The Disruptors: NCTA Pitches Wide Tent for Tues General Session

When NCTA rebranded its convention as INTX, the idea was to bring disruption and new entrants into the conversation. And that was on full display at Tues’ general session—whether it was FanDuel CEO and co-founder Nigel Eccles boldly declaring that his company wants to be a media platform that streams actual sports games in its app or AT&T Ent Group CEO John Stankey’s mantra that mobile is key to the future. “We think the customer is going to want to do more things on the go,” Stankey said. “Our desire is to take the premium entertainment experience and what people have emotional connections with and bring that into our” mobility experience. AT&T is going a different route than Verizon with its go90 service, which is “coming from the bottom up” with less established content offerings, he said. AT&T is experimenting in that space also though with Otter Media, the online video-focused jv with the Chernin Group. “Both are necessary. You’ve got to work from the top down and [with premium content], but you also have to have a foot in the bottom up. Segments of the population will be better suited to that,” Stankey said. “Mobile for distribution allows you to try a lot of different things.” Stankey spoke shortly before Periscope’s CEO took the stage, prompting a question about what live video streaming means for AT&T. His take: the fact people want to engage in content and use more devices is good for business. “From the dawn of time, what we have made our money on and what we’re good at is moving the bit around,” he said. Mashable CEO/founder Pete Cashmore talked about how his company is working with traditional media companies such as Turner and NBCU, with its patented algorithm Velocity crunching data to predict what viewers want to see. “We’re developing shows together using our data platform. It makes it a much safer bet,” he said, noting that Bravo recently signed a 4-series deal to for digital programming. “The fastest growing part of our business is branded content,” Cashmore said, adding that Mashable is looking to bring that content all the way to linear. Is there a worry about consumers resisting branded content? “Viewers are aware that is how their media is paid for and as long as the disclosure is clear they are OK with that,” he said. Next up on the INTX disruptor stage was FanDuel’s Eccles, whose company blanketed media with heavy advertising last year. That wasn’t all good, with Eccles admitting “we overexposed it.” And some of that exposure likely brought about the legal scrutiny of fantasy sports, he acknowledged: “I think the issues we’re going through now we’re going to happen anyway, but I don’t think they were going to happen as quickly.” Right now, FanDuel is working with states one-by-one on legislation clarifying that fantasy sports is a game of skill and adding consumer protections. Ad spending for FanDuel will be down significantly this year, with more of those ads appearing in digital. The tone will focus more on the fun of fantasy sports. “We probably didn’t sell all the benefits of the product,” he said. Last up on stage was Periscope CEO/co-founder Kayvon Beykpour. He didn’t really want to talk about Facebook Live as a competitor. “Our reaction is to double down on what we’re doing,” Beykpour said. “Ultimately, other people in the live streaming space is a good thing. When we first entered the space, the narrative was very different—it was ‘this isn’t interesting, people don’t want to spend their time live streaming’ and a bunch of other pessimistic views… I’m excited that conversation has actually evolved to where no one questions the legitimacy or efficacy of the space.”