Shownotes
I’ve got bad news for you. Turns out your TV is pretty dumb. Well, not the TV itself, really. But the broadcast that comes into it sure can be. In this age of personalized experiences and customization, a sports broadcast is more or less one size fits all. Here’s the game, there’s the couch, sit down, and watch.
It’s a situation that was just begging for someone to apply a little innovation and creativity. And that someone was Wim Sweldens, the co-founder and CMO of Kiswe.
Sweldens, you see, is the consummate innovator. The former Lucent technologist owns 28 US patents, which is 28 more than most people have, and saw early on how all the bandwidth being created could be filled with more customized viewing experiences. That led to the founding of Kiswe, the company helping sports teams and leagues take control of their streaming rights to offer direct-to-consumer experiences that they own, operate and (more importantly) monetize.
In our conversation, we talk about the a-ha moment that led to the founding of Kiswe, how K-Pop superstars BTS were instrumental to their growth, and how teams like the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns are using Kiswe to provide private label streaming services direct to their fans.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
The Sports Business Conversations podcast is a production of ADC Partners, a sports marketing agency that specializes in creating, managing, and evaluating effective partnerships between brands and sports. All rights reserved.
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Dave Almy brings over 30 years of sports marketing and sports business experience to his role as host of the "1-on-1: Sports Business Conversations" podcast. Dave is the co-Founder of ADC Partners.
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Transcripts
Hi, this is Wims Weldons, co founder and CMO of Kisview. I'm going one one with ADC partners.
:Hey, this is Dave Almy of ADC partners. And thanks for stopping by to check out this latest episode of the one one sports Business Conversations podcast. No matter what you do or aspire to do in sports business, I guarantee you that you've landed in the right place. We've got episodes that cover just about everything. We got team ownership, marketing, sales, law, entrepreneurship. I mean, even mascots. After you finish with this episode, you can find all our past interviews@adcpartners.com. Slash podcast. Okay, and now on to this show. And I gotta start with bad news for you. Turns out your tv is pretty dumb. Well, not the tv itself, really, but the broadcast that comes into it sure can be. In this age of personalized experiences and customization, a sports broadcast is more or less a one size fits all. Here's the game. There's the couch.
:Sit down and watch. It's a situation that was just begging for someone to apply a little innovation and creativity. And that someone was Wim Sweldens, the co founder and CMO of Kiswi. Sweldens, you see, is the consummate innovator. The former Lucent technologist owns 28 us patents, which is 28 more than most people have, and saw early on how all the bandwidth being created by telecoms and communications companies could be filled with more customized viewing experiences. That led to the founding of Kiswi, the company helping sports teams and leagues take control of their streaming rights to offer direct to consumer experiences that they own, operate, and, most importantly, monetize.
:In our conversation, we talk about the Aha moment that led to the founding of Kiswi, how k pop superstars BTS were instrumental to their growth, and how teams like the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns are using Kiswi to provide private label streaming services direct to their fans. So thanks for checking out this conversation with Wim Sweldens, co founder and CMO of Kiswi. Hope you enjoy it. Okay, Wims Sweldens, welcome to the show. You're just back from Paris, so I would love to begin with what your impressions of the 2024 Olympic Games of Paris were like.
:Yes, I literally just got back from Paris. I'm actually still in Belgium on my way back stateside. But, yeah, having spent the last three weeks in Paris, I have to say it was phenomenal. I mean, just the idea. The games were phenomenal. Paris was beautiful. The work we did worked out really well. It was just incredible to see how they had managed to make the entire beautiful, historic city the backdrop for the games, and it was just such a privilege to be there.
:I feel like that is the overriding theme on everything that I've seen related to the games, that the city itself was an incredible backdrop. And I know the media partners are certainly happy because there was some of the highest rated telecasts associated with the games of all time. And we're going to talk a lot about media today, the transition of media and what's going on and how Kiswi is addressing it. But I want to start with a little bit about you. We got to set some foundational background.
:Wim. Sure, let's do it.
:Because I read a colleague. A tweet from a colleague. No, I only take the nice ones. It's all right. Sure, they are out there. You were described as a tech innovation guru. Think human engagement meets live sports. Okay, so that was the tweet. And I wonder if you can start by breaking that one down for me.
