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July 10, 2023

Play Anywhere Wants to Help Leagues, Media Partners Monetize Interactive Rights

Play Anywhere wants to help content owners, broadcasters/rights holders, and distributors deliver interactive viewing experiences across live, VOD, and highlight clips.

Its patented solution, which plugs into existing linear and digital platforms, allows viewers to enjoy an enhanced version of the broadcast and to “play, bet, and buy while watching,” Peter Scott (chief strategy officer, Play Anywhere) said.

The platform includes a B2B clearinghouse system that collects and distributes sponsorship, advertising, and affiliate fees to stakeholders (think: Plaid).

“We’re enabling the monetization of interactive rights,” Scott said.

The company recently announced its first deal with a sports league, a strategic partnership with La Liga.

“We’ve gone live with LaLiga Pass, their direct-to-consumer product in Indonesia and Thailand, with free-to-play games and e-commerce,” Scott said.

Come ’23-’24, all of La Liga's broadcast partners will have the option of implementing the interactive technology. The league has upwards of 100 media partners across the globe.

Play Anywhere was spun out of Warner Media. Scott previously served as Warner’s VP of emerging media and innovation.

The company has raised more than $8 million to date. It will announce an investment from a sports league in the coming weeks.

The emergence of streaming technology has enabled viewers to choose the version of the game they want to watch (think: alt-broadcasts). Interacting with the chosen feed is the next step in media’s evolution.

Fans “want the ability to watch the game with friends, buy a jersey, and order a pizza, all from one screen,” Scott said.

Well, at least some fans do. ~50% of LaLiga viewers in Indonesia and Thailand engaged with Play Anywhere's overlays this past season. The offering launched with ~20 games remaining in each club's season. 

Remember, that is how they are being trained on platforms like Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok.

Play Anywhere gives content owners, broadcasters/rightsholders, and distributors the opportunity to deliver interactive viewing experiences to bigger pieces of glass. Its software enables interactive ads (think: QR codes, L-Frames and pushbacks), and supports both e-commerce and gaming businesses.

“There’s a big opportunity because every league is trying to figure out how to incorporate betting into their feeds,” Scott said.

Play Anywhere is certainly not the first company to overlay live odds on a broadcast feed. The difference is its technology enables the viewer to place a wager from the screen they are watching

if

a low latency video solution exists (think: inside of a sportsbook app). The fan does not need to switch apps or move to a second screen.

The integrated environment should spur fan engagement and drive sports betting handle.

“Five or six years ago, Racing Post, [a British horse racing publisher,] began working with U.K. sportsbooks to integrate betting functionality inside its app. The idea was you never had to leave the application to make a bet, and it was incredibly successful,” Scott said.

Play Anywhere's clearinghouse connects the plumbing between OTT platforms and sportsbooks, e-commerce vendors, advertising agencies, DFS companies and other third-party partners so that real-money transactions can occur. Its back-end accounting and ledger system collects the fees generated from transactions, tracks the revenues in a transparent dashboard and then remunerates the various stakeholders accordingly. 

That last part is important.

Historically speaking, interactive rights have not been included in broadcast and data contracts. And broadcasters who pay tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars annually for live rights aren’t going to want their partners selling an interactive rights package to another media company; nor are they likely to be willing to pay incremental dollars for the rights at this stage. So, leagues who wish to pursue interactivity before their existing media pacts expire will likely need to cut in any/all other stakeholders on any revenues generated. 

Play Anywhere believes interactive rights, which give a rightsholders the ability to launch interactive experiences, open doors to a wealth of incoming producing opportunities.

The company will take in sports betting affiliate fees. It will also charge a flat $.25 fee on any wager placed via one of its overlays.

While gaming draws most of the headlines, Play Anywhere expects E-commerce and in-game advertising to have greater upside.

“We could bring the ability for a fan [watching a game] to buy a jersey with two clicks,” Scott said. There are also opportunities to charge “an advertiser a high CPM for the sponsorship of a moment of the game.”

While the latter isn’t a particularly novel concept, the digital nature of the Play Anywhere solution enables the company to trigger different sponsors based on region, the dynamics of the game, a specific athlete’s performance or event in the game, or a team or league event.    

“And at the same time, we’re capturing all the first party data in that interactivity,” Scott said. “So, while you’re in that panel picking a particular jersey or making a bet, that’s data we can now give to the leagues, and they can decide how they want to share with their partners.”

Play Anywhere believes it can build a “robust” business unlocking interactive rights for sports properties around the world. But it has plans to go into unscripted television too (think: cooking shows).

“People have been trying to sell the sweater Jennifer Aniston wore [on Friends] for 25 years. If you did that 10 years ago, who gets paid? Jennifer Aniston? The production company? NBC? TBS?,” Scott asked.

Play Anywhere’s platform can ensure all those parties do making it a viable business opportunity for the first time.

Expect more leagues to begin experimenting with broadcast interactivity now that the potential exists to turn the engagement into dollars.