Cynthia Slowik 0:07
Hello, everybody. And thank you for joining us on your Thursday afternoon. The second part of our sports series called revolutionising the fan experience. I'm Cynthia slowik. And I'm the innovation manager with the Verizon 5G Labs. Coming to you live from Brooklyn. We're excited to host this discussion as part of the 5G Labs virtual event series. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, we work with startups academia, enterprise teams to build a 5G powered world using practical applications of emerging technologies. Part of that mission includes having conversations like these that address barriers to digital inclusion and create opportunities for communities to thrive and grow. If you're interested in learning more about the work we're doing, please visit us at our website Verizon5glabs.com. And I'd also like to thank Alli for partnering with us to make this event happen. Ollie is a community agency we work with that unites rich and diverse communities around the country, with corporate partners to provide resources and catalysts to drive positive change in tech and the broader world. Without further ado, I'd like to turn to our incredible panelists who are with us today. And I'm asking them to each introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about the work that they're doing. I see here I have Ishwara up first of all, can you just talk a little bit about the work you're doing over at Fry's media.

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 1:36
Alright, thanks for having me, Cynthia. I'm excited to be here and Davyeon here and something I have spent a lot of time together and Davyeon and I were actually on a call earlier today. So it's fun to do this with friends. I lead business development, and partnerships for Yahoo Sports, which is part of Verizon media, which is part of the 270 million users who come to our site every month to read our editorial coverage of what happened in last night's game, play fantasy football, or basketball, or baseball or hockey with us, or to work with our partners at MGM to bet on tomorrow night's game. We are really excited to talk about some of the ways that we've innovated recently and worked with 5G to do that.

Cynthia Slowik 2:18
Amazing. And next, Davyeon, welcome. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about ShotTracker.

Davyeon Ross 2:26
Absolutely. It's truly a pleasure. Thank you for having me. My name is Davyeon Ross, and I'm one of the Founders of ShotTracker. And I'm also the President & CEO. And ShotTracker is a sensor based solution that tracks statistics and analytics. With sub second latency. Our solution consists of three components. a sensor that goes on the player weighs about six ounces, sensor that goes in the ball today, we have our senses, balding Wilson, Nike, Under Armour, Adidas body, multi basketballs, and then a sense sensors that go around the arena that allows us to track the location of the player in ball within two to four centimeters. Provide that data in sub second latency. That data can either be staff sort of raw location of the player ball that can help in many facets, I'm including, excuse me, enhancing the fan experience, either be additional statistics that come from automating the box score or going beyond the box score. We're really excited about 5g because anytime we can, you know accelerate the distribution of that data to whether it be fans or broadcasters or media companies. It's a great day. So again, thank you for having me, I'm excited to be on here with the rest of the crew.

Cynthia Slowik 3:49
Awesome. And Miheer, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you're doing with Livelike.

Miheer Walavalker 3:57
Thanks for having me. Great to be here with friends. I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Livelike. Livelike is a technology platform. We work with media companies and sports sports teams and clubs around the world, wherein we allow them to create interactive and social viewing experiences within their owned and operated platforms. So you know, when everyone is talking about a watch parties these days, we are essentially enabling our partners to create those kind of experiences within their own apps rather than leaving all the engagement for so to be done on social networks. allows our partners to get to know their friends better engage their fans better create better loyalty. And of course at the end of the day gamified those experiences to improve both participation and engagement. That's it.

Cynthia Slowik 4:48
That's it. Thanks, all for being here. We're excited to dive into this discussion. Before we kick things off. Audience members, you guys are a part of this show too. Please make sure to drop your questions into the BlueJeans q&a feature. And we'll be answering those throughout today's discussion. And before we get to that first question, one more thing, I just would like to quickly touch on 5G, what it is and how it works with MEC, which is what we call multi-access edge computing. You'll hear that word a lot the word MEC, and how it's feeling the next breakthroughs in business. 5G is known for increasing speed and increasing bandwidth. And we're also seeing like extremely low latency along with a few other key attributes to 5G that enables technology advancements in both hardware and software experiences. So 5G, and MEC is going to revolutionize the data processing by moving workloads to the edge of the network. What does it mean to move massive amounts of data to the edge of the network, while 5G's bandwidth allows you the ability to stream massive amounts of data beyond 2d video into new formats like 360, video, live action 3d environments, and in VR and AR and multiplayer gaming platforms, you don't have to have in the future, you won't have to have all the big server and the big computers on site to do the rendering and the streaming because you can do that computation on the edge and stream the results. And so you'll need a lot of bandwidth and ultra low latency, you'll hear that word a lot to to achieve an experience without a lag. So this type of new technology will fuel new experiences across industries, especially in sports, which is what we're here to talk about. So Ishwara I'm picking on you again. But uh, you know, as someone who sits at the intersection of sports and tech, as you have like, for your whole career, can you talk a little bit about how sports viewing habits have changed in light of this pandemic, and just touch on, you know, our obviously people are watching at home, but are more people watching overall. And then, of course, talk a little bit about major league, what major leagues done to engage fans in new ways.

