• The Platform Question That Changes Everything: It used to be simple, you made a TV show. Now the first question Buzz16 asks every client is which platform are we delivering for? Joe explains why that single shift has fundamentally changed how content is conceived, planned and produced. Are most producers even asking it yet?
• The Organic Share Test: Anyone can post their own content and tell you it’s brilliant. Joe’s real measure of whether something has landed is whether someone with no obligation to share it does anyway. So why are so many teams still optimising for metrics that don’t prove that?
• What YouTube Still Gets Wrong: The spontaneous point-and-shoot era is over. Joe argues that pre-production and planning is the most underrated skill in the industry, and the best creators are quietly adopting broadcast disciplines. But are creators willing to give up what made them different in the first place?
• The Metric That Actually Matters: Views and watch time are table stakes. Joe’s real measure of success is whether people with no obligation to share your content do it anyway. So why are so many teams still optimising for the wrong numbers?
• The Generalist Has Won: When asked what one skill producers must master, Joe’s answer is telling. You can’t master just one anymore. From strategy to platform awareness to shooting and editing, the modern producer looks remarkably like the solo creators who built YouTube from nothing. So is the specialist producer already obsolete?
• The Gap Is Closing Fast: Joe traces his career from making short-form digital highlights nobody took seriously in 2009 to running a company delivering for linear, YouTube and everything in between. Is the gap between broadcast and creator content almost gone entirely?

Transcription

Jo (00:03.374)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Attention Shift podcast. And I’m flying solo today and that’s because I’ve got a guest. I’m delighted that we’ve got with us today, managing director of Buzz 16, Joe Bennett. Welcome Joe, how are you?

Joe (00:17.042)
I’m good, thank you. Thanks for me on. How are you?

Jo (00:19.118)
You’re most welcome. Now, we’re gonna get straight in, tell us, so tell us a little bit about Buzz16 and you, because you’ve worked across digital, traditional broadcast, now you’re running a company. So tell us a little bit about you, what you do, and how your role as a producer has changed over that last 10 years.

Joe (00:39.134)
Yeah, it’s been a busy, busy last 10, 15 years. So I got into the industry as a junior AP edit assistant back in the day. Actually, when I came into the industry was almost as digital content was starting to become more of a thing. So I actually joined a company called Perform back in 2009-ish, that has since obviously come on to become the zones of today.

So that was my first introduction into the industry in terms of sort of making short form digital highlights for web player content. So was sports bulletins, sports highlights, sports news stories. And then I batched, so I bizarrely started in sort of digital content, transitioned into going to work for input media as a assistant producer there, which was my first foray into broadcast, proper broadcast television and sort of

my grounding of a broadcast experience, became an assistant producer there, went on to work for Sunset and Vine at BT Sport, again in traditional broadcast. And then whilst I was working on the Premier League coverage there, an opportunity came up to actually shift into digital. And I went to work for the FA and worked with the England football teams, most notably the Lionesses for a long time, strong affiliation to women’s sport based on my time at the FA. But that was actually a very good time to, I guess, in terms of the

title of this podcast, Attention Shift. My background at that point was very solidly a traditional broadcast and delivering for BT and Linear. When I went to England, that was very much YouTube content. And that was the shift. It was just at the time when your content that was starting to do really well on YouTube. So your original sort of teammates type style content came out and that was my sort of grounding within digital content. And at that point I was a

Jo (02:15.085)
Mm.

Jo (02:32.621)
Yeah.

Joe (02:34.642)
I was shooting, editing, producing one man band, traveling around the world, creating content with the best footballers in England, which was obviously a great period. And then I left there to go to Chelsea very briefly as a senior producer, and then I joined Whisper. So I joined Whisper and they’re much smaller than they are now, the powerhouse that they are now in the industry. But my shift there was really a dynamic of juggling.

digital and broadcast. I went there as a multi-platform producer. So again, as this evolving role became, it was as everyone was realising that.

there wasn’t just linear, there wasn’t just digital. It was starting to become one and become more joined up. So that was my sort of original remit at Whisper was to bring those two together. And that was my oversight and progress progressed whilst I was at Whisper. And then I’ve been at Buzz now for 14, 15 months. So I joined that actually joined Buzz as head of content to oversee all of our digital non-live and live content. Again, from my background.

Jo (03:17.571)
Yes.

Jo (03:26.478)
Mm.

Joe (03:43.41)
within the industry, having worked across those three sectors. That was my remit when I came in. And then to the back end of last year, I’ve now stepped up to run the company. So I’m managing director at Buzz16, which is a different challenge. It’s no longer a producer type hat on and more business orientated, but it’s good fun.

Jo (03:46.968)
Mmm.

Jo (04:00.159)
Yeah. Well, yeah, we’ll definitely get into the running the business side of things in a bit because that’s another challenge in and of itself. But just sticking with the producer and the creative side, I mean, it’s interesting because there’s certain parallels with my own career. So I’m interested to know from you, you mentioned you started out making digital and social content. I remember when that was just the filler. It was the ancillary stuff.

You know, it was the stuff that happened over there and there was a little team that did it and nobody really took it that seriously. And here we are in 2026 where, as you said, you don’t just produce for one method of delivery anymore. You still have broadcasts, but social now is so much more important. Social first consumption. We know that YouTube is ostensibly the gateway, the doorway into fandom for a lot of sports, you know, for the under 35s particularly. What…

I mean, in a nutshell, how have you observed that shift over the course of your work in all of those companies and that trajectory that you’ve just explained? What’s been the overriding kind of observation that you’ve made in how audiences consume sports content?

Joe (05:15.742)
Yeah, probably haven’t gotten enough time to answer the question in terms of this podcast, have we? It’s a headlight. I think the biggest shift for me is actually the shift and how quick that shift is continuously, if that makes any sense in terms of we’ve seen people turn their nose up and look down on YouTube and social content, like you say, then it becomes the go-to destination. And then it’s almost now this balance of actually what’s the primary platform that we’re delivering for? Yes.

Jo (05:17.998)
Give us the headline.

Jo (05:29.646)
All

Joe (05:45.394)
the rights might live on linear originally, but actually a lot of the second screen experience or what we’re actually trying to cater for is the split audiences in terms of two at the same time. And that’s the shift. That’s the shift that’s the hardest thing, I think, for producers and content makers now. That’s the thing to satisfy and to make sure you’re speaking to both audiences in terms of second screen, but also the linear product at the same time. I think the consumption habit, obviously,

Jo (05:50.698)
Mm. Mm.

Jo (05:56.686)
Exactly, yeah.

Joe (06:14.773)
depending on the demographic, depending on the client we’re working with, there’s variations there of which platforms you target initially. And I think, again, that’s a big shift. It depends on now, it used to be you make a TV program or a linear program or a documentary. And now depending on which brand you’re working for, it’s actually which platform. One of the first questions we ask for is what’s your destination platform? What’s your target platform? And I guess that’s a big shift in consumption in terms of depending on who the client is and you have to have that awareness of

Jo (06:29.581)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo (06:36.92)
Yes.

Jo (06:40.685)
Yeah.

Joe (06:44.689)
what works for each channel.

Jo (06:44.782)
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It used to be that you were a specialist in making a TV program or like you were early in your career, you were a specialist in making social content that sat on a web page. Now, the decision as to how that content is going to be sliced and diced and distributed to what really what you’re talking about is fragmentation really

You’ve got to think about that as you’re making it, as you’re thinking about it, as you’re producing it. And that, I think, is the switch, isn’t it? As a producer, 15 years ago, you delivered a TV show, and that’s what you delivered. Now you’ve got to think about feeding a whole ecosystem. You’ve got highlights, you’ve got creators, you’ve got sponsors, you’ve got to think about how you surface stuff that’s going to work well for the algorithm. That’s a completely different skill set as a producer, and now you’re…

running a business that produces. So what skills matter more now do you think when you’re thinking about that than maybe what a producer skill set was 15 years ago?

Joe (07:52.542)
always torn and I actually say this to my team now in terms of like at heart I’m very much a creative person and that’s always that will always be a passion of mine regardless I don’t get to do so much of it anymore that’s still a massive passion of mine I think an underrated skill for a producer or someone in the industry now is actually and my team will laugh because I’m not the most organized person it’s the organizational side but also the planning so like the pre-production the pre-planning

And actually again, we’ll go onto it probably later on about shifts in how YouTube content is now created compared to TV content. It’s a lot more pre-planning is now in YouTube content than potentially when it first exploded and content creators came on and were making great content themselves. But actually now you see the best produced content. And the biggest skill set for me is that planning, that organization.

Jo (08:28.109)
Yeah.

Joe (08:46.917)
You have to have that awareness, as you said, of that ecosystem that you’re trying to feed. you can’t just be a producer now that turns up and does a shoot. You can’t be a producer that just oversees a project. You have to be a producer that is considering the wider strategy. You’ve got to wear many hats. You’ve got to work out actually, and again, probably a shift from what we spoke about a second ago is, it used to be this whole thing of you wouldn’t share the content. You’d go and make an interview with someone.

Jo (09:01.645)
Yes.

Joe (09:14.129)
you wouldn’t dare give the best bits of that interview away until it went on linear. And obviously now that shift over time is very much like, get the headline out, get the news line out. And again, the way content is cut now, you want the scroll stopping, the thumb stopping bit of the content at the top, the drop the headline at the top, which is complete reverse of how everything used to be. So long way around, long way around of answering your question. I think the, the organizational side and the strategy side is a, is a skill you need to have. You have to have an awareness of

Jo (09:19.512)
Yeah.

Jo (09:24.803)
Mm.

Jo (09:33.164)
It did, yeah.

Joe (09:43.897)
everything now you can’t just be a creative the creative the creative element is important but you can’t

Jo (09:49.231)
course it is, of course it is. But as you say, it’s different ways of being creative. Because how you’re creative for linear broadcast is different to how you’re creative for a TikTok or YouTube shorts or even YouTube content. Because we know that the consumption habits are different there. You’ve got to have that hook upfront on YouTube to stop the scroll, as you said. Whereas you don’t necessarily need to think about that quite so early if you’re thinking about linear. So…

Joe (09:58.512)
Absolutely.

Jo (10:16.332)
different consumption patterns. And I think you hit an important point. As a producer, you’ve got to be mindful of the different ways you articulate your creative in those spaces. And that’s a bit of a shift, isn’t it? So you’ve got to be aware of the habits and how content’s consumed across all those different platforms. And you’ve got to do that much earlier because otherwise you’ve got to then go and recreate it and that just gets expensive and costly in terms of time.

When you produce something then, let’s look at success metrics, because this is a very live conversation at the moment. How do you, not just measurement of success, and we talk about Bob and all of that, kind of the importance of views versus retention, but as a producer and as a creative producer, when you’ve produced something, what do you think? What tells you it worked? What’s the definition of success for you now?

with content.

Joe (11:13.349)
Yeah, it’s again, without sitting on the fence, right, in terms of there’s there’s many answers to that question in terms of depending on who we’re producing for and, and what that client is trying to deliver. So at Buzz, I very much describe us as a 360 company, we are a company that deliver for linear, we do deliver documentaries, we do deliver digital content. And actually, the success is different for all of those platforms, depending on who we’re delivering for, I guess.

Jo (11:28.579)
Yes.

Jo (11:32.236)
Hmm.

Jo (11:42.264)
course.

Joe (11:44.069)
I guess for me, know when something selfishly, I think something is successful when it’s been shared by people that are invested in the content, but or either the athletes or the people involved that have organic, if they organically share, we’re all very aware that people are paid to share posts and, and exactly. But if someone shares it organically, I think it’s brilliant. But also I think, and again, I know we potentially touch on it, but LinkedIn is such a powerful platform.

Jo (11:56.777)
Mm. Mm.

Yes, there’s a nice validation on that when it’s contained.

Joe (12:13.988)
and there’s so much content that’s surfaced on there. But the shift in terms of a lot of producers, a lot of people, a lot of companies, we do it the same, post their content to say, look at us, we’ve done this, it’s brilliant. And that’s fine. And that’s part of the game we all play. But actually, I actually see a measure of success is if you see other people in the industry, if you see people in the audience demographics sharing and commenting about your content organically rather than…

your own PR of it is a big success metric. Now again, that’s a bit of a vanity thing in terms of, obviously we look at KPIs that are associated to the content and watch time and retention, but for me, I think something’s landed if you can see that something surfaces naturally rather than you posting. Me telling you it’s brilliant is great for my content, right? I can tell you why my content’s brilliant all the time, but if you’re actually telling me or you’re telling someone else.

Jo (13:02.253)
Yes.

Joe (13:13.222)
Have you seen this piece of content from so-and-so? This is fantastic because of XYZ. That to me shows you’ve cut through.

Jo (13:14.647)
Yes.

Jo (13:19.404)
Yeah, yeah, no, I’d agree with that. think, you know, it’s, it feels like vanity, but actually it’s a good standard of if other people rate your work and to the point where they voluntarily share it, then that’s a good success metric. I would agree with that. You mentioned a little bit about success being success for those who you’re working for. And of course, when you’re…

you know, in that agency side, that is really what you’re there to do is deliver on the objectives of your clients. So, I mean, you’re producing for the BBC and the WSL, for example. How do you shift your creative instincts now? Because obviously you’re the boss of the company as well, but you’ve still got your creative instincts as a producer, as you said. How do you shift those when you step into like a broadcaster system?

Do you still, I mean, obviously you’ve got to listen to their needs, but how do you kind of push innovation as well, given that you’ve got now experience across a great many platforms?

Joe (14:18.01)
Yeah, I think the challenge when you’re trying to be creative on a linear broadcast is completely different to YouTube, right? In terms of, as we know with the linear live sport, especially every second counts. So we have short buildup times, we have half time where you have to get X, Y, Z trails away. You only have a limited off air time off the back. So every second counts. So the difference, I guess, within the linear production would be…

Jo (14:24.514)
and

Jo (14:30.328)
Mm.