:Yeah, I think I probably know who it came from, but I think it doesn't really matter in my mind. I've always sort of thought myself as an innovator. That's sort of the one sort of thread throughout my career, in various phases and projects I've done, I've always had a passion for technology and innovation, but not just technology for the sake of technology, not just the idea of inventing new ideas and algorithms and banditing them and things like that, but really technology that impacts human lives, that makes life better, that makes our experience better, that makes entertainment better, that makes us life better. That's always sort of a passion that I've had. So I think there's some truth in the quote or the tweet.
:Well, it was right on, too. And I love that idea of technology and humanity. You were at Lucent Labs for a long time, which was an innovation center. So many technologies come out of that. You clearly were doing well and applying that interesting technology and innovation really well. You hold 28 us patents. Most of them are in telecommunications. So I'm interested how you started looking at sports and entertainment as an industry, which you weren't, to focus your creative attention. How did that first bubble up for you?
:Yeah, it's a good point. So, yeah, I've been a technologist for many years, and I'd even lost count on the patent, so thanks for refreshing.
:Me, too. I've lost count on mine. And once you get past zero, you know, it's a difficult count.
:And yes, you're right. I worked at Bell Labs and Lucent for many years, sort of the core innovation center behind a lot of key things in the telecommunications world. And it was a fantastic place to be. It was so stimulating, kind of legendary.
:In its own right. Like, there was a lot of things came out of.
:To have lunch with Nobel Prize winners at the lunch counter was just an incredible experience. Yes, a lot of my work was more in telecom, but still, if you look at my earlier work, it was still about image multiscale image transformation, image coding, video compression and things like that. So not the hardcore telecom type things. And if you look at some of the more recent patents over the last couple of years, so definitely more directly related to what we do here at Gisbach compared to the traditional sort of telecom world. I did make a switch career wise about eleven years ago to switch from, let's say, telecom to more media and obviously sports streaming. And a little bit was that because I was at the time Lucind had become Alcatel. It was just starting the transition to Nokia, which it's part of right now.
:I had been part of this sort of transformation of Lucent into Alcatel, which was exciting but painful at the same time. I figured one giant transatlantic corporate merger, I don't really want to do another one.
:I've been down that road before.
:Yeah, it's a good experience, and I learned a lot from it. And I'd always played with the idea of starting a company as opposed to working for a big multinational.
:So this was a bug that you wanted to scratch at for yourself. You'd done the big company, and now you're thinking maybe there's something else out there.
:Yes. Yes, I definitely had that scratch. And also my co founder, Jung Kim, who I worked with very closely at Lucent. I don't know, catal. I was the president of the wireless division at the time. He was the president of Bell Labs. So we worked together closely and we did a whole bunch of interesting sort of innovative projects within the big company. But we always felt the limitations of a big company and often would sort of sit in each other's offices and ruminate. We would think, like, you know, one day, you know, one day. And then we never finished that sentence, jobs. And then that day came in 2013, and that's how Kiswi was founded.
:And we then decided that we didn't really want to stay in sort of the hardcore telecom equipment sector, because maybe for a little bit of a selfish reason as well, is that it's a lot more exciting to fill networks than to build them. And so we at the time saw that the world of live tv and sports coverage was changing. I mean, I saw it. My kids were teenagers at the time. They never watched tv. They were always on their tablets, on phones. I mean, I know in our household, the set top box broke one day. It just crashed, and I probably just had to reboot it to get it going again, and I forgot. And a week later, nobody cared.
:Nobody noticed.
:My kids didn't care. I didn't care. My wife didn't care. I'm like, I'm not going to reboot it.
:I'm just going to reboot it.
:And then I realized, why doesn't every family in the US do that? I'm like, yes, because people really like their NFL or their NBA or whatever favorite sports they're at that they want to watch on cable. And I'm like, wait a minute. If we can find a better way of delivering live sports to smartphones, to tablets, to devices that is more interactive and engaging, we can sort of disrupt this industry which is ready to be disrupted. That was the original spark that sort of created gizmi.
:I find that idea of it's more interesting to fill the pipes than lay the pipes as being particularly fascinating. I had an opportunity to work with Cisco systems many years ago, and they were doing the same thing. It's like, we've created all this bandwidth. What are we going to fill it with? And this is a long time ago. This is like pre 2010, but we're talking about the same thing here. It's like, okay, we've got all the capability. What are we going to do with it? And so that lightning strike of who the heck cares with the cable modems now, right? How can I take advantage of this? And that led to kisweek.