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 7:17
Sure, so as many of you know, Yahoo Sports streams every NFL game in the Yahoo Sports app, so you can watch all National Games, and all local games. So any game you'd be able to see undertake TV through cable, you can watch on Yahoo Sports for free. We also have NBA league pass, and we have a variety of highlights from MLB. And from the NHL deal that we just announced a few months ago, we're continuing to see that fans really want content that's personalized to them, they want to highlights they want to watch live games, they want to be player focused. It's been an interesting year for sports, obviously, right? You've seen a lot of the schedule change. It's also been a very busy year with political news as well. And you know, a lot of people's lives have changed. And also the schedule of sports has changed. You know, we've been through a long period of time, unfortunately for here and Dave, them and all of us in sports where there weren't a lot of sports, and then all of it hit at once. So a lot of things have changed. And it's become hard, I think in some ways for consumers to follow where to find their games and where to watch them. And it's been widely reported that ratings overall on sports properties this year have been down I think the NFL has recorded about a 7% decline year over year. But it's interesting to think about it also the NFL this year had 20 of the top 25 and 42 of the top 50 telecasts. And if you look at the top 100 telecast for all of 2020, only two of them were something other than sports or news. So it's still it's still reasonable to think that live sports are one of the only things that people don't want to watch on demand. It's not as much fun to watch the game, if you already know, one. When you look at the data, you'll also see that, you know, the NFL and many of the league's are trying to think about how to distribute their games going forward. Do they distribute them on broadcast? Or do they distribute them over the top to a platform like Yahoo Sports, and I think you'll continue to see leagues try to do both wherever they can. I mean, to them, it's an issue of maximizing revenue versus maximizing eyeballs both of which they want to do. But for as much talk as there is about Ott and as proud as we are to be one of the distributors of the NFL last year for the NFL, at least only 3.4% of overall viewing was on digital. So it's still it's still just very early.

Cynthia Slowik 9:27
And Miheer would you like to maybe talk about the types of engagement strategies that have been gaining the most traction among fans in your world and Mr. COVID? Yeah. I mean,

Miheer Walavalker 9:43
I'll start with what what what a pieces has been for fan engagement, even pre COVID and then I'll talk about like, what if there's been any acceleration but you know, overall, look, I grew up in India, watching NFL Formula One NBA middle of the night, I didn't really have the luxury to go to bar With friends to watch games, which is, you know, the more sought after a thought about behavior in the US. So, you know, we always started watching games and chatting on WhatsApp and you know, calling each other to see, you know, did you see that goal when Liverpool scored or something like that the idea that you want to watch, watch games together has been, has been the driving force behind live life since the beginning, even when we were doing it primarily in virtual reality. The other aspect that we've been focused on very, very minute Li is, interactivity, you know, passive Leanback viewing the data passively in back viewing are gone, at least for the younger generation, you know, you have everyone has their phone in their hands when they're watching anything really, at this point in time. And the data, the nature of the phone experience, you know, you want you want to interact, you want to engage, you want to participate. So that participatory experience is what we've been trying to create it to our to our platforms, and we provide that as an SDK or an API to our partners. When we first started going to market with this, you know, we found some reticence at least in the sports leagues, in terms of Hey, we don't want to use chat, you know, chat, we've tried it, it doesn't work. Really, they will try and comment boards, right? It's not that's not chat. moderation is a concern synchronization, spoiler prevention, like we don't want to have spoilers when you're watching completely get it, that's exactly the kind of behavior that we were trying to solve for it as well. So it took a while to get people warmed up to the idea. But with the advent of Twitch, and with every major tech company out there providing watch together type of solutions, I think we found a lot more. You know, most of the needs Federation's and broadcast partners have been more open to the idea. And now, you know, even brands are starting to take notice of that and brands are interested in it. And then ultimately, you know, when sponsorship dollars go in and make things much every conversation becomes much easier. So, the idea of watch party has definitely taken hold recently. But more than that, not just watch parties, but interactive engagement, you know, polling predictions, you know, express yourself, tap to cheer. These are more COVID specific phenomenons because match, you know, because the statement in stadiums were empty, and there was no crowd noise. So make some noise from home cheer for your team. Those I would probably call more COVID specific innovations. But the idea of interactive participatory experiences that's been that's been picking up steam for a while now.

Cynthia Slowik 12:34
And the data that you're getting from the polls that you're running live, and the information that you're getting back from the fans, are you also able to, like leverage that into like future experiences or have partners like ways that they can apply that?

Miheer Walavalker 12:50
Absolutely, I mean, look at this, at this point in time, there are two competing teams that we are we're working with not competing Tableau themes, you obviously have the interactivity and the social community driven experiences. On the other hand, you have debt of third party cookies, you know, GDPR, and compliance requirements, you know, with now with the whole idea, controversy with Apple updates, you know, everyone is looking for first party engagement data, which is where we come in, right, like we're saying, you take our SDK, you put it into your own app, and we'll help you enrich your own user profile, you don't have to go retarget them and find out, you know, based on cookies, and that, so the data that we capture, in terms of what kind of content resonates with people helps drive editorial strategies going forward? Okay, you know, FYI, this type of an audience prefers more educational modules, whereas another type of an audience prefers more, you know, bragging rights related, like armchair quarterback style modules, like who's gonna win next. Look, I told you, so that kind of thing. So there's a lot of use from drive editorial strategies from a fan engagement standpoint, the one thing that I believe is there is no one size fits all fan engagement experience, which is why we chose to go with a platform approach and empower the product managers rather than taking a white label product offering, when this is yours, the product and take it or leave it and put your own spin on it. We want people can decide for themselves, what experience works for them and all that is driven through data.

Cynthia Slowik 14:17
Wow, that's impressive. Davyeon. Maybe you can share a little bit about some of the projects that were in the pipeline that your your team has been working on that got accelerated during the current climate.