Joe (14:46.278)
Unless you’re adding value to the story, you leave it. Whereas on YouTube creation, when we’re obviously founded the overlap and stick to football and those chats, obviously you can let them breathe. And there’s great fun and engagement actually in the silence sometimes. And that’s part of the creative, but actually the creative in our linear is very much, you have to approach storytelling differently. You’re still storytelling across a live game of football, but actually.

Jo (14:49.954)
Mm-mm.

Jo (15:03.874)
Yeah.

Joe (15:14.616)
it’s how you do that. So the creative can come from different elements, but in the editorial, you’re still teeing up the story at the start. You’re still then, you’re telling people what they’re going to watch and you want to inform them of things to look out for in that match that’s coming up. The commentators then carry on that story, that narrative. You pick it back up at half time and then you have the resolution and hopefully, hopefully if we’ve done our job correctly or the games panned out correctly, what we wrap up at full time.

closes that story that we teed up at the start. So the creative is obviously the editorial narrative is told over a different timeframe and different style to a YouTube video. But in terms of the creative that goes into the program from promos, from features, that shifted as well. We work very much in partnership with the BBC. So it’s a real collaborative effort. So we work with Amy Myveld’s team at the BBC and her content teams to make sure

any content gathering opportunity, whereas you used to go and just do a sit down interview for broadcast that would sit into a program and that would be it. The collaboration now and the creative that we put into it alongside Amy’s team is how does that story live past just those 90 minutes? Because yeah, it’s great that we might get 800,000, a million viewers for our WSL coverage for a top game, but actually

Jo (16:38.062)
Mm.

Joe (16:39.984)
that content opportunity with Leah Williamson, with Olivia Smith, whoever that may be, can live so much wider. And again, with the characters we’ve got in there with Alex Scott doing the interviews, the reach of the game and the objectives and the creative again comes back to what we said around satisfying all the platforms. So we work hard with Amy’s team. Amy’s team, so the content team at the BBC will do a large share of the features

Jo (16:51.543)
Amen.

Jo (17:00.535)
Yeah.

Joe (17:09.264)
themselves, but we’re involved in the creative and we’re involved in the discussions around would this work? What formats would work within that broadcast for your game, but actually also land on digital platforms. it’s that collaborative creative approach, but also met that creative approach. Everything we do has to live outside of that broadcast. And again, within the editorial.

Jo (17:10.091)
Mm-hmm.

Jo (17:18.542)
Mm.

Joe (17:36.75)
everything we do within the editorial, we have to think now, how could that work across Reddit? How could that work across the other digital programs? Can we be a bit more, can we shape the creative of the program to be more debate led rather than sometimes you get bogged down on the nuance, but there is obviously an objective to educate and inform audiences. But actually the creative side is, can we add these elements that we know this conversation lives outside of the linear broadcast?

Jo (17:43.33)
Yeah.

Jo (18:05.528)
Yeah, and it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because when you’re the WSL, for example, mean, working with the BBC is great because you’re on the BBC. But as you said, once you’re outside the bounds of that schedule, it’s very difficult to start growing engagement. so you…

you have to borrow from YouTube in terms of all of that other content, in terms of extending that engagement, expanding it. And it’s not just YouTube, you’re right, to call out Reddit or it’s TikTok. And now the BBC has to try and think more like that. And they are, and they’ve been very candid in saying, and actually, we’re not experts in that, so we need help from partners and we need to upskill our internal teams in knowing how to use that. With that in mind, I mean, it’s always…

been the case, well it is the case, that you’ve got YouTube creators now who over the last 10-15 years they’ve disintermediated that relationship with the audience in a sense they’ve cut out that broadcaster middleman and they’re much closer to audiences and they have that participatory relationship with them. Over here you’ve got broadcasters who still are the experts in telling stories

So we kind of got two ends of the spectrum, but they are moving together. So what in your view can broadcasters steal from YouTube and YouTube creators? What competencies can they say, we need to have a little bit more of that? But similarly, what are creators, what can they learn from more traditional producers and broadcasters? Because that’s the world that I come from and you come from. But we’re part of that kind of joining of the two sides together now.

Joe (19:50.809)
Yeah, absolutely. I do think, as you said, I do think that gap is getting smaller in terms of obviously, and we see that within consumption habits and how many people watch YouTube on TV as well now. I think in terms of…

Jo (19:55.406)
Mmm.

Joe (20:07.1)
What works, and the reason I say the gap is getting smaller, I think if you look at what works on YouTube and what works on linear TV, a lot of it’s formatted, right? A lot of audiences are creatures of habit. They like to know what they’re coming to watch. So if that’s a repeatable format on TV, but also on YouTube, which is why imitation is the best form of flattery. Everyone does very similar content and concepts, right, on YouTube. So I think from that side of the conversation,

gap is quite, it’s closer than we’ve thought, it’s closer than we thought in old think in terms of it’s very similar. What’s being produced on YouTube is very similar to TV, but just slightly different skews and production and potentially slightly more risky or more stunt based on, on YouTube compared to your formats, your entertainment formats on linear. What can creators and YouTube learn from the broadcasters? I think

Jo (20:48.6)
Yes.

Joe (21:05.485)
Again, back to what I said at the start, think a lot of, and the shift has happened already and is happening now, is that pre-production, that planning, and you’re seeing creators shift from doing a lot of UGC type style, or just point and shoot their own camera. Then now we’re seeing YouTubers go to production companies or set their own production companies up. And actually that brings another layer of expertise, but also in a crowded market.

Jo (21:13.678)
Right.

Yeah, kind of spontaneous stuff. Yeah.

Jo (21:24.428)
Hmm? Hmm.

Joe (21:33.497)
I think a lot of YouTubers are turning to be more high-end production. I mean, some of the content you see now produced is really good compared to what used to be lo-fi. And I know there’s always this debate between what’s authentic and what does it cut through better if it’s lo-fi, but actually production standards have gone up. And I think that’s been driven via TV people coming into YouTube to help these creators as well. In terms of what TV could learn from, linear could learn from YouTube.

Again, I think some of that shift has happened in terms of I think a lot of linear we used to be very guilty of holding on to the story and you build and there’s a slow build and it’s you have this story arc and I’ll probably get daggers from people saying that that’s a lost and forgotten trait that is going out of fashion because of people’s attention spans but it’s getting that story up.

and making and giving people a reason to carry on watching. we do that with our WSL coverage. Like if we’re coming on with a game, we need to tell people why they’re going to watch this game. There’s a reason why you’re going to stay and watch the rest of this 90 minutes, which is a long time for people to sit and watch. So I guess that’s something that’s something the TV or linear takes needs to take from YouTube. But also again, it’s hard because the market’s so crowded. Obviously the content we see that does well on YouTube is obviously longer discussions.

Jo (22:28.782)
Mm.

Jo (22:37.87)
Mm.

Jo (22:44.408)
Yeah.

Joe (22:58.757)
There’s not so long on linear slots. Also the stunt-based content, I guess, it depends on audiences, guess, your own go with that.

Jo (22:59.128)
Mm.

Jo (23:08.418)
Yeah, and it depends what their need state is at the time. Sometimes that catches an itch that you happen to feel at that particular moment. But I agree with you. think there’s a couple of things that you said there that I thought were really interesting. One.

I think you’re right, there’s kind of almost been a lost art of how you construct stories, but I think actually there’s now an acknowledgement that there is value in that and that should be guarded. And creators do want to learn that. And they do want to learn that from traditional media, which is great, because hopefully it will keep you and I in a job. But similarly, you said, you know, we…

It’s not just holding onto stories. We used to hold onto content. You mentioned it earlier on. And actually that used to be where the value was. But actually now, the value is not in just being exclusive and keeping hold of your content. Because if that means it’s only going out on one particular platform, the very real risk is that you’re anonymous because there’s a whole swathe of people who can’t and won’t access it there for various reasons. So now, actually you need to have everything everywhere all at once. But there is still value in that story and that crafting

narrative and that you know that’s been developed over 70 80 years you know is the reason that there’s a reason why you know producers and even broadcasters like BBC are so good at it so it’s it is bringing those both sides together as you said and I do think that that’s coming right let’s get on to your responsibilities now you’re now you’re in the MD’s chair

Joe (24:18.095)
Yep.

Jo (24:35.97)
and maybe creative producing is slightly less of your daily life for good or for bad. Tell me, what’s your learning curve been like since you became MD?

Joe (24:50.362)
I’m No, it’s been a really, it’s been a, it’s interesting. I’m just trying to work out the best way to phrase it in terms of, so I took over as MD in December last year and it’s been a very much a learning curve of how to be in a boardroom and how you then report the business and then a lot of the challenges that.

Jo (24:50.734)
I am.

Jo (25:13.838)
Yeah.

Joe (25:17.562)
creative’s fight of obviously around budgets and how are we going to be most creative and to be creative you want this, this and this. And now obviously my business hat now is that’s great. How can we be creative but still make money? we, how are we hitting targets? How am I reporting those numbers? That’s been a big side of it for me in terms of I’ve always been, whilst I’ve been creative, I would say one of my skillsets through my career has been sort of being a picture and more, and I’ve never said I’m

Jo (25:20.244)
Thank you.

Jo (25:27.246)
You

Jo (25:45.251)
Mm.

Joe (25:47.299)
I would never, I would always say I’m not the most creative person. I’ve got lots of ideas, but I’ve always surrounded myself with people that I always think you should, you need to surround yourself with people that are better than you as well. if there’s someone that’s a better creative than me, that’s no problem. But my skill came in, actually, that’s a really good creative. Could we shift it to be this and satisfy this platform? So I’ve always kind of had that bigger picture view. So I guess that transition into the role.

Jo (26:07.756)
Yes.

Joe (26:16.026)
was more natural in terms of I’ve always had this bigger picture plan and I really enjoy the strategy and business planning side of stuff. So how are we gonna go and target this vertical or should we shift and pivot over here? And I’m very much enjoy that side. The learning curve has been very quick in terms of.

you accountability, I guess, right? it now the bucks, the buck stops completely with you. So you could, you could get something wrong on a budget as a producer and it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily affect you personally. If, if I signed something off now that’s wrong or we’ve miscalculated something, I know that’s going to bite me in the bum in a big way very quickly. And I then have to report that to the, to the business. So yeah, I guess, I guess that shift of

Jo (26:59.34)
Yeah.

Joe (27:07.748)
balancing creative, but also how can you be resourceful? How can you be efficient is the learning curve. But yeah, the boardroom definitely is the main thing.

Jo (27:12.334)
Hmm.

Jo (27:16.142)
Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? As a producer, you kind of moan about restrictions and constraints that are placed on you by those in the board, and now you’re the other side of the fence.

Joe (27:24.378)
Yeah, absolutely. No, I know. I’d say my team will laugh because I always say I’m a creative and then I’m like, but can you just do it this way? Or can we do it this way to save some money? Is there a more efficient way or have we looked at it? And yeah, I guess as a producer, you just want to you just want to go and produce the best content, don’t you? And I feel sometimes you’re not bringing people back in because you’re always delivering for your clients and you want to deliver the most creative thing. It’s just, yeah, I feel like a nagging.

nagging parents sometimes, but there you go.

Jo (27:53.615)
That’s similar to how I feel these days with the, you know, teenage boys. I’m like, no, now I’m doing the things that I used to moan about when I was a teenager with my parents and now I’m doing it. It’s similar dynamics.

Joe (28:01.498)
Yeah.

Joe (28:10.821)
I mean, sometimes I do think it’s easier to rein my eight-year-old in than some of my creatives, but it’s a good challenge.

Jo (28:17.806)
Right, just before we wrap up, I’ve got a couple of questions, kind of quick fire questions. So yeah, give us your gut response if you’re able. So if one platform vanished tomorrow, whether it’s broadcast or whether it’s social or whether it’s YouTube, which do you think would, which loss would be felt most?

Joe (28:40.154)
Oh, we felt most I would say YouTube if that went. Do you want me to give a reason why on these? Just put that. Was it just to go through?

Jo (28:46.531)
I mean, can do, I mean, from either from a personal point of view or just from a market point of view, why do you think we’d feel the loss of…

Joe (28:52.698)
Yeah, so I think YouTube would be the biggest loss if one disappeared. I think the shift in consumption for that platform and the reach and just the way everyone is now habitually viewing YouTube, think, and even from a branding and commercial point of view as well, I think it would be a massive hit.

Jo (29:12.322)
Yeah, no, I agree. I cannot imagine a place where YouTube doesn’t exist, quite frankly. Right, and last but not least, and it’s been a theme actually, but see if you can articulate it in one or two words. Name one skill that producers must master in the next few years. We’ve spoken about how it’s changed as a job. What do you think is that one skill that a new producer or a relatively new producer into the industry needs to master?

Joe (29:45.402)
The reason I’m stumbling on it is I don’t think you can be a producer and master one skill. think you have to be in the modern, it used to be, I’m sorry, this isn’t quick fire. I always used to say to people, you needed to be multi-skilled. You couldn’t just be a producer. And this was from 2009 onwards. You couldn’t just be a producer anymore. You had to have, and you had to be able to edit. You had to be able to shoot if you wanna go far.

Jo (29:52.462)
Well, there you go, there’s the answer.

Jo (30:07.96)
No.

Jo (30:13.091)
Yes.

Joe (30:14.157)
But now that’s evolved even more, right? You need to be able to, like we said, you need to have that strategy. I think you have to have an awareness of consumption. You have to have an awareness of what works on what platforms and how you go onto a shoot. How do you carve that up? But actually just getting five pieces of content isn’t good enough. You need to make sure they’re five pieces of content for the right platform. So yeah, the long winded way, I don’t think you can be master one. I don’t think you can master one thing to be.

Jo (30:28.846)
Mm.

Jo (30:34.062)
Mm.

