Tom Bowers: Innovating Fan Engagement in Sports
Tom Bowers: Emerging technologies are bridging the gap between live events and broadcast.
In this episode of the MVP Interactive Podcast, host James Giglio speaks with Tom Bowers, a pioneer in fan engagement and media innovation. They discuss the evolution of interactive television, the impact of emerging technologies on sports broadcasting, and the cultural shifts in fan experiences, particularly in the UK. Tom shares insights on how augmented reality is transforming live sports, the challenges of brand integration, and the future of media landscapes as streaming platforms gain prominence. The conversation highlights the importance of authentic fan engagement and the potential for technology to enhance the overall experience for sports fans.
Highlights
05:54 The Evolution of Interactive Television
08:59 Emerging Technologies in Live Sports Broadcasting
18:27 The UK Media Landscape and Sports Broadcasting
23:37 The Rise of Streaming Platforms in Sports
24:52 Innovative Fan Engagement through Technology
27:01 The Future of Live Sports Consumption
31:03 Transforming Game Day Experiences
33:35 Cultural Shifts in Sports Venues
About Tom Bowers
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Podcast Transcript
James Giglio (00:01.266)
Welcome back to another episode of the MVP Interactive Podcast. My name is James Giglio. Today we have an amazing guest coming from the United Kingdom by the name of Tom Bowers, who is the founder of Hypothesis Media. And so Tom is a broadcast and live event innovator based in the UK, bridging traditional content with emerging tech to enhance fan engagement.
very good guest because this is right in the MVP wheelhouse. I feel like we’ve had a lot of recent guests that have been tangential, but it’s nice to kind of bring in an expert. And so as the founder of Hypothesis Media, Tom runs a consultancy specializing in visual innovation, such as mixed augmented reality fan engagement for live and broadcast sports. Tom is also a leader in global tech partnerships and is a recognized pioneer in the industry. So Tom.
Thanks so much for joining our show today.
Tom Bowers (00:58.68)
Thanks James, thanks for that amazing introduction. Good to be here. And true, the Fat on Fan engagement is my specialist topic. I love it.
James Giglio (01:07.45)
Excellent. Well, I know that we talked a little bit about this when we initially met, which by the way, for our listeners, we met very organically engaging on LinkedIn to, can’t even remember somebody’s post, but I think it was a Super Bowl related one. And so we already know that we run in the same circles in the industry. knowing fan engagement and the consumption of sports here in America versus England is a…
very different and very unique to each other. As well as, you know, where emerging technology has really grown in many ways and in my opinion, I think in the out of home advertising world, I felt like Europe, whether it’s the UK or France, have done some really innovative things well before companies here in the United States have done when it comes to digital signage and maybe interactive LED.
boards at Piccadilly and things of that nature. But we would love to hear your background, where you started and sort of how you kind of formed and created Hypothesis Media.
Tom Bowers (02:17.72)
Yeah, sure. So I started my career in traditional telly. I worked as a runner, a researcher, know, very much down the traditional route, always wanting to work in live, loved, I the immediacy of live television, it really grabbed me as a young student in college. was like, you know, and around that kind of time, there was a lot of reality TV. And I just loved the, how audiences could be immersed in a narrative that was happening.
you know, as, you know, in the moment. And it was really grabbing people. And I just loved that kind of element of being able to work towards something that was you, you, could do as much preparation as you wanted, but live television, things can go wrong. You have to work together as a team and you get to the end result. And I think that’s what was the main reason I got into telly. And then after about three or four years of doing the kind of more traditional
based production, technology was really starting to come through the ranks. Everyone was starting to have a mobile phone. mean, it’s around kind of 2001, 2002, I’ve been in the industry for a few years and SMS messaging became a thing. And we were like, oh, how can we use that? are, know, can we bring that onto the TV show somehow? And we put like a crawl on a lower third on the bottom of a big brother live stream. And the amount of people.
James Giglio (03:44.99)
I know.
Tom Bowers (03:45.166)
I mean, took a bit of planning to do, but the amount of people that wanted to get their opinions on television, you know, around what they were seeing on the screen live was just insane. And I was like, wow, there’s something in this. Like audiences have got an opinion about what we’re watching. I think this is gonna become a thing. And then from that moment onwards, because I found myself in a bit of a unique situation, I understood how to make a television show and all the kind of components that went with it. But I also kind of…
James Giglio (03:57.577)
All right.
Tom Bowers (04:14.462)
learnt to understand about how new technologies could impact that and obviously what the trends were with audiences, fans of the show. And I kind of niche myself down that route. I worked at quite a lot of the major broadcasters here in the UK, kind of doing different roles at Sky and Channel 4 and ITV, mainly around voting to begin with. There’s a lot of reality voting elements, like on X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and shows like…
James Giglio (04:38.438)
Okay.