Davyeon Ross 14:31
Yeah, absolutely. So you don't win. You know, similar to me here. You know, we had we had several strategies around how we can use our data. And you know, we really focused on, you know, really pushing our data to the coaches to broadcast etc. And to really try to figure out how we can enhance the fan experience mainly because of the rich nature of our data, being able to get the location of a player involved within, you know, 200 milliseconds and You know, being able to get insight about the game that is beyond the box score, right? That was our baseline. And to be honest with you, those, those are the sexy things, right? Those are the things where monsters want to be around, right? What we've seen with COVID is is the emphasis on, you know, things that lead to efficiency, the things that lead to automation. So a perfect example of that. And, you know, I'll share my screen while I'm talking here. But a perfect example of that is, you know, one of the things that we're doing is we're actually utilizing, you know, our technology to drive the experience in regards to how we could remote control cameras, how do we do ramie, which is remote operations and remote productions of the game. So I mean, I'll share this here while I'm speaking. But on the left side is an example of what we've done at the Mountain West tournament, it was using multiple camera people, I think there was like four or five different cameras with associated camera, people controlling it. And on the right side is a visual gives me a visual representation where our data is being flowed to the camera and controlling what's going on in the game. And for this implementation, you just see one camera, but we have four or five camera implementations, which allow you to zoom, which allow you to jump from different cameras from a production perspective. And if you think about in a COVID environment, where we're trying to get sports back, we need to think about their their broadcast partners right now, who are sending people to games and you know, you'd have to send a truck, you have to send a whole bunch of people. And you know, hours before the game is cancelled, because, you know, the team can't perform or not enough players to be able to supply team due to COVID. So there's this whole level of efficiency that people are going for that we have seen, become top of mind. And and the ability to be able to set up a camera and control it from a remote location and have that camera I understand. Now, there's a group of people may say, Well, you know, there are some options in the market today that can handle automated production. And we agree. But what we've seen is we've seen this, this, this, this not necessarily resentment, or this lack of acceleration, because, you know, those cameras don't necessarily match up with a $50,000, you know, broadcast camera that's used for a Monday night game. So what we're seeing now is being able to use those high quality 50 k cameras, you know, you put 5G and MEC in the mix, to be able to streamline the broadcast experience, and the bandwidth that's necessary to bring this to fruition. And now you're saying that you can use these production, expensive cameras that produce such a standard and a quality that people are accustomed to. And now you don't have to compromise that because you can actually take our raw data and control as many as five to seven of these cameras, and produce an experience that's, you know, comparable or equal, or sometimes better, because of what it's enables to what we're seeing on a championship basketball game.

Cynthia Slowik 18:19
Right? Do you really like you're literally creating the customized experience that a fan might want, and they can basically pick any player that they love, or any part of the game? And really, like, very, like, zoom in on exactly what that player is doing by using this type of technology?

Davyeon Ross 18:36
Yeah, so I don't I don't mean to be the guy, you know, short all the videos. But I mean, when you bring that up, I mean, show it is, I mean, don't us believe in, right? You know, we also believe that this empowers like a customized experience. So let's say, you know, I'm watching a game here, I've got all these different camera angles, but you know, I have an affinity, and I want to be able to follow Russell Westbrook. Well, now you're getting a situation here where, you know, because of knowing where the players in real time, because of having these cameras that are now automated, that have turned this into a software experience, you can literally create your ISO cam with your favorite player, just watching them there. And it could be dynamically implemented, right? It could be something that, you know, you are putting this in the hands of the consumer, and one of the things that we have to think about is that, you know, Gone are the days in my house today, you know, I don't think I have, you know, I've cut the cord, right? So we still have a cord to the Apple TV, but you're looking at your cable boxes. So people are using YouTube TV. And now you have applications that can provide that experience to the end user to control what they're looking for if they wanted to. I mean, if they wanted to be able to look at say James Harden, and create an ISO cam with James Harden, they could do so. Now, control. So, you know, I think COVID is everybody's trying to be more efficient. Everybody's trying to figure out how do you produce with the same quality of more or less. And I think taking it in that direction is only going to open up the opportunity for us to enhance the fan engagement, and give people to control whether it's linear or TT, that they're looking for.

Cynthia Slowik 20:25
That's impressive. And then the next question.

Unknown Speaker 20:31
Next question is moving on.

Cynthia Slowik 20:36
So this is a question for everybody. But you know, what, what, how are major sports leagues activating fans right now? And how are the teams currently engaging fans? And then and then how are they leveraging this tack for for players? Anyone wants to take this one?

Miheer Walavalker 21:04
I was saying, Ishwara you want to go for it?

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 21:08
I mean, I think a couple of the big trends that you're seeing now, which are talked about a lot, but it doesn't mean that they're that true, is that I think younger consumers really want leagues and players to live their values, I think you've seen a lot of overlap recently with social issues and leagues and with teams. But also one of the things that we've really focused on a lot at Yahoo Sports and want to keep doing more of is, in addition to the values, we've done a lot about women's sports. Over the last year, I saw a really good piece that the NBA did on a lot of the W NBA players bringing their children with them into the bubble, those sorts of content. And that sort of thing that I really like, and I think really speaks well to values that go along with sports. But I think what we've tried to focus on more and more is getting to know the game and the player, we've tried to find content where you can get to know who the player is, what matters to him or her and how they're performing on the ice, or the field, and so on. So I think you'll continue to see more of that, along with sort of customized content, we've spent a lot of time looking at who is on your fantasy team, or Who's your favorite team, and customizing highlight reels that are unique to you.

