control of our roadmap, our experience and so on. To be quite innovative and, even if a lot of people are saying, like, okay, is it a sustainable model in terms of revenues and so on, blah, blah, blah, at least, we have the control of the experience.
00:37:28:28 – 00:37:53:05
So, let’s try to make the most out of it. Yes. And Paul on your side. Roadmap and ambition. They collide, sometimes they don’t. Oh yeah, I think our roadmap and, yeah, our ambition. Yeah, they’re very related, actually. So we’re spending a lot of time in the shorter term with our streaming product player product and ads product.
00:37:53:17 – 00:38:23:09
And our focus there is helping our sports customers generate revenue and so meet the requirements that they have on the streaming side, get to the platforms that they need with the player and also with ads. We’ve been successful in increasing ad revenue for a couple of our sports customers by upto, you know, over 60% actually, because moving them to personalized ads at scale has really helped them increase their revenue.
00:38:23:13 – 00:38:51:09
But longer term, the way that we, our ambition is to help our customers generate more revenue by increasing watch times. So keeping viewers watching, keeping viewers engaged with what they are watching. And we’re taking a very user centric approach to this. So we are looking at how users engage with content. There’s so much data that streaming providers have at the moment.
00:38:51:09 – 00:39:17:32
So with that data, understanding what engages viewers and then, with that data, what we’re doing is creating stories around the sport because people engage with. Sport is a story, people engage with stories. There’s a lot of interesting information around the sport to get a game to keep people engaged, which could be replays from other live games.
00:39:17:32 – 00:39:39:22
It could be replays from the game that you’re watching. It could be social media content. It could be different views that are more interesting to you. Racing, for example, car racing there are so many camera angles. It’s so much stuff happening on the field. What is the view which is interesting to that viewer at the time?
00:39:39:26 – 00:40:10:32
So our thought is understanding what engages viewers and then using all of the information we have to turn the experience into more of a story that keeps them watching. And we see that as a way of increasing revenue as well, because that’ll increase subscription. One way that I see, ambition in terms of you mentioned it before that, I’ve seen it in the sports innovation, event in Dusseldorf.
00:40:10:36 – 00:40:33:15
Genius Sports, EA, and a lot of companies. You know, the thing we mentioned for many years, it’s now low recent, decent latency possible to recreate a full game with EA style graphics. Oh Yeah. While it’s happening. So the fact that my son will watch a game like that, or at some point he would go back to that and recreate the action.
00:40:33:15 – 00:40:54:38
So this kind of mixed experience. It’s not, it’s here. We just need to find a way, as an industry, need to find a way to. And still, I recently make my friend Lamberto at Milan invited me to the, to some Milan games in Milano San Siro. You know, and I have to say, I still needs to have a device in my hand.
00:40:54:38 – 00:41:15:24
What I can do stuff, rewatch, etc. Amazing to see the live experience, but I’m so digital that I want something to put my head. I know that there are a lot of apps. I think that’s and maybe, someone like Ligue 1 already. They already on the DTC streaming. May also invest there more than you know.
00:41:15:24 – 00:41:40:29
The club or, the broadcasts, in certain cases, it’s very difficult to do it properly. So. Yeah, that’s I’m missing a device in my hand, which is not for everybody. Sorry. Then I think, also what we saw this week, this weekend at La Liga where they did like, kind of a old school overlay, where you had, like, all the lineups, all the old fashioned way of.
00:41:40:33 – 00:42:03:25
Yeah, it’s a very cool sport and so on. And honestly, I watched it and I was like, it’s crazy as everybody’s saying, like, we need to be like at the cutting edge of technology, have something dynamic. But sometime having kind of the nostalgic overlays back from the like 2000s, gives a new taste to the games.
00:42:03:29 – 00:42:30:07
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I think, we covered, I would say most of what I had in mind. Thank you for being part of this. Like, I always like to talk with people that not only talk about things, but they’re really building, launching, relaunching, refactoring, whatever you do in product and with the real case. I think, before you were mentioned then.
00:42:30:07 – 00:42:47:07
Now, we have to start now. We have to start. I think, one of the as a product guy, one of the things I love working in streaming is that you have, with all the privacy things, but, you know, so this person is doing this so you can go so deep into what the existing, doesn’t mean to the one outside.
00:42:47:07 – 00:43:21:02
So, but the existing customer doing if you have your sensor right and you have a platform more and more this platform with AI etc., you gonna extract a lot of insights of what works, what doesn’t, and even what you can what make work better because you see faster and so that’s super fascinating. If you chill off, you know, designing, and building product, it crazy old like, from like all the years before when we were selling the rights just to a broadcaster, the only link that we had with the fans were like on social media.
00:43:21:06 – 00:43:47:28
So basically the real Ligue 1 fans, was kind of a black box for us. Like, whether, what they, what demographics, what type of content are they’re interested in? So it’s a real, a game changer to get access to the data. But, it’s also like something that you need to angle, like we figured out at the beginning of the season that we were, like, super excited.
00:43:47:28 – 00:44:13:32
Okay, like all this data that we’re going to get from people and so on. And then going, we were like, okay, we have all this data, but what do we do about it? Like, and you need people to manage it. You need to like, to get the right insights. You need to have also some months because after two months, the first conclusion that you have can be like wrong or a mistake.
00:44:13:36 – 00:44:33:45
So I think that’s also the good thing about the season two of the project is that you now have something to compare it to in terms of, okay, like the year minus one, I see the trend, I see the big games I know have some insights. But it’s definitely somewhere to angle all those data. Yeah, we should talk.
00:44:33:45 – 00:45:00:17
We work with a bunch of people around the data, and particularly from the angle of understanding engagement. Okay, make sense. Because Dolby itself, we’re very we’re very focused on creating engaging content. So we have a lot of data scientists. Yeah. And researchers that understand engagement from a physiological level. So we should chat. Exactly!
00:45:00:21 – 00:45:30:03
That’s an appointment. Yeah, absolutely! So what can I say? Thank you to the people that followed. And thank you to Cyprien for being available again. Really appreciate that, and thank you Paul, for being connected so far from us. So thank you. And and let’s see, Ligue 1+ season two with all the episodes like. Ma bene, grazie. Chao! Thank you for listening and watching.
00:45:30:03 – 00:45:32:26
Chao. Bye-bye. Thanks, Carlo. Thanks, Cyprien.