:Yeah, yeah. It was pretty much the same dynamic. And we've friendly competed with Cisco for many years. So I know a lot of the people there.
:I'm sorry, I don't mean to bring up a much profiled company, but then.
:We also said, like, 1011 years ago, we're like, we had built 4g networks all over the world at that time. I mean, I was like, wait a minute. These networks are good enough to do individual video to phones that is at good quality. You know, it's like, wow, that could really disrupt the world. And I know, I'm a sports fan, too. I mean, cycling is the sports that I'm passionate about. It's like yeah, I love to watch the Tour de France on my phone. I want to watch it wherever I am. I want to see what's going on. I want to watch the camera that I want to watch. And I'm like, this is sort of the.
:The thing that sort of got me excited, because once you go into a digital world, there's so much more that you can't do in the tv world. The tv world is a broadcast world. That means you send the same image to everybody all the time.
:It's pretty dumb.
:And in a digital world, you can personalize it. You can make it interactive, just like any other app on your phone. Any app on the app on your phone is personalized and interactive for you. But when you watch tv on your phone, it's the same thing for everyone else. So the medium doesn't match the device. The device is fundamentally personalized and interactive, and the medium is not. And we're like, wait a minute. Let's make sure that we create a new medium, personalized and interactive, that is for digital devices.
:And it also doesn't match what people's expectations are now. Right? People are maybe. Maybe less so when Kiswi was first coming onto the scene. But I think, particularly today, an uncurated experience is anathema to people it doesn't fit with. This product isn't designed for what my interests are. Well, to hell with that. That's not something I'm going to deal with. So I take your point particularly strongly, is how do we create smart media? How do we create things that totally fit with what your expectations are? And that was one of the geniuses behind kisweed.
:Yeah, it's the general idea of mass customization that's behind so many Internet technologies, because if you look at the production of a show right now of, let's say, an NBA game or a sports game, I mean, yes, you produce a show. It's very expensive to produce. You have commentary, you have graphics, you have directors, and you ultimately create one product for everybody. It's almost impossible to please everybody because you have hardcore NBA fans who understand everything about the game. You have novices who really just want to understand what's really going on. Your people really want to understand what are the sneakers that people are wearing? Or what is LeBron saying? Or what is he wearing? And so with cloud and Internet technology, you can actually now customize the games. You can have different commentary, different graphics, different direction, different images for different users.
:And that's sort of the magic of what I think part of the technologies.
:That we're building now, you're talking about media and technology and sports. And the phrase that comes to mind is it's kind of a third rail for major professional sports leagues. From the standpoint of there was a way that they did it for a long time, and that was to get a big check from a media company, turn over the keys to broadcast and production, and do that kind of thing. And Kiswi came out to change that. How? Or at least transition it. How did your proposition first be received by the teams and leagues you were talking to?
:Yeah, I would say we didn't come out to change it. In some sense, it was already changed. We're not the ones that drive to change. New generation of fans, the digital millennials that grew up in a different world, that don't necessarily want to subscribe to a bundle, tv packets like my kids never done and never will. That is driving the change. Now, the traditional business models that you describe about buying rights and broadcasting that don't meet that needs of the end users.
:So when we came about, we said, like, look, with the technology that we built, with the level of interactivity, the level of scale, the level of quality and all, also a new business model where we say, hey, you, mister sports team, mister league, mister content owner, you can go directly to your fans to monetize them, to first of all deliver your product to them, because that's what they want. Secondly, to then monetize it in a number of different ways, which you obviously need to do. That is sort of how the world is changing. So in the sense that the partner business model that we've introduced works really well. I mean, we don't buy rights. That's not the company we are. We don't sell technology either. We just team up with people who have. Sorry, we don't buy content. We don't sell technology.
:We team up with people who have content, and we put things together and we create platforms that have been quite successful.
:It's a fairly turbulent time in sports media, particularly in the US, right? Because most teams generated a pretty significant amount of money from regional broadcast networks. That was a big source of revenue, and that's not necessarily the case for all the reasons that we just talked about. Can you give a sense of this timing of the market? Was the demise of a regional sports network something that really helped elevate your offering, or did they happen on parallel tracks?
