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| Juan Delgado |
JUAN DELGADO is the CEO of Perform Media. The company is a division of U.K.-based Perform Group. It owns and operates a number of digital sports platforms, including Goal.com, Sporting News and Spox. The company is currently in the process of launching a new OTT service, a so-called Netflix for sports. The new service will initially launch in Germany and Japan. Delgado, who has been with Perform since '07, has seen the company grow into a leading digital sports media brand. The Colombian native recently talked to SBD Global about Perform's new OTT service, growth areas, market challenges and Esports. Delgado was also a SBJ/SBD FourtyUnder40 nominee in '15.
On launching the OTT service only in Germany and Japan …
Juan Delgado: We basically did a whole lot of research through the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 and determined four key variables. No. 1, consumer population and its tendency to subscribe to a service like this … connectivity of the population, what’s the broadband and smartphone, LT or 4G penetration. Obviously in both markets Japan and Germany you’ve got quite advanced telecommunications infrastructure … The third and probably the most important is the proposition the consumers where getting from local broadcasters and that the determining factor for us to really try to go in and revolutionize the market a little bit … The fourth piece and probably most relevant from a timing perspective but less relevant now is rights windows that you look at when you go after a market. It just so happened that those two market were quite open to disruption by going on and grabbing a whole bunch of rights.
On what sports will be featured on the OTT service …
Delgado: They ultimately are not the top dog domestic leagues in either market. Our belief is very similar to how Netflix started. You are running content that might be interesting to a certain segment of fan base but because you are offering it at a price point ... it’s a compelling enough proposition with a 24/7 sports offering that you don’t necessarily need to have the biggest and most premium rights in either of those markets to make progress. Having said that, the audiences of those leagues that we have acquired, for example, in Germany, La Liga and Premier League on the soccer side and then some of the American sports like the NFL and NBA, they draw hundreds of thousands of viewers … That’s our plan and if it works it doesn’t mean that we don’t have appetite for bigger and more compelling for local consumers. But we have to crawl before we walk and then run … The launch of the service in both markets is very imminent. (On Thursday, the Bundesliga announced that Perform Group acquired the league’s digital highlight rights.)
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On Perform Media's growth opportunities …
Delgado: In terms of Perform Media, we are 100 percent focused on growing our audience globally. That is still the foremost focus for us. The breadth of our growth has been spread around a lot of different countries and so we are pretty big in places you wouldn’t expect like Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia. It basically is a challenge for the next few years on how you extract revenue from those markets that are not necessarily as developed as our core markets like North America and Western Europe. Attaining that ability to monetize the platform in those markets is still a big challenge for us and a big focus. I’m talking about countries like Brazil, Indonesia, India, Nigeria and even China actually falls in there … That’s probably our No. 1 challenge. Tied to that there are still markets out there where we require more scale to be able to have as big a footprint like we do in places like the U.S., the U.K. or Germany.
On markets that present a challenge …
Delgado: One example is Indonesia, which I would describe as the Brazil of Southeast Asia. Nobody realizes that it’s got 240 million people. It’s highly connected and the ad market is quite buoyant and quite healthy, including the digital ad market and we have a very strong position by being the No. 1 football side in the market and No. 2 sports site with Goal.com … Nigeria is exactly the same. Its 180 million Nigerians … In Nigeria I believe we are actually the largest sports site in the market by a mile. Monetizing those markets is still a challenge … That’s the positioning that we carved ourselves out and why we are so focused after having a good successful run in Northern Hemisphere developed digital markets. Now we need to focus on monetizing the audiences in those markets where have a stronger position from an audience perspective but the market still needs to develop and we need to invest in it.
On the emergence of esports ...
Delgado: We are looking at esports, specifically around soccer because it is becoming quite a big opponent of our fan base … We are starting to play around with it. We’ve looked at partnering with a few of the e-leagues in certain markets … We are engaging very heavily with it. We’ve not necessarily created an e-gaming section or segment within our content offering yet. We are covering it and it’s getting a lot of engagement from users ... Could we look at growing our own vertical? I think it’s probably likely. If you wanted to have a timeframe … I would say it’s not necessarily six months but certainly within the next maybe six-18 months, especially because as World Cup draws near that segment of the market … will be quite hot.
Hangin' With runs each Friday in SBD Global.
