StreamTime Sports

A week of major developments across the Premier League, media and streaming has raised important questions about the future of sports business.

This episode explores the potential consequences of Manchester City's ongoing regulatory battle and what it could mean for the finances and global appeal of the Premier League. Nick and Chris also unpack the completion of Skydance's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, examining the impact on sports rights, streaming platforms and competition across the media landscape. Finally, they discuss Disney+'s growing sports strategy in the Nordics, where the addition of NHL rights further strengthens their portfolio and if its a sign of the company's plans to develop their sports offering internationally.

Not every sports property can be the NFL, Premier League or NBA. But not every sport is a niche passion play either. So what happens to the vast number of organisations caught in the middle?

This episode explores the growing challenges facing sports media's "middle class" - established properties with meaningful audiences, passionate fans and commercial ambitions, but without the scale of the world's biggest leagues. Nick and Chris examine how streaming has changed the economics of sports broadcasting, why premium sports and niche sports often have clearer business models, and what middle-tier properties must do to remain competitive.

Using examples including Dyn Media, FloSports, Formula E, the EuroLeague and rugby, the discussion explores whether strategy, aggregation and audience growth can provide a sustainable path forward in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Key Topics:

• Was traditional TV historically propping up sports media's middle class all along?
• How has streaming changed the economics and opportunities available to middle-tier sports properties? 
• Why do niche sports often have an easier path to monetisation than larger, more established middle-tier sports?
• Can platforms like Dyn Media and FloSports prove that aggregation is the future for middle-tier sports?
• Is it possible for a sport to move from the middle tier into the top tier of the global sports ecosystem?

What happens when a football league needs to broadcast its own live games?

On this episode of StreamTime Sports we bring you the latest episode of our New Economics of Fandom miniseries in partnership with Genius Sports. Co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone are joined by Cyprien Castanedo, head of media and platform innovation at LFP Media, to explore the launch and growth of Ligue1+, the league's direct to consumer streaming platform.

After the LFP lost its domestic broadcast partnership, Castanedo explains how Ligue1+ was built in a matter of months, reached one million subscribers within three weeks and drove revenue through both subscriptions and major distribution partners.

Sports media leaders may compete in different corners of the industry, but many are increasingly focused on the same challenges: personalisation, production efficiency, cloud infrastructure and audience engagement.

Fresh from StreamTime Sports Live and IBC in Amsterdam, Chris and Nick unpack the biggest themes emerging from the worlds of sports media, broadcasting and technology. Drawing on conversations with speakers from organisations including the BBC, SVT, Bundesliga, Dyn Media and Dolby, they explore how the industry is approaching AI, cloud production, personalisation and fan engagement.

Key Topics:

• Why are broadcasters, rights holders and technology companies becoming increasingly aligned around personalisation and audience engagement? 
• How are organisations using cloud production, automation and AI to improve efficiency without sacrificing quality? 
• What lessons can sports media learn from the approaches being taken by the BBC, Bundesliga, SVT and Dyn Media? 
• Is sports media entering a more mature phase, and what does that mean for future innovation and growth?

Sports organisations have spent years talking about data as the key to growth. But what if most are approaching it the wrong way?

In the latest episode of our New Economics of Fandom miniseries, Chris Stone and Nick Meacham are joined by UEFA Chief Marketing & Chief Digital Officer Roman Putsch to explore how one of the world's leading sports properties approaches fan engagement, first-party data and commercial growth.

Putsch explains why UEFA views data as "crude oil, not gold", how the organisation measures audience quality rather than simply audience size, and why creating value for fans must come before collecting information from them. The conversation also explores sponsorship activation, media rights, and the capabilities sports organisations need to build for the future.

The New Economics of Fandom is produced in partnership with Genius Sports and explores how sport's commercial future is being reshaped by technology, data and changing fan behaviour.

Key Points:

• How are sports organisations are thinking about data the wrong way.
• How fan value creates data value, not the other way around.
• The best metrics for evaluating audience quality.
• Why "owning the fan" may be the wrong objective for sports organisations.
• How to build the capabilities needed for sport's next commercial era.

Few companies have generated as many headlines, sparked as much debate, or attracted as much attention in sports media as DAZN. Once positioned as the 'Netflix of Sports', the company has spent the last decade transforming from an ambitious streaming start-up into one of the most influential and controversial players in global sports broadcasting.

This episode traces the complete DAZN story, from its roots in Perform Group and early expansion across Europe and Japan, through its billion-dollar betting on sports rights, the challenges of COVID, and its shift towards profitability. Chris and Nick explore the key decisions, acquisitions and personalities that shaped the company, including Len Blavatnik, Simon Denyer, John Skipper and Shay Segev, before examining what DAZN has become today and what its future could look like.