Jo (30:37.74)
No, I think you’re right. It almost comes down to being a generalist, doesn’t it? And for a long time, I mean, even all the way through school, we were taught that you specialize in something. But actually, when we look at creators and what creators were able to do when they were started creating in the kind of mid 2010s or early 2010s is like you’re saying, they were self shooting, they were producing, they were directing, they were editing, they were mastering.

the vagaries of YouTube, they were analysts, they were figuring out how to pivot their content if it wasn’t working. And I often say, you when I was working at the BBC, all of those competencies were in separate people and often in separate departments. Yet creators came along and they were all smushed into one person. And actually, you’re right, I think it comes down to that.

you’ve got to wear a great many hats and whether that means that you’re a generalist or there’s another term that I can’t quite put my finger on. But I think you’re right. I think that is the skill that producers must master, which is a great spot to round up. Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. It’s been, no, really, really enlightening. Thank you very much, Joe Bennett of Buzz16 for joining us today. And if you like this, if you enjoyed this chat, let us know, drop a like or a share.

Joe (31:42.293)
Thank you for having me on.

Jo (31:54.827)
and subscribe and if you want to get involved or even kind of give us some feedback on today’s episode you can email us at hello at attention shift dot media. Thanks Joe have a great day.

Joe (32:07.341)
No, nice one, you too.

The post Joe Bennett | Behind the BBC’s WSL Coverage, & The Question EVERY Producer Should Be Asking! appeared first on Dizplai.

Your biggest competitor is actually one of your own fans. One who’s watching your content, engaging with your broadcast, maybe even a die-hard ticket holder, but also one who you can’t identify, can’t reach, and can’t convert into anything beyond that single moment of attention.

76% of sports fans are anonymous to the organisations they support. That’s not a technology problem. Anonymous fans are a seven-figure revenue problem hiding in plain sight.

What anonymity actually costs

It means you can’t retarget them, you can’t build a relationship, and you can’t offer them anything beyond what’s happening right now. And when they leave, they’re gone. There’s no opportunity for a follow-up, no upsell, no second touchpoint. Just attention that vanished the moment the final whistle blew.

Now imagine what that means commercially. A sponsor pays you to activate during your biggest moment: a cup final, a season opener, a title decider. The engagement happens, fans participate, and the metrics look good. But what do you know about who actually engaged? Where do they live? What else are they interested in? Can you prove any of them converted?

No, you can’t. Because they’re anonymous. And thus worthless to a performance marketer trying to justify spend against other channels where attribution actually exists.

Where the real cost shows up

Sponsorship deals get smaller because you can’t prove ROI beyond impressions. Merchandise revenue stays flat because you’ve got no direct channel to the people who just watched your content. CRM strategies fail because there’s no one in the database to nurture. You’re competing for budget against platforms that can show a clear conversion path, and you’re losing because your audience is invisible.

The prize for solving it

This isn’t small. First-party fan data unlocks retargeting, personalisation, direct communication, and proof of conversion. It turns sponsorship from a media buy into a performance channel. It makes your broadcast inventory worth more because you can show who engaged and what they did next. It stops the revenue leaking out to platforms that do know your audience.

The organisations starting to close this gap aren’t waiting for fans to fill out a form or download an app. They’re building participation moments that capture identity naturally – vote on this, unlock that, redeem something live. The engagement creates the data. The data creates the relationship. The relationship creates the revenue.

Your biggest competitor isn’t another broadcaster. It’s the gap between the audience you have and the audience you actually know.

Close that gap, and the commercial picture changes completely.

We’ve mapped the full cost of anonymous fandom in the Anonymous Fan Index – the seven-figure revenue leak most organisations don’t realise they have.

Ready to turn your passive audience into an active community? Get in touch 

The post The anonymous fan: Your biggest competitor isn’t another broadcaster appeared first on Dizplai.

• FIFA’s Trojan Hydration Break: The 2026 World Cup’s mandatory three-minute water breaks aren’t about player welfare — they’re about unlocking $1M-per-slot in-match ad inventory that half-time alone could never deliver. Ed and Jo ask the harder question, though: after the Six Nations picture-in-picture backlash, does cutting the crowd noise kill the ad and the viewer simultaneously?
• The Newsroom That Became a Studio: The New York Post’s pivot to a daily live YouTube sports show isn’t a quirky experiment. Ed argues it’s the clearest signal yet that video advertising has made written journalism economically uncompetitive for distribution. But as traditional publishers chase the Barstool Sports playbook, Jo asks: when the reporter becomes the personality, does sports journalism lose the last thing that made it distinct?
• Major League Rugby’s Personality Gamble: Ahead of the 2031 Rugby World Cup on home soil, Major League Rugby has partnered with OAS Studios to rebuild its entire broadcast around player storylines, not rules, not tactics. It’s the Drive to Survive playbook applied to a sport that has historically resisted putting individuals above the team. Ed and Jo debate whether the UK rugby establishment would ever be brave enough to follow suit, and whether Henry Pollock is sitting on an untapped distribution goldmine.
• X Games Solves the Event Trap: By scrapping its annual handful of events in favour of a full global league , four city franchises, a draft, and a 52-week content calendar, X Games is directly addressing what Jo calls “the event trap”: the brutal peaks and troughs that leave social channels starved between tent-pole moments. The question now is whether a season-long narrative structure can manufacture the same raw stakes that made a half-pipe wipeout unmissable in the first place.
• March Madness Crosses the Atlantic: Disney Plus streaming all 134 men’s and women’s NCAA tournament games in Europe for the first time is a bold cultural export, but Ed and Jo aren’t sure the product travels without the identity. In the US, March Madness is your school, your city, your family. In Manchester, it might just be basketball. Their bet: the real audience isn’t casual fans, it’s teenagers who want to say they spotted the next NBA superstar before anyone else did.
• The Entertainment-ification of Everything: Sitting underneath all five stories this week is the same tension, sport has always sold itself on purity and passion, but the economics of attention are forcing every rights holder, publisher and league to ask whether entertainment and integrity can share the same dressing room. From FIFA’s ad breaks to rugby’s personality push, Ed and Jo ask: is this the week that tension finally became impossible to ignore?

Show Notes

• FIFA to show in-match advertising during 2026 World Cup.
• The New York Post Launches Daily Sports News Show.
• Major League Rugby backs Personality over Technicalities.
• The X Games goes from event to league format.
• Disney brings March Madness to Europe.

Transcription

Ed (00:01.657)
Hello and welcome to the attention shift. In the week, FIFA looked at the World Cup and thought, you know what, this game is missing. More ad breaks. The New York Post quietly shut down its newsroom and opened up a YouTube studio. And nobody’s entirely sure where the line between publisher and creator really went. Major League rugby have decided the fastest way to grow a fan base ahead of the World Cup was to stop explaining the rules and just give people someone to root for.

The X Games killed the event, kept the brand, launched a league, because it turns out 4 tent pole moments a year isn’t a media strategy. And Disney Plus dropped every single March Madness game onto European screens for the first time ever, and asked a continent that didn’t go to a college in Ohio, do you really care about it? Without further delay, you know the drill, 5 stories 5 minutes each Joe, you ready?

Jo (00:54.412)
Ready Eduardo, let’s go.

Ed (00:56.493)
Let’s go over to you.

Jo (00:59.054)
you’re getting great at that. It does make me chuckle. You missed your vocation as a newsreader. Anyway, ad breaks coming to football. groan. Sorry, hydration breaks, not ad breaks.

Ed (01:05.048)
Don’t about that.

Ed (01:16.813)
Sorry. All right, okay. That wasn’t, I didn’t do that on purpose then just to throw you.

Jo (01:21.898)
No, so anyway, yes, World Cup introducing two mandatory three minute hydration breaks per match. Yeah, really? OK. For the first time, broadcasters will be able to sell advertising during a live football match without having to wait for half time. I mean, people really see this for what it is, right? Nobody’s fooled. It’s 104 matches and now they’ve got a whole load of new inventory they can flog. Isn’t that just more commercialisation of the live game of the World Cup?

Ed (01:52.505)
Yes, absolutely. I mean, it is in the land of commercialisation after all, So I was reading about this as well. So during the 2022 World Cup final, US advertisers paid $1 million for a 30 second ad slot. the consensus is on this now that these are going to be premium on top of that. They’re already going to be paying more for the ad slots anyway, and this is going to be premium still. yeah, look.

Jo (01:53.518)
Glad we sorted that one.

Jo (02:17.549)
Yeah.

Ed (02:21.72)
You can see exactly what they’re doing here. Just more opportunity to sell more. And I guess the whole piece is to and be as lucrative as the Super Bowl in a sense,

Jo (02:23.821)
Yep.

Jo (02:33.538)
get it, I get that need to commercialise it but hasn’t football always sold itself on the purity of the game almost like English and European football has resisted that American style commercialisation and now the World Cup’s in America and guess what? Hydration bricks. And no, I was just gonna say if this works, which it likely will do,

Ed (02:56.28)
The dorms are gone.

Jo (03:04.084)
Once football learns it can sell ads in hydration breaks, it’s gonna spread, right?

Ed (03:09.272)
They’d almost be better off doing it in the VAR breaks. I don’t know what’s going on with VAR. I mean, that’s the obvious place to start bringing brands in, right? It takes five minutes to make a decision these days on whether a goal’s a goal or an offside’s an offside. You’ve got a real opportunity there that’s not interfering because VAR’s already doing the job of the interference in the game. But you’re right though, like if you’ve got that already and then you’re gonna add in…

Jo (03:15.374)
For sure. Insurance.

Jo (03:29.262)
So true.

Ed (03:35.051)
Other interferences too, like it is going to be stop, start, stop, start. And again, I am not anti advertising because I understand that ultimately, you know, the game has got to be paid for somehow and fleeting fans for tickets is not enough. There’s got to be other ways of getting of getting money into the game as well. But I think I’m re-reading here that the former Coca-Cola and Visa sponsorship exec said it was a no brainer for FIFA to do this. Like clearly they’ve gone and done the research and they know that the brands are queuing up to spend the money.

And you do wonder as well, have they been having a look at a little bit of what went on with the Six Nations and how that’s played out? Because in the last couple of weekends, I’ve not heard as much moaning about it. I’m assuming they still did it.

Jo (04:14.798)
There was a lot of vocal objection when it first happened, right? We spoke about it.

Ed (04:19.266)
First couple of weeks, yeah, Yeah. But I’d not heard anymore.

Jo (04:23.31)
I mean, is it the question, is it just a case of, people moan for this first World Cup and then they’ll just get on with it and that’s it. Ad breaks within live play will just become the norm.

Ed (04:37.048)
I’m not sure because I think if it’s just a one hit and then done and then it’s not done again, people just moan about it the next time around. The only way people don’t moan about it is if it carries on and it stays there. I think what it does show is the value of live attention, how valuable that is. In that moment, when people have got the real attention on it, it doesn’t mean though that you should… Go on, I knew you were gonna say that.

Jo (05:03.566)
And also, I don’t know, I’d like to see that proved. I’d like to see it proved that if the live broadcast suddenly gets littered with a ton of ads, is that advertising effective? You can’t, you’re gonna struggle to convince me that that advertising is really effective.

Ed (05:09.634)
Yeah.

Jo (05:23.532)
because the ad loads on every platform are increasing and people are just screening them out. They’re a nuisance. sometimes I think it actually goes the other way and has a negative impact. Anyway, I digress, but yeah, I don’t know how I feel. It’d be interesting to see how these hydration breaks out and whether it’s gonna be an opportunity for some good quality kind of brand advertising in it. That’d be cool, but.

Ed (05:53.345)
For me, I think it’s and I think we said this before when did the Six Nations. Obviously, we don’t want to harp on about this, but I think it’s how you do it is the key thing. think cutting to a video ad with audio that feels like it’s got nothing to do with the experience whatsoever feels massively intrusive. Squeezing back to whether that’s an L rap or something like that where the game is still going on. That’s not interrupting, but there’s a strong brand message. Yeah.

Jo (06:01.037)
Yeah.

Jo (06:09.687)
Yeah.

Jo (06:17.24)
And don’t turn the audio off.

Ed (06:19.552)
Visual without the audio I can live with because I’ve seen it when I’ve traveled and it doesn’t bother me that much When it switch when you switch the audio on as well that it’s almost the game itself even though there’s nothing going and gets relegated then it feels too much, but

Jo (06:25.016)
Mm.

Jo (06:32.686)
I think there needs to be a lot of testing and learning to figure out how it sits alongside and doesn’t jar. Anyway, next story.

Ed (06:40.13)
Yeah. Next story. So the New York Post have turned its newsroom into a YouTube studio. So they’ve launched a daily show called Shine Time, hosted by Adam Shine, funnily enough, because he’s got his name in town. So it’s a live weekday show that’s streamed on YouTube and on the Post website. It’s a sports show. It combines live commentary, guest interviews, reactive sports debate. And again, it’s that broader shift of

what are now becoming digital first publishers moving into that space of YouTube essentially, where they feel like ultimately they can then can, I guess, take a cut of the ad money. There’s no other reason that they’re doing it right. And it’s effective these traditional newsrooms who from their perspective, they feel like they are well set up to be able to create good quality content. And I’ve had a look at the content. It’s well produced. It’s visually appealing.

Jo (07:34.2)
Mm.

You didn’t like him though. Much.

Ed (07:39.384)
He’s not my favourite, I’m not gonna lie. mean, yeah, I had a bit of a look earlier today and I was gonna say you could hardly tell what he was saying and I’m sure anyone watching or listening to this probably says the same about me. So I mean, that’s overly harsh. But yeah, look, I guess there’s a brashness to him how he does things. But again, I’ve not grown up with him as a presenter and I think a lot of people, certainly in the US, do know who is and he’s very well known. So it’s that.

Jo (08:02.861)
Mm.

Ed (08:08.085)
you know, he’s definitely got a specific style to him.

Jo (08:11.928)
If this is the final kind of tipping point where traditional news media publishers that are ostensibly to this point written word journalists, if you like, they know that they have to have video now. mean…

You can’t just rely on written journalism anymore. You need your video. We’re all visual processes now in terms of, you know, we go to YouTube and TikTok to find things out. So video, even for your sports news, is kind of non-negotiable, right?