Tom Bowers (04:44.078)
sort of big shows like that. And then that was where kind of the desire to learn more about new interactive technologies and how can it affect the kind of user and fan experience came about. And that’s when I set up my consultancy. I did have a previous consultancy, but it kind of has evolved into hypothesis where we kind of focus at the intersection between technology and content and advise accordingly to the industry. Cause we’ve got a bit of trust there of understanding television content.
And how to use these new technologies to heighten that experience whether that be viewers at home watching it You know on TV or in the venue now We do a lot more in venue kind of experiences because the two translate quite a lot. It’s a very similar kind of Engagement level that you have whether it’s you know, you’re having a call to action on a television screen or having a call to action in the venue for fans to do a certain thing for a certain outcome, so Yes led me to you know running
I’ve been lot of different global tech companies and we act as a funnel, learning what they’re doing in different territories and then kind of representing some of those texts and helping to execute them with different end users, that be broadcasters, rights holders in the sports arena, to really kind of push the boundaries and move the market forward for the benefit of the fan.
James Giglio (05:45.79)
All right.
James Giglio (06:07.954)
Yeah, now correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s another example, surveys that is, is something that really originated on your side of the pond, because I think for us, and maybe this is just my limited exposure to it, but it was shows like America’s Got Talent or those types of talent shows that you started to see the integration of those surveys, but.
Is that accurate that this sort of concept started overseas or was it at a parallel time?
Tom Bowers (06:41.56)
think there was a murmur in television that TV was changing and the awareness, I think, of viewers as fans, they were accessing technology more readily than ever before and therefore with that technology came new ways that you could integrate that into the show editorial.
I met a lot of resistance in the early days from traditional programme makers that were like, this interactive stuff, we don’t want that to affect our heralded, glossy Saturday night entertainment show. we were seeing, at that time, was very much, I think with American Idol and we had Pop Idol over here, it was happening around the same kind of time, transition, but because it was happening at a global scale, was like, right, this is something that we need to be.
And there wasn’t that many people at the time that really kind of could understand the two. It was like we do traditional television production or there was a few companies out there that just knew about mobile. And that’s what it was in the early days. It was like, you know, we understand mobile but there was not really any organization doing the two or having awareness of the two. I’ve, and a lot of the commissioning editors at the time are going, Tom, you know, in a really unique position you should set up and do something by yourself. And that’s what gave me the impetus to do that. But.
Yeah, I think it gave me the reassurance that this wasn’t just unique to the UK. This was happening not only in this territory, but in Europe and obviously in America at the same time. As things have evolved, I think, you know, the US has really kind of strided forward in, you know, new innovative technologies, Murph’s technologies have taken to the next level. I would say that the US is about 18 months to two years ahead of the curve of trying new things in this arena. And the UK will
often look to what the US have done and see how we can UK-ify it a little bit before it kind of comes over here.
James Giglio (08:38.814)
Yeah, well, I’m glad the time has shortened because I frankly I feel like there was a time not too long ago that that gap was probably five or eight years and so if we’re down to a mirror a couple of months or half a year I’m I’m a static about that
Tom Bowers (08:52.268)
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I think it’s definitely reduced. mean, I’d like to think because of the relationships that, you know, my consultancy’s got. So we’ve got that level of closeness. I’m aware of kind of what’s coming down the pipeline in terms of development, what the fans in the US are kind of being more receptive to, and not everything translates. I mean, there are elements where, you know, I’ll sit in a product development meeting and it’ll be like, well, this new feature, their fans going crazy over here in America. And I’m like,
don’t think that will quite resonate with the UK audience, let alone the German audience who are even more reserved than the UK. So there is different layers, I think, of receptiveness, just because you can do it as a feature doesn’t mean it’s going to work in every territory. And I think because of my awareness of what’s working in America, we can show some examples of, you this is what’s working in America to inspire, often we have to kind of caveat with that we know this probably isn’t going to work for this UK market, which is what our consultative approach.
enables us to do. And I think by having that awareness of what’s coming down the line, I think that has squeezed the adoption time down from, know, years ago, was four or five years before things were kind of changing, but now it has kind of come down quite a bit.
James Giglio (10:08.015)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you you see it through a much different lens or at least initially on the broadcast side, because I think maybe for sure those type of fan experiences and the integration of technology and broadcast is really a tighter race than, not race, but a tighter parallel industry than maybe the sort of game day or tent pole activation
you know, technology that what it’s like to go to the Super Bowl as an American versus what it’s like to go to a premier championship game. But broadcast, I think there’s, you know, a tighter gap between the two. And whether we talk about 360 content or the Vision Pro experiences with Apple and such, I wanted to ask, actually, are you familiar with a company called Trickshot, who’s also based in the UK?
