Mike Emery: Democratizing Grassroots Sports (Full Transcript)

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Ronen Ainbinder 0:49

Today's Halftime Snack features a former sales and marketing director who's now the leader of one of the most fantastic sports technology businesses out there!

Joining us from Oslo in Norway. He's an entrepreneur who's passionate about sports and technology, but he's mostly driven to improve the industry's quality worldwide.

He's the CEO of Joymo, a game-changing streaming platform for clubs, athletes, fans, and coaches, where they can film games and training, store content, sell access to fans, and so much more.

Additionally, he's the founder of World At Play. This charity foundation works to inspire and develop young people through sport and play.

This man accepted my invitation to the show with zero hesitation, and I'm sure we're all going to learn so much from him!

So, buckle up for today's Halftime Snack with the one and only, Mike Emery!

Mike Emery 1:44

What an intro! I feel like a wrestler. Thanks for having me on the show.

Ronen Ainbinder 1:50

It's a pleasure to have you on the halftime snacks. And so excited to have a conversation with you. And I want to start right away by talking about one of the things that I realized about your background because I don't understand how you landed in Joymo. I wonder what some of the events or things in your life that brought you to where you are right now are.

Mike Emery 2:15

I guess it's a couple of Crossroads or a couple of moments that are worth picking upon. So the first would be I wanted to become a journalist and always wanted to become a journalist. So I did my work experience when I was 14 at the local newspaper. And then I studied English Lit in university, always planning to get into journalism. But every year during my university years, in the summer, I was working at an outdoor education center for kids. And I remember I taught one kid to climb a climbing wall. And the difference from him at the bottom to him at the top was like it was a different person he opened up to, and he just had the sense of completion and satisfaction he had when he did this climb. And later that evening, he told my fellow instructor, this has been the best week of my life. And this little boy, I didn't realize at the time, but he was in remission from cancer. And he went on to die. And I was missing. I must have been 21-22. And I thought to myself, well, hang on a second, how can I go into journalism? How can I go down that path that I planned for myself if I knew that what I had done in helping this young boy learn to do something in sport had made such an impact on him? So I remember that evening, after that evening, when I heard the news about him. I said to my dad, I want to create a children's charity. So that was a long time ago now. But I guess that was a real crossroad where I decided to go from journalism to the charity sector created World At Play. And that still runs today that's been going for 1516 years now. And then, from there, I didn't know where I was going, right? Like I created a children's charity where next I joined another children's charity called right to play, and I worked with a guy called Johan costs. Now Johan is a four-time Olympic gold medalist from Norway. And the opportunities for a young man to work with someone who has achieved four gold medals and see how driven he was and how committed he was. He showed me that when you put your mind to something you can, you can do it. Right if you give of yourself. So yeah, I think that two kinds of big moments of I want to work in the charity sector than working alongside a former professional athlete ultimately steered me to where I am today.

Ronen Ainbinder 4:46

Being a CEO of a sports and exciting sports technology startup such as Joymo. What does he take in terms of what personality traits do you think are now necessary for such a road in Joymo, but more oriented towards what is it about you that makes you special or what would you say? It's the thing that brought you in terms of your personality to be that person.

Mike Emery 5:20

Yeah. Okay. I don't think it's what makes me special because then the more I work in this sector, the more I surround myself with different startups. The more I see that there is some, there's a commonality to people who create something and commit to something other than blind faith. There's a Greek Norwegian word, which is Truevandy, which basically is like a mix of credibility and trustworthiness. That's the first trait when you create something is you need people to follow you, whether you're creating a children's charity. You want to go and get funders to help you run that charity, or you're recruiting volunteers to work for that charity, or in where I am now, as the CEO of a tech company.

You have to build a team, get investors, and think that people believe me and that people see that I'm honest in the way that I approached the job and that I give everything that I have to it. And then people are more inclined to follow and support. So credibility and trustworthiness. And then, something else that I've learned along the way is humility. So I get it wrong a lot. And so we have this little thing in Jomo, which is a bit of a silly word, but it's called Mike's booboo corner, where basically I will, I will admit to stuff that I've messed up along the way, things that I took the business down the wrong angle that if I hadn't, maybe we'd be further ahead. And because of that, we feel I feel that it's okay to make a mistake. It's not okay to make lots of the same mistakes, but it's okay to make a mistake. And in the startup world, the worst thing you can do is afraid. And if you're not afraid to make mistakes, then more often than not, it's going to go okay. Humility is important. When you're CEO, you don't have all the answers, and you're going to mess up. And I think that standing up and taking responsibility for the things you've got wrong is a good trait for running a team.

Ronen Ainbinder 7:47

That's a very touching thing that we're going to talk a little bit more about that later. But now, I want to switch over to talk more specifically about Joymo. We talked about this in our intro call, and we discussed a bit about how to join lands in the traditional sports broadcasting spectrum. So I want to know if you can share with us a bit of what Joymo trying to achieve; how is it trying to feel a gap in the industry? What pain points the value proposition? Can you share with us the idea of how joining more will potentially disrupt the sports broadcasting industry?