Key Topics:

• How did DAZN evolve from a niche streaming start-up into one of the biggest sports media companies in the world? 
• Which strategic decisions helped shape DAZN's journey, and which proved to be costly mistakes?
• How did COVID, changing streaming economics and the drive for profitability fundamentally transform the business?
• What is DAZN today, and is the company ultimately heading towards an IPO, an acquisition or something entirely different?

Sports organisations are increasingly prioritising reach over exclusivity, and the latest moves from Disney+, DAZN and Serie A show just how important audience growth has become in a fragmented media landscape.

 This episode explores Formula E's new global partnership with Disney+, why DAZN continues to expand through acquisitions and new distribution deals, and how leagues such as Serie A are balancing free-to-air exposure with subscription revenue. Along the way, Chris and Nick examine what these strategies reveal about the future of sports media, international distribution and audience growth.

 Key Topics:

• What does Formula E's Disney+ partnership reveal about the growing importance of audience reach over media rights revenue?
• Why is Disney expanding its sports offering globally, and what role could ESPN play in that strategy?
• What is DAZN actually building through its growing portfolio of acquisitions, partnerships and rights deals?
• Can leagues like Serie A grow international audiences by combining free-to-air visibility with premium streaming partnerships?

Pete Distad has spent much of his career at the centre of streaming’s evolution. He worked at the pioneering Hulu, spent a decade at Apple, and attempted to consolidate the world of sport DTC with Venu Sports. Now he’s leading Fox’s own digital ambitions with Fox One.

Distad sat down with Nick Meacham at SportsPro New York to unpack the thinking behind FOX One, what he has learned from launching and scaling multiple streaming products, and how those experiences are shaping Fox’s next chapter.

They discuss:

• The strategy behind FOX One and where it fits in thechanging US sports media landscape
• What a decade at Apple taught Distad about building and scaling streaming products
• Why Venu Sports remains the one project he still looks back on and wonders what might have been
• Building products consumers actually want and knowing when you’re onto something
• The mistakes, lessons and decisions that have shaped his career across Hulu, Apple, Venu and Fox
• Why the 2026 Fifa World Cup was a major test for FOX One and its streaming ambitions

StreamTime Sports is thrilled to make the top 5 Sports Business podcasts. See the full list here: https://podcast.feedspot.com/sports_business_podcasts/

With Premier League kickoff just a day away, Men in Blazers pulled off something it had never done before — live-streaming a Tottenham preseason match direct to North America and pulling in over 3x the concurrent viewership it had forecast.

On this episode, Nick sits down with Roger Bennett, Co-Founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network, to unpack how MiB became one of the biggest independent football media businesses in North America — and what football's rapid rise in the US means for the sport's next 50 years.

How Men in Blazers built its business on two first-mover bets: spotting football's rise in the US back in the early 2010s, and timing its launch around the emergence of podcasting

Inside the World Cup output that pushed MiB's streams up over 500% — 200+ podcasts plus TV shows, newsletters, alternate broadcasts and live eventsWhy NBC's 2013 Premier League deal — and its off-primetime kickoff slots — became an accidental masterstroke in growing US fandomMLS's move behind the Apple paywall, and why friction is the enemy of a fanbase that "finds football easily"

America's multi-team fandom habit, and why Wrexham draws roughly seven times the average Premier League club's US following

Debrief: streaming Tottenham vs Hoffenheim live to North America ~10,000 concurrent viewers against an internal forecast of 2,800–3,200 — and what it signals for the next wave of club-direct broadcasts

StreamTime Sports is thrilled to make the top 5 Sports Business podcasts. See the full list here: https://podcast.feedspot.com/sports_business_podcasts/

Don't adjust your dials. This episode of StreamTime Sports features an interview by host Nick Meacham with Genius Sports CEO Mark Locke featured on t he SportsPro Pod.

For decades, the sports industry has relied on broadcasters to fund growth, distribute content and monetise audiences. But what happens when that model starts to change?Locke discusses Genius Sports' evolution from its betting roots into a global technology business, the company's acquisition of Legend, the growing role of AI and data ownership, and why he believes the next generation of sports growth will come from direct relationships with fans.

The conversation also examines the changing economics of media rights, the NFL partnership, gaming as a future distribution channel and what sports organisations need to do to thrive in a more personalised digital world.

This is the first episode in SportsPro's New Economics of Fandom series, exploring how sport's commercial future is being rewritten.

StreamTime Sports is thrilled to make the top 5 Sports Business podcasts. See the full list here: https://podcast.feedspot.com/sports_business_podcasts/