Unknown Speaker 22:15
Yeah, I mean, what? Okay,

Miheer Walavalker 22:19
I was just gonna, I was just gonna add to that, I think, you know, what he was saying, you know, sort of dovetails a lot into what we're doing, like what Verizon and Yahoo is doing, as a vertically integrated experience for their fans is something that we're doing more as a as a b2b, right? So exactly, that we're trying to get our partners to allow fans to connect through their applications or, you know, bring bring behaviors that usually would persist on, you know, Twitter or Twitch. But having that into your into their own apps, bringing the results of those into broadcast graphics. I mean, we did something with sky in the UK, on. I don't know, if we can pull up a slider, maybe I can pull up my slide. But, you know, after after Damian's 55 minute video demos I feel left out and I need to pull something up as well.

Davyeon Ross 23:09
Miheer, always competing. I love it.

Miheer Walavalker 23:15
Exactly. We have you just pushing me to do better.

Davyeon Ross 23:20
Exactly what we do. Exactly.

Miheer Walavalker 23:23
So you know, what we've done is, you know, with Skype, for example, with the Premier League in the UK, they have something called as watching, they have watched play, and then they are watching influence and watching influence was you know, which chant Do you want to hear next? Because there's no audience in the crowd, or in the stadium? There's no noise instead of typing in artificial noise in there. We basically told them, why don't you do? You know. So the nice thing users which champion here makes Liverpool Chelsea Manning Arsenal, depending on the results of the audience votes, they actually change the graphics and sounds on TV. So audiences felt like they were part of the experience, right? Or a lot of our partners are using these shear meter functionalities and then using and then basically bringing the graphics like depends on how quickly you're tapping on your screen to cheer. They were using that to modulate the sounds in Stadium, which is the sound that you then hear back through linear broadcast. You know, Fox, for example, for the presidential debates. We're using our tools for trivia and polling influencer chat, like giving feedback contextual updates during the debate Hey, from just said this years, a fact checker Biden just said this, here's a fact check. So, you know, I think different people are using these tools for in different ways to activate their audiences, which is what I was saying earlier, there is no one size fits all in this scenario.

Cynthia Slowik 24:55
I couldn't hear you for a second that last part here. Oh,

Miheer Walavalker 25:01
Was that just you or everyone else? I was just saying that there's no one size fits all. And you as you can see all different partners went went live with different ways of activating their own audiences.

Davyeon Ross 25:11
I think last thing you said Miheer was that my video is better than yours.

Miheer Walavalker 25:17
100%.

Davyeon Ross 25:19
Right.

Cynthia Slowik 25:23
Well, okay, so as soon as we talk more about fans and the fan experience, what are we seeing being developed in the virtual amp and physical worlds? And how will these change the fan experiences? Any solute? Any solutions working on blending? The two? Anyone who wants to take this question?

Davyeon Ross 25:44
No, I think that, um, I think what we're seeing is that there's a little bit of a blend in, in the virtual and real world. And I think that what we're seeing now is that there's just a huge significant emphasis on the virtual world, because we don't have a choice. You know, and but what I see is that there's going to be a juxtaposition, because I mean, many, when I look at many folks who have not necessarily put a significant emphasis on their mobile experience, they don't have a choice. So right now, they try to beef up their mobile experience, beef up their mobile apps, you know, add tools, like like live life, to really enhance that integration. And I think what that's going to lead to is that's going to carry on to when we have individuals back in the stance, because they're going to be, I mean, we've talked about people having stuff in the past, right, we're going to see some of those experiences, be really integrated, one of the things that we're pretty excited about is the ability. So a little a little fact, I'll know if it's not unknown, but we actually know where our ball is in space. And because we we, because the updates happen so far, so fast. Our basketball updates us its location every 8.3 milliseconds. So to give context, it takes us about three to 400 milliseconds to blink. So that gives you some context in regards to the speed, right and more perspectives, we see the opportunities in the future for people to really gamify the experience in regards to it's almost like we have pre cognition, is that shot going in or not? And that lends to a whole level of gamification, and how do I use this, this experience with what's happening in the mobile app to tie it to what's happening in the game? You know, and how do I get different social experiences and reactions, knowing that something's going to happen in a game I've been frequent in the Final Four. And I will tell you that every game at the funnel for that there was like a last second shot, I had it on video. And what that tells you is that people are bringing out their mobile phones to either record it so they can push it to social. And now you have that unique experiences of how do you use this real time data to enhance the experience simple stuff, as if, hey, they made the shot confetti comes down or predicting is it going to go in or not? So I think that, you know, maybe not yet we're seeing like these real strong integrations, because of the lack of fans in the stadiums, but we're seeing people have to get in contact with their audiences, which is forcing them to go more digital, and to do more innovative things, which, when we come full circle, and, you know, everybody's vaccinated, and we get back into the stance, you're going to see even more of that juxtaposition of the virtual and the real world.

Cynthia Slowik 28:31
Right. And just to kind of add to that, but you know, once we're back, and we all have vaccines, and we're, we may not have like the best seat, we might be able to like use, you know, our phone and get that up close, you know, visual of like, What's happened? hairs. And the players, you know, that don't normally get a lot of attention, like might be able to get more eyeballs on the work that they're doing.

Davyeon Ross 28:56
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I think, you know, I remember when, you know, if you guys remember a long time ago, like everybody was so hyped about VR, you know, and what was happening in VR, VR? And, and I think what I've seen is that, I mean, VR is still amazing, but, you know, we all have an AR device in the palm of our hands. So how can we leverage this AR device, which doesn't require us to put a headset on and how can we use tools to your point, Cynthia am sitting in the top row, you know, and and how can I get a different experience of what's going on down low in the stadium using 5G? So we're going to be able to bring the fans really closest to the experience, which is something that I'm excited about.