:All right, a couple of points on that. So, yes, the RSN world is in a massive turmoil. That's obvious. All the headlines, did that help us as a company? Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the deals we've done with the Sunset Jazz and NBA teams who sort of want to go direct to consumer, those things go hand in some sense. When we started the company more than ten years ago, we sort of envisioned that this world was going to come. I mean, we didn't think it was going to take ten years. I mean, I'll admit that it took a little bit longer than we thought. We didn't necessarily think that it was going to start in the RSN world. We sort of hadn't really thought about that.
:But that's where obviously it started a couple of years ago, and now it's happening in space. What's happening is that, yes, the monetization is fundamentally changing. And what you see that with some of the owners of the teams, they realize is like, my job is to get my product out there to as many people as possible. Yes, there is an ever growing demand in sports content, in sports media, in everything that surrounds sports, whether it's NBA or NFL or w or a lot of leaks are very popular, and people just want to get their content in different ways. There's still people, maybe more my generation or older ones. It's like, hey, we just want to watch it over the air or traditional tv, fine. There's people like my kids, generations like, yeah, I just want to watch it on my mobile.
:I'm happy to pay for it. I'm happy to be advertised. I'm happy to have interactivity. So there's a variety of different ways that content can get monetized. They're just different than they were before. And I know there's a lot of fear around it because change is always a little scary. I think we've now demonstrated over the last couple of years that the direct to consumer model works, that it can be done. The technology is ready, the business is ready, users get it. And that's sort of what we're all talking about now.
:You spoke to this time, it's been about ten years now. And there was a bit of a Runway for the concept to get dialed in to take off or kissway. Was there a catalyst moment that's like, oh, okay, we got it. Versus, is this gonna work? You know, the nervous part?
:Yeah. No, I mean, look, a technology startup is a little bit like a roller coaster.
:I think it's a lot of it like a roller coaster.
:I'm convinced, like, we're gonna rule the world and everything. Then 24 hours later, is like, no, we're doomed. That it's not gonna happen.
:Not for the faint of heart.
:Yeah, that's exactly. It's not for the faint of heart. There's a couple things that happened, is that we sort of always expected that direct to consumer was gonna happen, but it took many more years than we thought, and we obviously need to keep going. So what we did early on is that we focused a lot more on the production side than just the distribution side because it was easier to innovate on production because we started doing old cast and remote commentary and remote graphics and things like that. So we started doing games in different languages and sort of using cloud with doing innovation in the production side without necessarily impacting the distribution, because there's multi year deals that sort of made that stuck. So that's one thing we. We did.
:If you look at what we just did with the Olympics, in some sense, it's still much more on the production side than it is on the distribution side. But it gives us a lot of credibility. It makes us partners. And then when the sort of opportunity showed up in the direct to consumer with, obviously, the RSS, we grabbed them. And then one other thing, one other key thing that happened, obviously, was Covid. I mean, when the lockdown happened, and for a while, there were no games, there was no sports. It was very bad for us. There was no business.
:Not helpful to have zero content.
:It was not helpful at all. But then something happened in that. First of all, there was a lot more need for remote commentary and cloud production because nobody wanted to go to a studio that helped. And then we had already, through our connections in Korea to my co founder, had been thinking about applying our technology to music. We didn't really know anything about music, but we knew a guy who knew a guy, and then we had done a bunch of small K pop concerts, and they were reasonably popular. They were in big groups, but they were reasonably popular. Like, yeah, this technology seems to work for K pop. So then we got to meet the kings of K pop, which was BTS. This was 2019, just.
:Just a little band known as BTS.
:And I remember I flew to Korea. We met with the management, and like, hey, we have this feature called Multiview, where the fans can pick the camera they want to watch live. And we demonstrated it, and it worked really well. And they're like, our fans are gonna love this, because, again, I don't know much about Kpop, but did you have.
:Any idea what you were getting into with BTS and the scale of their podcast?
:I know it was big. That's all I knew. It's like the new beatles, and. But I didn't know much about that.
:Did the kids go, you're doing what?
:Yeah, no, we got quite a few of that. I mean, all of a sudden, I was a cool dad for a brief moment there.
