Some light reading from the world of digital sport (and beyond). Today we take a look at….

Amazon Prime Video, Mediapro, La Liga Team on Amazon’s First Spanish Original Series (Variety.com)

La Liga President, Javier Tabas, keeps pushing Spanish football in new directions with moves into esports, international expansion and now an Amazon 6 part series. Sport is certainly being seen as a big market for media companies, with off-the-field becoming much more appealing sue to the lack of rights attached to them. Recently we’ve seen the first 3 parts of the ‘First Team: Juventus’ series – which I thought was OK without wowing me in any way. This one feels like it could have more to it with the series following 3 players, 2 coaches and 1 team owner. As the article puts it “The director guarantees that the images are not only a shopwindow, but that the stories have depth.” If anyone sees it then do let me know if it is as good as it sounds!

This Is Definitely Not Pepsi’s World Cup Soccer Commercial (fastcompany.com)

Love the title to this because, as we all know (right?), Pepsi aren’t the official sponsors of the World Cup and cannot mention it in any way. Coke are FIFA partners on this whilst Pepsi have their hands on the UEFA Champions League. The advert comes out just before the second legs of the UCL Quarter-Finals and on the day that happens to be the 100 days until the World Cup countdown. Coincidence right?! This is something that Nike has mastered over the years and others have followed. Nice advert from Pepsi and who doesn’t like to see footballers getting covered in paint 🙂

Is Spotify too big to fail or is subscription-based music streaming doomed? (newatlas.com)

Nothing to do with sport but I like to venture out of our bubble when I can and see what is happening in the rest of the world – as you should too. There’s some really interesting points in here about some of the information Spotify has released for their IPO, and especially how they’re still losing lots of money. As Apple Music’s Jimmy Iovine says; “Amazon sells Prime; Apple sells telephones and iPads; Spotify, they’re going to have to figure out a way to get that audience to buy something else.”

If we take this into a sporting context and look at the wave of OTT platforms appearing. Does this sound warning sirens going for any that are solely relying on selling subs to stay alive whilst having to pay large rights fees? Both Sky and BT use sport to sell additional services, DAZN is back by Perform Group but what about others out there? It does make you think.

Tell me it’s Real — Post-Truth, the Hyperreal and the Age of the Algorithm (medium.com)

I must be having a day when my brain wants to get into some deep material. But I found this interesting as it speaks about the trust in media and how we should be cautious when it comes to how technology should be implemented. Not just placing all our faith in a future based on algorithms and technology being used as a blameless and unquestionable authority. Not an anti-tech article but one that strikes a cautionary note.

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