Welcome back folks!

Edition #51 at your service, and today we’ll explore the IOC’s renewed partnership with Comcast, and their shift from media rights holder to strategic partner of the games; Roblox’s launch of Cube, an open-source GenAI model that now allows creators to generate 3D content through text, and lastly, Concacaf’s tie up with Marvel Entertainment to launch a new mascot, Volar - and the storytelling and commercial opportunities it can unlock for the confederation.

Let’s get into it!

Contents: Edition #51

• IOC & Comcast partner for “new, innovative joint strategic initiatives and projects”

• Roblox announces Cube, a foundational model to create 3D content on or off the Roblox platform

• Concacaf teams up with Marvel Entertainment to launch mascot, Volar

IOC & Comcast partner for “new, innovative joint strategic initiatives and projects”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and NBCUniversal have agreed to a $3 billion extension of NBC's U.S. broadcast rights for the Olympics through 2036.

This deal includes coverage of the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the yet-to-be-decided 2036 Summer Olympics. NBCUniversal will move from media rights holder to becoming a strategic partner, working with the IOC on technology infrastructure, connectivity and media, in-venue distribution, digital advertising opportunities & even access to its ecosystem of start-ups.

This extension follows NBC's previous $7.75 billion agreement covering the Olympics through 2032.

Why You Should Care

TL;DR: The Olympics aren’t going anywhere, or at least not off NBC. With a $3 billion extension, the IOC is doubling down on its long-term media partner, and throwing in a few sweeteners to enable Comcast to have more of an input into the delivery of the games by further integrating their technology and start-up ecosystem. For Comcast, Peacock is now central to Olympic coverage for the foreseeable future, with the retention of the Olympics being a draw for a games obsessed US to subscribe to their service.

In full: Sports has been the glue of many of Comcast’s propositions, and that doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon, with NBCU doubling down once again with a commitment to the Olympics until 2036. The $3 billion dollar extension comes off the back of a successful Paris 2024, where NBCU’s coverage from Paris reached an average of 67 million total viewers per day across its broadcast, cable and streaming platforms.

So despite the obvious challenges that cable & broadcast channels are having, tentpole events, like the Olympics, are still able to drive significant viewership, and it’s this stickiness that makes sport such an important part of traditional media businesses' arsenal as they navigate the transition to a more streaming-first approach.

But this will take time, as NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua put it bluntly:

And evolve their coverage (and relationship with the IOC) they have, with Comcast moving from “media rights-holder to strategic partner”.

So, what does that exactly mean?

Well, 6 things were highlighted, but three of which pricked our ears up:

1. The IOC will lean on Comcast’s expertise in technology infrastructure, connectivity and media to support the delivery of the Olympic Games;
   
   → The less attractive part of the equation to talk about, but connectivity and tech infrastructure is the first-step to delivering next-generation fan experiences on-site, so its importance can’t be underplayed.

   
   With Verizon being a huge player stateside, and a key partner of the FIFA World Cup in North America in 2026, Comcast locking in the Olympics for their Comcast business arm to showcase their capabilities was likely a core part of the extension.
   

2. Collaboration on digital advertising opportunities in the United States;
   
   → Comcast will use the Olympics as a way to drive sign-ups to their streaming service, Peacock. OTT services offer Comcast a much deeper insight into consumers (viewing preferences, location, demographics etc) - all of which are valuable data points for attracting advertisers.
   
   And with advertising minutes during one of the biggest shows on earth likely to be worth a pretty penny, this will be one of Comcast’s routes to recouping their investment.
   

3. The IOC benefitting from Comcast's investment in relevant and innovative start-ups;
   
   → Comcast Sportstech recently announced its latest intake of 10 sports tech businesses a few weeks back. The accelerator focuses on helping their portfolio of companies like Sky and NBCU (and partners from across the sports ecosystem, including the likes of NASCAR, PGA Tour, Premier League & others) to get exposure to the latest and greatest tech businesses that could potentially help solve challenges and open up new opportunities within the sports industry.
   
   It will be interesting to see whether the IOC (or some of its national federations) embrace the corporate innovation initiatives that Comcast can offer.

Wrapping up, tier 1 sports rights will continue to be a valuable commodity that media businesses are willing to pay for, however, given the traditional business models in media are in flux, it will take some trial and error for media businesses to truly figure out how to replicate their revenues in a D2C environment in a sustainable manner.

For sports brands, this means that commercial conversations are likely going to require more flexibility, access or both to maintain previous rights agreements, but with media businesses still holding the cards when it comes to distribution, it’s a smart deal from the IOC that keeps the Olympics visible to a whole new generation in the US up to 2036, and therefore continues to grow to the Olympic brand over the long-term.

Roblox announces Cube, a foundational model to create 3D content on or off the Roblox platform

Roblox has launched Cube 3D, an open-source AI model designed to generate 3D objects from text prompts.

The tool aims to assist developers in rapidly creating 3D mesh objects, enhancing productivity and creativity. Inspired by text token prediction models, Cube 3D predicts tokens for 3D shapes to construct complete objects. Future advancements are planned to enable Cube 3D to use images as input and to become multimodal, incorporating various input types such as text, images, and videos.

Why you should care?