Tom Bowers (11:04.93)
Not actually, no.
James Giglio (11:06.138)
Okay, I’ll make a connection. The CEO is a friend of mine who I actually met at last year’s South by Southwest and their platform really does an amazing job of integrating live augmented reality experiences through live broadcasts. And so their platform can literally alter your viewing scene of a particular sport through augmented reality.
Tom Bowers (11:30.744)
There’s a similar company I work with, Resol, have you heard of them, Resol? They do kind of augmented reality experiences and what they can also do is they can ingest archive game footage and bring it to life in AR through a headset so you can play that match out in a very different way. So that’s really interesting from a kind of archive content match perspective of how you can reverse your content to.
James Giglio (11:35.388)
Mm-mm. No.
James Giglio (11:51.197)
Yeah, very cool.
Tom Bowers (11:58.132)
to a whole new bunch of audiences. I think that’s quite exciting.
James Giglio (12:01.436)
Yeah, I had, you you can make your jokes about the Apple Vision Sense and, you know, it sort of mostly sits on shelves with the people that initially got it. as a technologist, I obviously have to invest in the R &D of all new emerging technology. you know, it’s like, how I have to explain a $3,500 purchase to my wife. It’s like, you know, this is what I do.
Tom Bowers (12:19.95)
Of course. Nice to have a fun gadget to do once in a while.
Tom Bowers (12:29.012)
It’s for work. It’s fine.
James Giglio (12:30.16)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But one of the main reasons I reacted so quickly on it was because of the PGA tour and certain apps that I had experienced.
either just online of what the functionality of the mixed reality experience is, which is really mind blowing. And I’m not, I’m sure like you, I’m not easily impressed about much, you know, because I’m in the industry, know what’s going on. You know, I think I’ve ruined sports for myself. So I can’t go to a live game without walking the concourse and seeing what sponsors are doing or what technology is happening. But
I just thought when we talk about AR or mixed reality viewing experiences, the NBA just launched a very similar app experience to the PGA Tour where it is, I think they called it the tabletop experience where the court and the players in AR are literally in your vantage point on your coffee table, so to speak. so, yeah, I absolutely love where the live broadcast
technology is developing. Back to your earlier side of your career, I initially, did you focus just on live TV of all varieties or was it entertainment, was it sports, was it sitcoms? What did that look like?
Tom Bowers (13:55.95)
It’s continued to be actually over time. It tends to be live entertainment that’s got a bit more budget around it. And you’ve got that immediacy factor where there can be interactivity as part of the component where you’ve got a main show and then a resolve with a result show that is live. That was a focus for quite a long time on the television side.
We worked on the Brit Awards, so like music entertainment as well, where we worked on, we did like a first ever social vote where the viewers voted on social media to determine the outcome in real time of who won an award. So something like, things like that had never been done before, but using, know, again, tapping into trends at the time. mean, obviously a lot of people are emigrating away from X at the moment for various different reasons, but at the time Twitter was the, you know,
social TV, that was the place where people were talking about programming. So it’s like, how can we leverage that behaviour to impact around, know, do something exciting that the audience can feel part of the experience more. And then obviously sport is kind of, it’s always, know, fandom and sport is always goes hand in hand. So it’s just become a natural part of the offering. know, a lot of, there’s obviously more budgets on the whole, particularly in
sport, so things can be trialled, know, educated risks can be taken with new tech and you know, doing new things for the fans benefit. So it’s started with entertainment, I would say, but now it’s kind of, it’s as my line of experience and repertoire has kind of diversified a little bit, it’s been entertainment still, but much more sport as well, particularly as it’s now
focusing on how we can look at not only the fans in venue, but the fans at the broadcast level as well, but how the two can interpolate. know, we’ve been having conversations recently of like, I don’t know if you’ve seen, have seen these ASB glass floors with the reactive floors you can have the like course, I think the NBA have used it. I mean, they’re fantastic, but it gives it, obviously they’re quite expensive deployment and upgrade to sort of core infrastructure.
James Giglio (16:06.055)
yeah, the big LED fluorescent. Yeah, big fan of those.
Tom Bowers (16:17.858)
but the visual possibilities what you can do with that to immerse the fan, not only that are gonna be court side, but also the fan at home and having a synchronicity between the two. So stats that the fans see in the venue also can be stats that the fans see at home. And the possibility of being able to do that before has never been, know, there’s always been a set of graphics there in the venue and then ones for home and they’ve never been able to interplay.
James Giglio (16:38.364)
See, that’s it. Yeah, that is a…
Tom Bowers (16:45.282)
but now that’s possible and you could even have mixed reality graphics to that, having things coming out of the floor. The possibilities are amazing to really streamline that immersive fan experience and I think that is really exciting of where things are moving to.
