NEW YORK — Live broadcasting isn’t a novel concept as it’s been around for decades, according to Kayvon Beykpour. Still, in the modern digital era, the Periscope Chief Executive Officer and his team at the streaming arm of Twitter are changing how sports fans interact with the content they love.
He sat down with SportTechie at the Twitter offices in New York City to discuss how Periscope is competing in the live streaming space and working with various sports properties.
When asked about rival Facebook and last year’s reported publishing with media companies, celebrities and athletes who utilize Facebook Live, Beykpour admitted “it’s sort of flattering because a new entrant comes into the space, they’re desperate and want to pay people off.”
“I think other companies explore the cold hard cash model. … That definitely works in some cases but it’s not a model that is terribly scalable,” he added. “We’re interested in building a product that people love to use and want to use for the sake of using it.”
Beykpour said that through building and continuing to reinvent a product that users want to use, Periscope can “put a pretty big dent into the ecosystem.” With the recent transition of six-second looping social platform Vine to a Camera app, Beykpour explained that it now allows Twitter and Periscope to “double down” on their focus areas, with one of those being the ‘live’ experience for users.
Shoulder content — as Beykpour described, including NFL analyst Cris Carter’s live broadcasts during Thursday Night Football this past season and retired tennis star Andy Roddick commentating on Periscope during the 2016 U.S. Open — are additional ways to complement linear broadcasting. In the latter example, Roddick partnered with blue-chip brands Grey Goose and Chase as the first test cases for a new advertising model for Periscope, according to Beykpour.
“To be able to watch the event through Andy’s eyes was a new way to engage in the same content that we knew people would be interested in,” he said.
The two brands amplified Roddick’s broadcasts through paid promotion on Twitter and pre-rolls in front of the live video. Beykpour said that the business model of playing middle man between content creators and brands is still in its infancy. When asked about the financial arrangement among the three parties, he didn’t elaborate on specifics regarding how advertising money is shared and if there’s a separate talent fee for Roddick.
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“Our role is to connect the dots,” said Beykpour about Periscope’s position. “It’s a model where everyone wins. Viewers want to see this content, the creators want to make a living and Chase and Grey Goose want to get their brand in front of a wider audience. … You’re not writing checks for someone and putting them on payroll, which is another strategy and a valid one. For us, we think this is an interesting model that deserves to be explored.”
For other instances of sports organizations or athletes going live, such as tennis star Roger Federer bringing fans into a recent practice session, money doesn’t necessarily change hands but rather, Periscope works with sports influencers and athletes, like Federer, along with media, professional teams, leagues and athletic departments to brainstorm new creative ways to leverage the platform.
“Everyone fits so natively into Twitter that we get to piggy back off of these relationships that Twitter already has with a lot of athletes and media companies,” Beykpour said. “The kind of adoption we see is people were using Twitter already to publish their content, post their Tweets. Now, some subset of their brain power goes to using this new medium of ‘live’. The way it fits into our strategy is that we want Periscope to be a window into the world.”
Below are a couple other insights from Beykpour on Vine and where eSports fits into the Periscope strategy.
On how the transition of Vine to a Camera App impacts Periscope and live video … Vine doesn’t impact us. Vine was an amazing brand. Like fabric, it was less aligned with the direction and the core of the company. Twitter is what’s happening, and Twitter is a way to see what the pulse of the world is. The reality was Twitter already had a video product. Vine had an incredible community, but it was one that given the direction of the company and given resources, it didn’t make sense to continue. That was a tough decision.
On where Periscope stands now with the growing buzz around eSports in 2017 … Our support for eSports right now is really nascent, but we’re excited about it for a few reasons. One, you have this incredibly rich community that you know exists. You have gamers who are adored by their fans. They’re spending a shit ton of time in their craft playing, and it suits itself to a live environment. Twitter has a devout community of gamers. It’s one of the biggest verticals on Twitter. … Only until Periscope Producer launched a few months ago could a gamer go ‘live’ from a console or computer.