The declining cost of Influence
Over the last 20 years, the world of taste making has dramatically fragmented and moved downstream, from traditional film and television celebrities to pseudo celebrities whose main objective is becoming famous and finding ways to monetize that celebrity. This evolution started with the advent of low-cost camera phones and free social platforms like YouTube and Facebook, and has expanded at a dizzying rate across most areas of our daily lives. The team at Cameo figured out that there was a large store of untapped wealth in ‘almost famous’ and ‘formerly famous’ personalities and created a successful platform to help unlock it. Clubhouse discovered that during a global pandemic that forced humankind to shelter-in-place, humanity’s interest in connecting with their fellow humans skyrocketed. This interest grew in ways that felt less packaged and more authentic. Tapping into this trend, they helped provide access to somewhat harder to reach pseudo celebrities like venture capitalists and such – all without the hair and makeup requirements that video mediums like Zoom entails.
All of these platforms in one way or another found a way to tap into a broader trend – the cost of access and influence is declining, and it’s becoming a lot cheaper to create and monetize it.
Audio drives the experience
During my youth, when my parents were away I would sneak into their bedroom to watch scary movies that were way past PG-13. One night while watching one of the OG versions of the Halloween horror movie franchise, I decided to creep out from under the bed where I was cowering and turn down the TV’s volume. I had one of those youthful epiphanies when I realized that if I turned the volume down, the scary movies became a lot “less scary.” That experience reinforced how impactful the audio soundtrack is when watching anything on a screen. The audio makes it fun, happy, sad, entertaining, irritating, and almost any other emotion you can imagine. The audio really does drive the visual experience.
Sportscasting 101
In 1921 Florent Gibson of the Pittsburgh Star newspaper broadcast the first sports commentary while covering the fight between Johnny Ray and Johnny “Hutch” Dundee in Pittsburgh, which is demarcated as the beginning of modern sportscasting. Today, the highest paid sportscaster in the US is a former quarterback who makes $17M per year as part of his role providing commentary on NFL football games. With the role of sportscasting broadly incorporated into the world of professional sports, it was only a matter of time before creative entrepreneurs would look for ways to unbundle the hardwired relationship between broadcasters and sporting events.
Enter Colorcast, an exciting new platform that changes the traditional sportscasting model by allowing anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection to become the sportscaster they always dreamed of. This very simple idea – that the video and audio feeds from live sporting events could be unbundled – is a powerful one. This new model frees the listener from the whims of whatever talking head has been placed on the screen in front of them.
With unbundling happening in so many aspects of our lives, why should sporting fans be trapped like lab rats in a maze that is not to their liking? Enter Colorcast. By unbundling the video and audio feeds, they have built a platform for creators to broadcast their own audio commentary of popular sporting event and unlocked a range of different experiences for listeners.
Do you like watching golf, but dislike listening to Jim Nantz call the Masters golf tournament because his monotone voice is too sleepy? Change the channel.
Are you a female sports fan who likes to watch Tom Brady on Sundays, but wish you could relate to the tone of the sportscasters more? Change the channel.
Are you a non-English speaking basketball fan who likes to watch the NBA, but the only broadcasts you can get are in spoken English? Change the channel.
Do you like to get together with your friends to watch college football on Sundays? Join the game and broadcast your own perspective. Become the channel.
Growing the Sportscasting talent pool
In many industries today human capital is scarce and there exists a supply/demand imbalance that favors the worker; the professional sportscasting business sits on the opposite side of this spectrum. When ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN or any major network airs a nationwide sports broadcast, there are typically only two or three sportscasters who provide audio commentary for the event. While there may be local sports announcers on a regional radio station or two calling the game in English or Spanish, at least in US markets, the number of sportscasters covering an event has structural limitations that keep it from growing very large. This creates a limited number of opportunities for individuals to pursue a career in sportscasting as there are so few positions available.
With Colorcast, there is an almost unlimited number of opportunities for budding sportscasters to test their skills and hone their game. Novice sportscasters need only a smartphone to start broadcasting a wide range of sporting events from whatever location they choose. A benefit to having a larger pool of talented sportscasters and more platforms like Colorcast where they can hone their craft, is that it will create more career opportunities in sportscasting where these new talents can grow and be heard.
Colorcast is one of the best things to happen to sports consumption in a long while. While initially some broadcasters may worry that Colorcast will reduce their listenership, they would be overlooking the important problem that Colorcast helps solve for them. Sports fans want a more personalized listener experience, and so far, the sports teams and broadcast networks haven’t delivered.
Colorcast creates stickier sports fans out of ones who might typically have lost interest and ‘churned.’ With Colorcast, sports teams have a new way to engage fans in a way that expands the audience by personalizing the listener experience. By giving fans a choice for how they listen to their favorite teams, Colorcast has created what may be the next great platform in sports fandom.
PS – Post Mortem
I started drafting this post before the recent death of John Madden, who arguably was one of the last of a generation of tentpole sportscasters. RIP.
Images:
Title background photo by Tim Mossholder @Unsplash
Boxing by Martin Knize @Freestocks.org
Sportscaster by Jeremy Enns @Unsplash
