Welcome to edition #25 of the report - we are now just one week shy of the 6 month birthday of the SEG3 Report launching. I hope our card is in the post…

If you’ve been here since the beginning - thank you & we hope you’re enjoying it - and if you’ve recently joined, you’ve luckily got a bit of reading to catch up on….

Anyway, onto the reason you’re here - this week's edition, which dives into the BBC acquiring Anime content, Polkadot’s partnership with Inter Miami & NASCAR’s experimentation with GenAI.

Contents: Edition #25

• The BBC brings 1000+ episodes of One Piece to UK free-to-air for first time

• Polkadot become Inter Miami’s Training Partner

• NASCAR experiment with GenAI

Let’s get into it…

The BBC brings 1000+ episodes of One Piece to UK free-to-air for first time

The BBC has acquired over 1,000 episodes of the popular anime series One Piece, marking the first time the show will be available on free-to-air television in the UK. This extensive acquisition will allow viewers to watch the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his pirate crew on the mainstream platform, with episodes available to stream on BBC iPlayer, making it a significant addition to the platform's growing anime catalogue.

Why you should care

I’m going to say it loudly - anime is no longer ‘niche’. 

I’ve seen it thrown into a ‘jock vs nerd culture’ debate, almost like the two have been / are at loggerheads. I disagree, and the last few weeks have shown that Anime / ‘Nerd Culture’ runs much deeper through the mainstream than you would think…

Whether it be Noah Lyles (which we’ve covered in edition #20) or Zane Malik with Yu-Gi-Oh; basketballers Zion Williamson and Joel Embiid both leaning into anime or perhaps most relevantly for this edition, shotputter Payton Otterdahl bringing One Piece to his walk-on at Paris 2024 or the LA Chargers bringing One Piece to their schedule release - these crossovers are increasing in popularity.

But why?

Anime has always been popular, it’s just been bubbling under the mainstream - but with Gen Z (and definitely Gen A) growing up in a period where animation has been the cornerstone of many of the biggest TV shows & films, what used to be coined ‘nerd culture’ and niche is now actually quite widespread and mainstream.

To support my thoughts, Polygon interviewed 4000+ adults across the US, and found that 42% of Gen Z are watching anime weekly, which is 17% more than are watching the NFL weekly…

A stat you were expecting?

On one hand, anime could be seen as competition to other forms of entertainment for eyeballs, but I’m of the opinion that it offers an opportunity for smart sports & entertainment brands to significantly grow their reach if they can create relatable content & activations that lean into anime culture & stories.

The LA Chargers One Piece schedule release racked up a cool 213k likes and had comments to the tune of ‘am I a chargers fan now?’. A success in attracting new audiences to the chargers & the NFL.

So make no mistake - combining passion points = a deeper connection and sense of belonging.

And passion points and deep connections often dictate what we say/do/buy. 

With more than 50% of Gen Z agreeing that Anime has an influence on their identity, style, colour palette and more, it definitely feels like an untapped opportunity for mainstream fashion/cosmetic brands, but also brands across wider culture like sports & entertainment to also create content/products that unlocks this audience.

Content will likely be the easiest entry point to introduce new audiences into the never-ending storylines and characters surrounding anime and on the flip side, the anime audience into the athletes character and stories that sports presents.

As ever, distribution plays an important role in people discovering your brand. From an anime perspective, Netflix is the reigning king for US Gen Z’ers to find content, with other streaming platforms Hulu and Amazon Prime also key players.

In the UK? I can’t find exact data, but you’d imagine it’s a similar picture (barring the US specific players on that graph), with perhaps an increased percentage for Crunchyroll.

So hence the BBC’s play to bring 1000+ episodes of One Piece to free-to-air could be the start of trying to make themselves the hub for anime in the UK, and in doing so, attract more of a Gen Z & Gen A audience to their platform to pay the TV licence (with Ofcom’s 2023 Communications Market Report showing that only 33.2% of 16-24 year olds consume any BBC content in a week).

To that regard, the BBC’s Controller of Youth Audiences for iPlayer & BBC Three, Fiona Campbell said:

A closing thought. Anime may not be the right fit for all brands, but with sports, entertainment, gaming, music, fashion, art and more are all converging into one as part of wider culture, it has never been more important that brands are across cultural trends outside their traditional audience and industry if they want to remain relevant to Gen Z & A and continue growing.

Well done to the BBC on this move and we look forward to seeing what impact it has.