James Giglio (16:48.67)
for sure.
James Giglio (16:58.35)
It’s super exciting and I was not aware that, you know, I think maybe on a one-off, maybe an all-star game or what have you, the NBA has used those courts. But I think that’s a perfect example of what we were talking about earlier on leveraging immersive technology at a live event and then that sort of blending and merging into a broadcast where we’ve seen and we’ve built and created experiences with touch, LED,
walls or floors and when it comes to these big tent pole events like college football playoff or the Super Bowl or the NBA All-Star, brands are really gravitating towards those bespoke fan experiences for that event. Now what you’re saying is that same technology and leveraging the capabilities can be viewed on a broadcast.
is a great sort of step forward to the masses, right? Because not everyone can get to the Super Bowl, not everyone can get to these events and they’re across the country, but you can now watch something, a basketball game across the world and experience that type of immersion, which is a really fascinating.
Tom Bowers (18:05.528)
think what I’ve always wanted to do is get fans, because to be a fan of something might mean you never get to go to that event, whether it be through your finances or geographically, it could be a combination of factors, but it doesn’t stop you being a diehard fan. It’s like, technology can obviously really help bring that fan closer to that event. Now, in more ways than ever before.
And you always have to, I always try and put myself in the fan’s shoes and it’s like, well, what can we do? I don’t want to do, for a time, interactivity was seen as like a bit of a, an element that could distract away from the core experience. And again, because of my understanding of traditional television as a medium, I always wanted to suggest things that would only enhance that experience, not detract away from it. And I always prefaced any conversations I’d have with particularly
James Giglio (18:50.536)
Right.
Tom Bowers (19:05.393)
Traditional content makers that we’re here to help protect your brand Do something new but not deviate away from what people are tuning in for which is to watch the main game If there’s something that we can add that will make them feel like that is a new experience They want to repeat again and talk to their friends about then let’s explore doing it if it’s just because of you know doing tech for tech Sakes and you know, not I’m not ticking that box, you know for a while I was people people ring me up going all they are that’s the thing to do. I’m like well why
James Giglio (19:09.479)
Yeah.
Tom Bowers (19:35.01)
I don’t want to, is it going to enhance the experience of the audience at home? No. How many people are actually going to go out and buy a new piece of hardware to view these experiences? You know, it’s, can save you a lot of R and D by saying it’s not worth doing. I’m sure you’ve had the same experiences, James.
James Giglio (19:39.008)
yeah.
James Giglio (19:45.681)
I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you, I was just gonna say, I can’t tell you the amount of prospecting or client calls that we had where they describe a technology to their understanding and say, this is what we wanna do, but in turn, they were talking about something entirely different that.
using tech for the sake of tech and as a technology company, although it does pain me to move away from certain engagement, leveraging technology, I would be doing them a disservice by not requesting the proper methodology to get their message.
communicated, right? And so, yeah, I can totally relate to that. Earlier, you had mentioned some work with Sky, and again, my limited knowledge of the media landscape overseas, I do know that that’s probably one of the largest sports networks, or networks in general, in Europe. Can you talk about what the media landscape in the UK specifically looks like in comparison to the rest of Europe?
Tom Bowers (20:52.418)
So, well, if we’re going to talk about in terms of sport, the Monopoly really is held by Sky still. I there is patches of games, premiership games that are shown on TNT Sports and on Amazon. But the majority of the Monopoly is still held by Sky, which is great in some respects. It’s from an audience expectation point of view. They know where to go.
But in some respects, it can be problematic with the restrictions that are given around the Premier League, you know, and Sky’s agreement with what they can and can do with that content. So we’ve been looking at how we can innovate around the matches. you know, with mixed reality, for instance, we have done a few pitches recently for Sky about how we can…
circumnavigate the rights deals that are in place that they’ve got directly with the Premier League, but also look at new opportunities that potentially could be extension from the programming. So for instance, during the half time, could we film extra content that doesn’t actually infringe on the actual game itself, but it looks like a seamless transition into a brand sponsored opportunity that could be either outside the venue or in the venue.
And it’s these kind of approaches that haven’t ever been done before. know, rights deals are very, they’ve been the same for many years and we really had to kind of push, you know, how we approach this to kind of navigate the deals that are in place, but also suggest new things where you can exploit new technology that’s going to attract a brand at a premium price. Cause ultimately this, you know, sadly TV advertising money is going down.
But there’s big brands, if there’s something new and cool they can go and shout about, they wanna be part of it. But the broadcasters only wanna shove it around headline content that’s gonna get a lot of eyeballs. And at the moment that is sport. Sport is still staying at that level. So there are challenges about what you can do around that content. And we’ve spoken to TNT around similar things, they’ve got.
