For fans, the centre of gravity in sports media has shifted.
That was the core of a keynote interview at the ISC Fan Engagement Summit with Global Fan Network CEO Brett Best – an influencer and content business that grew from supporter-founded channels like the Arsenal-focused AFTV.
Over the past decade, GFN has been at the heart of a trend that has reset the terms of the sports media conversation. As technology and distribution have challenged sport’s live rights models, fans have also turned to podcasts and highly reactive YouTube channels for deeper discussion of their favourite teams.
YouTube remains at the centre of GFN’s activities but increasingly, it is moving into the living room. GFN, Best explained, is pioneering what it calls Social TV: a hybrid of social media and the traditional TV model that brings creators and influencers on to broadcast channels with their own formats and IP.
It has done this by embracing FAST – free ad-supported streaming television, which is now embedded into multiple connected TV platforms. GFN Soccer TV has now launched on 13 of those platforms including Samsung TV Plus, Rakuten and Plex Titan.
That project resulted from a powerful insight: the second-screen behaviours of the 2010s, where fans would follow social feeds on mobile as they watched live games, have now been inverted. More and more audiences are following live streams of creators on their TVs as games or highlights play out on their phones.
This is not the only way in which these worlds are converging. Traditional broadcasters like Sky Sports are looking to the creator community to support their own programming, and adopting formats with roots in social platforms.
“There’s a place for what they do and there’s a place for us,” Best said. “And then there are collaborations between the two.”
Rights holders and broadcasters are also becoming more flexible in how they distribute rights. LaLiga, for example, now has clips incorporated into the podcast The Rest is Football, while the Bundesliga is showing one game a week in the UK with the independent creator Mark Goldbridge.
GFN is keeping an open mind on live rights but Best is eager to double down on its community capabilities, becoming part of the conversation “within WhatsApp groups”.
That is a powerful asset for brand partnerships, even if there is a process required to align brand guidelines with the fast-moving, sometimes chaotic GFN environment.
The reward for partners is “genuine, deep, authentic behaviour which matches what the brand is doing with what the fan is doing”. Best cites the example of bookmaker William Hill, which enjoys organic integration with AFTV’s lively and clippable prediction shows.
GFN is committed to deepening those dynamics – a process that will continue in person as well as on screen.
“You actually do have to have boots on the ground,” Best said. “The third space is really powerful but you have to actually feel like you’re part of fans’ real life as well.”
The lower cost of creating TV channels is stimulating new possibilities all the time. In Kenya, Best revealed, GFN is developing a broadcast channel that will combine global AFTV content with localised content and conversation.