Polkadot become Inter Miami’s Training Partner

Inter Miami CF have announced Polkadot, a layer-1 blockchain, as their club's official global training partner. 

The partnership involves branding on training kits, as well as a hint that they’ll aim to increase fan engagement by bringing club operations to Polkadot.

Why you should care

We seem to be having a resurgence of sports brands partnering with blockchains. It’s making me reminisce about 2022!

And Polkadot have perhaps been one of the key instigators in this resurgence, with recent partnerships across esports (Heroic), motorsports (Conor Daly - IndyCar driver) & games (Mythical Games, which indirectly brings them in touch with the NFL through Rivals).

So they were no strangers to sports, entertainment & gaming prior to the collaboration with Inter Miami.

But let’s dive into the partnership a bit further and some guesses about where things will be heading.

And to begin, I suspect the title of ‘Training Kit’ partner is a bit of a ruse. 

It certainly doesn’t immediately jump out to me as a great asset for an infrastructure business, but we must not forget this is a road trodden before, with Man United & Tezos following the same route in 2022 - with that partnership now having delivered numerous products & experiences as part of the partnership, with Fantasy United being the latest (as discussed in edition #21).

As ever with these partnerships, the devil will be in the detail - what rights will Polkadot have built into the partnership? How are they planning to leverage these rights to drive engagement with their chain and wider ecosystem? Will they try something novel & bespoke to Inter Miami? Will they look to inject web3 into current operations, or will they try to build something net-new?

All questions I do not have answers to given the brevity of the press release, but the release does emphasise on ‘interactive fan zone activations & dynamic digital campaigns’, which leaves it up to our imagination. A dangerous thing in my case…

The long and short is that sports partnerships undoubtedly get you in front of engaged and loyal eyeballs, but for the partnership to have any value for web3 infrastructure companies like Polkadot, it has to drive transactions through an increase in products or experiences being built on-chain, so the way they activate the partnership will need to either:

A) Have Inter Miami building on Polkadot - i.e. building something novel they can then spin out and monetise together elsewhere
B) Bring new users to the chain - i.e. onboard Inter Miami’s fanbase to Polkadot
C) Drive collaboration opportunities for projects Polkadot’s ecosystem - so they stay on the chain rather than be tempted to a different ecosystem

or the old faithful of:

D) Increase their token price (which does not seem to be materialising as of yet, with the token having dropped 10% since the announcement).

It’s obviously extremely early, so we’ll be keeping tabs and keen to see what they can bring to life over the course of the partnership.

NASCAR experimenting with GenAI

I came across this post by NASCAR’s Patrick Carroll about how they’re using Generative AI to enhance fan experiences by integrating AI into various aspects of their operations, and wanted to signpost it to you good folk.

Why you should care

I won’t bore you all by repeating word for word what Patrick shared on Linkedin, but it’s definitely worth a read into how sports brands, or wider enterprise brands for that matter, are thinking about GenAI, which is:

1. Can we augment some of our existing processes by integrating GenAI?

2. Will it help us to save time or resource, which could be better reallocated elsewhere?

3. Will it improve the experience for fans or customers?

4. How reliable are the data/assets that the model produces, and does it require a human touch?

Whether it’s AI being used in match/race content like NASCAR, Wimbledon using it to drive personalisation (as covered in edition #14) or it being used to accelerate the creation of assets for games & films, the opportunity GenAI presents across sports, entertainment & gaming is sizeable. 

A report from Deloitte just released on GenAI says 42% of respondents have seen improved efficiency, productivity and cost reduction through use of GenAI, with 67% of organisations interviewed planning to increase investment as they’d seen strong value so far.

But as with all emerging technologies, there are teething problems and a lot of false starts - with 68% of all respondents saying they have moved 30% or fewer of their GenAI experiments into production.

I don’t see this as a bad thing at all however. If you have the time & resources to be able to, internally incubating, testing and iterating new products & experiences built with emerging tech feels like a must to make sure your organisation remains innovative and ahead of the pack. 

And with the current macro economic environment, as well as challenges to legacy business models across sports, entertainment & games, being able to find ways to improve the top & bottom line by leveraging emerging tech may be the difference between success and failure/stagnation.

In other news this week…

A quick round-up of other stories you should be across:

• Why Youtube is winning the battle for TV screens

• The Minecraft Experience Villager Rescue has postponed its launch

• NFL Owners approve private equity deals

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!