Ed (08:47.967)
Yeah, because ultimately, like video advertising is the most valuable form of advertising. So that’s why they’re pivoting more and more. I’ve had a conversation with a few, just the first pubs over the last couple of weeks and they’re saying, look, we’ve tried all of these things and we feel like we really need to move into video because ultimately that we really want to start to earn the big bucks and they’re thinking about how can they create, unique programming. I could look, there’s not a lot, there’s not a lot wrong with

He brings big energy, he’s got big opinions, he’s gonna be very click-baity how he’s gonna go about doing what he’s doing and they’ve only just launched with it right in the last week or so, so it’s very early stage. It’s doing about 5,000 views on YouTube per show, but I think actually it’s more of a clip form. think that hour long they’re gonna be clipping that up and putting it on lots of other. So yes, the live is important to them.

Jo (09:16.526)
Hmm.

Jo (09:23.639)
Yeah.

Jo (09:30.978)
Yeah.

Jo (09:36.3)
which can often drive more engagement than the show itself. mean, look at Saturday Night Live or look at late night talk TV in America. It’s all of the social clips that do the heavy lifting now really rather than the show itself, right?

Ed (09:48.866)
Yeah, lots of people say, well, why do it live in any way? Why not just pre-record it? Because ultimately, as people are watching it live, this is Zane’s stuff, they’re already doing half the job for you of telling everybody else what he’s just done. And by the time they tell anybody else what’s just done, the clips start to drop and the people can see themselves and it just fuels the whole experience.

Jo (10:06.414)
I get that it’s a growth opportunity for people like New York Post and traditional news publishers. Does it cheapen sports journalism though? Because it turns it more into sports entertainment when it’s less of your sports reporter writing your news report and more of a personality.

Ed (10:29.471)
I think sports journalism and sports… I think sports journalism and sports entertainment for decades already. I mean, look, you travel to the US and you watch a lot of the shows that are there, like Sports Nation, things like that, and the way they’re delivered. You look at, obviously, the way that Sky over the last 10, 15, 20 years have done Transfer Deadline Day and with Jim and his yellow tie. I mean, it has become entertainment in itself already, so I think this is just…

Jo (10:31.628)
Or am I just being snobby?

Jo (10:38.092)
Okay.

Jo (10:53.462)
Mm.

Ed (10:59.829)
What this, it’s that last moat, as it were, distribution. This is allowing these publishers to think about distribution of content and normally would have been confined to their broadsheet newspaper. You see it on the newsstands now because of what they’re doing. They can go in theory anywhere with it. And it’s the convergence of media essentially, really, isn’t it? That everyone just ends up doing.

Jo (11:16.941)
Yeah.

Ed (11:28.011)
The reality is the same thing and then what wins through, well, the best content in theory.

Jo (11:32.91)
I guess, know, now as well as being a sports reporter and journalist, you’ve to be a presenter too, right? But actually, most young people who are getting into sports media are likely to have played around with creating video anyway.

Ed (11:48.994)
But also that was, if you think about it the other way as well, I remember when I worked in football 20 odd years ago, and we were dealing with local media, back then local media news reporters were being trained how to use cameras and do audio and stuff like that. So that was the reverse of it. So they could do it all themselves. And that’s not even, I think it’s only been talked about in recent years mainly, but that was already happening certainly at a BBC level 20 odd years ago. And you’ll have seen it yourself, right? So it’s the reverse, but the same in a sense that one person can…

Jo (12:11.32)
True? Yep, very true.

Ed (12:18.699)
can do it all.

Jo (12:19.886)
Okay, what about rugby?

Ed (12:22.185)
Okay then. Right then, so Major League Rugby, and it was funny, I having a chat with a friend of mine at the weekend, he was was Major League Rugby then? Major League Rugby is a league in America, a rugby league, they’ve got a league playing rugby in America, so for anyone watching or listening to this, Major League Rugby is a rugby league in America. But I was quite surprised when I explained this, and I think sort of the normal person on the street wouldn’t, like we know what it is, but wouldn’t necessarily know that, and I was lucky enough three, four years ago to go and see the LA team.

in the Coliseum of all places and it was very early on in that process of Major League Rugby so look it wasn’t a massive turnout and so much so that after the game we were able to go on the pitch and throw a ball around. mean it was amazing to go in the Coliseum and do that but essentially Major League Rugby have partnered with OAS Studios and they’re looking to rethink how matches are presented across broadcast and digital and for anyone doesn’t know OAS Studios they come very much from a gaming culture, entertainment, music so clearly Major League Rugby

Jo (12:52.334)
Mm.

Ed (13:21.899)
rugby are thinking about how do we turn this into, how do we make this more entertaining than, God, I’ve got to be really careful what I say about rugby here, more entertaining than rugby naturally is. And they really want to focus more heavily on player personalities, storylines and character led narratives. Now, I don’t know enough about Major League Rugby at the moment. I know we did have a, I think Chris Robshaw went out there a few years ago to play Major League Rugby. I’m assuming that Major League Rugby are going to try and sign some of these personalities.

Jo (13:47.31)
Mm.

Ed (13:52.061)
Otherwise, they’re creating them from scratch, which is a tough old gig,

Jo (13:58.703)
Yeah, and I knew nothing of this story until we were researching what to talk about. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was really interesting, given that of the sports in the UK, rugby does to me to seem the least keen on surfacing individual players. It’s about the team and there’s no kind of tall poppy syndrome. Nobody stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s about the team.

I get that and in a way I like it, but also there’s no getting away from the fact that increasingly young people, they fall in love with the people inside sport before they fall in love with the sport. It’s the characters. know this. So the, feels like by not acknowledging player personalities and them as a distribution mechanism that actually

rugby could be doing itself harm in the long run. And I think about like Henry Pollock and how there was so much potential in him as this kind of young, cool player. But when I, a few months ago, I kind of ventured an opinion on LinkedIn about, you know, he should be put front and center. People were like, no, no, no, no, we don’t do that. Whereas, you know, this feels very light. I mean, creator sports network,

I think Michael Cohen posted something about athletes who were streaming content on their own personal channels and their social. It’s really powerful. We know that creators and athletes are a distribution layer that’s been largely under-leveraged. So I think it’s really interesting that Major League Rugby is doing that first.

Ed (15:39.223)
Yeah, there’s an interesting quote here from Paul Guest, who’s the SVP of Sports and Growth at OS Studios, and he said, I would argue that’s probably all sports. That’s not just a US rugby thing. I think more and more now, like you…

Jo (16:01.238)
Interesting how the US are not afraid to say that out loud though. I don’t think you hear sports execs in the UK saying that too loudly.

Ed (16:07.209)
Yeah… No. Because the US sports fan don’t lambast them for it because they know it’s entertainment whereas in this country it’s kind of like you’ve ruined the purity of the game. Like the point you just made. You’ve ruined the purity of the game now. No, I’m not interested. Thank you. I’ll do something else. But it’s, you know, they think that Major League Rugby fans need to understand the personalities in the game more than the rules itself. They need to have someone to root for but…

Jo (16:12.525)
Mm.

Ed (16:33.354)
We all need to have someone to root for, I had a conversation with someone today about whatever team you’re connecting to, if your team is transient for whatever reason and players are coming and going, it’s really hard for you to almost fall in love for the team you support. There’s certain individuals that you want to connect with. That’s why as a kid growing up, you have a favorite player. Now look, the game’s changed quite a bit now, if you’re certainly from a football perspective, like, you know, that kids are…

Jo (16:35.246)
Mmm!

Ed (16:59.734)
more going after the Messies and not necessarily the local team in a similar kind of way. But I still think that connectivity is still there with individuals, even more so. So I get what they’re And they’ve got a long pathway to the Rugby World Cup. It’s 2031 for the men’s and 2033 for the women’s. Look, it’d be interesting to see how it plays out, right? And if they manage to do this, because it’s such, such a crowded market in the US. And at the same time that

Jo (17:26.818)
Yeah.

Ed (17:29.77)
Major League rugby, want to create personalities, so does every other league.

Jo (17:33.359)
Hmm, that’d be interesting one to watch. think this’ll be, potentially if it works, it’ll be a blueprint for maybe rugby over here following. Anyway, X Games, X Games is launching the X Games League, which is interesting, this story, because it really reflects something that I was actually speaking to Paola and Bengu about, and I joined them on their Business of YouTube newsletter this week to talk about this event trap.

which we’ve spotted on both YouTube and Roblox in the sense that when leagues focus everything on their YouTube and Roblox around the league and around events, there’s a big drop off afterwards. Whereas we know that creators optimize for continuous content. And it’s interesting that X Games, which to this point, it only really had four events per year. So it was experiencing the peaks and the troughs.

on social and of course X Games is, yeah, huge on social, but it’s really hard to sustain between those four individual events. Lord knows how the Olympics do it every four years when they acquire a new audience and then literally forget about them for another four years. Anyway, I digress. So this, you know, I think this is a really smart move because they’re going to this season structure. So.

Ed (18:31.85)
It’s so hard. So hard.

Ed (18:50.72)
But yeah.

Jo (18:58.284)
Gone are the handful of events that used to be the X Games and now it’s this continuous league with regular competition.

gives them a chance to stem those peaks and troughs that we’re talking about, kind of create these ongoing narratives. And X Games really good at that. If we’re talking about personalities and drama, that X Games is replete with that. So this always on content ecosystem, I think it really reflects what I was saying about with with Bengal and Paola in terms of trying to stem this kind of…

got loads of fans, you’ve got loads of interest and then it falls away and then you have to try and bring them back again. It’s pretty exhausting. So if you can just stem that a little bit and keep that continuous content, then we know that attention is likely to stay much more sustained. So I think that’s a really interesting move from X Games and arguably one that’s been long coming. What do you reckon?

Ed (19:53.042)
It’s interesting as well. I didn’t like I said, when I was again, when we were told about this, I started doing a bit of research into as well. So there’s going to be four inaugural clubs that are represented, L.A., New York, Tokyo, Sao Paulo. So it’s instantly a global league of four. Right. So it’d be interesting to see if over time does that develop into more like you got, know, I London’s not an obvious place to have snow and whatnot, but you’d imagine over time because I remember that back years ago, they did an X X Games in Baty Power Station.

Jo (20:08.343)
Mm-hmm.

Ed (20:22.815)
So look, these things get put together in different parts of the world as well. So it’s global from day one, and they just did a draft as well. So as they lent into sort of the American way of who gets to play for who and who gets to take part for who, sorry. And one of the most established stars in this is an Australian, Chloe Covel as well. So they’re really trying to have a global spread to it. But what they’ve also done as well is this, the athletes will receive 100 % of their service fee as it were, regardless of whether they get injured or

not during the season. Because guess the reality is the more things they do, the more likely they are to get injured. And, you know, we saw some of that in the recent Winter Olympics and Paralympics, right? It is easy to just, you know, you ever so slightly misjudge it, you’re injured and you’re out. The fact that they’re making that commitment to the athletes as well means that they’re probably a little more likely to go for it, I guess, and you get the highest quality competition. So, yeah, it’s interesting.

Jo (20:56.942)
Bye.

Jo (21:17.898)
Some, yeah, I mean, if I was at X Games, there’d be so much that I would be digging into before we started in terms of those narratives. You want to pull out the heroes and the villains from Brazil or from South America or from Japan. And when you’ve got a sustained schedule, I remember when I was working at WWE, know, at the beginning of each season of WWE, you’ve got almost the story meetings, you know, you’ve got the bouts, you’ve got, yeah.

Who’s gonna be the baby face? Who’s gonna be the heel? Who’s gonna steal somebody else’s girlfriend kind of thing. I mean, but you can craft those narratives if you know you’ve got a schedule. And I think that’ll be really, really cool. And of course, makes complete sense having a team based in Sao Paulo, given that South America loves its sports, loves its sex games, and consumes most of their sport content through YouTube, as we know on platforms like Cazetv. So.

I can see it going off. I think, I mean, certainly as somebody who I have a lot of X games and can content on my socials, I can’t wait for this to start feeding through, because I feel like there’s going to be some really good stories that come out of it.

Ed (22:27.377)
expect us to talk about X Games again when Joe’s explained to me what has actually gone on with it because I’m not a follower so I’ve just had just like heights and those kind of they just scare me so not one for me but but again again some of the stuff at the like said Olympics and Paralympics I guess the X Games orientated sports were probably the ones I watched the most and enjoyed the most and there’s some amazing young athlete personalities coming through at the moment

Jo (22:38.506)
god, I love it. I love it.

Jo (22:49.836)
Yeah, for sure. They’re the most, yeah, there’s, and for me, there’s stakes. There’s genuine stakes, right? In big air or the half pipe, there’s stakes. So, and it’s quite quick. It’s watchable because it’s quite quick. You’ve got rider after rider after rider coming down, so coming down the hill. So I can’t wait for that. I’m excited.

Ed (23:03.017)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (23:18.005)
Cool, right then, March Madness. Joe, what’s the top you got on?

Jo (23:23.342)
I got my Syracuse. I got my Syracuse, T-Shirt on.

Ed (23:25.1)
Syracuse there we go Syracuse So March Madness goes global so anyone doesn’t know what March Madness is March Madness is the men’s and women’s NCAA college tournament that goes live every 17th of March to the 7th of April or there or thereabouts so for the first time ever Disney Plus are going to be streaming all 134 matches across the men’s and the women’s across Europe and South Africa So it’s the first time that European fans will be able to access every game through one

Subscription and also the zone. I’ve done some sub licensing through that as well. I also did in Germany, too I’m excited about this because I’ve only ever really experienced I’ve never been to a March Madness game, but I’ve been in New York multiple times when March Madness is on and It’s an unbelievable experience to be in a bar when there’s so many games going on and it’s not your normal franchise these are college teams so effectively university teams playing off against each other the intensity

Jo (23:59.022)
Mm.

