What is your professional background, and your current role at the company, and which area are you responsible for, in a nutshell?
I was the first person to join MyCujoo besides the co-founders. My background is in sports, including working at football clubs, and then marketing agencies in Switzerland. I also spent time at international football organisations, and the European Leagues [previously the European Professional Football Leagues] association in Switzerland as well. MyCujoo’s mission was to democratise football, and for that you needed football content.
What are your personal duties and responsibilities at the company?
From the outset, my role was in business development, and I am Director of Content Partnerships and Operations at ELEVEN, with my responsibilities for the global OTT platform elevensports.com [formerly mycujoo.tv]. I oversee all the processes involved in the creation of the content, from acquisition through to ingestion on to our studio, from where it is distributed to fans. This covers establishing and maintaining relationships with sports rights holders and competition organisers, for which the relationship is contractual. Approximately 60% of our content is subject to a contract, otherwise known as a media rights agreement. This means we receive a license for the exposure, distribution, and exploitation of the content on elevensports.com. I’m also responsible for the department that looks after day-to-day content operations. This team is responsible for the successful delivery of the content, both the type of content that we produce directly ourselves, and content that is produced by rights holders. The platform has multiple different production models and we are responsible, of course, for ensuring seamless delivery of the content, regardless of who is handling production. Furthermore, as we currently make our platform freely available to sporting entities who wish to start livestreaming their events, over 3,000 clubs, leagues, event organisers, and more from over 150 countries and territories – that’s over 70% of the planet – utilise our technology to bring their athletes and teams closer to their fans.
From which countries and markets do you have the most active user base?
No matter the country from which games are broadcast, we have exceptionally engaged fans watching content on elevensports.com. It is particularly important to note that fans of the women’s game, regardless of the territory in which it is played, are typically the most engaged of all, and we are very proud to be the world’s biggest platform for women’s football.
We have a significant number of contractual partnerships with confederations, national associations, regional associations and leagues. Those partnerships include a large number of national associations and regional associations, in territories where football is not only organised nationally but also at state level. For instance, in Brazil, we just recently renewed our agreement with the Brazilian Football Confederation for live streaming worldwide the top three women’s national divisions: that is Série A1, A2 and the newly organised A3. Naturally where those partnerships cover premium competitions, especially in countries where teams competing in those competitions have a substantial fanbase, the audiences will typically be the largest.
We also then have a huge number of organic partners, including approximately 3,000 active clubs that do not have a contract with us, playing in every area of the world, at different levels of the game, typically ranging from semi-professional to grassroots sides, and each of those games attracts a passionate, emotionally connected audience.
Can you describe the platform itself? What do you offer for your clients and for the stakeholders?
Elevensports.com is a sports-specific OTT that offers rights holders the opportunity to distribute their content to a global audience, regardless of their size, which covers the full pyramid from premium content to grassroots content, and ultimately realise the value inherent in that content. Where football specifically is concerned, we further provide the capacity to create content which contextualises the game. In addition to our proprietary live streaming technology, there are also powerful but easy to use tools including football graphics, scoreboards, timers, line-ups, and the ability to tag highlights in real time, ensuring fans are provided with an even more engaging experience. At the end of a game, together with the full match automatically being available on-demand, a rights holder can easily and automatically create a recap of the match simply by selecting their preferred highlights already tagged within the game. We are focused on creating the best possible experience for organisations to distribute their content, even with low production standards, such as streaming directly from a mobile phone.
The platform also contextualises content consumption, because each piece of content is organised according to the model related to that specific sport, what we call an entity structure. For example, any football match is linked to each team’s name, and then to each entity in the team’s pyramid structure up to and including the global governing body. This means you can access that same content from multiple entry points on the platform. Approximately 90% of the content is organised under the football pyramid structure.
It is interesting that you mentioned democratisation. This is one of the key words you use in your value proposition. What kind of value do you identify in amateur sports? Because many of your clients are not in the biggest competitions like Champions League. But here at ELEVEN, everybody can create their own content.
In November 2020, MyCujoo was acquired by ELEVEN, and the MyCujoo platform was rebranded as elevensports.com. ELEVEN is a sports media destination delivering world-class entertainment to fans, and in addition to elevensports.com, ELEVEN operates in a number of regional markets around the world, through which we typically offer premium live and on-demand content either solely via a digital offering or a mix of linear and digital.
What democratisation entails is that we believed from the outset at MyCujoo that any level of football deserves visibility and has value that can be unlocked. When the platform launched in 2015, many other live streaming platforms popular today had either not yet begun operations or were still relatively young. And to that end, we developed a platform which enabled clubs, leagues, and federations of any size, no matter where they were in the world, to distribute their content in high quality via technology as simple as a mobile phone, and to bring them closer to their fans, whether those fans could be counted on one hand or in the hundreds of thousands.
Can you describe the monetisation part of the platform as well?
Our relationships with rights holders are either contractual or organic, but regardless of that relationship we offer a range of monetisation opportunities which are suited to that rights holder and how they want to engage with their fans. For organic rights holders, this can include programmatic advertising, the use of sponsorship slots, and the ability to make their events available on a pay-per-view basis.
