Hey all - welcome back to Edition #45 of The SEG3 Report!

Today’s piece dives into the NHL’s use of tracking data to produce new weekly animated programming, Hockeyverse; Roblox’s launch of a sports whitepaper & Alo Yoga leveraging POAPs to merge physical and digital experiences.

Without further ado…

Contents: Edition #45

• NHL launches weekly animated series, Hockeyverse

• Roblox releases ‘Sport on Roblox’ whitepaper

• Alo Yoga leverages POAPs in updated Sanctuary on Roblox

NHL launches weekly animated series, Hockeyverse

Over the weekend, the NHL launched their first "HOCKEYVERSE Matchup of the Week," a 30-minute animated program that recaps a notable game from the previous week. Utilising NHL EDGE Positional Data, the series animates game action to engage younger audiences. Teenage broadcasters, selected from the Bruce Beck Sports Broadcasting Camp, will provide play-by-play commentary as animated avatars. The inaugural episode featured the January 25 game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Washington Capitals, with the episodes airing on Saturday mornings on NHL Network in the US and on Sportsnet in Canada, also with availability on the NHL YouTube channel.

Why You Should Care

TL;DR: Discovery is always a challenge in todays fragmented, noisy landscape. The NHL are leveraging the same technology they used for animated broadcasts (with great success), but are now varying the format to try and grow the discoverability of their content by their target audience. Producing altcasts can however still be expensive, but if it can allow you to produce multiple pieces of content that attract new youth audiences, it could prove to be a shrewd investment.

In full: Tracking datas use has evolved far beyond just enhanced real-time insights for broadcast or for teams performance analysis.

The NHL, as well as the NFL, have alongside a host of broadcast and technology partners been leveraging positional data to create animated games for around the last 18/24 months.

The NHL specifically have used their NHL EDGE Positional Data to create Big City Greens animated games (which we covered in Edition #39), but are now adding in a new format to include a weekly series, with the objective to “produce more full games, but also test more shorter form content”.

So, how is this done, and why should you all be paying attention?

How it’s done

During NHL games, the NHL EDGE Puck and Player Tracking (PPT) system transmits positional data from the Players on the ice and puck at 100Hz. 

With five skaters and one goaltender on each side plus the puck, 3,600 data points are transmitted per second for each game – 12,960,000 data points per period per game.

The NHL EDGE Puck and Player tracking and game data streams are sent from the arena via the NHL’s OASIS Platform data hub, analysed and then sent to downstream systems including broadcasters for integration with live broadcast signals, archived to aid in long term analytics, or as we’re discussing, to power animated feeds.

Impressive, huh?

So why are the NHL doubling down on animation?

Well, according to David Lehanski, EVP Business Development & Innovation at the NHL:

And certainly the way the league is producing and distributing the show has the hallmarks of helping them to attract a younger audience to the sport of hockey.

1. Distribution

The league is distributing the animated series in three ways:

• through their own NHL Network in the US

• through Sportsnet in Canada

• through Youtube for the rest of the world.

It’s a smart mixture which allows them to provide new content for traditional broadcast partners (and their own channels) that can engage and attract fans in their key territories, whilst also leveraging Youtube to grow the awareness of the sport and league globally.

And when 60% of Gen Z use YouTube to find more content about a show or movie they just watched, giving consumers options and varied length of content will allow the NHL to bring a wider range of fans into their funnel.

And so…

2. Creating short-form content

Social & UGC platforms are undoubtedly the key platform for discovery for Gen Z / A, with Youtube research showing that 59% of Gen Z watch longer versions of videos that they discover on short-form video apps, so the NHL producing short-form content from the animated series can be a good acquisition tool to drive intrigued fans to longer form content on Youtube, and then hopefully onwards into their own ecosystem.

You can hear Charles Campisi, Director of Digital Innovation & Growth Strategy at the NHL talk more about the challenges of discovery from our LA show below ↓

Closing thoughts: Capturing fans early is essential for leagues to ensure that their sports continues to grow for generations to come, so creatively leveraging technology, as the NHL are for Hockeyverse and their animated shows, is a really smart way for the league to tell their hockey stories in a more interactive, engaging and unique way that will inevitably drive conversation and engagement with a youth audience.

So kudos to them for skating to where the puck is going to be…

Roblox releases ‘Sport on Roblox’ whitepaper

Roblox has released a new white paper, "Sport on Roblox," outlining how sports organisations can tap into the platform and its audience to drive fandom and revenue.

Why you should care?

TL;DR: Here’s all the key findings you should be aware of:

• More than 80% of those exploring sports experiences on Roblox are under 35, whereas 71% of TV sports viewers are over
the age of 35.
  

• As of Q3 2024, year-over-year sports experiences have added 28% more daily unique players and grew total hours engaged by 26%.
  

• Two-thirds (66%) of players engaged with Roblox sports experiences are outside the U.S.
  

• 43% of total annual hours spent in a league's Roblox experience were outside of their regular season.
  

• In the case of branded sports experiences, Futures calculated that this exposure was found to have an earned media value of $608 for every 1,000 hours engaged.
  

• Users who were exposed to sports activations were more likely to recognise the leagues (up to an 11pp lift) and view them favourably (average 12.5pp lift) compared to those who were not exposed.

