
SVG Sit-Down: Bleacher Report's Joe Yanarella Believes B/R Betting Is Just Scratching the Surface of What Is Possible' Why live betting content works and how in-game betting is the next big thing By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Tuesday, September 7, 2021 - 3:24 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
With college football season under way and the NFL just days from kicking off, it's the most wonderful time of year for the sports-betting market.
This season feels especially so for sports-betting books and broadcasters: 23 states currently offer live and legal sports betting in some form, and, in another nine states, it's currently legal but not yet operational (according to the American Gaming Association). There's promise for big numbers in bets and high numbers in sports-betting-related video content.
Bleacher Report and its sports-gaming-focused B/R Betting are geared up for the upcoming season with a menu of planned new live and on-demand content. That includes Squad Ride, B/R's live Sunday-morning NFL betting show that streams directly to the B/R app; new episodes of its hit series Bet$ Friend$ with former NFL receiver Chad Ochocinco; and the debut of Ride Along, a betting series that will feature B/R Betting talent onsite at marquee football games.
Bleacher Report's Joe Yanarella: We're seeing excitement in the [sports-betting] category grow at the same time the technology's evolving and allowing us to expand our creative experiences.
SVG caught up with Joe Yanarella, SVP/GM, sports betting, Bleacher Report, to discuss the video content that his team is planning for the new year, why building a community is important to them, and why real-time in-game betting is the holy grail.
What are your feelings going into this football season, both NFL and college? Football is already the kingpin of sports-betting seasons, and now we're entering a year when more states are on board. How does this feel for you in terms of excitement level compared with other years?
There's always excitement around football season because it drives more audience than anything we see around B/R in my history here, having been here 12-ish years. With betting, the groundwork has been laid, and now we're starting to see more and more momentum through partnerships with the [NFL]. It's really exciting: more states are coming on board.
The momentum is fantastic, and we're incredibly excited. We're already starting to see the results of that momentum. We did our first preview show of our Squad Ride Show, and we had our best video views and audience in our history. We had over 200,000 people watching our live show. Just to be able to create that sort of live destination interactive programming in our app is incredibly important to us as a brand and a company.
What content plans that you and the team are working on particularly excite you?
One is our weekly Squad Ride Show in partnership with DraftKings. That's our weekly NFL show on Sunday mornings. We've taken a different approach to it. It's not just expert picks and information. Our brand value is about being more relatable with the audience and authentic and interactive with them. We're having a conversation with the audience, and they send us UGC submissions with videos, their bet slips. We all do it together as a community.
I think one of the things we've found is, if you try to act more transactionally - which is what most of the traditional brands do: provide information in a one-way conversation - you are judged by the value of that information. Even the best people on the planet are wrong 45% of the time. So your audience dislikes you 45% of the time. What we try to do is build a communal experience where we say, Hey, we've all agreed on this together. This is a bet we all want to do as a community. They get the experience of riding along with us, and, even win or lose, they say, Well, that was fun. I enjoyed doing that together. We'd like to keep doing that. That's where we are right now in this stage.
In the future stage, we want to get to the point where we can integrate that into broadcast with Watch Parties and elements like that. We're not 100% there yet in terms of 5G and how quickly things move in real time, but that's the goal to get to, and I think that's the exciting part. We're seeing the community grow and excitement in the category grow at the same time the technology's evolving and allowing us to expand our creative experiences.
Do you think that community approach attracts the newer bettor? This is probably a question you've been asked a million times, but how do you guys approach the balance of welcoming in more raw bettors vs. people who have been doing this for a very long time?
We're trying to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation of sports bettors. Taking the age out of that, some of them are more casual, some of them come from a fantasy background, and some of them have no background.
[Sports betting] can be very intimidating if you don't understand the language, the numbers, the odds. But, if we just simplify things, it's easy.
I can have an opinion on [whether] Ezekiel Elliott or Dalvin Cook is going to score a touchdown this week based on their matchup. Everyone can feel like they are an expert when it comes to that: they have an opinion about it because they've watched football. We're really looking at the casual mainstream fan, who wants to be part of a connective interactive experience, more than the hardcore kind of sharp types.
In terms of live content specifically, company-wide, there's a huge push to put attention on the B/R app. But you do some live stuff on Instagram and other places. When and how do you make the creative decisio
More from Sports Video Group
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...
09/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment, ViewLift Unveil Broadcast/Streaming Joint Ven...
09/07/2025
SVG Europe Audio State of Wireless Mics Forum: If we lose the spectrum, it...
09/07/2025
Tech Focus: Athlete Audio - Venues Provide Sound Just for the Players From locker room to field of play, personalized systems help rev up the athletes By Dan D...
08/07/2025
Groundbreaking Gamecocks: Inside University of South Carolina's Four-Control...
08/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment's Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN...
08/07/2025
Live From 2025 FIFA Club World Cup: FIFA, HBS Focus on Tournament Wrap, With an ...
08/07/2025
SVG Rewind: NESN Goes Behind the Scenes of 1975 Red Sox Retro Broadcast NESN is following up the retrocast with a week-long celebration of the Green Monster By...
07/07/2025
1-2 Punch: The Cloud, Generative AI, and the Future of Sports-Content Distributi...
07/07/2025
Tests and decisions: Formula E host broadcaster Aurora on launching new AR graph...
07/07/2025
Building tension: Using new AR graphics for storytelling at the Formula E penult...
07/07/2025
Altitude Sports' Matt Krol on the Success of the RSN's In-Arena Postgame...
07/07/2025
SVG Rewind: Four NFL Clubs Bring Us on Set of Respective Media Day Shoots An in-depth conversation with 49ers Laura Johnson, Ravens Jay O'Brien, Las Vegas R...
07/07/2025
Cosm To Build Fifth Shared Reality Venue in Cleveland as Part of Bedrock's ...
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...