Ed (24:23.889)
is unbelievable and it’s very different to US franchise sports because if you think about it this way it’s more local so a college in theory is never going to franchise so you’re either from that area so that’s your team you went to that college so that’s your team your parents went to that college so that’s your team so in theory that that support of it is always growing and people get really really intense about their support for their college yeah

Jo (24:29.356)
Yeah, because it’s more local.

Jo (24:40.78)
Mm-hmm.

Ed (24:52.533)
I love it, I look forward to every year. I’ve not gone as far as doing a bracket yet because I don’t know nearly enough about it. Bracket being playing a bit of fantasy and making predictions. But yeah, I don’t know how much you know about it, Joel, other than you see a Q’s talk, but I’m excited about this.

Jo (24:56.995)
Yeah.

Jo (25:04.31)
No, well, interestingly, I knew nothing until I started co-producing a show with Sesame Workshop. And a couple of the folks from Sesame Workshop came over and they were talking about Syracuse and they were a mad Syracuse fan. My friend Phil, now works in Copenhagen, doesn’t work for Sesame any longer, but, and he brought me over a Syracuse shirt.

when, I mean, this is years ago, think we, 10 years ago at least that we were producing a show with Sesame. But ever since then, the fervor and the passion that they spoke about when they spoke about Syracuse and March Madness. So this is my second Syracuse jersey, because the other one fell, you know, fell apart in the wash. But I kind of have that, kind of my own little, you know, loyalty because of that. And it, but that is really why

I’m wondering about showing this across Europe and South Africa. I get it. I know of March Madness, but because it is so tied to that college identity and that loyalty, can that or will that emotional connection really translate to audiences who are sitting outside the US who don’t really have it? Doesn’t it just mean that it’s a basketball competition?

Ed (26:22.024)
But is it any different than people who pick an NFL team or an NBA team? think what is great about it is there’s an intensity to it, right? Because ultimately it means everything to these kids who are trying to obviously win this tournament. But also kind of like these are the stars of the future, the NBA ultimately. So you’re not just seeing obviously a tournament at a really, really high level. Some of these players are going to go on to be…

Jo (26:26.445)
Yes!

Jo (26:35.724)
Yeah.

Ed (26:49.96)
the best players for the next 15, 20 years. You’ve seen them really, really early on and the coverage will be so good that they are pointing out to you like who are the ones to really watch out for. But there’s always players that come through it as well that you weren’t expecting who go out, who stand out, who then go on and do the unexpected and then move into the NBA too. it’s exciting for that. look, and I’m not necessarily even a massive basketball fan as such, but what I love about it again is that is the intensity that comes with it.

Jo (26:50.114)
Yeah? The super smells, yeah? Yeah?

Jo (26:58.413)
Mm.

Ed (27:16.816)
And because it is ultimately a knockout, it’s kind of like, and it happens all the time, suddenly the team that you think is the frame, they’re gone. And look, and that’s why again, it’s quite close to European sports in a lot of ways, because American sports generally are, let’s play each other 10 times. Like this is kind of like, you lose, you’re gone.

Jo (27:17.198)
Mm.

Jo (27:25.293)
Yeah.

Jo (27:33.326)
Mm.

Yeah, one of the things that I think is really interesting about it is, I mean, this is the NCAA and Disney quite aggressively exporting that kind of cultural, you know, kind of college sports, March madness in a way that we’re not very good at doing the other way around. You know, we talk about the Premier League, they’re trying to break North America and they want every kid in America to have their Premier League team. The Americans are so much

Ed (27:57.032)
No.

Jo (28:05.602)
better at exporting that kind of fervor. And the other thing that I think is really interesting is kids who are young, of teenage sport fans who are finding new teams to support, new sports, new players through YouTube. I think this is the ideal forum in which to do that because kids and teens love spotting an elite player on the way up. They like seeing them before they’ve hit the mega contracts. They like being able to say to fans,

Ed (28:29.929)
Yeah.

Jo (28:35.419)
But I’ve liked that player since I was 15 and they were only 16, 17 playing in March Madness. So I think it’s actually, it could be genius.

Ed (28:38.206)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (28:44.852)
And also, if you think about it this way as well, potential for the colleges as well, it’s a great recruitment opportunity for them because there are players, right? There’s lots of players who play in the NBA now who are European or from Africa, right? Or other parts of the world that have then gone on to go through the US college system. This just opens the eyes, I think, to up and coming basketball players, both male and female, that this is a pathway potentially in through education to then go and play at the highest level.

Jo (28:57.166)
Mm.

Jo (29:09.166)
Mm.

Jo (29:15.128)
Yeah, yeah, great. Cool. Okay. We’re at 29 minutes. Look at that efficiency.

Ed (29:17.652)
Cool. We’re done. We’re done. Would you like to wrap up, Joe?

Jo (29:27.173)
god, now the pressure, it’s my turn.

Ed (29:29.426)
We’ve run out of stories, that’s five. We’re done.

Jo (29:32.558)
Thank you for joining us for this week’s episode of the Attention Shift. That’s been Ed Abbas and I’ve been Jo Redfern. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and if you want to feature as a guest or give us some questions, then email us at hello at attentionshift.media and we’ll see you next time. See you Ed.

The post FIFA’s Bringing In-Game Ads to the 2026 World Cup, March Madness Hits Europe & The X Games is DEAD? appeared first on Dizplai.

It’s become so embedded in live stream shopping that most brands treat it as fact rather than strategy. The problem is, the more recent data says it doesn’t work.

When we surveyed live shopping audiences about what actually triggers a purchase, countdown timers ranked dead last. And yet they’re still running on streams across TikTok Shop, Instagram, and dozens of branded live shopping events every day.

So where did this idea come from, and why won’t it die?

Where the urgency myth came from

The obsession with manufactured urgency has a logical origin. Scarcity marketing is a real psychological principle. When something is genuinely limited, people want it more. Economists call it scarcity value. Behavioural scientists call it loss aversion. Marketers popped it into their playbook and ran it into the ground.

The problem is the leap from genuine scarcity to manufactured urgency. Countdown timers, artificial stock limits, and bots flooding a chat with fake purchase notifications are all attempts to simulate the psychological conditions of real scarcity without actually creating them.

Early live commerce in China, where the format first scaled, used high-pressure tactics because the audiences were new to the format and the novelty carried the conversion. Western brands copied the mechanics without understanding the context. And because live commerce was growing regardless, nobody looked too hard at whether the urgency tactics were actually working or whether the format itself was doing the heavy lifting.

They were never the same thing. And the data is now catching up.

What the data actually shows

When we asked live shopping audiences how they felt at the moment they decided to buy, the results were clear.

‘Confident and engaged’ ranked top. ‘Rushed or pressured’ ranked last.

People don’t buy because they were scared into it. They buy because you convinced them it was a good idea. The emotional state that precedes a purchase in live stream shopping is closer to enthusiasm than panic, closer to clarity than anxiety.

This fundamentally changes how you should be thinking about conversion in a live commerce context. If your stream is designed to make people feel rushed, you’re actively working against the emotional conditions that lead to a sale.

The brands using countdown timers aren’t just wasting their time. They’re creating the wrong atmosphere entirely, one that pushes the 60% of persuadable viewers, the ones who would buy if the moment felt right, straight back to passive watching.

Manufactured versus genuine urgency

Not all urgency is equal and the distinction matters.

Manufactured urgency is artificial by design. A countdown timer that resets when it hits zero. A stock counter that never moves. Bots generating fake purchase notifications in a chat. Audiences spot this immediately, and when they do, trust collapses. You haven’t just lost the sale, you’ve lost the viewer’s confidence in everything else you’re saying.

Genuine urgency comes from the moment itself. In scarcity marketing terms, it’s the difference between simulating a limit and actually having one. The most powerful form of scarcity in live commerce isn’t a timer. It’s the exclusivity of being present when something happens. A product revealed for the first time. A collaboration announced live. A limited run that genuinely exists and visibly sells down in real time. These aren’t manufactured. They’re real, and audiences respond to them very differently.

The window where emotional intensity is high and action feels natural is a genuine phenomenon in live shopping. The mistake is trying to force it with a graphic rather than creating the conditions for it to happen organically.

Social proof done right

The alternative to manufactured hysteria is something subtler and significantly more effective.
63% of live commerce buyers told us that the presence of others influenced their decision to purchase. But only 1% said social proof was their primary reason to buy. For the vast majority, it was a nudge, not a shove.

Social proof in a live context works by reducing uncertainty. Seeing other people engage, react, and buy is a quiet signal that this moment is legitimate and worth participating in. It validates a decision that was already forming rather than forcing one that wasn’t.

This is the mechanics that TikTok Shop and WhatNot have built into their platforms naturally. On WhatNot, you can see live bid counts, active viewers, and real community reactions in real time. Nobody’s faking the room. The participation is genuine, and nuanced, and it shows. TikTok Shop’s social commerce infrastructure does the same thing at scale, making visible engagement the default rather than something that needs to be engineered.

One is community momentum, the other is theatre. And audiences know which one they’re watching.

Genuine social proof in live stream shopping means making real participation visible. Live reaction counts. Authentic chat activity. Actual purchase notifications when they happen. The goal isn’t to create the impression of a crowd. It’s to let the crowd that’s already there be seen.

The shift

This doesn’t mean you have to choose between the story and a discount. But understanding that one gets you a sale and the other gets you a customer changes everything. Live shopping works because it creates a completely different buying environment. One where people are already emotionally invested, already gathered, already engaged. In those moments, they buy differently.

The brands winning at social commerce aren’t manufacturing urgency with countdown timers that nobody trusts. They’re not in a race towards the lowest price. They’re creating moments worth participating in and are pulling all five levers at once – leading with the story.

Confidence converts better than panic

The brands winning at live commerce are creating moments worth participating in.

That shift in framing changes how you approach a live stream. Instead of asking how to make people feel like they’ll miss out, you ask how to make people feel like being there is genuinely worth their time. The answer involves emotional intensity, real narrative, authentic social proof, and removing every barrier between interest and purchase.

Countdown timers don’t appear anywhere in that list. Because confidence converts better than panic. Every time.

Our latest report, The Impulse Lab, breaks down the full psychology behind what actually drives live commerce conversion, including the five conditions that need to align before a live moment will convert, and what to do when they don’t.

Download it for free here.

Ready to turn your passive audience into an active community? Get in touch 

The post Why countdown timers are killing your live shopping conversion appeared first on Dizplai.

Most product teams have a backlog. A long, carefully prioritised list of things they’ll probably get to eventually, once the current sprint is done, once the roadmap clears, and once someone in the C-Suite says yes.

We’ve obviously got one of those too, but we’ve also got The Dizplai Kitchen. It’s our internal R&D space where ideas don’t wait for permission. It’s where we build first and ask questions second, and where the mess is the whole point.

Why we built it

To be honest, the sports and broadcast industry moves slowly. Not because the people in it are unambitious, but because the structure rewards caution. Long procurement cycles, conservative budgets, low tolerance for failure. The conditions are almost perfectly designed to kill early-stage sports tech innovation before they’ve had a chance to prove anything.

We’re not immune to that. Any product team inside a commercial business has to balance what’s possible with what’s sellable. But if you’re only ever building for the next client conversation, you stop asking the bigger questions. You’re in danger of being unable to notice the shifts until they’ve already happened.

The Kitchen is how we stay ahead of that. It’s a deliberate decision to ring-fence time and creative resources for exploration, with no guarantee of what comes out the other side.

How it works

Every project in the Kitchen starts with our Product Discovery process. Early-stage sports tech innovation concepts come in from anywhere, the product team, client conversations, something spotted in the market, and get validated against two questions: is there a real client need here, and is there real market demand? A lot of ideas don’t survive that stage. And that’s the point.

The ones that do move into active experimentation. We build proofs of concept, test them, break them, rebuild them. The standard isn’t perfection, it’s about confidence. We’re looking for the point where we can say: this genuinely solves the problem, for the right audience, in a way that works at scale.

Once something clears that bar, it gets handed over to the wider team to own, develop, and take to market. The Kitchen doesn’t scale things. It proves them.

The sort of things we’ve been building

Prediction markets as a broadcast and news service tool

Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have built something genuinely interesting: real-money markets on live events, driven by crowd intelligence rather than expert opinion. We’ve been exploring how that data layer translates into a broadcast context. Not as a betting product, but as a live signal. What if a broadcaster could show, in real time, how market confidence is shifting during a match? What does a 20% swing in odds tell you that a scoreline doesn’t?

The final PoC pulls in markets which are shown on a live video stream via html graphics.  We also introduced a basic voting mechanism allowing users to agree or disagree with the predictions which build stories – “the markets say X, our users disagree” 

MCP Apps

MCP Apps let you return interactive UI applications (data visualisations, forms, dashboards) that render directly in the LLM chat windows. We’ve been building apps for both Claude and ChatGPT, testing what becomes possible when AI has direct access to the kind of fan and content data we work with every day. The short version: the gap between “AI generating generic content” and “AI doing something genuinely useful inside a product” is a tooling problem, and MCP Apps is part of how that gets solved.

After loading the app we requested the next 6 fixtures for a team.  After rendering these, the chatbots response was to ask if we wanted to predict the lineup for the next match or vote on a poll for the result as it understands the scope of our data and how to package it in a variety of interfaces within the chat window.  

Player momentum tracking

Momentum tracking is about what’s happening right now. A composite signal built from four live data streams: on-pitch performance, search trend velocity, public sentiment, and social conversation volume.

The score isn’t a single metric. It’s a weighted index that surfaces which players are accelerating in the public consciousness, not just on the scoresheet. A player putting in quietly effective performances might score well on performance data but low on search trends; a controversial decision in the 70th minute might spike social and sentiment signals before the match has even ended.

The real ambition is broader. The same four-signal framework applies anywhere public figures generate measurable attention: entertainment, politics, tech. Swap performance stats for box office rankings, search trends for Google Trends, sentiment for review aggregators, and social for platform conversation volume, and you have a momentum index for actors, politicians, or founders.