Cynthia Slowik 29:41
Yeah, super exciting. Um, all right. I have another question for Ishwara. Can you tell us about the work Yahoo Sports has been doing around? You know, betting is a hot topic right now, fantasy gaming and how this is greatly increasing fan engagement right now.

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 29:59
Sure. To build on to Davyeon's point that he just made, I mean, I think nobody misses going to live games more than all of us on the phone. I know we all desperately miss it. I think last year, we were all getting excited for going to Superbowl. But I think it's also important for us all to remember that, you know, 99% of people viewing games are doing it at home or on the go, most people don't have the good fortune to go to many games. So we want to keep building products for people to use. And we work for mobile carriers. So wherever they are, be it at home or at the game or on the bus or watching their kids play whatever sport. You know, you've seen us launch these different products that incorporate that, like you've seen with Verizon and the super stadium app with the NFL that you can watch the game from multiple different camera angles. Or to get back to the original thing you asked me about how it plays with gaming, we launched a product with our partners in tain formerly gvcw. And a partner with MGM in Europe, where you can watch games while playing right now, which is going to be free to play games, but you're actually going to be able to watch them on a VR device. In the untain app on Oculus, you can watch the game and you know, make a free to play bet or wager against your friend while watching a soccer match. It's fun. We did the same. We did games in VR with the NBA this past season. But for us, I think, you know, they've gotten me here. I've talked a lot about this. I think it's it's true that VR is somewhat a solitary experience. And we want to create different experiences for what different people want. We're doing things this year to make what makes you know, fantasy fun. You know, Yahoo is better than anyone at fantasy is bragging and playing with your friends. And that's sort of what we want to bring to the gaming space as well make it social, make it fun, and enable you to both watch the game and play. So we're going to launch in a couple of weeks a product with the NBA, where if you've got with us and our friends at MGM, if you spend $200 with us, you'll get a season of League pass on us. Because we know that people want to watch games and they want to bet on what they can walk. And that makes it that makes it really it really ties into what makes Yahoo and Verizon unique is this ability to Game and Watch and play and have unique multi cam experiences.

Cynthia Slowik 32:06
Amazing. Um, and,

Miheer Walavalker 32:09
like we bring that experience to all other apps in partnership with Verizon if we do our job.

Cynthia Slowik 32:16
Great. And actually, I was thinking maybe we do a video Ishwara if it's okay, we could share just so people can kind of get a better understanding of what you guys are doing.

I

shwara Glassman Chrein 32:27
I mean, videos are always fun.

Cynthia Slowik 32:30
Yeah,

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 32:30
okay, let's talk

in-panel video clip 32:49
I'm Hannah Kaiser. And this is the bandwagon I was on a little bit heavier on the on the cool factor between Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. Point. Your point God God. Patrick mahomes Yahoo Sports is the voices of fans and I know a great voice when I hear what are you a $40 million? You tell me the Yahoo Sports pregame show whoo whoo let's get it Gardner without danger back look it up Yo I'm kicking it here with Chapman buffalo What's happening? Oh yeah. The hell yeah 30 seconds for you to make as many shots as possible I ask you questions he's gonna embarrass incredibly. well for the top spot Welcome to mad bets yellow sports weekly gambling show and I'm excited man we just partnered with MGM we a one stop shop. You can watch the game we articles and you can watch this show and then place your bets on the app there's no gamble not betting I want you to I want action in every game every time you go out. I want to go yes and no, we don't want to see a bunch of good teams. We want to see a great

Miheer Walavalker 34:13
That video was better than your video Davyeon.

Unknown Speaker 34:18
issue are we

Davyeon Ross 34:22
gonna have to flag immediately?

Cynthia Slowik 34:28
killer video killer. Okay, so with we'll build on community building and flashy videos. But, you know, for everybody, and especially this question might be more targeted to Miheer. But how are we seeing communities being developed and foster virtually, you know, leveraging functions from Twitch and other software services like robots in the real world. So if you want to know me a little bit about that.

Miheer Walavalker 34:58
I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, that's such a The whole concept of metaverse and it's fascinating how things are evolving and how quickly things are evolving, frankly. Look, I think there's already avenues for people to go out there and create communities. You know, if you're a gamer, you're on discord, if you're into eSports are now, even more so on traditional media content, you're going to twitch and create communities there, you obviously have read it is a it has been a community forum for a long time. You have these Twitter groups, interest graphs that play a role. And the thing that I that I believe genuinely is that the media and the sports media industry, especially in the sports clubs, and leagues, have been relying on the tech companies like all these communities are forming on platforms that have not, that doesn't pass any information back to the to the broadcasters, or to the teams or to the league's right. So I can I call it us because I consider him our our clients and our partners, they are all in the same game here. And I'm like, we're losing out the audience. And knowing more about our audience. I mean, for an example, I have been a Formula One fan, and I've had a whatsapp group with about 12 people spread out around the world for about 14 years now. 13 years, I don't even remember when we started, we watch every Formula One qualifying every practice session, if we miss a practice session, we'll catch up on the chatter in the group because people are talking about it. And we have all our interests to share videos. No one from Formula One knows anything about. So when they launch the f1 TV product. I'm like, why would I pay $100 for f1 TV, when I can get the exact same content from YouTube is part of my cable subscription or virtual gaming subscription, whatever it is vmvpd. If now if I can actually have watch and chat with my friends and create that community inside the F one TV app that's giving me something beyond just the video beyond just the content. And that's something that we've been talking to our partners for a long time now. Like, there are there are already avenues for people to create communities. Okay, can you hear me now?

