Ryan Spoon, Senior Vice President at ESPN, discusses community management strategies for sports media and how authentication prevents online discussion from devolving into low-quality banter.
Assertion Partly supported
ESPN digital hit 10 billion monthly minutes, 1.5 billion from fantasy
“This past month was, across ESPN, our historically great month. Year over year, across multiple, you know measurements, 30, 40% growth. We had ten billion minutes across all ESPN digital. Across all digital. And over one and a half billion of that was fantasy.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sunday is ESPN digital's busiest day despite lacking Sunday NFL broadcasts
“Our most active day of the year is Sunday. And coincidentally, we do not have NFL Sunday on our air. Fantasy makes a big chunk of that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Native Twitter video playback is ESPN's fastest-growing video segment
“Fastest growing part of our video business is, you know, again, frictionless, one click video play within the Twitter feed.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ESPN SportsCenter app logged-in user rate grew from 0% to 70%
“Over the last year, you know, we put a gate up in front of our largest Mobile apps, SportsCenter and in a year went from zero percent of people logged in because they were customizing to the device as opposed to the user name, and it's now, you know, around 70…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ESPN signed multiple startup deals from one a16z executive briefing day
“And in six hours probably met 15 companies. This was one of them. And we walked out of there actually with a couple deals, a couple interesting partnerships.”
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
ESPN expects to reach 15 million fantasy sports players this year
“We'll have, I think across all of our fantasy games this year, fifteen million players.”