One of the most surprising stats I heard last week was that live-game streams are not the most popular part of NBC Sports’ MyTeams, the video-centric app that NBC’s regional sports networks launched nearly two years ago.
NBC has seen much more usage of short-form video — video clips that run anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes — than live games, NBC Sports Regional Networks President David Preschlack said. That is surprising since live games garner the best ratings by far in almost every form of media.
But NBC’s RSNs have found that short videos of everything from news and highlights to mock drafts and rumors have proved to be more popular.
“The good news is that it’s highly monetizable,” Preschlack said. “If you look at the digital space, the value of display advertising is decreasing. The value of video advertising, particularly as it relates to short-form video, is increasing dramatically. We have more usage of short-form video than we do of live games by a wide margin.”
That does not mean NBC Sports will follow a similar “pivot to video” strategy that others, like Fox Sports, used three years ago — essentially stripping websites of text-based stories.
“Short-form video works great, but the written word is still pretty powerful,” Preschlack said. “But the way that people consume the written word is a little bit different. Ten or 15 years ago, people were more willing to engage in 5,000 to 10,000-word stories. That’s not the case anymore. It needs to be 300- to 400-word stories. That’s what’s really effective …
“We’ve really morphed from a digital destination that recapped last night’s game to a destination that people can go to from when they get up in the morning to when they go to bed at night to follow all the major storylines in the markets that we’re covering.”