:Oh, my God. Tell me what that's like.
:Then, in some sense, we made a deal with BTS. We streamed one of their concerts in Osaka in December 2019. They were going to go on a world tour in 2020, and were going to stream the world tour.
:Wow.
:What could go wrong? Yeah, well, Covid happens, obviously, world tour obviously canceled. Streaming of the world tour canceled. But we had built good relationships, and so we jointly started thinking about these ideas, like, well, there's Covid. All the fans are stuck at home. There's nothing to do. You can't go anywhere. We could do a virtual event. We can actually just put BTS in the studio. There's no attendees. We can stream the whole thing. We can make it interactive. We could do multi view, we could do multi language. We could do multi country. We could sell tickets around it, and we did it. So the first BTS concert was, like, somewhere in 2020, in the middle of the lockdown, and it was huge. And we did, I think, about maybe a dozen BTS events or something like that.
:They became bigger and bigger till at some point, we got the Guinness Book of Record for the largest Internet streaming event. And people bought tickets all over the world, and it was like, wow. Yeah.
:There's a necessity as the mother of invention kind of aspect of this whole thing, too, right? The moment presented itself and, you know, fortunately, were ready.
:And you could say, did we get lucky? Maybe we got lucky, but you have to be ready to be lucky. We were ready to be lucky. We have proven the technology. We have proven the scale. We had the patents, we had the reputation, and were ready. And so we delivered BTS that then got, obviously, the entire world's attention. And this music world is a little different because the rides were very different. Yeah, yeah.
:You had to learn an entire new language associated with some of that, and.
:You gave her the credibility to then go back to sports and to talk to people in the Olympics and to talk to people in the. In the NBA and say, like, look, we could do millions of fans with BTS. Yes. We could do this with you, too. And we can.
:Yeah, you're a piece of cake compared to BTS.
:Well, we didn't quite phrase it that way.
:You are the CMO, so you clearly came up with a more clever phraseology to be able to do that. But let's talk about you come off the heels of demonstrating your capability with BTS. Like you said, the largest streaming event probably ever known. And then, you know, you start to have success, particularly in the NBA, with the Phoenix Suns and the Utah Jazz, each start working with you to own their rights and stream their games. And I'm interested because both of those franchises are now owned by relatively younger owners who come from entrepreneurial backgrounds. So I'm wondering if that was, did they see the opportunity more clearly than maybe some older school ownership and was that instrumental in making those partnerships happen for you?
:Yeah, I think you can probably answer your own question on this one, but.
:I'd much rather you do. It comes with so much more authority.
:But in some sense, I mean, I've spoken to many NBA team owners of different generations, and to be fair, they all sort of get this. They all understand that there is a younger, growing, digital savvy demographic that wants to consume the content in a different way, more interactive, more customized. And so I think most MBA team owners will say yes, but of course, each market is slightly different, each team is slightly different. The demographics are different. The market power of the RSN is different in each region. Therefore, it's sort of a complicated formula that needs to come together for direct to consumer to happen. But yeah, it's a change. It's innovation. Innovation is always a little scary. Doing things live is always hard because the one thing in life is that you can't make a mistake. There's always some hesitation, too.
:And it's something I realized while just watching the Olympics as well, is that there's so much pressure to do things right with literally hundreds of million people watching, that if somebody comes along, it's like, here's a new idea to completely do it differently. Your initial reaction is, I really don't think so. I've been doing this for many years and I'm doing it right. So life and innovation is hard.
:Well, and I have to, you know, the sports teams and franchises, I can't even imagine how many pitches they receive regarding new technologies on a daily basis because just as you identified their ability to produce a live, compelling content that's replicated a thousand fold, live is tough and it's very. What are some of the things that you've seen with particularly, and I'm focusing on the Phoenix Suns and the Utah Jazz out of the gate that have made you go this part of our service is exactly on track, and it's doing exactly what we want to do. And this is great the way they're doing it. And what have been some of the things that have made you go, I think we want to tweak that. I think we want to try something new here, and here's an opportunity to innovate a little further.
