As sports viewing becomes increasingly fragmented across streaming services and traditional television, fans are finding it more difficult to locate live games and related programming. John Morash, global sports lead at Gracenote, says unified sports metadata is helping solve that challenge by connecting viewers with live broadcasts regardless of where they air. By bringing together video information, sports schedules, and rights data into a single source, platforms can create a more seamless discovery experience for fans.
Beyond helping viewers find live games, Gracenote's technology also connects audiences with related content that keeps them engaged long after the final whistle. From pregame coverage and highlight reels to documentaries and athlete-focused programming, the platform links content across teams, leagues, and individual athletes through a unified data model. This richer discovery experience helps streaming services increase engagement while making it easier for sports fans to follow the teams, players, and stories they care about most.
Alejandro Piñero:
All right, welcome back to our coverage here at StreamTV Show in Denver and I'm very happy to be with John from Gracenote. Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us today.
John Morash:
Thanks for having us.
Alejandro Piñero:
Absolutely. And we're chatting today about a topic that to me personally is very close to my heart, which is that fragmentation with sports. It's a great content to engage with audiences, create that common experience, but there is that challenge of being able to have it all together and creating that experience. So let's start with talking about what the opportunity there specifically for streamers and aggregators around sports specifically.
John Morash:
Yeah, so I think you hit it right on the head. If you're a sports fan of any club or any league, the fragmented viewing experience is really challenging these days. So I'm from Canada myself, and in order to support all my favorite teams of franchises, I need about seven different streaming services. So it's a well-known problem. And Gracenote has a state of play report where we did a little bit of research and surveys say that 61% of users fight it harder than ever to locate live games. So at Gracenote, we're trying to solve that problem and really connect users with live games regardless of where they show across linear, across streaming. And I think that creates a great opportunity with a lot of the platforms because it's a challenge right now. It's a challenge to point people to live games. It's a challenge to enhance fandom on your platform.
People lose interest very quickly if they can't find the sports that they love and they enjoy. And our technology by connecting industry leading video information with sports metadata has really attempted to solve that challenge.
Alejandro Piñero:
So what's the market saying in terms of what it needs to address that fragmentation?
John Morash:
Yeah, I think it's really a unified data set because if you think about it, sports rights are fragmented across many different platforms, rights holders, people are investing billions of dollars in rights. So a lot of times finding that data and aggregating it is very challenging. So what the market is saying is, "Hey, we need a single source. We need the ability to, if I'm a Barker fan or I get a fan of North American sports, I need one place where I can go to where I can get all those feeds, not just the core here's the main national telecast, but if I'm a local market and I want my local announcers or in Canada, if I want a French language service of a particular show, you need one place that can connect all that via one ID. And what we're finding with the opportunity is we've got a ton of global partners like platforms, traditional, paid TV, streamers, of course, that rely on the Gracenote ID.
It's the currency in the video ecosystem. And now we've been able to connect that to a deeper portfolio of sports data and help drive those users who've relied on Gracenote IDs to now get access to those live games and a lot of related content and other information that goes with it.
Alejandro Piñero:
So let's pick up on that last point really in terms of how Gracenote fits into this puzzle and what you guys are doing to ensure that seamless experience to support your teams, your franchise, your athletes even, or just the community. Where do you guys fit into that?
John Morash:
Well, I think Alejandro, from our little talk ahead of time, we're both big sports fans and it's more than just the live game now. It's what else can you give the users to keep them engaged, keep them on your platform? And it spans a lot of different areas. I mean, one of the key features that we have is we call related content. So if I'm a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi or Tom Brady, really any figurehead in sports, I want to know any program they're involved with outside of the game. So yeah, sure would be able to point you to the game saying, "Hey, this Barker game's happened this time or Argentina's playing in the World Cup like they were yesterday. Here's where you can watch it." But what do you do when the lights are off? And we have the ability to connect to all shoulder content and programming.
So pregame shows, highlight clips. And then if you take a little bit further to docu-series and to other content right around that we do it at the league level, athlete level, team level. So if I am a fan of a club and I feel really strongly about how much I value the content and the athletes that I follow, it's like we want to give you everything through one ID and our technology allows our partners.
Alejandro Piñero:
That's amazing. Well, as a sports fan and as a fan of this industry, thank you for doing that. And John, thanks so much for dropping by as well. Great to chat here in Denver and have a great show.
John Morash:
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.