Tom Bowers (23:10.434)
They’ve got bigger appetite because they’re a smaller fish and they’ve got a small slice of the pie, but they want to do more with it. They want to show willing to of perhaps get more next time when the rights deals are up for grabs. So in the UK, we haven’t actually, we’ve recently done a mixed reality execution for the Bundesliga in Germany, but that was purely an editorial execution.
James Giglio (23:38.504)
Right. Right.
Tom Bowers (23:39.138)
which the DFL funded themselves. So was no brand sponsor, they didn’t pay for it, which Sky haven’t got as a broadcaster, don’t have the financial budget to be able to go right. We wanna do this big bombastic mixed reality execution off our own back that, you know, we don’t know what the return will be. I’ve tried to say, we’ve tried to discuss it with them that it’s possible, they know it’s possible, but they want to do it as a brand sponsored activation.
James Giglio (24:06.526)
Sure.
Tom Bowers (24:07.234)
But then obviously by doing that, you’ve got to then circumnavigate all the issues with the rights. there is opportunity. There’s definitely appetite within the landscape at the moment as it stands. But also we’re trying to approach it from the league perspective as well and saying, you know, do you want to champion this as being the first league to do something editorially? So then they finance it and then skiers have to kind of fall in line. So which is what we did with the DFL.
There are multiple approaches. I think, you know, that’s how the landscape is in terms of innovation, where things sit with live television and, you know, so I can navigate in the right direction. I’m not saying it’s just all about sport. You know, there are opportunities. I think we looked at some opportunities around the recent Brit Awards. It was on a couple of nights ago with MasterCard and how that can evolve with different, you know, individual innovation opportunities, which didn’t quite come to fruition, but the talks are happening.
But yeah, it’s not, don’t think that compared to the US, you know, seeing how some sort of visual innovation executions have kind of been done over there, there’s not as many barriers that we have over here with kind of off-con regulations, clear cast regulations. There’s lots of things that have been in place for a long, long time to do things differently is you have to jump for a lot of hoops.
James Giglio (25:26.334)
for.
Tom Bowers (25:35.734)
and the Brits are very much for tradition. So doing things differently is often a bigger challenge than other territories.
James Giglio (25:38.619)
sure. Right.
Sure, now on that note, there’s an obvious trend here in the States that a lot of the streaming platform services are aligning themselves with particular sports leagues. So Apple, for example, is now the official streaming partner of Major League Soccer. I believe Netflix just won, I can’t recall the amount of games, but they’ve partnered with the NFL. watching…
the NFL on Netflix is going to be a possibility as soon as this coming season. And even Prime Video, you see that now on Thursday night games. Are there many teams and leagues aligned with alternative platforms like streaming networks versus a traditional sky or?
Tom Bowers (26:29.134)
I think, I mean, Amazon Prime do have some Premier League games, not many, but they do. I think the interesting thing about, mean, and I’m really excited about the shakeup that’s been occurred by these rights deals being acquired through these big streamers. mean, obviously Netflix also got the WWE as well, which is big on fandom, huge. And because there is a…
a visual infrastructure that people have to access, unlike a terrestrial television channel, where they are used to an interface, they are used to making selections within that. There’s nothing to say that within that infrastructure, it can accommodate and house immersive lean forward experiences around that live content, which haven’t actually come into play yet. We’ve pitched a few ideas, but I think the appetite of doing things, know, and creating that
global moment where fans can all tune in at whatever o’clock in their time zone to dial into a global fan community around a specific sport they like. I think it’s really exciting. Obviously we’ve had it with boxing for some number of years and you pay per view. mean, over here it costs I think 40 pounds to watch a a premium boxing match, which is huge money. But the innovation around that still has been very much you’re just streaming the live.
match, but there’s no interactivity or enhanced services around that. There’s been second screen experiences, not what the possibility I think is, you’ve got this, you’ve got with kind of Amazon Prime and Netflix, Apple TV, that being able to bolt something on or having a separate simulcast that has more enhanced experiences associated with, perhaps even potentially pay a little bit more to, I don’t know.
James Giglio (28:11.358)
Thank
Tom Bowers (28:24.43)
be beamed ringside and asked to do a live Q &A with the players potentially after the experience. The list is really endless and I think because it’s all that UI is already built, audience are familiar with it, how we see and engage with live sports at a television level now, I think it’s gonna rapidly change over the next year or so.