:Yeah, I think I would say that. I mean, when we started, I mean, it was a little bit of a rush job, like, you know, but we pulled it off. And the first thing was, let's just make sure we get the games on the app, on the smart device, working at high quality, and that people can log in and it's easy and have a good experience. For example, I mean, oh, I don't have to create a new email account and now, and have another email account and then, like, no. So that was one of the learnings. Like, the user journey has to be easy. I mean, if they already have an MBA account, just use that account. So that was one of the learnings. Get the games delivered. Let's make sure the monetization is easy.
:You buy a game, you buy a month, you buy a season. So that was one of the other learnings. But one of the key insights that we got that convinced us that, yeah, this is really working is that obviously we had very good numbers watching the games. I think the Jazz reached over 20,000 subscribers. That really good and was very happy to see that. But then there was also an opportunity to do things that you can do on a broadcast network. There's a lot of additional content that the jazz started producing. There was like an interview with a coach called shoot the shot or something like that. Every couple of days, there was a little clip of sort of premium content. It was behind the paywall. It's not for YouTube.
:And what we find is that people would come back more and more to consume some of that content. Pretty much half of the Jazz users would come every day to consume the content, even though there's obviously not a game every day. And that gave us an idea. It's like, ha, this is really becoming a destination. It's a destination for people who just love the brand, who love the team, who want to know more behind the scenes. They obviously want to watch the games. They're going to bring their friends to the games, they're going to buy the merchandise, they're going to do all those type of things. But there's so much more when you have, let's say, something called jazz plus that is available 24/7 where you can, hey, I love the game.
:I want to watch the highlight and I want to read this again. First, I have a slot on a tv network and this is my slot, and when it's over, it's gone. I mean, that was when we realized, like, yes, this is a whole new way of reaching fans.
:And I think you bring up such fascinating point, too. You're talking about media now almost as a sandbox where teams can now experiment with creating content like the coaches show and being able to offer that because they own the rights and now have the delivery system to be able to put that out. You're almost vertically integrating these teams in a way that they've never been accustomed to.
:Yeah, exactly. And then the other part of it, like anything in digital, is that because there's more content, there's richer content, there's more interactivity, there's also more data. I mean, if you think about what is important for a team has an email database of everybody's ever bought a ticket. Obviously the good ones do watch the game. How would they know? There's no way of knowing. Now they do. There is an email database of people who've watched the game. You understand who is watching the game, who's coming to see the coaches content, who is cheering, who's chatting, who's buying merchandise, all of those things you have. So you can now use that data to better serve the users. Just make sure that they get the content they want, when they want. You can market to them, you can target, you can retarget.
:All of these things was not possible. If there's a third party, whether it is a broadcaster or whether it is a social big media platform that aggregates all the data and uses it for their own monetization, which is obviously fine. Well, then the team is always a step removed away from that. And I think that's some of the biggest things that are happening now with data capabilities in terms of just understanding who the fans are and what they actually want.
:How do you feel like teams can prepare themselves to use this service and this trend in media, this direct to consumer model effectively. Right. Because you're talking about a skill set that is slightly different than being, okay, we got our rights to feels, turn over the production to them and good to go. What should they be thinking about what they need to do to succeed in this transition?
:Yes, I think it's a very important question, and it's a question that took us a while to get the answer right. Because a number of years ago, were like, hey, we're technology streaming gurus. We can help you with technology streaming. And the teams were like, yeah, but we need a lot more because now we need to integrate the login and we need to integrate the website that we need to figure out how to market this and we need to figure out how to manage the data. And we realized, like, whoa, we are not making their life easier. We're making their life harder, more complex. All of a sudden, they have to become a technology integrator. And, like, teams are not designed.
:They're not equipped that way.
:They're designed to run teams and run games and win games. That's what they're designed to do. So we started retooling our company as well and says, like, hey, there's more capabilities that we can provide. We're not just going to throw our technology over the fence. We're not just going to be a SaaS company. No, we're going to be a solutions company. We're going to say, like, okay, fine, we're going to build jazz plus end to end for you. We're going to run the thing. We're going to operate it. We're going to do customer support. We're going to do integration with other tech companies. We're going to work with the MBA to make sure the bid works. We're going to help you with some of the digital marketing, and so we're going to do things for you.
:So we become more of a technology and services partner than just a technology company because otherwise you need somebody else to sort of put.
:It's interesting, right? It's not so much what they need to do, it's what you needed to do to take advantage of the moment and what they had to be able to bring to the table to support it.