The connectors change. The model doesn’t.

What the Kitchen isn’t

It’s not a skunkworks. It’s not a place where ideas disappear for six months and come back as a PowerPoint. The whole model is built around short cycles, real builds, and honest outcomes. Some things will fail. That’s not a bug, it’s how you find the things that don’t.

The Kitchen is messy, exploratory, and deliberate. In that order.

And if you’re a client or a partner who wants a look inside, that conversation is always open.

The post The Dizplai Kitchen: Our version of Labs appeared first on Dizplai.

But most brands are still figuring out the rules, so here they are.

1. Never lead with the discount

The instinct to open with a deal drop is understandable, but wrong. Our research found that the story rivals a discount as a purchase trigger, and buyers who are led with narrative report 19% higher post-purchase satisfaction than those who were sold on price. Discount buyers had the lowest satisfaction of any segment. So lead with why the product matters, the price comes after.

2. Every viewer is persuadable

Only 8% of your live audience is actively shopping when they tune in. But that doesn’t make the other 92% a lost cause because 60% of live audiences are open to buying if something resonates. The difference between a passive viewer and a buyer isn’t their intent when they arrived. It’s what you do with the moment once they’re there.

3. Make scarcity real or don’t use it at all

Manufactured urgency gets spotted immediately, and it alienates the audience you most want to convert. The most powerful form of scarcity in live shopping isn’t a countdown timer, it’s the exclusivity of the live moment itself. Create a genuine reason to act tied to the moment itself, not a fake timer.

4. Lead with the story, then make the offer

47% of live audiences are more likely to buy when the stream leads with a story before the offer. That’s almost half your audience, and for this group, discount drops to last place as a purchase trigger once you’ve given them context and narrative. Tell the story first, earn the sale second.

5. Build confidence, not panic

Countdown timers ranked dead last as a purchase trigger in our research. And yet they’re everywhere in live commerce. The data is unambiguous: buyers want to feel confident and engaged, not rushed or pressured. The brands doing this well on platforms like TikTok Shop aren’t engineering panic, they’re creating enough clarity and trust that the decision to buy feels easy. (If you want to go deeper on the psychology behind why pressure tactics backfire, Phill Agnew’s Nudge podcast is a good place to start.)

6. Make participation visible

63% of live buyers are influenced by the presence of others. Not because they’re following the crowd, but because visible participation reduces uncertainty. Watching others engage, buy, react, and comment is a quiet signal that this moment is worth being part of. Social shopping works because people trust people. Show them the room is full.

7. Remove every barrier between interest and purchase

Live moments are fragile. The emotional intensity, the story, the scarcity, together they create a narrow window where action feels right. Every extra tap, redirect, or form field is a reason to abandon. In-stream checkout, saved payment details, one-tap buying. They’re the difference between a conversion and a near miss. Test your own checkout flow and count every step.

8. Measure satisfaction, not just conversion

A sale that ends in regret isn’t a real win. Discount-driven buyers show the lowest post-purchase satisfaction of any segment in our research, which means a conversion rate built on price promotions is quietly eroding your brand. Shoppable video and live commerce give you something traditional ecommerce rarely does: the chance to build a purchase that feels genuinely good. Track how buyers feel 48 hours later, not just whether they checked out.

9. The host is part of the product

In live shopping, the presenter isn’t just delivering content. They’re the trust signal, the energy source, and the primary reason someone stays or leaves. WhatNot gets this. Their most successful sellers aren’t the ones with the slickest setups, they’re the ones with genuine authority and personality in their category. Invest in your host. Brief them on the story, not just the specs. The product sits behind the person.

10. Don’t force commerce into the wrong moment

Not every piece of live content is a buying opportunity. Pushing a transaction into a moment that isn’t ready for it damages trust and conversion in equal measure. The Impulse Moment Framework identifies five conditions that need to align before a live moment will convert: emotional intensity, scarcity clarity, narrative depth, social proof, and ease of action. When those conditions are present, live commerce converts at rates that make traditional campaigns look sluggish. When they’re not, wait for a better moment.

Live shopping rewards the brands that understand how people actually buy. Not the ones manufacturing pressure, discounting their way to short-term numbers, or treating every viewer as someone already in the checkout queue.

The data is clear. The opportunity is in the 60% who aren’t actively shopping but would buy if the moment was right. Build those moments deliberately, and the results follow.

Download The Impulse Lab for the full breakdown of the research behind these commandments, including the behavioural psychology that explains why each one works.

The post The 10 Commandments of Live Shopping appeared first on Dizplai.

• The Supreme Court Rules on AI: Why the “no human, no rights” verdict is a ticking time bomb for every sports organization using generative tools.
• Jesser Rewrites the NBA Playbook: How the Chicago Bulls moved past half-baked “creator slaps” to let Jesser lead a total gameday takeover.
• KSI’s Boardroom Debut: Why KSI is swapping the “CPM hamster wheel” for a boardroom seat at Dagenham & Redbridge to build a content legacy.
• NASCAR’s $4M Subscriber Gamble: Is putting an amateur YouTuber in a 200mph stock car a stroke of genius or a dangerous liability?
• Secrets of Live Shopping Unlocked: The data is in—storytelling beats discounts, and your countdown timers are triggering massive buyer regret.
• The “Cringe Zone” Graduate: Our first listener question: Is Gen Z outgrowing creators and moving toward purely algorithm-led feeds?

Show Notes

• The Supreme Court Rules on AI.
• KSI’s 6th Tier Takeover.
• The Impulse Lab: Report & Guide
• The NBA x Jesser’s Kid Nation Chicago Bulls Takeover.
• NASCAR’s Creator Driver, Cleatus McFarland

Transcription

Jo (00:02.36)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Attention Shift. In the week that KSI swapped his FIFA career mode for an actual football boardroom and decided that the sixth tier of English football was his starting point for a Premier League takeover, we’ve also got the NBA who led a YouTube designer game bringing a ton of kids music to my ears and owned the social layer and it actually felt intentional rather than a stunt for once.

Talking of stunts, well, NASCAR, they’ve given a two-year deal to a man who crashed out and finished last the last time he raced because apparently his four million subscribers outweighs his driving expertise. The Supreme Court also told the world that if your AI made it, nobody owns it. And that gives the creative industry and sports an identity crisis and a new piece of display research revealed that scarcity…

Countdown timers and panic buying are the least effective tools in live commerce. And Ed is going to talk us through that one. But without further delay, you know the drill. We’ve got five stories, five minutes each. Ready, Ed? Amazing. Okay, tell us about your new research. You’re kicking off.

Ed (01:04.376)
Let’s go.

Ed (01:09.029)
Alright then, so the marketing team at Display have created Impulse Lab. So they’ve been surveying consumers who’ve previously engaged with live shopping across a variety of different social platforms to find out how live shopping’s been making more of a resurgence. We already know that it’s sort of China and across Asia, it’s massive. And look, it’s becoming more and more of a thing here in Europe as well and across North America, but not quite at those kind of levels. So most brands treat live shopping

Jo (01:30.136)
Mmm.

Jo (01:36.653)
Yeah.

Ed (01:38.862)
like it’s, I guess, traditional e-commerce using interruption marketing to chase customers with discounts. However, according to our research, live commerce is completely different by an environment. We’ve discovered that nearly half of the audience that we surveyed are context responders. And these fans will ignore a discount entirely, but will move fast if you give them a compelling reason to care about the product or service.

Jo (01:52.472)
Hmm?

Ed (02:08.537)
that you are selling.

Jo (02:09.039)
So that kind of flips on its head conventional wisdom, you know, that is, it’s the level of discount that’s really gonna prompt you to buy, right?

Ed (02:17.539)
Yeah, or the countdown clock that will scare you into making a purchase essentially,

Jo (02:22.946)
Get it before it’s gone. Yeah.

Ed (02:26.147)
I mean, and it was interesting as well in the research as well that people were actually, when they’d been presented with those kinds of experiences, they were actually getting deep by a regret after they made that kind of purchase. 74 % of people who bought when there was a compelling story or reason to buy still felt positive about that purchase 48 hours later. That’s me, that, when I’m buying my next pair of trainers.

It’s interesting. I mean, I guess it’s not rocket science to think that that if there’s a compelling story It’s actually linked to that bit of Cell that you’re more likely to feel good about it yet

Jo (03:08.118)
Yeah, well, it plays in to wider trends that we’ve seen in media, right? And I talk about this a lot, as you know, you’ve got younger generations that are the most media literate generation ever. So they know the tactics for manipulation in media, those countdown clocks, the pressure sales, it’s discounted now, press this button, spin this wheel, you got a discount. They know all of those tactics.

and they know how to circumvent the mosque or screen them out. But much like we’ve talked about a million times with how young people engage with content made by creators and they trust creators more than they trust traditional media, it comes down to that genuine story connection. And although it’s not live shopping, as in the piece of work that you’ve just done, but I certainly, I knew of a TikTok shop seller.

busy working mom had kids, she’d make content around how she has to fit in her fitness around a busy day, she’s getting the kids ready for school, she’s making their packed lunches, but she really appreciated good quality, technical kind of sportswear that was reasonably priced, that she’d be happy to go around in all day and fit in her fitness around her busy life. That level of storytelling that she put into that when she came to selling on her TikTok shop.

meant that a woman that she only had like 10,000 followers on TikTok was selling hundreds of thousands of gross merchandise value through TikTok shop because she had a genuine connection with customers who then said, no, I believe you. I believe what you’re telling me. That’s a reason to buy, not a countdown clock, not a spin the wheel and you get 30 % discount. So it kind of plays into that, which I think is really interesting. My question to you, how does this impact sport? How can sports media leverage it?

Ed (04:54.095)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ed (05:04.377)
We talked a little bit about this off air, we? Outside of obviously the obvious when you watch live sport, which is generally broadcast not by the original rights creator themselves, there’s not a great deal of, I guess, live experiences where you could bring this live shopping moments into it. And I’ve even read through this and seen where it talks about that people want to…

Jo (05:17.826)
and

Ed (05:32.739)
have stories told to them and you think like, you you could absolutely create experiences here where you could bring in commerce moments to it. Like when something happens and create unique.

Jo (05:34.958)
Mm.

Ed (05:47.417)
bits of merchandise on the back of that moment. know, there’s ways you can do this with drop shipping nowadays where you could absolutely build in a series of different variants that if that moment happens, whether it’s a goal scored, an amazing point in intent, whatever it is, that that thing is then available with a graphic where whoever’s presenting that experience is talking about it, simple QR code, go purchase now.

Jo (05:53.261)
Yeah, yeah.

Jo (06:03.502)
Mm.

Ed (06:14.132)
Ultimately, these are only going to be available for a period of time simply simply because it’s scarcity because it’s that’s the moment then and you’re not doing it then because you’re being counted down is because an hour later might be another moment, right? But you might really really want that moment

Jo (06:17.144)
Please.

Jo (06:25.494)
Yeah. It’s interesting because we’ve spoken about second screens before, not as a cannibalistic or not as cannibalistic to what’s happening potentially on the big screen, but as being complimentary. And that can be either, yeah, it can either be stats, it can be deep dives, it can be the history of El Clasico that you’re looking to dive into whilst it’s actually playing on the big screen TV in the lounge. Equally, it could be a live shopping experience. You you’re watching a game, you’re watching the Champions League final or…

Ed (06:38.306)
Yeah, additive, yeah, yeah.

Jo (06:54.818)
and you’ve got a live shopping channel that is dropping products live. And that can be really compelling. Cause it, like you said, it’s in the moment. it, I mean, it works that way in gaming as well. We see very often in games, you’ll, you can sell content, you can sell merch from within shops in games. And actually very often they sell out when it’s a new variant of a character, a monster, a dragon that’s dropped in a game. So it’s borrowing from that kind of purchase behaviors. Be interesting to see how it could be used in sport.

Ed (07:21.998)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Jo (07:25.388)
Okay, second story, I’m gonna kick off in this one just because we’ve spoken offline quite a lot about, okay, a sigh this week, moving from what a lot of creators have done in terms of this overt promotion back to what we were saying about people can see when they’re just being paid to shill something or promote something. It’s why trust in influencers is declining. But actually we’re seeing creators now and athletes too.

taking much more of an active role in ownership and governance of teams. We’ve seen athletes taking stakes in fashion brands or sports brands. They’re becoming creative director. So yeah, what’s your take on KSI taking a minority stake in Dagenham and Redbridge?

Ed (08:11.98)
Yeah, look, mean, a friend of mine sent it to me as soon as it happened. I mean, look, I’m sure there’s people in and around KSI who’s like, this has been going on for ages. But for me, came from nowhere because I’ve not really seen it coming. it feels like a natural transition, I guess, for where he’s been going with his storytelling. I mean, the opportunity to be able to come in and bring his, what, his 70.53.

Jo (08:32.942)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (08:39.714)
million followers across all those social instead of almost I guess a sports property renting attention from a creator he’s going the other way going now actually I’m be part of the story and I’m gonna bring my audience to it and ultimately they’re gonna have they’re gonna see that I’m honest and truthful about this because I’ve invested my time and money into this property so they can come on that journey with me so I think it’s interesting right because look you can look at what’s going on with Wrexham

Jo (09:09.742)
Mm.

Ed (09:09.794)
And I’m sure there’ll be an element of inspiration there for him, but he’s going to do it in his own way, right?

Jo (09:17.452)
Yeah, and you know, interesting thinking about it, aside from the whole Wrexham thing, which, I mean, it was very much a fairy tale and those kinds of things only happen once because the mold is very much broken after that. You can try and replicate it, but rarely does it happen to that scale or level of success the second, third, fourth time. What occurred to me, and this was a bit related to a newsletter that I published last week about Savannah bananas actually, in that,

Ed (09:30.008)
Yeah.

Ed (09:47.022)
I knew you’d get them in eventually.