Cynthia Slowik 37:17
If you were swearing at us, we can hear it?

Unknown Speaker 37:21
I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 37:22
I know you're perfectly now.

Miheer Walavalker 37:29
When we talk to our partners, we like take control of that conversation. I mean, there are multiple communities and these niche communities created. In any case, at this point, people are used to that forces, the one space where community charter especially you're going to have experiences around that community. It's not just chat for the sake of chat, it's chat because you can play a fantasy game in the Yahoo app, instead of your whatsapp group. It's chat because you can wager together in the NBA app, instead of doing it on WhatsApp or messenger. It's communities around specific experiences. That's the key, not just community for the sake of it. Otherwise, it's just a fragmented experience. And you're like recreating your same user group across 10 different platforms?

Davyeon Ross 38:09
Right. Yeah, I'd add to that. And you know, I don't like agreeing with you here. But I mean, he makes you know, more choice. Well, yeah, this one. I agree. 100%. And I think that I mean, there's there's things that him and I have been talking about, about how do we enhance and build these experiences. And I think a critical piece of that is being able to see the experiences and see it with content and see it with video that's going to drive the discussion. We had a test we did on last year in the Mountain West with Facebook, where they did a stadium data, Facebook watch, and we are incorporating our data into the experience. And it was a great test for us. Because some of the things that we started doing was, you know, we would take stats and information that people So for instance, if what happened is that some one of the fans said, I don't know why they have this lineup. Well, we have lineup data that tells you why they have this lineup. So literally, I take a screenshot from our app, and I put it on and I show that look, this is probably the most productive lineup that they've had throughout the whole game. And then it's just started this incredible discussion. And I think that what we're seeing now, I mean, we're seeing it just not only in this world, right, but we're seeing it in the retail world, we're seeing it in across the board where people want to know more about their fans. They used to be a time where, you know, you would actually build a product, give it to the retail partner, and they would control the relationship. Now people want to go direct the customer because to Mayer's point, they want to know more about that customer because it drives everything within the business. It drives, what they're willing to pay what they're excited about, you know how to use the app. So I think that those are really critical points. And I think that as we continue to build those audiences is really important to like like any other thing you want to see to enjoy this Question with what are its data, what it's video to really enhance and build that community. And you know, we're gonna get to a point where, you know, the community starts driving on its own, and people are empowered to figure out, oh, wow, I know, I can go to get this data here next time, let me put it into drive compensation.

Miheer Walavalker 40:18
And you see that already on Twitter, like NBA, Twitter is a beast of its own, like NBA Twitter drives more probably, than the actual content of the games. And that's the part where I feel like there is a lot of opportunity. And a lot of these experiences weren't possible until today, I would, I would like to think that live like is one of the pioneers in that space. There are many others out there as well. But we're taking these solutions to be plug and play keeping ground realities in mind, because tech is not part of the media company's DNA. So they need companies like ours to help them with that kind of stuff. Right?

Davyeon Ross 40:54
I think it's fair to say me here that although, you know, NBA, Twitter, I mean, it's thriving, right? And but if you notice, what's what they did, right, they went and did a relationship with the NBA, that allows them to have content that can enforce these discussions absolutely can work in it, right. And, look, I know, it's a discussion on, you know, do you build this restaurant on the sidewalk? Or do you build it in a hotel? Right, like where the audience already exists? So people starting to think about, okay, where do we push our content? And hopefully, this ends up being this bi directional, where, you know, I still want to push my content to some of these external sites, but I'm going to keep you know, something a little special to differentiate. Yep.

Cynthia Slowik 41:41
That's really well said, Yeah. Where? Yeah, where do you deliver the content? Or when does the community takeover start creating their own content? And what values do the tools and the technologies that enable them to do like is, is coming like to light? So I think as we continue on Davyeon, if you can tell us with the help of 5G, and we will have real time data and stats on all the games and the players with your incredible technology? What does this impact mean for the industry? What is real time data mean for sports betting?

Miheer Walavalker 42:20
muted?

Unknown Speaker 42:22
Me?

Davyeon Ross 42:25
Thank you. Oh, it says it's a fair question where I'll start versus, you know, to help people understand, you know, where we are in the market, a little story. So I grew up in Trinidad, right, so I was a big soccer fan, just like Miheer. He has a Formula One group, we have a soccer whatsapp group, with about 40 of us. And we all grew up together, etc. But I remember my brother coming in while I was watching a soccer game. And he didn't know score, it was on commercial. So I gave him I told him that I'm going to give him three goals. And I would bet him that my team would win the game. What he didn't know is that my team was already up for zero, of course, he took the bet. So you know, my point is here, the speed of data is really critical, not only when you look at how do you enhance the experience, and I think we're here and both Ishwara talked about, like the synchronization of data across the board. We want to see a real time fan experience, not only in Stadium, but we want to see it on television, we want to see it if you're looking at it via the yahoo app. So there's like a synchronization of the data. And today, the data acquisition process is more of a manual reactionary process. So from my perspective, if we can actually, I mean, we're dealing in milliseconds, right, so we're dealing to but we're, you know, milliseconds is much closer to the real time, I think what you're going to see is, you know, as we start seeing proliferation of sports betting, in the professional leagues, across the different states, you're going to see people try to really enhance the exterior experience in stadium to drive events in the game. And how that data plays a significant role, like I talked about is going to make the shot on up, you're gonna see people utilize, you know, just the speed of data to figure out how to date open beds, close beds faster, to manage that experience, in situations where, you know, sports betting either is not proliferated, or, you know, it's not a it's not accommodated at this time. I mean, you're gonna see people utilizing that data to enhance the experience via video boards, to gamify the experience and still make it fun. Because there's a there's a lot of things that I mean, if you think about fantasy, right, fantasy is, you know, in its initial phase was this gamification of this experience that kind of the game within a game. And, yeah, I think you're going to see more of that, but you're going to see it more in a real time manner or sub second manner. That would get we haven't seen in the past. So it's really exciting. I think we're gonna see I mean, there's already some amazing companies that are trying to leverage data to bring that to fruition. And I'm excited to see where it's gonna go. Oh,