:Yeah, exactly.
:You've had some pretty strong opinions about venue, and this is the Disney, Fox and Warner Brothers Discovery streaming sports bundle, I believe. And I laughed out loud when I read the quote because you said venue is as relevant as a blockbuster store in the age of Netflix.
:Yeah, I was quoted on that.
:It's a great quote. So, you know, I gotta bring it.
:Up, but I also want to put that in the right context. I mean, we, and I have a lot of respect for what the big broadcasters are doing. I mean, in a changing world, if you see what discovery is doing and what NBC and what other broadcasts doing and what they did with the Olympics, it's really incredible. I mean, it's I tip my hat to that. That being said, there is something about the model of bundling content, which is the traditional broadcast models, like, no, oh, I want to watch this game. No, no, you have to buy this bundle of things, some of which you want and some of which you don't want. And thats how were going to sell it to you.
:Thats a little bit what ive reacted to because what were seeing from end users, theyre like, no, they dont necessarily want to buy a bundle.
:They want the exact opposite.
:Yeah, I want to buy this. I want a la carte. I want to buy that. And yes, theyre willing to pay for it. So my reaction was like, well, youre just going to make a bigger bundle with different companies that used to compete fiercely, that are now working together to create an even bigger bundle. To me, doesnt feel like what end users are asking for. And that was sort of my comment that maybe I made it a little bit too colorful in that regard.
:But chest kiss on the color.
:But yes, that's sort of the, but.
:It does speak to, and I appreciate your point. This is a group of companies who've spent billion dollars on their rights, and they are trying to figure out in any way possible how they continue to monetize those rights. And so if we create this massive platform of all sports, you know, are there going to be, you know, are there going to be places of congregation like bars who are going to buy that package because they have a bunch of people coming in and doing that kind of thing?
:For sure.
:But as far as the individual sportsman.
:Goes, yes, and there will be end users like, hey, we're just sports fanatics, and they just want to get as many content as they get. And there will be a good package for them to, no doubt about it. But there's just lots of different types of users who want to watch content in lots of different ways and want to pay for it in lots of different ways. And therefore, there'll be a happy medium in the world we live in. And I think we're a little bit more one side than the other side, but I think there's value on both sides.
:So Kissaway was launched about ten years ago. There's been a lot of twists and turns in this story so far. I'm wondering what, but you're looking at now on the horizon, both near and far, that you feel like Kiswi is going to be able to adopt. Kiswi is going to make sure that we address that. What are some of the things that are getting you excited but also keeping you up at night as you look about the evolution of the company.
:Yeah, they're both sort of the same things. You're right. I mean, like any startup comes, we've had our ups and downs, we've had fantastic years, we've had bad years, we've had good times, we've had bad times, we've made pivots. Like, I mean, it's just the world you live in. But there is something special that's happening now. First of all, we have proven ourselves in some of the biggest events in the world. We work with BTS, the biggest music people, we work with the NBA, we work with the Olympics, we've proven ourselves. The world is ready for the change that we envisioned with direct to consumer. It took us a while to figure out not just the right technology, but also the right business model.
:And as I mentioned before, the services around, it's like, how do we actually package this in a way that makes it easy for people to work with us as opposed to hard? Took a while to figure that out, but now it's all sort of coming together. We have the credibility, we have the technology, we have the innovation, we have the key partners. And now our mission is growth. We have the product market fit. We'll continue to innovate. We want to grow more sports, more countries, more regions, more parts of the world. We want to grow in sports. We see lots of opportunities. We see lots of opportunities in music. Even though the dynamic of music is a little different than after Covid, it has, of course, shifted a lot back to the live world.
:But there is sort of the dynamic with live nation and some of the challenges they have with their business practices, that we provide a good alternative there. And then the really exciting part, which, again, I'm not the expert in, but I'm excited about and I'm learning more about every day, is the creator space. You see so many more influencers or youtubers who are like, wait a minute, I grew up on social media. I became big. I became, I monetizing it that way. I'm now a big enough brand that I can be my own platform. Sometimes I like to crypt and I talk to them, say, hey, you could be your own tube.
:Oh, the podcasters are all leaning forward right now.