Jo (09:48.407)
I know, can’t go a podcast without mentioning Savannah Bananas. But you think about creators, creators like KSI and who are part of larger collectives, they’ve spent the best part of a decade, if not more, on this hamster wheel of creating new content and then pumping it out there to keep their channels growing. Slave to the CPM, to the algorithm, on the hamster wheel, then they started creating collectives which kind of, you know, eased a little bit of the pressure they could share.

Ed (10:06.382)
Slaves to the CPM, essentially.

Jo (10:18.018)
that content across their channels. You take that another step further and these creators are looking to invest in these clubs because they’re a content engine too. He’s already said he wants to start creating a strand of content that charts their course from sixth tier football to the Premier League. He’s doing that as a documentary. It gives him something else to talk about on his channel and within his wider creator group.

That as a content engine is probably worth doing in and of itself because it’s not just beholden to him then to be KSI, do what he does and create that content. He’s now got a vehicle through which you can create more content. So I think that’s really interesting. And also it plays in to our first listener question. See my segue there. Sally Hodges, first listener question.

Ed (11:09.998)
Sally, thank you.

Jo (11:16.576)
I’m gonna chuck it at you now actually, because it relates to what we’re saying about that. So Sally emailed us and said, I’m hearing suggestions that the under 25s are tending not to be fans of particular creators anymore, but instead of trusting the feed, relying on the algorithm. Colin and Samir mentioned, it’s kind of lame to be two into one creator. So she was wondering if there’s a particular age group who kind of are ready to cast off those creators that they’ve grown up with and loved.

Ed (11:18.98)
Go on then.

Jo (11:46.435)
Maybe they feel like they’ve grown out. And they want to align themselves more with other interests in that cool culture. So actually, is this playing into that? Maybe is this KSI acknowledging that maybe a lot of his fans are ready to graduate and he’s gonna give them more content that they’re ready to graduate into. What do you reckon? And thank you, Sally.

Ed (12:09.859)
Nice easy question to start with, cheers for that. I think that cringe zone, so the listener’s age bracket theory, I think he’s smart, right? I think that the cringe zone is, oh God, I mean, I’ve got a 15 year old daughter, so I’m already in the cringe zone. On a daily basis, hourly basis.

Jo (12:11.758)
you

Jo (12:26.286)
She’s still in the crematorium.

Ed (12:32.127)
It’s but I think that cringe zone is probably I don’t know maybe 14 to 2022 where I think there’s still an element of yeah that is cringe and I think then as you start to get out of that I think that’s why we send the research to things like pod you know podcasts obviously newsletters they were growing to more and older demographic I think well maybe it’s a bit overstated I think so that algorithm first consumption as trained youngsters announces to follow

Content rather than creators because it’s not like you get the same thing every time right you get similar things But from different people so it’s not necessarily trying to push you the same thing all of that because the reality is you do get bored I think any of us would have the same people but I think I think like you said they like what he’s doing there is He’s given himself an opportunity to create different types of content with unfettered access in theory to a plaything of sorts

Jo (13:03.373)
Mm-hmm.

Jo (13:12.046)
Yeah, and I do think their audiences are waking up too.

Jo (13:23.715)
Mm.

Jo (13:29.294)
Mm.

Ed (13:29.571)
And I’ve always said this about, mean, you know, working football myself, there’s going to be lots and lots of ordinary things that he’s going to be really, really clever at making them feel like they’re extraordinary, just through access in itself. And I think it’s going to teach a lot of people about what you can do in and around a sports property on game day, not on game day. And he’s like, he’s going to have to think about, you know, things like rights and what he’s allowed to do and what he’s not allowed to do, when cameras are allowed to come in, when cameras are not allowed to come in.

But yeah, I think it’s interesting and I think there is that element of it. And I think some of it is, like I said, there is because we’re just ultimately people just trained to consume content in a certain kind of way. And some of it is just through pure interest. don’t want to watch the same things all the time.

Jo (14:14.85)
Yeah, yeah. And people forget that creators don’t stay the same age forever. They also evolve and mature. And so, you know, they’re going to want to do different things too. Okay. We’re running behind Ed. Come on. need to speed it up.

Ed (14:20.279)
No, absolutely.

Ed (14:27.651)
god, we’re gonna be getting in trouble here. We’re gonna be in trouble. We’ve got producer Dan with us today, Will’s had a night off. So this is one that I know you wrote about yourself anyway, didn’t you? And a little bit, yeah. So we’ll put that in the link so people can have a read of that afterwards. So the Chicago Bulls and the NBA are executing what they’re calling a historic creator game takeover. Let’s hope it’s not a one-off, yeah. So far beyond the typical guest ex, guest…

Jo (14:32.824)
Hahaha.

Jo (14:38.582)
A little bit, yeah.

Ed (14:56.707)
I can’t give me words at appearance. Content creator Jesser has done the Jesser, Bull and Bulls Kids Nation game where Creator was integrated into nearly every facet of the gameday experience from hosting a pregame party, basketball cleaning for 50 local kids, participating in on-score shooting contests and I guess just bringing what Jesser does into that whole gameday experience. How did you feel that went?

Jo (15:22.102)
I loved it. I loved it because there’s a lot of leagues and sports teams that consider what they need to do for kids as just a tick box exercise. And very often it comes across as a bit half baked and more often than not, very patronizing to kids. And that is my biggest bug bet. By contrast, their Kid Nation game, because they brought Jesser in, it felt…

for once like they’d actually thought about it. They’d woven what he does and who he is through the whole thing. So it felt like it wasn’t patronizing or talking down to the kids. mean, some of the pictures that I saw, you he’s on the court, he’s signing autographs. I made the point in one of the comments on a LinkedIn post about access. You know, we talk about access. If you are going to get kids to engage with a sport, you need to give them access. That’s either access to media,

on platforms like YouTube rather than locking it away behind a paywall. But if they’re gonna go to a Chicago Bulls kid nation game, they wanna stand next to Jesser and that they facilitated that and kudos to him for letting it happen as well. So I really thought it was smart. Obviously he’s a huge creator. think he’s got across all of his platforms, he’s got 45 million followers globally. Yeah, and most of those are under 25.

Ed (16:43.936)
small then.

Jo (16:47.83)
So even if they’re not kids, they are young people. So it makes him quite an influential basketball creator amongst those young fans globally. So again, the fact that they put him there, they wove his content and who he is all the way through this kid nation game and they gave kids access, I thought was really cool. And again, it just plays into this wider realization, I think now in sports that…

there has to be investment in bringing kids along as fans and it doesn’t have to be tick box and it can’t afford to be patronising because yes, they might be hard to monetise and feel a little bit fickle with their attention when they’re young but if you can engage them and you can show them that you’re showing up and you’re investing in building that relationship with them.

nobody would convince me that the lifetime value of that fan wouldn’t be higher. So it is worth doing at that early stage. And I think obviously Chicago Bulls have cottoned onto that and I just think it was really smart. yeah, moved away from slapping a name on a game to something that felt quite deep and considered.

Ed (17:53.421)
Yeah, it was interesting as well because the Bulls VP of Content Marketing said that the Jessa provides a conduit to the next generation. So from that perspective, could Jessa’s work with the NBA be one of the best sports creator core labs that we’ve seen?

Jo (18:11.342)
It could be, like I said, it just felt so embedded. mean, Jesser also showed up at the NFL opening game that was streamed on YouTube alongside Destroying. That felt a bit more to me like creator slapping on sport, whereas Jesser’s integration into the Kid Nation game for Chicago Bulls didn’t. And it’s an interesting distinction between the two. I think sports is still trying to figure that out, but.

what for me it was genuinely engaging these kids and they had a they had a shock composition and there was you know kids and families were winning ten thousand dollars I mean this was this was good good stuff rather than just chucking a load of creators at it and hoping that it brought audiences to them.

Ed (18:56.438)
We see it like, I guess the obvious thing that you always see at any sporting event is let’s do a kids zone and let’s do a kids zone. Let’s take a few PlayStations in. There’s a mascot. It’s always the same stuff, right? Whereas here, they’ve almost tried to, and they’re really good at theming game days in the US anyway, right? But they’ve almost, like they said, they’ve tried to get Jetta to almost take over that game day. But with kids front and centre, which is, you don’t often get that.

Jo (19:06.062)
Thank

Jo (19:16.214)
Yeah.

Jo (19:21.364)
Mm. Yeah.

Jo (19:26.882)
and that is the way to do it rather than somebody in a boardroom who’s 50 go, right, we need to do something for kids and we’re gonna do this, this and this. And they don’t really have that connection. So I really rated that one. Big tick. Good on you, Chicago Bulls. Let’s see some more of that. Let’s talk NASCAR and Cletus, which is my new official favorite name. Cletus. I love Cletus McFarland.

Ed (19:39.82)
Big tick.

Ed (19:49.728)
I just wanted to hear you say it, go on then, do it again.

Jo (19:56.589)
Yes, so he’s driving a NASCAR. Tell me, because you were really excited about this.

Ed (20:03.874)
Yeah, I’ve been fortunate enough to go and see a NASCAR race, I probably said this on probably one of the previous episodes, one of the greatest sporting experiences of my life, if you can call it a sport in that sense. yeah, amazing. And I’ve seen a few videos of Cletus McFarland, real name Garrett Mitchell, who he’s bought, he’s bought a like a derelict race circuit in Florida that he’s then transformed and him and all his mates just…

Jo (20:21.774)
You

Ed (20:32.832)
rag cars around burning, know, burning tires and stuff like that. He’s got an unbelievable following online who watch all this kind of content. And essentially one of the NASCAR teams have signed him up for a race. And obviously we talked about the EVO sessions a couple of weeks ago, I think it was last week actually, and which we, you know, we said, well, it was really interesting that you put in a creator in those cars and all the challenges that brings like.

Jo (20:34.924)
Uh-huh.

Jo (20:38.87)
Yeah.

Jo (20:51.864)
We did.

Ed (21:00.854)
You go and watch Cletus driving a NASCAR car, those cars are literally separated by an inch or two between them. Look, they’re stock cars, right? They’re all built to crash. It’s not like the Formula E cars. This is exciting and scary equal messaging. You just know that people are watching this to if he crashes, without a doubt.

Jo (21:05.378)
This genuine stakes.

Jo (21:23.138)
Well, I mean, that is what works best on YouTube, right? We might have mentioned before, that kind of dopamine hit that you need to keep hitting to make content sticky on YouTube. You don’t get a bigger…

Ed (21:34.818)
There just seems to be like, you know, one up ship going on here. Like everyone’s just trying to like, how can I make it crazier than the last one? Like you put this together with.

Jo (21:41.792)
You don’t get a bigger dopamine hit than thinking somebody’s going to crash.

Ed (21:46.306)
I mean you put this together with like, obviously like we were just talking about those Chicago Bulls and you go, yeah I’ll give you your kids, kids entertainment and I’m gonna stick this weirdo now in a car and see if he smashes it up.

Jo (21:57.463)
They’re not gonna stick kids in a NASCAR just yet, but I think… But, right, okay.

Ed (22:01.506)
You could put Jesser in a car against him and see what happens there.

No, but look, think, think, look, he has a huge following already. He’s, you know, he’s from the south of the US, which is where the heartlands of NASCAR are. So he very much ties into that whole NASCAR experience. And it is very, very sort of south orientated because that’s just where it’s come from in general. Even though NASCAR have been doing a lot of building over the last couple of years and now they have a race in Chicago and other places too. It is still…

Jo (22:33.088)
Yeah, it has, it’s worth pointing out that he’s going into kind of the second tier, second division of NASCAR. That doesn’t make it any less dangerous to, but just coming back to that stakes point, I think that is one of the reasons that I think this is really interesting and perhaps a genius move, I should say, because one of the things that we said a couple of episodes ago was that, no, actually it was something that I wrote about in terms of

If there’s no stakes, when one of the Christmas day games on Netflix didn’t perform well, because there was no stakes, the teams weren’t really fighting for anything. So you can put these things out on YouTube or you can eventize them in the way that Netflix does so well. But at the end of the day, there’s gotta be some stakes. And this is interesting because there’s inherent stakes in sticking a YouTube creator in a NASCAR and sending them around a track. Now.

I get the debate, some of the corners of NASCAR are saying actually, is this really sensible? You’re pushing an amateur up this ladder too quickly just because he’s got a big social media following. I don’t know. I mean, clearly he’s bought a track and he’s been building and racing cars. So it’s not as if he’s just some Joe off the street, but it does call into question how much sports should be leaning into

creators in creator led sports. We’ve spoken about it the last three stories we literally spoke about creators in sport in some shape or form. We’ve spoken about it on previous episodes. Is it going too far? Is it cheapening sports think?

Ed (24:09.237)
And…

As you said that then I thinking, no, yes. And my mind was sort of split. I think, like, look, they’ve committed to him. This is a two year deal. He’s not going into the top level in Asgard, going into the second tier. But look, I’m not sure if I could even make it into the fifth tier anyway. He can definitely drive from what I’ve seen of him. Like, he knows his way around the car. He’s not just a novice that used to be a jockey and just suddenly decided to go and race a car. I think…

Jo (24:14.414)
Put on that fence.

Jo (24:36.172)
Yeah.

Ed (24:42.347)
There’s that element though of, and I think it’s the jeopardy that makes everyone excited, but there’s danger with this one. Like I said, this is, it’s a serious sport NASCAR and things can happen and cars can turn over and yeah, look, they’ve got roll cages in there and stuff like that, but the drivers that are in that there, are fine tuned driving machines who’ve been doing this a number of years who,

Jo (25:00.589)
Yeah.

Ed (25:10.977)
spent hours and hours and hours doing simulators in the same kind of way that they’re doing Formula One and places like that, right? They don’t just turn up. I can’t believe that he’s just gonna turn up. I do like it. I don’t have a problem with it necessarily. I think, like I said, they’re not just parishing him at the top. He’s coming into the second tier. And again, I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have just… I can’t believe they wouldn’t have tested him out a bit before they put him in, because otherwise it’s scary.

Jo (25:15.939)
Yeah.

