Opinion: Watching The Big Game, But On Whatsapp

As Twitter brings the NFL to US audiences, James Kirkham, head of Copa90 asks: what’s stopping Facebook’s WhatsApp bringing us the Premier League in 2019?

Last week, the first of ten Thursday night live match streams brought the NFL to Twitter users all over America. Deemed an unmitigated success, it was a watermark moment not just for the platform but a clear signal of where sport is heading. 

The Jets v Bills grabbed an audience of 2.3 million people globally via Twitter, which compares pretty favourably as a first bite out of a further 15 million who tuned into the traditional TV broadcast, and it isn’t hard to predict the trajectory of these two forms of media as innovations progress. 

A tie-up between sports streaming and social is one of the most natural fits imaginable. 

For a global population, which moved seamlessly from shouting at the TV to venting their spleens on their social streams, social and sport are beautifully entwined in a self-perpetuating symbiosis.

Twitter has always been a leader here too, with the nascent pillars of the microblogging platform perfectly adjoining the ebb and flow of our most popular sports. Bite-sized narratives, swiftly unloaded from all those you follow, is precisely the right fodder to help give Twitter some much-needed purpose at this time. 

If it works for Twitter, why not other platforms, says James Kirkham

So people are rightly applauding Twitter for this innovation, spending big to launch its NFL nights and reaping the benefits as a consequence. 

However, the devil is in the detail, and one perspective is that Twitter can still improve product innovation and functionality with the streams to make even more of them and to ‘own’ it in a way truly distinct to it.

Twitter has so far packaged it in its ‘Moments’ feature, which makes sense editorially. But it feels it is missing a trick as users where asking why they couldn’t watch the video alongside their own Twitter timelines too.  After all the tidal rhythm of second screen commentary is what still gives Twitter such a stand out advantage, versus other platforms. 

Subsequently being able to piece together the live video stream with the live social stream would make for a beautifully appropriate user experience. The medium would effectively be evolved, with our favourite second screen commentaries derived from those people we choose to follow, intersecting elegantly with the game itself. This combination of event and social is likely to create more features, advertising opportunities and tie-ups.

Regardless of this minor criticism – this is just week one and we would assume a whole lot more improvements to the experience as the trials continue – but where does it go next?

The @HoustonTexans.
The @Patriots.
Thursday Night.

: https://t.co/cwnT5c7crk
: @NFLonCBS #TNF #HOUvsNE

— NFL (@NFL) September 20, 2016

For those less involved in this vertical, it is worth re-iterating how sports rights are often deemed something of a holy grail. Easily the most expensive of all the available streaming rights, it is seen as a real coup for anyone who might land them. The old world philosophy of course was that you could not create a sports media business without any rights. 

Although Copa90 has debunked that theorem with over 11 million global subscribers and customers spending over 47 minutes per week with content, it is certainly not the norm. Audiences believe the authenticity in play here yet the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Conversations and discussions around the games should be easily sustained and maintained between matches in a way current broadcasters are failing to do. Yet perhaps this is a throwback to the origins of the platform and a hint at where the true future might lie. 

Last week, a story emerged in the business press how Amazon is seeking sports rights too, from French Open tennis to International Rugby and similarly it is waiting patiently on the sidelines for the big American ball games to become available. This is a simply a game that all the major players will be looking at and as such, what is the inevitable conclusion to this tale?  Surely Mark Zuckerberg can re-open his incomparable war chest and simply clean up if he so wishes?

For all of us who spend our Sunday afternoons trading insults and banter in home made WhatsApp groups based around the Premier League fixtures, this feels like an obvious opportunity staring us right in the face. 

Being able to watch the game on a messenger platform would almost be the happy ending most sports fans seek. As messaging platforms continue to evolve so that we (the customer) are kept willing captors in their all encompassing eco-systems, it would make great sense to play out the biggest sporting events right in the heart of the conversation too. 

What’s more, micro-payments could easily switch on a pay-per-play mentality, allowing us to choose where to direct our attention on demand, complete with the away ‘crowd’ of our choosing. This would then give a platform such as WhatsApp the ultimate seismic shift, augmenting our lives in a way we’d surely relish. Conversation, live event, in game chat, and post-match analysis would seamlessly combine to deliver truly appropriate sports consumption. For a brand or advertiser, this would be the dream state too, being able to ‘pop-in’ to the most fervent and engaged conversations around a consumer’s favourite past time. 

Whether Zuckerberg has the desire to bring sports into Facebook or not is a much discussed but as yet relatively unknown point. The fact is that he absolutely could – and beyond the usual traditional players having their annual high profile commercial squabbles about which rights they can acquire, it is likely instead to be platforms like Facebook and Amazon which follow Twitter’s lead and end up dominating this space for years to come.