In full: As we’ve just talked about above, it’s a completely new battleground for sports brands to now onboard fans to their brand. They’re in competition with a number of different passion points for their time, money & loyalty, so creativity and cross-platform storytelling capabilities are now more important than ever to introduce your sport to Gen Z & A (and soon Gen B…).

Onto the report, there were two findings I found interesting:

1) Two-thirds (66%) of players engaged with Roblox sports experiences are outside the U.S.

Many of the US leagues have started to look outward for growth, with the likes of the NFL giving their franchises specific parts of the globe to grow their footprints and the NBA playing global games (where they’ve just had their most successful global games ever on socials, generating more than 718M views), so the fact that 66% of players are outside the US will only give these leagues more impetus to increase their presence in the platform.

On the flip side, this shows that sports brands from the rest of the globe potentially have more players residing in their markets, so there is a large opportunity to use Roblox to drive IRL engagement, which is what the R&A have been doing with their experience, Just Swing, which we covered in Edition #16.

2) 43% of total annual hours spent in a league's Roblox experience were outside of their regular season.

Maintaining momentum and mind-share in the off-season is something that is very hard to do when there is no product (live events) happening. 43% of hours spent in the off-season tells you there is an appetite from fans to continue gathering and engaging with their favourite sports year round, so having ‘always on’ experiences can help service those needs.

This was the thesis behind FIFA’s ‘FIFA World’, which we covered in Edition #12, where between tournaments, FIFA, and their national associations, can maintain a connection to their fans and give year round activation opportunities for their commercial partners.

The challenge with always on, or ‘evergreen’ experiences, is the constant need for updates so that fans do not get bored — which is why brands like the NFL, who have built their own experiences, are now combining this with a licensing strategy, bringing their IP into popular games on the platform like Universal Football (which we covered in Edition #27), where the game developer (Voldex in this example) already has the product managers, producers, game designers, analysts etc needed to maintain a successful game.

Closing thoughts: Maintaining relevance in todays attention economy is challenging, with any brand that wants to be in the mainstream vying for the attention and eyeballs of a youth audience.

Given there is clearly a demand for sports content on Roblox, with engagement from players in sports experiences growing YoY, and 80% of players visiting sports experiences being under 35, it’s hard to see how Roblox shouldn’t be a central part to all sports brands fan engagement strategies.

Alo Yoga Roblox update introduces POAPs to bridge physical and virtual worlds

Alo Yoga has refreshed its "Alo Sanctuary" experience on Roblox, integrating Proof-of-Attendance-Protocols (POAPs) as the mechanism that unlocks exclusive Alo Yoga UGC after visiting one of their physical retail stores.

Why you should care

TL;DR: Alo using POAPs to unlock digital rewards for physical interaction with their retail stores is cool, but the actual long-term value is in being able to gather more insight into their customers behaviours and interests depending on where and through which campaigns they claim POAPs. This insight could help them to deliver much more personalised experiences.

In full: In a first-of-its-kind for Roblox, Alo Yoga, Sawhorse & POAP have essentially gamified the retail journey for customers, bridging physical and digital worlds through the use of POAPs.

How does it work?

POAPs have been the go-to for web3 communities for many years - being the representation of a moment in time or in recognition of an action. Collectible tokens in short.

Many brands, like the US Open, Adidas and others have used POAPs as a tool to incentivise engagement, and then given holders of these POAPs access to exclusive items or experiences.

And that’s very similar to what has happened for this experience, with players able to scan an NFC sticker at one of Alo Yoga’s 150 retail stores which will reward them with a POAP, which can then be used to unlock exclusive rewards and UGC items.

Lucas Verra, Co-Founder of POAP Studio said:

The holy-grail for any brand is to be able to:

1) Reward behaviours you’d like to see

→ Incentivise the visiting of an experience, transacting or engaging with a commercial partner.

Customers know this holds a value for you, so want a value exchange for their actions.

2) Capture more insight into your customers actions

→ Having collectibles that show where and when customers have engaged with your brand gives you much more of an insight into their profile and interests, and allows you to offer more personalised experiences.

Closing thoughts: The Alo Yoga Sanctuary has reportedly had over 117 million visits since its launch in 2022. It’ll be interesting to see to what degree the tease of exclusive UGC helps to drive action off-platform and whether it can drive players back to the experience for the latest update.

P.S. SEG3 London had a small role in this partnership coming to life…maybe you should consider joining us for 2025?

In other news this week…

• The Metaverse Society releases report on The UK Creative Industry & AI: read here.

• EA Sports acquires advanced tracking company, TRACAB: read here.

• US Copyright Office releases report on legal and policy issues around AI: read here.

• Kings League & Serie A partner up: read here.

• Netflix becomes the home of WWE 2K on mobile: read here.

• NVIDIA brings DeepSeek-R1 into enterprise software platform: read here.

• Stats Perform launch 2025 Sports Fan Engagement, Content Monetisation & AI Trends Report: read here.

• National Student Esports (NSE) & Pot Noodle partner up: read here.

• Red Bull to host Trackmania tournament in UK: read here.

• Coinbase becomes a registered firm by UK’s Financial Conduct Authority: read here.

• Pudgy Penguins partners with PEZ & Line Friends: read here.

• TopGolf brings Marvels Captain America to life at US venues: read here.

• Warner Bros. Games axes live service game, Multiversus: 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!