Cynthia Slowik 45:17
all right. So I guess if anyone else have anything to add to that, and any other examples of leveraging data to enhance fan engagement,

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 45:28
absolutely, I hope that you'll be able to, you know, build on what Davyeon was saying, with data that you'll be able to watch the game you want to watch. But I think that's the future. Whereas if you want to watch the NFL game, I mean, there's no better better, you know, the broadcaster's do an amazing job of bringing the game. And I think that's what the vast majority of people want to see. But I do think there are people who want to see it in different ways. Like they might want to see an overlay with how their fantasy team is doing and how they're doing against their competitors. as the game goes on. Other people might want to be able to place bets while they watch and then see how they're doing as it goes. We did something with the NBA as an experiment last year that we're going to do again this year called the bet cast, where you could watch the same video, but a different audio with different commentators talking about the betting lines, and some people may not want to watch that. But it's all about choice. And I think that's what I hope technology will bring.

Unknown Speaker 46:15
That's cool.

Cynthia Slowik 46:17
And another question for everyone who ever wants to dive in first? Where are we seeing the biggest disruptions and fan experience as the world becomes more connected with 5G?

Unknown Speaker 46:27
So

Cynthia Slowik 46:31
what are some of the things that we are, are thinking that's coming down the pipe?

Miheer Walavalker 46:35
I mean, right now, frankly, in my mind, the biggest experience for 5G is going to be high throughput experiences, you know, I think, you know, we started our journey in the RV, for sure. Anything that requires maybe second or less latency, you know, so bearing type of experiences, high throughput experiences, contribution side experiences, where you can actually stream a lot like uplink type of experiences, those are the things where I personally think 5G comes into play. mec, you know, MEC, I guess, um, you know, considerably because you know, what you might not be able to do like gaming, for example, what Google stadia is trying to do, I don't think they're really necessarily succeeding with it just yet, but it's early days is, so much of the processing, especially in video experiences happens. happens on your phones, right now. If some of that processing can be done at the edge, your phones can be unlocked to do a lot more. So you know, even when you're trying to do social experiences, where synchronization comes into play, if your phone has to decode high quality video and provide a multiplayer experience at the same time with without any latency, and with synchronization and stuff like that, I think that's where 5G make those kind of technology is going to play a big role is enabling those kind of experiences where your phone and you're on, you're not constantly worried about your phone overheating, or your phone, you know, battery dying in 30 minutes, because it's too much to capture. Um, I just mentioned three or four things in there. But that's that's where my head's at as far as 5G is concerned.

Cynthia Slowik 48:10
Right. Those are great examples. I'm actually someone have a question for you. I'm here. Talking. Please ask Miheer. If you could talk about how live like brings back fans, back to Premier League matches in VR today in a social setting.

Miheer Walavalker 48:28
Oh, that's a deal for years in the making it was started working on um, yeah, we live like as a partnership, our VR VR business and our business that I've been talking about are two separate verticals now. But you know, as everyone knows, most that who knows me, we started our journey at live streaming virtual reality. And we have a partnership with sky where we basically launched a sky VR app with them, where fans can watch Game live stream games and watch games in a multiplayer experience together, high quality video, you know, scoring to prevention implemented in there. We've done that now in the past as well, we did the FIFA World Cup, we've done Champions League Final, we just launched this with sky in the Premier League, it just took a different meaning because the fans would never know, there was no fans in the stadium. So it just became more relevant. Yeah.

Cynthia Slowik 49:24
Right. And and the question for another one first, why?

Cynthia Slowik 49:28
How do you lead balance incorporating immersive technology like VR with the limitations of the hardware?

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 49:39
Yeah, I mean, I'll defer to them here. And David on some of this, I think that what you'll continue to see that we talked about earlier is leagues trying to bring contents where fans want to be anyways, I don't think that you are going to, I think I think the expectation should be going forward that we want to bring content to fans as opposed to expecting fans to come to the content. They're going to see content, all sorts different. faces. I think for at least the next five or 10 years, we're going to continue to see major sports leagues put their content on broadcast networks. It's just, they make a lot of money doing it, and they reach a lot of eyeballs. But I think you will continue to see content on Twitch and other social platforms. I think you'll see it in VR. I think the whole goal for league should be to put it in as many places as they possibly can. I think you'll see you've seen it a lot with the broadcaster's we're actually trying to serve that function as well, by having streaming and over the top services that you can have, such as peacock, or ESPN plus.

