Will Pithers, Strategic Partner Manager for sports at Meta, joins Andy and Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast. Having previously work at City Football Group , Will helps teams, leagues, federations, athletes and creators optimise their content strategy across Meta’s platforms.

With user behaviour shifting from public feeds toward private messaging, and short-form video dominating content strategy, we wanted to get an insider’s view on how sports organisations such as Formula 1, Premier League clubs and Mercedes F1 are navigating Meta’s eco-system to engage fans globally.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why short-form video (ie Reels) is the key to success across both Facebook and Instagram
• How F1 teams and drivers have built a thriving community on threads
• Why the majority of a social media user’s time will soon not be spent in feeds, but rather in private and group messaging conversations.
• How Meta is looking to make their platforms more attractive for content creators?
• Why providing utility and not posting too much has been so important for success with WhatsApp channels
• How sports organisations are looking to monetise their activity across Meta’s platforms
• Why teams should be investing in tools that can help them manage their content archives
• The potential opportunities for sports organisations in AR with Meta’s Orion glasses

In the latest Sports Loft podcast, Andy and Charlie are joined by Victorien Tixier, CEO of Scoreplay. Fresh off the announcement of their $13m Series A funding round, ScorePlay have been seeing huge success onboarding new clients. So we wanted to discuss how they see the content market evolving, their future product strategy and to get some very specific examples of how sports organiastions are using ScorePlay to its full potential.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why has the fragmentation of content workflows has become such a big pain point for sports organsiations?

• How has ScorePlay leveraged best-in-class AI technologies for facial recognition, logo detection, speech to text conversion and even dubbing, rather than trying to build it themselves?

• How are rightsholders using the platform with their commercial partners?

• How has the content market evolved since the launch of ScorePlay and how will it continue to change?

• Why they have stayed very focused on the sports vertical?

• How have their athlete investors played such an important role in driving adoption in the locker room?

• Why does Victorien see the future for ScorePlay as the “media infrastructure for sports”? – and why is developing their API so important in order to achieve this?

Jonny Keogh, UK&I Sports Lead at YouTube joins Andy and Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast. Having previously worked at Sky, Jonny now helps major rightsholders and sports creators make the most of YouTube. So we wanted to dig into what’s coming from YouTube, who is being really innovative in their use of the platform and get some specific examples of how teams are using it to drive revenue.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Has YouTube become THE destination for highlights?
• How are rightsholder’s monetising their content, but also how are they incorporating YouTube into their sponsorship conversations?
• How are YouTube Channel Memberships being used by some clubs as an extension of their OTT platforms? And in some cases could it be a more cost-effective alternative?
• Should creators be viewed differently now that much of the output is almost broadcast quality in terms of the production and storytelling? And which teams and broadcasters are working with them well?
• With athletes such Jude Bellingham becoming creators – how are they developing different content formats and commercialising their own YouTube channels?
• What benefits are rightsholders and broadcasters seeing from having live games on the platform?
• Where is AI being used in the YouTube platform to create new content and commercial opportunities?