James Giglio (28:44.286)
Yeah, I agree with you 100 % and my working theory as of last year, and I don’t think it’s anything too revolutionary in terms of my statement here, but the future ability, and even in the short term, the way that fans are going to be able to consume the live broadcast through a Meta headset or an Apple headset, as we discussed, is going to be at their fingertips, literally.
you know, by onboarding because, you know, streaming services are great for binge watching and, you know, having a catalog of movies. And so when sports started to incorporate into those, there was a lot of questions and head scratch, scratching. But I think to your point, it’s the future is really being able to maximize the capability of those platforms and how they can plug into different experience and give you access that other networks cannot. And so,
Tom Bowers (29:38.51)
Totally.
James Giglio (29:42.249)
cutting the cord, so to speak, as they say here, and with cable is definitely a movement that’s been happening over the last few years, and now streaming content has gotten so expensive, we’re kind of back at ground zero of like, where to invest your money to watch any movies or sports, but I do think that the big leg up in a technology perspective is these streaming platforms being able to incorporate mixed reality and really give an unprecedented.
access to the event. then, you know, conversely, I think, you know, the leagues are going to have to get smart with some type of revenue share or income distribution with the teams that are going to be competing against those service from fans going to the game because heck, if I can be courtside on my couch versus paying $1,000, you know, in the dead of winter, you know, that’s an interesting value proposition. And so
You know, if I’m a team owner, have to be thinking about that stuff.
Tom Bowers (30:43.618)
think, yeah, it’s really interesting with the way things go. mean, let’s be honest, part of the diversification of the broadcast landscape is the lack of younger demographics viewing content. are not, they’re on YouTube, they’re diving into content, they’re not in a more linear fashion and not even really as much on streaming. So to grapple with that audience and attract them,
I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen what Nickelodeon have been doing with… Yeah.
James Giglio (31:15.454)
Absolutely love it. I, when I, when that first showcased, was, or debuted, I was so happy that that came to life. Yeah.
Tom Bowers (31:23.168)
It’s brilliant, it’s genius. And I think you’re basically re-syndicating the same stream, but with a whole new set of commentators, whole new set of visuals. And I think we’re gonna start seeing more models like that, where it creates this whole new set for IP for specifically targeted to a certain demographic that’s gonna being presented in a visual format that they found familiar a la.
YouTube and how that is very visual and loads of graphics and the mixed reality stuff. I think all of that, we’re gonna have super bowl spin-offs where there will be characters running around and they will be tailored for a certain demographic. And I think we’re gonna start seeing much more of that in terms of how the rights to that are spun off to target specific demographics and where they’re watching it. And I think.
James Giglio (32:14.044)
Yeah, I think you’re right too, because there’s a subset of fans that watch football, for example, and they have to mute the game because they can’t take it, tolerate the commentary from the announcers. But when you plug in Amazon’s or AWS real stats and you’re seeing the speed of a running back or the trajectory and length and distance of a pass, that gets really compelling. And I think about baseball where
like the UK, the baseball fans, big portion of them are very traditional and they like baseball to be this relic of a game. And the league, think, has suffered from that and now they’re finally changing some of the rules to kind of speed things up and so on and so forth. baseball is another great example because it is a four to five hour experience and if you’re just watching pitch counts like.
you know, that’s gonna get old pretty quickly. Starting to incorporate these animations and different technologies is really compelling. I had actually, that reminds me, we had worked with another company by the name of Arc Tourist based in San Francisco and their platform was, they had a software platform that is able to create volumetric
capture content in live rendered streaming, right? And so volumetric capture traditionally has been a methodology of athletes or actors go into a studio, there’s a thousand cameras doing a 360 recording of said actor or athlete to be built into some other experience, whether it’s a AR experience or some other engagement. But we had
worked with them to install and integrate into other 3D cameras at a baseball stadium, right? And then leveraging their software and their platform to render that content to create a 3D instant replay visualization like that’s never been done before. A couple years, Intel had their cameras in a few stadiums that you can get different vantage points of a particular game, but…
James Giglio (34:33.554)
being able to do it live. if you think of a play at the plate and then you’re at the Jumbotron and now you’re getting a zoned in like 360 perspective of the play or the tag, you know, it was really compelling. again, another way of technology moving forward into, you know, in game broadcasting.
Tom Bowers (34:52.928)
Is that able to convert the players into different characters? I think I might have seen different examples of that in real time.
James Giglio (34:59.558)
That would be more towards trick shots technology. I have seen that, right? Where you turn the athletes into gremlins or whatever.
Tom Bowers (35:07.63)
Okay.
Tom Bowers (35:11.488)
Yeah, which can be done now in real time. The speed of the development is insane of like where you can get to now. You don’t have to kind of break, it’s pre-rendered character animation. It’s just done in live situ, which is amazing.
James Giglio (35:24.2)
Yep. So Tom, we’re nearing the end of time here for us, but I do want to talk about one more topic. And we briefly talked about this offline, but 10 years ago or so, I received a phone call from Chelsea FC. I was just so blown. We were a new company. We didn’t have much or many clients or content, but.
