EverPass Takes Investment From TKO, Acquires UPshow Enabling Bars to Stream Sunday Ticket

EverPass Takes Investment From TKO, Acquires UPshow Enabling Bars to Stream Sunday Ticket

EverPass Media, a commercial business-focused media platform, recently took on a strategic investment from TKO Group Holdings.

The company concurrently purchased UPshow, an entertainment and performance marketing business that gives it streaming capabilities. The acquisition makes NFL Sunday Ticket available to be streamed in bars and restaurants across the country for the first time.

EverPass Media was formed by RedBird Capital Partners and 32 Equity, the NFL’s strategic investment arm. It was created to make it easier for commercial establishments to access and showcase the growing number of live sporting events that are distributed exclusively via streaming platforms (see: NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV).

The bet is that venue owners and operators worldwide will want a single platform capable of controlling all their programming, and that EverPass will be positioned to be it if/when live sports are exclusively delivered direct-to-consumer.

“The legacy delivery mechanisms [of cable and satellite] are not able to accommodate where the market is going,” Kevin LaForce (managing director, RedBird Capital Partners) said. “As subscription streaming services continue to grow share of consumption, more and more games are going to be available exclusively [on streaming platforms]. EverPass was built to [serve as] an end-to-end solution that [aggregates commercial rights and] over the long term can revolutionize how [these] establishments [showcase and use] content.”

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Historically, the NFL has relied on satellite distribution to place its out-of-market games into commercial establishments. A quarter century long partnership with DirecTV enabled the league to build a robust network of commercial establishments with Sunday Ticket subscriptions (think: tens of thousands).

But cable and satellite are no longer sufficient pay TV solutions for those venues.

“You can’t have five different subscription apps on 15 screens,” LaForce said. “It doesn’t scale, notwithstanding the technical challenges.” 

So, RedBird aligned with the NFL, built a new digital media entity, and introduced its product to the market ~15 months ago.

EverPass benefited from the league’s decision to grant residential Sunday Ticket distribution rights to YouTube TV. The move opened the door for the company to include the NFL’s out of market games within its product from the outset.

Everpass has been working to stockpile an arsenal of sports content since partnering with various rightsholders and distribution channels, including NBC on Peacock Sports Pass (PSP). PSP includes B1G football and basketball games, as well as EPL action.

“We had the exclusive [NFL] wildcard game last season [through that partnership too],” LaForce noted. It was “a perfect use case for the primary basis of [our] business model.”

EverPass was able to carry the momentum into the summer. And in July, it took on an investment from TKO.

The tie-up “made sense for a variety of reasons,” LaForce said. 

Most notably, TKO’s track record as a successful media operator and rightsholder. Everpass is also expected to eventually land the exclusive commercial distribution rights to UFC and WWE programming, which would further bolster its offering. 

“We are in active conversations with most key rights holders in the U.S.,” LaForce said.

The company seeks to construct a portfolio of live game inventory –particularly, streaming exclusive or out-of-market events– that it can package and deliver to commercial establishments in a single easy-to-use solution.

The strategy is akin to what RedBird and 32 Equity did with On Location Experiences (OLE) and Super Bowl tickets back in 2015.

EverPass is taking an asset that was already fully distributed and regaining control of it to facilitate a better market outcome. It’s also concurrently leveraging the extraordinary demand for the NFL to help other sports properties gain distribution.

It’s worth mentioning that Endeavor, majority owner of TKO, took ownership of OLE after the PE firm sold the business to them in 2020.

EverPass is doing all of this with a new IP-based digital delivery mechanism that improves the user experience and opens doors to several new revenue streams (the tech replaces a series of ‘dumb’ pipes).

Its app allows venue owners and operators to easily discover and program televisions with premium content and interactive experiences designed to drive foot traffic and time spent at the establishment.

It “will also support brands seeking to reach high-value consumers in a highly targeted, ROI-measurable way,” LaForce said.

While EverPass is a digital solution, the company remains focused on distributing the NFL’s out-of-market games, and the rest of its offering, as broadly as possible. In fact, the plan is to keep Sunday Ticket on DirecTV through at least the ’24 season.

The company would prefer to build on the services’ existing audience rather than having to backfill lost subscribers.

“We signed a partnership with Charter/Spectrum, which is a marketing deal where they're going to sell the out-of-market package alongside their commercial services in their systems for the first time,” LaForce said. 

The company is expected to announce similar deals with other distributors too.

It’s not clear how big the total addressable market for a robust commercial sports content offering may be. But if there are upwards of 60,000 commercial establishments in the U.S., capturing 20-25% of the remaining TAM would seemingly represent a meaningful growth opportunity for EverPass. 

Sunday Ticket is believed to be in somewhere around half.

RedBird, which remains in control of the business after the TKO investment, believes that is achievable. 

And it’s not just domestic establishments that the company can pursue either. EverPass tech can sit on top of any pipe in the world. 

So, how big can the business get?

“It’s not hard to imagine a world where everything is available via subscription streaming services, plus a growing number of direct-to-consumer offerings nationally and locally, as well as out-of-market content,” LaForce said. 

If EverPass is the way all of that content is made broadly available to fans on behalf of rights owners and holders, at scale, worldwide, then the answer is likely as large as a unicorn.

“Generally, our goal is to build multi-billion-dollar companies,” LaForce said. “We have high hopes for this one.”

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