Davyeon Ross 50:30
They're also I'll add to that, that, I mean, you're seeing people do you know, things that allow you to get multicast and multi multi camera angles, right, which is a pretty significant. I mean, if you think about the value proposition of VR, you know, the whole thought process was like, Hey, I'll put you into this virtual environment where it's almost like you're sitting courtside? Well, I think with with camera with the ability to stream multiple cameras, both both ishwari and mihir, talked about bandwidth. I mean, we're probably going to be able to get that experience if we want it on our televisions, all our mobile apps, you know, not only linear, but also Ott. So I mean, I think that those are pretty significant. And they would tend to mirror as close as they can to VR experience without, you know, having the need for a headset or a piece of hardware to actually bring that to fruition.

Miheer Walavalker 51:23
And I mean, I address some of the limitations around hardware and stuff with five The downside on 5G and making any case, I think those are the things where hardware limitations can be alleviated through the spectrum.

Unknown Speaker 51:40
Great.

Unknown Speaker 51:41
And

Cynthia Slowik 51:42
this is a question for, for Damien and me here. How do you guys envision the future fan engagement? And let's say 10 years from now,

Miheer Walavalker 51:53
what are you gonna track are billion dollar companies? I don't know, 10 years ago, and by tomorrow, I'm gonna put my hands up and say, I have no idea what's gonna happen in 10 years, maybe two years down the line, but 10 years down the line? I have no idea. I would love to. I would love to hear the answers though. Someone else's answers. Yeah, I mean, I

Davyeon Ross 52:20
it's hard to say 10 years. I mean, I think like, what I will say is, you know, to the future is personalized. That's one of the things I think the future is community, the future is personalization. The future is enjoying the game with, you know, your siblings who are on on, you know, several different continents, watching at the same time and interact in the future is, you know, watching what I want to watch when I want to watch it, the future is being able to choose to view I want to see of the, you know, of the the 10 yard line cam, or the pylon cams. I mean, the future is control. I don't know. And I To be honest, I don't think that's 10 years. I mean, I think we're seeing some of that personalization now. So I think I think it's going to get to the point, just like anything else, where people are not going to accept anything less, but the ability to control what they want to see how they see it when they see it, and really discuss about it. I mean, I think that that's the future. But I think it's, it's, you know, it's 1236 months, it's not necessarily

Ishwara Glassman Chrein 53:37
I think one of the one of the things I would say sort of coming from the perspective of the institution years, I think perhaps less will change than you think. I mean, if you think about how much sports viewing has changed in the last 40 years, the fundamental way that we watch Sunday, football actually hasn't changed that much. And we've talked to some of our friends at NBC and they've tried a lot of alternate telecasts. And they probably only get 5% or less penetration, the end of the day, like we all enjoy, they spend a ton of money and a lot of energy and they get the best talent to call games for us. So I still think you'll see that as the fundamental backbone with other things layered on top of it. I look at the way my kids watch and I think that you'll see a continued focus on what I hope will be leagues teams and players going directly to fans interacting directly with fans going over the top even with some of their streams, but also interacting with their fans. I think fans today really want to get to know the player and what matters to him or her and what their values are. And I think you'll see, I think players have sort of learned what I think is wonderful that they can have a voice outside of their team in their league and I think you'll continue to see more player focused content and more player interactions with gaming.

Davyeon Ross 54:41
One thing I want to do is is give a quick shout out to you know players TV you know those guys what they're doing theirs is incredible and you know, it started with you know, drawn and Tolliver and a few friends, you know coming together and really solving and it's it's Exact example as you are of what you're talking about, right? Being able to control your content control the pipe, and being able to deliver the content to people where they want to consume it, and bringing people into their homes. I mean, they have a video of the Andre Jordan doing goat yoga. I mean, you know, who would have thought that you would actually get video of the Andre Jordan doing goat yoga. And you know, what they're doing is exactly what issue are is talking about right making content available to folks and bringing them into their home. So I tend to agree with that. That thesis.

Miheer Walavalker 55:37
I would imagine autonomous vehicles, people flying to Moon and Mars. Elon Musk has his way. Those are the kind of things I would expect in 10 years from now, everything else? The next three to five years as davion said, What are you doing? You're working?

Unknown Speaker 55:53
Right?

Unknown Speaker 55:56
Yeah, exactly. Hyper loops. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 56:01
I love it.

Unknown Speaker 56:02
I love it.

Cynthia Slowik 56:02
This is all great. Um, anything else anyone like to add? Before we wrap up? I can't believe we're actually at time right now. And there is a poll going.

Unknown Speaker 56:13
I see no.

Miheer Walavalker 56:16
DVR, that's a rig.

Davyeon Ross 56:23
That but if you think about it, I you know, I'm okay. Being 5050 with ishvara. I like rehears position, though.

Davyeon Ross 56:35
When I had

Unknown Speaker 56:40
four more points.

Miheer Walavalker 56:42
I feel like this is inside hustle. Because there's only six votes here. I can't imagine.

Cynthia Slowik 56:50
The six of you say nothing. But no, this is so great. Thank you guys all so much for being here. I, it was such an incredible discussion. I cannot wait for the next year, the next two, three years, 10 years to go to Mars. But um, but no, this is this conversation has been really, really insightful. And a recording of this is going to be processed, and sent out to everyone who's joined and feel free to share that with your community. And then we'll be back here next week for a conversation around IoT and sports and how that's going to be completely changing the game and you'll hear from more experts in the field. Companies from zone seven catapult and of course Verizon. So thank you guys. Thank

Unknown Speaker 57:42
you again.

Cynthia Slowik 57:44
Please let us know. Any questions reach out to us at Verizon5gLabs.com