You know, we had a good message and our presence in this space about enhancing the game day experience. And so I must have talked to their executives for nearly two hours learning about the culture of sports consumption in England and what it means to go to a Premier League match.
And we talked about what it’s like as an American and how brand integration has come more into play. And again, I think we’re further along than 10, 11 years ago when I had the initial conversation from a team ownership perspective, because the big trend here now is these properties and arenas, they’re just not a conduit for the game. mean, these are entertainment districts in many cities. And so,
owners are really looking at hotels and mixed use retail experiences and treating it more like a a sub city of sorts and um
You know, we talked about that and the trend has, you know, obviously progressed where more and more, maybe 12 years ago, maybe there was four stadiums that had those compounds and now it’s like when a new stadium is built, it’s, here’s the apartment complex, here’s the hotel, here’s the casino and it’s like, by the way, here’s the ballpark. so, you know, the one thing that I was really interested in hearing was, you know, the single most important thing for a fan.
James Giglio (37:19.73)
during a game or a match is literally getting there and watching it. The door’s open, you’re in, the game’s over, you’re back at the pub. And that is so different. It was so different to what we incorporated into our game day experience where, gates are open three hours early, why don’t you come and shop and do these experience with our corporate sponsors and grab lunch and really take this Disney theme park approach to it.
I’m curious as of 2025, February of 2025, is the institution of a premier match the same, you know, in terms of culturally, or are you starting to see trends that have become a little bit more corporate sponsored, Americanized, if you will.
Tom Bowers (38:07.918)
Wow, what a question. think, so I need to look at this at different angles. So I’d say in terms of ambition, I think a lot of clubs, particularly in the Premier League, I I use Tottenham as an example, their stadium, it’s now like a multi-purpose stadium where, know, Beyonce will come as well to specifically target artists to come and host their, you know, part of their world tour within their infrastructure because they can support it.
great 5G Wi-Fi, it’s got merchandise stands that can be tailored accordingly, they’ve got affiliations with local hotels that are part of the package, so they can offer a premium experience. Is it at the level of the US? No. So that’s definitely, we’re seeing elements within the Premier League of different teams, Manchester is heading that way as well, where they’re trying to build these kind of…
bigger opportunities and offerings where it’s multi-purpose other than just the fans coming to the venue. The venue is becoming more than just a football match venue. It’s multi-purpose or can be multi-purpose to make them more money. But on the other side of that, there is, I would say, over 50 % of football teams and clubs in the UK that some of them don’t even have screens in the venue.
It’s very old school stadium still. They haven’t upgraded their infrastructure for the last 30 odd years. So, and their budgets are really tight. So that is just like echelons away from them. But the fan is, know, had a conversation with one of them earlier today, you often don’t choose who you support. It’s just something that you, you know, it’s handed down through your father, you’re born into, yes.
James Giglio (39:34.782)
Wow.
James Giglio (39:49.918)
Right.
James Giglio (39:59.933)
You’re born into.
Tom Bowers (40:03.618)
But interestingly, there’s been a bill that’s been passed in parliament last year called the Fan Engagement Bill. So it’s trying to level up the opportunities that fans have with decisions that are made in their clubs. And I’m hoping that that’s gonna cascade down into how leagues particularly will help inject some money into being able to offer more standardized fan engagement opportunities to allow these clubs to level up the infrastructure to sort of…
I’m not saying they’re gonna build like skyscrapings, know, stadiums with hotel complexes and that’s, you know, that’s not, that’s never gonna work. It’s never gonna marry up to sort of, you know, going to game at Macclesfield FC, you know, it’s very much still a pint and a pie, you know, that’s the vibe. But in terms of, you know, every fan, even irrespective of disposal income, most people have got a decent phone in their pockets.
James Giglio (40:49.054)
All right.
Tom Bowers (40:59.32)
So they’re aware of what the possibilities are and it’s bit enabled to offer an extension of that to personalise the experience within the stadium and venue infrastructure, which some venues do not have in the basic means at all. So we need to address, I think, how that looks for the 50 % of fans that are supporting in clubs and teams that where their venue is nothing like, you know, the one or two kind of glimmers of
what you’ve mentioned that’s very much the case in the US. That infrastructure is just not there. I think there is an ambition to create something more experiential. And I think it’s really interesting what like Cosms are trying to capitalize on and that kind of mix between those fans that can’t really afford to go or regularly to the game, but creating a center where they can go, it’s more accessible, but yet it’s got this kind of bigger infrastructure of technology.
James Giglio (41:35.048)
Got it.
James Giglio (41:43.431)
short.