Jo (25:39.534)
I reckon there’s there’s safeguards that we’ve been putting in place. I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s smart. I think it’s really smart

Ed (25:45.186)
Me too, but you’re right though. mean, these parallels, right? And ultimately like, you you’ve got Jake Paul in boxing as well. I mean, some would argue he’s not boxing in boxing, but anyway, that’s a different story. Right then, last one. So we had a bit of a tete-a-tete last week about AI where we didn’t necessarily agree on it, which is nice because some say we always agree. So story coming out of the US around AI copyright. And I know people are thinking, really God, this sounds boring already. I went, but no, stick with it.

Jo (25:50.798)
Exactly, exactly.

Well.

Ed (26:15.041)
So a Supreme Court says that if there is no human in the content and it’s been generated by AI, then actually you can’t copyright it. Which is interesting, because lots and lots of people now are making content with AI and effectively this Court has said that you cannot copyright it if it’s just done with AI.

Jo (26:40.482)
I mean, so no human in the creation. Again, I would…

Ed (26:46.025)
Well, featuring in the content, I think it is, rather than the creation itself.

Jo (26:48.844)
Is it? okay. Cause I thought it was if AI had created it, you don’t get to claim IP rights, but.

Ed (26:57.237)
Yeah, but guess a human’s prompting it, So, so a human, yeah, I know, I know.

Jo (27:00.024)
Well, this is the thing. how do you define, yeah, a in the chain of its creation? Well, I mean, it’s almost implicit that there needs to have been a struggle.

Ed (27:10.337)
I think this will get challenged because ultimately where does everything come from? AI has ultimately been created by human right. Everything that trains AI has been done by humans. So this is going to get challenged without a doubt.

Jo (27:20.236)
Yeah, just created from human, yes.

So So it’s not sport related, but bear with me, because I’m sure a lot of listeners will have seen or heard their kids talking about Italian brain rot in the last six, 10 months. There was a trend of AI generated crazy characters that popped up all over social. There was Tralala, Tralala. There was Cappuccino Ballerina. There were these just bonkers. These bonkers mashups of characters. The interesting thing.

Ed (27:46.305)
How have I missed all of them?

Jo (27:53.025)
was because they were AI created, then people all over social were taking them, they were spinning them out into stories. You’d got a baseball bat called Tung Tung Tung Sahur that married Cappuccino Ballerina and they were creating these stories about what their kids would do because nobody owned the copyright. They were all AI generated characters under this broader genre of this Italian brain rot because they all had Italian sounding names. What’s interesting is

One creator, I think out of Eastern Europe, who claimed to have created the character, which was I think the baseball bat, Tung Tung Tung Sahur, claimed copyright over that character. And everybody was saying, how on earth can you claim it? And also now, you’re trying to claim it after the horse has bolted and people have taken this character and they’ve done different things with it and they’ve evolved it. It’s a complete mess. When I look at how…

particularly generative AI, and it perhaps applies less in sport. Most of what I hear about AI when it comes to sport is how it’s gonna be used in terms of data and when it comes to gambling and betting. I can see its use cases there in a generative sense. do, particularly in sport, which is a media business.

Ed (29:00.309)
Yeah.

Jo (29:10.708)
obsessed with rights. I don’t quite know how this is going to work. I think you’re right. I think there’ll be challenge after challenge after challenge will perhaps flip-flop between whether you can own copyright in something that you’ve generated as a human prompting an AI. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.

Ed (29:27.395)
there’ll be lawyers like now going like, wait a minute, I’m gonna go and challenge this. think, we’ll, again, as ever with these stories that have inspired us to talk about these things, we’ll have the links on the podcast page as well so you can go and have a read yourself and get familiar with it, because there’s a lot more to this than ultimately that we’re talking about right now. But it is interesting when people are thinking about, are they gonna use AI to create content for them from scratch? In the US, careful.

because actually you might not be able to claim copyright on it. But again, I just think it’s going to run and run and run. And I don’t know what the answer is, quite frankly.

Jo (30:06.254)
how you’ve got famous movie stars that are licensing their likeness into AI for models now. I mean, you’ve got deceased talent that are being ingested into generative models so they could perhaps create new music, new films, even after they’ve died. James Earl Jones, the iconic actor whose voice Darth Vader. I think he’s licensed his voice.

Ed (30:11.424)
Yes.

Jo (30:35.404)
to be recreated.

Ed (30:36.641)
think you’re right.

Jo (30:37.036)
Again, you come back to sports and sports people and how obsessed we are with rights in sports media and how name image likeness rights are hotly contested. It feels like potentially you’re going to have some athletes maybe licensing their name and likeness into models so that they can be used to generate content, animation, ads, promotions, sponsorship. Geez, I mean, you know, it’s endless. So it does beg the question how it will show up, particularly in that generative side of AI, separate and distinct from that kind of data.

and betting side that we spoke about. But I think we’ll see a lot of challenge, but we’ll see potentially how it shows up in sport pretty quickly because sports is so obsessed with rights and then how you monetize those rights.

Ed (31:21.929)
Yeah, and if you think about, yeah, exactly. And all of the sort of archive, which doesn’t always get used massively. You could see how people are going to think about how do we use that in a, and I guess in a AI kind of way to be able to do different stuff with it. Yeah.

Jo (31:27.97)
Mm-hmm.

Jo (31:34.304)
Yeah, as even as training data, you know, you could train, train a large language model on the volume of archive that leagues are sitting on. So again, there’ll be use cases that we haven’t even heard of or thought of yet that will no doubt come up. Bang on time.

Ed (31:50.636)
Cool, right then Joe, think that’s a wrap. So we’re back on time. Like we’re being kept on time by Danny’s. Like, come on, Rappel.

Jo (31:59.534)
I’m off to play NASCAR in my Mazda around Stockport.

Ed (32:03.553)
What is that to prepare yourself in case you get a call up?

Jo (32:06.317)
Yeah.

Ed (32:09.067)
So everyone, thank you for joining us on this week’s episode of the Attention Shift. I’ve been Ed Abbott and this has been… There we go, well done.

Jo (32:14.338)
Joe Redfern, and we’re gonna thank Sally for being our first listener question. Don’t let it be the last, send us your question.

Ed (32:19.243)
Thank you. Sally send as many questions as you want in. You’ve all for the start, started a trend now. But yeah, thank you so much Sally Hodges. We’ve been connecting on LinkedIn, the both of us last couple of weeks and she’s been sending some really interesting stuff to us. It was great to get a question. So thank you for that. So don’t forget to like, subscribe. And if you want to feature as a guest like Sally, you can email us too. Hello, attention shift.media. That’s us. Goodbye.

Jo (32:44.601)
Ciao

The post The Supreme Court Rules on AI, KSI’s 6th Tier Takeover & The Secrets of Live Shopping UNLOCKED! appeared first on Dizplai.

First thing in the morning. Commuting. In the bathroom. During a boring conversation, a boring meeting, any down moment. I know it’s bad for my brain. But a billion dollars of technological innovation has made sure that even with the greatest willpower, a device engineered to hijack your attention will win.

And I’m at peace with that.

What grinds my gears is that as marketers, we’ve outsourced our creative judgement to the addiction and the algorithm. We’re letting machines and AI-learning dictate what content we serve our audiences. We’ve drifted from the qualitative craft of content creation for audience engagement and into a loop of optimise, learn, iterate, repeat.

Don’t feel bad, it’s not on you. It’s happening everywhere.

The copy-paste era of content

Netflix is changing how shows are lit. Adding disjointed action sequences and non-sequitur dialogue to constantly remind audiences of plot narratives and character traits. You might call that smart audience retention, but I’d call it panic. When the world’s most valuable streaming platform starts rewiring its storytelling because it’s terrified of losing your attention for thirty seconds, something has gone badly wrong.

And it’s not just Netflix. Look at the self-appointed marketing gurus who’ll sell you the keys to the algorithm: capture attention in the first three seconds, put an excited talking head front and centre, offer a watered-down guide in exchange for an email address. The formula is everywhere. And because it works in the short-term, everyone copies it.

So now we get thumbnails that look the same. Content that looks the same. LinkedIn posts are structured identically (those AI tells are so easy to spot now). Trending content hitting the same narrative beats, the same production cues, the same hollow excitement.

None of this is a coincidence.

Reaction isn’t the same as interest

Algorithms reward micro-actions. They assign value to subconscious reactions. A scroll-stop counts as interest. So does disgust, frustration, regret, annoyance. The system doesn’t distinguish. It just feeds users more of whatever made them react, and drops them into an advertising segment they never consciously chose. The result is a media ecosystem optimised for reaction, not connection.

The problem is, audiences aren’t passive. They notice when content doesn’t add anything, or when they’re being gamed. And when they notice, they leave or disengage. Or they pay £60 a year for an illegal streaming service with better UX than your £60-a-month official product, because the unofficial version actually respects their time.

That’s a value exchange problem, not a piracy problem.

Valuable content doesn’t need hacks

What’s missing from this entire conversation is genuine connection. Creators and media companies aren’t asking how to add something meaningful to their audiences’ lives. They’re joining the queue, reinforcing attention deficit content, and rewarding dwell time over world-class storytelling.

The algorithm will keep optimising because that’s what it does. The tips, tricks and hacks will keep circulating because there’s a market for shortcuts. But the need for all of that is a symptom. It’s what happens when content doesn’t have enough genuine value to stand on its own.

Make something that actually means something to your audience and you won’t need to game the first three seconds. You won’t need the excited talking head or the manufactured urgency. The connection does the work.

The question was never “how do we optimise for the algorithm?” It was always about audience engagement, “what does this audience actually want, and are we giving it to them?”

Answer that honestly, and the rest takes care of itself.

Ready to look at audience engagement and turn your passive viewers into an active community? Get in touch 

The post Attention deficit content, or how I learned to start worrying about content homogeny appeared first on Dizplai.

At Dizplai, Jon’s remit is to ensure engineering delivers tangible customer ROI. Beyond leading the Engineering function, he will drive strategic alignment between technical capabilities and client outcomes, optimising delivery speed, platform efficiency, and the integration between product, engineering, and commercial teams. His focus is translating technical excellence into measurable value: faster deployments, stronger performance against client KPIs, and engineering decisions that directly support the returns customers expect from Dizplai’s technology.

Most recently, Jon has specialised in modernising end-to-end delivery workflows, using contemporary tooling and tighter team integration to increase speed, reliability, and overall business velocity – capabilities that align directly with Dizplai’s flexible commercial models and revenue-driven approach to fan engagement.

“Jon gets it – technology has to unlock revenue, build engaged communities, and turn distribution into monetisation,” said Ed Abis, CEO of Dizplai. “As we scale with partners who need better returns from their audience relationships, his experience will be critical in ensuring our platform delivers real value – connectivity that drives engagement, and engagement that drives revenue.”

Jon Robins added: “Coming from the sports OTT streaming world, I understand the pressure rightsholders face. Audiences are fragmenting. Live content creators are consuming how fans engage. The opportunity now is to convert those new behaviours, build new fans, and drive new and traditional revenue streams. What drew me to Dizplai is that the company is already solving this, turning anonymous, passive viewers into active participants and building the data and monetisation layers around that participation. My job is to ensure our technology empowers every part of the business,  and the rightsholders and creators we serve,  to turn that opportunity into measurable, commercial value.”

Ready to turn your passive audience into an active community? Get in touch 

The post Meet Jon Robins, our new Director of Technology appeared first on Dizplai.

AI artwork: U.S. Supreme Court rules: “No human, no copyright”

On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Stephen Thaler’s appeal over copyright for an artwork generated entirely by his AI system, DABUS. That leaves the lower‑court decision intact: under current U.S. law, works with no human author aren’t eligible for copyright protection. In plain English: if you publicly claim the AI is the creator, you don’t get IP rights over the output.

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KSI buys minority stake in Dagenham & Redbridge.

KSI (Olajide Olatunji) officially became a minority shareholder (20%) and strategic partner in National League South side Dagenham & Redbridge. Joining the club just days after former England striker Andy Carroll also took a stake.

With a “Welcome to Wrexham” style docuseries in the works, and KSI reaching 333K viewers on his IRL stream covering Dagenham’s game vs Dorking Wanderers this weekend, the potential upside of KSI’s investment is already clear.

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McLaren Racing launches high-performance golf division.

The biggest sports retailer in the US is building a creator army to scale human authenticity against a sea of AI ads. Dick’s Sporting Goods recently received over 10,000 applications for its “Varsity Team” program, but they aren’t looking for one $10M athlete; they are hiring thousands of store associates, coaches, and parents to be community storytellers.

By moving away from “Pro Influencers” and focusing on the people actually using the gear on the sidelines, Dick’s is betting that “real people” are the most valuable commodity in a synthetic marketing landscape. This represents a massive shift toward community-centred content at an industrial scale.

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The NBA announces “creator takeover” with Jessser & Chicago Bulls. 

In a historic move for US sports, the Chicago Bulls and the NBA have announced the first-ever “Creator Game Takeover” featuring basketball content creator Jesser. On game day, Jesser isn’t just a guest; he is being integrated into the fabric of the event, from co-calling the game on the local broadcast to designing the in-stadium entertainment and leading the social media coverage.

This collaboration marks a significant change in how creators’ roles have evolved in the new media landscape. The creator economy has moved beyond renting their following to reach more people. They’re genuinely integrating and allowing creators to do what they do best: reach the next generation of fans.

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The 2026 creator economy report: evolution, ownership, and the AI frontier.

The Influencer Marketing Factory has released its 2026 Creator Economy Report, revealing an industry that has officially outgrown its “niche” label. With projected U.S. creator ad spend set to reach $43.9B this year, an 18.3% increase from 2025, the economy is shifting from simple attention-seeking to a sophisticated, entrepreneur-led media ecosystem.

As creators increasingly identify as founders and CEOs, the focus has pivoted toward owning intellectual property (IP), building diversified businesses, and leveraging AI as a “productivity accelerator” rather than a replacement for human creativity.

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