:Yes. That doesn't mean we're telling people, you should abandon YouTube. No, because YouTube has, there's billions of people on it, there's tons of engagement, there's a lot of free content you could put out there. There's good advertising revenue to be made around it. But if you look at what we did with Smosh and try, guys, and some of the top creators, like, hey, they're big enough to have their own platform, the equivalent of sons and jazz. Plus they can monetize it. They can sell tickets, they can sell sponsorships. They can get advertising, they can get data around it. And what I love about the creative space, here's what I personally love about it. I like this idea that the technology that we innovated around, interactive streaming. My view always is that our product is ultimately an emotion.
:We deliver to the end user a feeling that they belong to the event, that they are part of the event. And the people who are most eager to adopt this technology are the creators and the influencers. If you look at our polls and quizzes and Multiview and the way to have the audience impact the show, we have some of our comedy groups who let the narrative of the comedy show be determined by the audience.
:Yeah, it's digital improv, something you can.
:Never do on tv. Obviously, you have to be on a digital device.
:Yeah, the word engagement is used a little too much, but what you're talking about here is real time, deep engagement between audience and creators.
:Yes, yes. If you see that, if you've contributed to a show and you've clicked and shared and uploaded a selfie and it has impacted the show, you will never leave the show. You will stay till the end of the show. You will buy all the merchandise, you will tell all your friends to come, and you'll come back for the next show. I mean, an engaged fan becomes a monetized fans. And that's a little bit what obviously, Covid drove a lot of that. Even the work, some of the work we did with the Olympics was around fan engagement and making people at home feel like they could share for the athletes, even when they're not physically there. I mean, that part is the one I'm most excited about.
:I'm with Wim Sweldens. He is the co founder and CMO of Kiss me, Wim. I want to say thank you very much for spending all this time today, but before I let you go, I have to put you, Wim Sweldens, into the lightning round.
:Oh. I don't know what that means, but.
:It'S exactly, well, okay, how would you say lightning round in Belgium?
:Lift Flitz Ronde of something like that.
:Okay, well, that sounds much better than lightning round. I'll give you this. Okay. This is a series of questions. These are not. These are not challenging, but they are unexpected and coming at you from a different direction. Are you prepared?
:Oh, boy.
:Here we go. Well, okay. All right. So, like we said earlier, you have 28 US patents. You're the inventor of the wavelet lifting scheme.
:Yeah.
:Is it possible to explain that to a liberal arts major in less than ten words?
:Yes. It makes complicated math as simple as adding and subtracting numbers and showing how it works. It makes the technology super simple.
:Oh, God. This liberal arts major is so excited about wavelet lifting scheme already. Okay, you won the Leslie Fox prize in numerical analysis. What does the trophy look like?
:I honestly forgot. I think it was a plaque or something.
:Oh, it wasn't even a trophy. It wasn't like somebody holding a number plaque.
:I hope they're not listening, but I don't even know where it is.
:God, I don't know. I haven't looked on my data yet to see if the Leslie Fox prize committee listens to the show, but I'll make sure to mute this part out in case they.
:That's all right.
:Okay. One of Kiswi's most notable entertainment successes, as we've discussed, was streaming the K pop band BTS. So who is your favorite member?
:I'm gonna take a pass on that.
:It's probably. Probably smart. Okay. You were just in Paris, and there were quite a few highlights for the belgian team, including Nafi Thiem, who scored her third gold medal in the heptathlon. So, legendary status. What were some of your other highlights for team Belgium?
:Well, team Belgium, I am a cycling fan, so Remco evener pool, winning two goals in both the time trial and the roadways is something that has never happened before. And given that were working at all the venues, and I picked a cycling arrival venue as the venue to go to. So the people literally stand right next to Remco Avedepu just as he crossed the finish line, because our athlete moment station was right there. That was just incredible. That was just unbelievable.
:Okay, last one. As we've established, you are belgian, so you have to choose one. Belgian beer or belgian chocolate beer. The lack of hesitancy speaks volumes. Win Sweldens, thank you so much for the time today.
:Thank you. Thank you. That was fantastic. I really enjoyed this.
:Thanks for listening to this episode of the one one sports Business Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed it, we always appreciate a subscribe, share, comment, or like. And don't forget, you can always find past episodes at AbCpartners. This podcast is written, produced, edited, and hosted by Dave Almey. And theme music was composed by Sky Holmes.
