SVG Sit-Down: Fox Sports Regional Networks' Michael Spirito on the Power of Digital Content for RSNs

SVG Sit-Down: Fox Sports Regional Networks' Michael Spirito on the Power of Digital Content for RSNs The head of business development and digital media discusses the digital team's changing role By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Monday, September 11, 2017 - 2:09 pm

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Over the past decade, Michael Spirito has been at the forefront of the rapidly evolving digital-sports-media scene, overseeing a sweeping digital transformation as head of business development and digital media at YES Network before taking on the same responsibilities for all Fox Sports Regional Networks as well.

Fox Sports Regional Networks' Michael Spirito

Spirito has championed the strategy of fully incorporating the digital team into the linear-production workflow as well as nearly every other department at an RSN. In doing so, he helped to create a model that flourished first at YES and now at Fox RSNs across the country.

While at YES, which he joined in 2006, he led the launch of the first in-market live-game-streaming product in MLB history in 2009 (as well as the first authenticated TV Everywhere product in professional sports) and dramatically increased YES's social-media presence and online video-distribution strategy (YES has been an active programmer and revenue partner on YouTube and an active Facebook user since 2007, much longer than most RSNs).

With a flood of video content streaming from Fox RSNs' digital-production teams, Spirito aims to make the holy grail of digital media a reality: widespread monetization. SVG sat down with Spirito at YES Network's production facility in Stamford, CT, to discuss how YES has served as a model for other Fox RSNs' digital efforts, Fox's Facebook Live productions and how to monetize them, how to serve different social platforms, and the increasingly popular pivot to video by sports-media organizations.

How do YES's digital and linear-production teams work together to create content?

It's amazing how seamless the interaction between [YES's] digital-media team and the linear-production team has become. That includes the people producing behind the camera, talent who are on-camera, and the digital team behind the scenes. We started this 10 years ago when we became the first RSN to essentially treat digital commensurate with [linear] production. We wanted to make sure that people who were producing for television were thinking about how we are going to program our digital channels. And, up here in Stamford, Kevin [Sullivan, director, digital media] has been the leader of that. Kevin has built a small but very nimble and skilled team to create content for digital. First, it was for the website only but has spread to a variety of digital and social channels as well. We have been an active programmer and revenue partner on YouTube since 2007 and been on Facebook in an active manner since 2007. We've been programming toward these channels specifically since the beginning, and we have led the brigade in terms of digital monetization.

Since Fox acquired a majority share in YES Network in 2014, how has YES helped to provide a digital-production model for other Fox RSNs?

We've shown them the template that has worked at YES. And the first thing that I did was try to alter how they thought about programming all these digital channels by embedding the digital-media function within the [linear] production. When you have every piece of the organization thinking with the digital mindset and, more important, seeing the fruits of their labors, you are going to succeed on both the linear and digital sides. When you show the exact number of views that a specific piece of content got on this digital channel or the number of people that are following us on this social platform is multiples above the people watching an average Yankees postgame, that gets people's attention. From an [on-air] talent perspective, the more we can enhance their personal brand and get them to engage more people, they are going to become more excited to be a part of it.

YES Network and Fox RSNs have been heavy users of Facebook Live throughout the MLB season. Tell us a bit these efforts and why you believe they are critical.

YES and other Fox RSNs were among the first to go live with that product 17 months ago. We've grown it in leaps and bounds since then. [YES Network] has done more than 130 Facebook Live streams, and there have been more than 4,500 across the Fox regions. It's a tool that obviously is very useful because of the immediacy of it: we can genuinely break news on that platform. Whether it's [YES analyst] Jack Curry breaking the [Yankees' trade for pitcher] Sonny Gray or a late-breaking injury report, we can be on Facebook Live in minutes. In addition, we can show people what's really happening behind the scenes.

And we're seeing phenomenal engagement and viewership across all the Fox RSNs. We've had 360-plus million video views across all the Fox RSNs for fiscal 2017, which basically is 12 months ending June 30: just massive numbers and massive growth over two, three years ago.

These digital channels are tailor-made for experimentation. Some stuff works, some stuff doesn't work, but, when you find something that does, you can just try to hit those same data points and produce similar content. That's how we started with the Facebook Live look into the production meeting. It's very non-traditional content coming from a sports network, but it's been immensely successful for us in terms of viewership and engagement.

What's an example of content that has directly resulted from embedding the digital team within the linear-production team's workflow?

I think Yankees Post Game Plus is a perfect example. One of the first things we did was a digital-specific p

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2017/09/11/svg-sit-down-fox-sports-regiona...
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