Do you have any more additional monetisation methods?
In addition to acquiring their broadcast rights, with a number of contractual partners we have also acquired their data and AV rights, and we then work with a range of data aggregation companies to generate further value from their content. Owing to our proven expertise in this area and our leading streaming technology, we are also able to deliver revenue from these rights at many levels of the pyramid and across the men’s and women’s games.
Where paywalls are concerned, as well as pay-per-view [otherwise known as TVOD], we also operate subscription models [SVOD]. The subscription options are diverse, such as single or multiple competitions bundled together, with a wide range of payment options and payment methods available tailored to the needs of the relevant audience. Earlier this year we distributed Carioca Serie A, which is the Rio de Janeiro state championship. This is an elite competition featuring some of Brazil’s biggest clubs such as Flamengo and Fluminense, one which was entirely suited to being distributed on a subscription basis.
Contractual partners also have the possibility to sell sponsorship in a centralised manner. We can work together with the rights holders to speak to brands, and have brand partnerships sold in the way which will generate the most value for the rights holders but also ensure that we deliver on the objectives of the brands,
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, we also run programmatic ads. It’s not necessarily the biggest revenue contributor proportionally to a rights holder should there be a sponsorship agreement attached to their content, but advertising is nonetheless still very important to many of our rights holders.
MyCujoo and then following its acquisition by ELEVEN has been on the market for seven years, generating revenue from different streams. Can you describe the amount of revenue you can generate from not the top tier levels, but below?
We can’t discuss specific amounts. Whether the revenue stream is sponsorship, pay-per-view or subscriptions, data and AV, or advertising, multiple factors affect each revenue stream.
Sponsorship revenue, for example, can differ depending on whether the content is being distributed locally, globally, or only outside the domestic market, if the content is distributed on a standalone basis or is aggregated with other content, or if the content is particularly attractive to sponsors because they favour a CSR approach to their sponsorship portfolio, and the sponsorship budgets will differ accordingly.
For content behind a paywall, such as matches made available on a standalone pay-per-view basis, or as part of a subscription, revenues depend on how premium the content may be, on the individual market and the cost of the transaction locally, and also on the context of why the content itself is behind a paywall.
There are some great examples of how we helped support clubs, especially during the pandemic when football had just started to return but fans were still not permitted to attend matches in-person. We became a very valuable and meaningful platform for clubs in the UK operating in the 8th or 9th tiers. Putting their matches behind a paywall while supported by a high quality, low cost production model helped cushion the significant impact on their operations caused by loss of ticket revenue.
As for the future, which kind of developments do you consider? I mean technological developments or any other concept you bring on the market?
Our highly exciting agreement with FIFA+ has recently been announced, which means we are playing a key role in supporting the production, delivery, and distribution of up to 40,000 live matches per year, streamed simultaneously to elevensports.com and FIFA+, all available freely to fans. We will also be helping support the creation of commercial opportunities through this newly available content.
How do you see the competition right now? There are social media platforms with many live streaming options in the market, though those are not football specific. But there are TikTok sports, Facebook sports and so on. How do you see their role in the market?
Through the ELEVEN Group we provide a complete unique offering to the market, providing fans with more than 65,000 live hours of sport per year, 665 million aggregated social media followers generating more than 4 billion video views per month, and award-winning contention creation capabilities spanning short form social content to award-winning documentaries.
What is your experience from our market? I mean, the CEE region like Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary – how do you see the possibilities, opportunities here?
Our earliest experiences with the CEE market include a number of competitions with the Hungarian Football Federation and via a collaboration with UEFA for the qualification phases of youth national team competitions. This included featuring the Hungarian national team in their respective age categories, with good viewership, and fans expressing how happy they were that this content was available.
In Slovakia we have streamed matches from the men’s second division and men’s third division, and in the Czech Republic, we have seen multiple matches broadcast in women’s football. There are now a handful of clubs who have regularly streamed their women’s games in different categories for over four years.
Through our agreement with the European Leagues, we have a partnership with the Polish League [Ekstraklasa] for the international distribution of the content, and through the same agreement we also distribute the Slovak League, for which we are helping the leagues find new audiences.
We are currently distributing content from more than 150 markets, covering approximately three quarters of the world, with that content being watched in more than 200 countries and territories, which necessarily means there is an audience available for content both inside and outside that market. As such, we are open to exploring opportunities as they arise, and which make sense for the rights holder and ourselves.
The last question, in your personal view, what satisfies you in the near future, how do you see yourself and the company, its operation, two-three years from now?
On MyCujoo we began with 90 live football matches in the first year. As ELEVEN, in addition to our own portfolio which now comprises tens of thousands of matches and through which we have successfully grown, via this exciting new agreement with FIFA+ we will distribute a further 40,000 live games per year simultaneously to the FIFA+ platform and the elevensports.com OTT. While I can’t mention any specifics about the OTT or the ELEVEN Group and where we are heading as a company, we have exciting and ambitious plans ahead which I’m really looking forward to being a part of.