The Future of Livestreaming: Music and Sports

There have been a handful of recent livestream deals in music and sports. NBCU tapped Twitch to produce and deliver live content that will live on a new NBC Olympics Twitch channel for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. And Warner Music invested in virtual concert platform Wave, and Deezer invested in live concert platform DREAMSTAGE. We break down the power of "live" via 4 success pillars, and how livestreaming will impact the future of these two verticals. 

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Chris Erwin:

Andrew, have you been tracking some of the Livestream deals over the past couple of weeks? I think I saw something about Twitch and NBCU and Warner buying a stake in Wave. You've been tracking this?

Andrew Cohen:

Yeah. No just over the past couple of weeks, but it seems like ever since the beginning of lockdown last March, we've been seeing more and more Livestream news happen every week.

Chris Erwin:

It's pretty wild. Yeah, we actually have a little shout-out to our website. If you go to one of our blog posts, we have a Livestream watch list. You can go see all the recent fundings out over the past year, 18 months or so.

Andrew Cohen:

Always be plugging.

Chris Erwin:

Always be plugging. Okay. There's a few that stood out. So one in particular was this partnership between NBCU and Twitch, and so NBCU has the exclusive live rights to the 2021 Summer Olympics in Japan. And so NBC is tapping Twitch to produce and deliver live content that will live on a new NBC Olympics Twitch channel for the summer games. It's going to include Olympics theme content. It's going to have daily unique Twitch-produced content, such as daily interactive clip shows, daily competition among three teams of Twitch creators, and primetime side casting and a live from Tokyo segment. I think there's a cool quote from one of the deal-makers here that says "The way that people consume traditional sporting events is changing. They no longer want to simply spectate. They want to be as close to the action and athletes as possible, and that's what Twitch is bringing to the mix."

Chris Erwin:

Just a couple of other quick deals. Warner bought a stake in a virtual concerts platform called Wave, and a Paris-based music streaming startup called Deezer took a minority stake in DREAMSTAGE, a live music streaming startup. So a lot of activity here, and I think, Andrew, something that you've thought a lot about and written about is, why is this happening? And you've captured four interesting pillars, so I think it could be fun for you to break that down for our listeners here.

Andrew Cohen:

So, really what we're saying is that across all these different verticals, live media is becoming more and more valuable. We think that live media is defined by four pillars, all of which evoke a deeper level of audience engagement and thus valuable.

Andrew Cohen:

Pillar number one, it's moment driven, which drives tune in. So the fleeting nature of live content and of live moments creates a sense of urgency for viewers. Each live event holds the potential for a completely unique moment, a new unique experience, so you tune in. There's real urgency around that versus something that's on-demand.

Andrew Cohen:

Pillar number two, we're calling the FOMO factor, which drives lean in. So it's that fear of missing out on a memorable moment that keeps users glued to the action because the next moment may always be that "can't miss" moment that everyone's going to be talki