TL;DR: Cube should be a real accelerant for 3D asset creation not just for game developers on the Roblox platform, but for all creatives that have not had the technical chops to work with other development tools. For brands and developers, Cube is a huge positive in the fact that it speeds up the development of games and assets (UGC items etc), but we are also likely to see an influx of rubbish created, so cutting through the noise will become even harder.

In full: We’re now vibe coding to build UGC games folks. If UGC wasn’t already eating the world before, the chance to create 3D content by prompt in Roblox (and beyond) now supercharges creators to build ‘worlds through words’.

So how does it work?

The breakthrough of Cube 3D is in the tokenisation.

Much like a text LLM like ChatGPT can predict the next word of phrase (based on access to large datasets and learned behaviour), Cube does the same for 3D shapes, where it understands shapes as tokens, and then predicts the next shape token to build a complete 3D object.

What can this unlock for players & developers?

From a player perspective, Cube could mean we’re getting much closer to the promise of personalised 3D immersive experiences.

And for developers, Cube should make 3D asset creation much quicker and allow them to focus more on creating a fun, engaging game for players. This will become more important than ever now that the playing field has been levelled from an asset creation perspective, meaning expert game design will be the differentiator between the pros and the amateur.

In any case, it’s a truly exciting development, and given Roblox have open-sourced Cube, we’ll likely see the impact of it expand far beyond just Roblox and the wider games ecosystem.

Concacaf teams up with Marvel Entertainment to launch mascot, Volar

Concacaf has introduced Volar, its inaugural mascot symbolising unity and passion for football among its 41 member associations. Volar, a heroic seabird, features a wingspan with 41 diamond shapes, each representing a member nation's flag. The storyline focuses on Volar serving as a guardian of Concacaf’s values, aiming to inspire and protect football culture across the region.

Why you should care

TL;DR: Sports is a noisy industry, with many similar propositions. Concacaf building a new IP like Volar is a smart way to stand out, whilst also giving them a broader narrative that they can use to engage with the next-generation and non-traditional sponsors alike.

In full: We’ve covered the development of new IP in sports a fair bit over the last few weeks, mainly around new formats of the sport.

What sports has been notoriously poor at compared to its entertainment & gaming counterparts is creating new IP that can help to grow their storytelling capabilities whilst contributing to growing the core brand. So concacaf working with renowned world builders in Marvel Entertainment to build out a new mascot and IP is seriously interesting.

Now for some of a certain disposition, the introduction of Volar may be viewed as an unnecessary addition away from the core business, but you perhaps won’t be surprised I have the opposite opinion for a few reasons:

1. Soft-launching soccer to new audiences
   
   → Comic books written by Marvel Entertainment? It’s quite the partner for Concacaf to start their world-building with, and if they can tempt over a fragment of Marvel’s army of followers, it will be a successful initiative.
   
   The story of Volar is being built in a way that educates the audience on football, its history, the member associations and more, but delivered in a creative, entertaining format that can allow non-traditional sports fans to engage and connect with the IP.
   

2. New commercial opportunities
   
   → The long-term view for Concacaf will be to have Volar as an IP they can monetise directly through merchandise and licensing (and it seems this is already in motion, with a consumer licensing program in place), but also indirectly through the new fans and sponsors that an entertainment driven narrative can attract to the sport and concacaf’s competitions.
   

3. The gaming crossover
   
   → Concacaf also launched Volar onto Roblox, into one of the most popular football games on the platform, Super League Soccer, which is averaging around 440k visits per day. And in a world where sports brands need to be visible (especially when trying to build new IP), the reach that gaming can bring is fairly unchallenged.

Overall, it’s a really smart and commendable move by Concacaf to broaden their storytelling capabilities through Volar, and if the IP is managed correctly, it will hopefully be a key driver in bringing new fans into their funnel and towards the core product of football.

In other news this week…

• DAZN & IMAX bring PSG & Marseille match to cinema; sold out tickets in 5 hours: read here.

• Pokemon & LEGO partner for new sets due to be released in 2026: read here.

• Shohei Ohtani skins, emotes and challenges come to Fortnite: read here.

• FIFA & Mythical Games drop first trailer for FIFA Rivals: watch here.

• Krafton launches Creator Network: read here.

• Discord releases free Social SDK for game developers: read here.

• OpenAI releases new tools for building AI agents: read here.

• MLB uses volumetric video capture in Tokyo series: watch here.

• Crunchyroll & Aniplex establish anime production joint venture: read here.

• Coca-Cola moves North America media business to Publicis from WPP: read here.

• Aldora release The State of Play on Games, Tech & Media Report: read here.

• Concept Ventures release report on European pre-seed landscape from 2018-2024: read here.

• WARC release report on performance & brand marketing: read here.

• Minecraft mod Lunar Client acquires Badlion from ESL Faceit Group: read here.

• IOC & Allianz extend partnership to 2032: read here.

• Disguise release report on Immersive Storytelling: read here.

• Lionsgate’s immersive John Wick experience opens doors in Las Vegas: read here.

• Discord released aespa themed collectibles: read here.

• Avakin and PhygitalTwin unveil the First-Ever PHYGITAL competition: read here.

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!

That’s all for now folks - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report and we’ll see you next Tuesday for more on the intersection of culture & emerging technology!