Enhanced information and context around sports are the driving forces behind Nielsen Gracenote’s new widgets offering designed to integrate real-time team stats, recent game results and live updates to TV and video home screens and auto infotainment systems. On the latest "SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead" podcast, Nielsen Gracenote Sports Senior VP/Product Management David Faulknor joined our Andrew Levin to explain the new tech and discuss its impact across the sports business.
On tech acceleration during the pandemic:
Faulknor: Over the course of the year, we’ve been able to maintain a relatively good level of tech innovation and maintain our product (growth). The areas that have been interesting is working and finding some of those other tech incubators and tech companies where, normally, you’d be traveling and meeting with folks, some of the areas like hype innovations and things like that, where you get to see a broad range of startups working and seeing what they’re working on has certainly helped us.
On current market conditions and consumption habits driving up the value of live-sports content as an asset:
Faulknor: It’s not breaking news that there’s a large amount of content available out there, and the days of everybody watching the 'M*A*S*H' finale are kind of gone and in the past. But one thing that’s a unifier in today’s culture is sports and is live sports. So, there is still that, 'It’s Sunday night. Let’s all watch football together. Hey, the Yankees are on. It’s 7:05. What does Michael Kay and crew have in store for us?’ And I think also, during the turbulent times, it’s been a tough year and sports brings some normalcy to folks’ lives.
On what different platforms stand to gain from a business point-of-view if they can successfully leverage fans' love of sports:
Faulknor: I think about them based around an engagement ecosystem, that the more you can provide value and grow customer affinity and client affinity to your platform, the more they’re going to be engaged and the more they’re going to come back and the more they’re going to see value in sticking with X company versus going to Y company.