Tom Bowers (41:57.282)
It allows you to feel close to the experience of the next best thing. Whether we start seeing some of those kind of centres that cater for multiple teams over here, I think that could be a midway advancement rather than the teams having to do that themselves. I think we are going to see that eventually over the next 10 years, but it’s going to take a lot of time because I think there’s really inherent issues that need to be dealt with first around levelling up fan engagement, which…
James Giglio (42:24.734)
Sure.
Tom Bowers (42:26.936)
We started to do here, yeah, we’re just literally scratching.
James Giglio (42:29.776)
Okay, okay, and this is just a tag along question to that and then we’ll wrap, promise. I know we have a hard stuff coming up soon here, but so again, speaking to consumerism, right, is the American economy, right? And so living and attending events in America, you’re…
so used to brand awareness, right? And whether advertisements on television or billboards or, you know, seeing a, getting a Bud Light at a stadium, right? As the number one sponsor in sports, you see the signage, you see the brand integration everywhere you go. And when I started MVP, I mean, that was my thesis, right? In the sense, hey, brands, let’s create a fictionless communication method through technology.
to gain new consumers because, you know, do I want a key chain or do I want to check out a VR experience presented by MasterCard, right? Like, that’s what I wanted to do. So that was my thesis and that’s kind of how we built the business. And so in thinking about that culture and philosophy of consumerism, what is the sentiment?
with fans and brand integration? Is it anti-Adidas or anti-Samsung or anti, like I don’t want to see any corporate logos or be in part of any sort of corporation involved in my team. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Tom Bowers (44:01.774)
Well, obviously all teams have a sponsor, whether it be a local brand, know, from very light second division, there’s, know, a local fencing company will sponsor the team. Obviously a lot lower level financially than, you know, a seller of, you know, one of the premiership teams. So I think fans are used to the, you know, sponsorship is what creates the money that’s associated with.
improving infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. There is a awareness of it. I don’t think there’s a disdain for it. I think from my experience, in terms of fan experience, if a brand is doing something authentic for the fan, then I don’t see the fans have any issue with that brand at all. It’s when it becomes divisive to that brand’s more important than them, then it becomes problematic. they’re trying to have too much of a say or changing culturally something.
James Giglio (44:48.133)
Okay, good, good.
Tom Bowers (45:00.248)
which has happened in the past. I think if they do something, they understand the fans that they were trying to work with, they try and create new experiences that, you know, their involvement can bring that fan closer to the action in some capacity that feels authentic, then fans don’t, I don’t think fans mind that. I mean, there might be pitted incidences where that’s not the case, but on the whole, I generally feel there’s not that…
know, level of, the brand’s involved with that team or for that experience, I don’t want to get involved with it because it’s too in your face. I think in the US, because it is so the other way, is very, the brands are everywhere and it is very big and bombastic. Everything’s jazzy, everything’s larger than life. We don’t have that here. We do have sponsorship, but it’s done in a very lower key way. And I think…
James Giglio (45:42.888)
Sure.
James Giglio (45:56.414)
Sure.
Tom Bowers (45:59.298)
I’m not saying that that might make change in the future as there’s a bit more of a land grab to do more cooler stuff. I hope that’s not the case and I would never suggest it. think it’s got to feel complimentary, I think. at the moment, the brands very much are respective of that relationship between team, league and them as a brand and their importance or relationship between those three.
James Giglio (46:28.68)
Right.
Tom Bowers (46:28.718)
Will it change? Possibly. But where we’re at right now, think that the combination feels authentic and the fan feels it that way too.
James Giglio (46:38.354)
Great. Yeah, absolutely perfect. Tom, this was an extremely enlightening show for us and me personally. So I do appreciate your time and hopefully we can meet one day in person. I love London and I know that you’re there. Yeah, I’ll take you up on that. I actually was in London two summers ago, which I had a great time. But what we’d like to do is extend our guests to our listeners. And if there’s any way
Tom Bowers (46:51.018)
Absolutely, James. We welcome any time.
James Giglio (47:08.43)
Any listener can find you your preferred method of connection, whether that’s LinkedIn or your social medias. What would you recommend for them?
Tom Bowers (47:16.226)
Well, I’m more active on LinkedIn than anywhere else and I’m on there on a regular basis. So probably best to connect with me there. And yeah, we’re on the conversation. So it’s Tom Bowers too. Who would have thought there’s a Tom Bowers one and a Tom Bowers before me, but there is James. mean, the world may stop revolving. I thought when I had to go for the two at the end of my name, but that’s the reality.
James Giglio (47:25.0)
And that’s just Tom Bowers.
Okay.
Well, you know.
James Giglio (47:38.718)
Well, that is great. Well, thank you so much again, Tom, and to our listeners, thank you for joining the latest MVP Interactive podcast, and we will see you next time.