Mike Emery 8:32

Sure, love to. So join me is a live streaming content management platform. But that's just a bunch of words strung together. So imagine, imagine, imagine a pyramid right or like a triangle. And imagine at the top of that triangle, you have all of the elite sports, from Premier League football to Olympics to NBA, NHL, whatever I like all the top stuff. And that's where all of the money is going. Like a good pyramid or triangle, the participation numbers are at the bottom. That's where everybody is. And everybody that is at the top has come from the bottom. And we're trying to flip it. We're trying to basically find a way that more value can get to the bottom. And there are lots of different ways that we can do that. And there are lots of different ways that Joymo can't. We can't get involved in every element of that democratization of grassroots and long tail. But what we can do is provide them with a means of broadcasting that returns the most possible value back to the grassroots. And so in terms of who our market is, as a business, it is grassroots amateur sports, youth sports semi-professional longtail stuff, so it's the more for the not obscure, but more the sports that it's harder to sell rights to. And we've got professional staff as well. So we've got elite-level stuff. And so the market is very big. And the pain points that these guys are feeling when it comes to creating content, so when it comes to living streaming or broadcasting content to fans, they don't have a lot of control. They cannot safeguard their individuals, particularly within children's sport; they can't find a rights buyer. Or even worse, there are poor rights buyers out there that are not paying enough money for the content; the cost of filming is too much. And they don't, and they were walking away from their broadcast experience of using big, other big social media platforms. And they do not understand their fans. And they do not understand the data behind it, like who's watching and for how long? And why are they watching that sport? So the content creation side, GMO empowers everyday athletes and teams while helping grassroots sports sustain themselves by enabling them to monetize their IP, with proceeds going back directly to them. Yeah, our goal is to give these guys at the bottom of this pyramid platform by which they can broadcast that returns as much possible value back to them to develop their sport and ultimately improve the elite.

Ronen Ainbinder 11:40

I wonder to what degree is it important for a business such as Joymo? To know and understand their own definition of what type of business they engage in, I ask this because while I was doing my research on your website, I found that you guys develop a car, a camera that can feel the game for you. So in a way, I thought you guys are a camera company, but you're also like a streaming company. And you also engage with lots of like, the content. So I wonder how important it is for you guys to define what you do that sticks to that niche part of the business. That, as you may say, it's more towards the content. But it's also powered by a camera or tell us about your thoughts around that.

Mike Emery 12:33

That's a good question. And there's a little bit of history here behind the camera for Joymo. And it might not have been the most logical place for us to start. Right. So we always set out to create a tool by which teams and clubs and federations and events could broadcast better. We always started there. Because of the people you get on board, you get influenced by their passions as a young startup. And we decided to go down the automated broadcasting route. And the English expression is to put the cart before the horse. Because what we did was, we said, Well, look, this, this content has value, and we're going to help you broadcast it. And it's a pain in the butt to broadcast it, to have someone filming it. So here's your unmanned solution. And if that, I'm not sure I'd walk that route again. But now we're in this good position, where we've got our content management platform, we've got a means of capturing content that's super easy through the Joymo app, we can accept streams from other cameras. If a club has its own camera setup and wants to use that, that's fine.

On top of that, we've got this cool piece of tech that we've developed, our own camera, which has quite a lot of demand. But that running a hardware business is a whole different, whole different kettle of fish. So yeah, it's been a journey to get where we are. I don't regret going down the hardware route at all. Because now we're in a great position, but it's been difficult to create hardware is hard.

Ronen Ainbinder 14:29

It inherited the word so...

Mike Emery 14:32

We should have known! We should have picked up on that!

Ronen Ainbinder 14:36

Yeah, just that you guys try to feel the supply chain of all the pain points discovered in this section of sports that I felt like, as you mentioned, you guys tried to solve all of them at once. Once you had most mostly the important ones to state this, the points to Connected are how it made sense. Now, looking back, so I wonder, I'm excited to see where this will be taken in the next few years. But I want to ask you more about the business model of over the top business, meaning that the way that streaming and broadcasting works, or today, and how is direct to consumer type of business model that your guys are trying to adopt disrupting the ecosystem? Do you think it's related to the idea that you mentioned democratizing sports, grassroots sports, or youth sports? In a way? Can you share with us your idea of how this is shifting? And where is it going in terms of the business model? And how would OTT be replaced by DTC if it will?

Mike Emery 15:57

Yeah, I mean, it's touching on some big stuff there. First of all, I firmly believe that over the next little while next few years, fueled by COVID and what COVID has done to the sport, we're going to see a real acceleration of clubs and teams going DTC. Direct to consumer, it'll be fueled by a need to diversify revenues alongside emerging tech. As the cost of production, the ease of production, and the ease of reaching out to fans, it's just lubricating this sector's whole growth. What we're trying to do, I know, you asked a question about whether this idea of disrupting you need to speak to those being disrupted to ask them how it's disrupting them. What's happening is good DTC or good Ott, giving a voice and a power under control to the sports via teams or clubs, or be it sports that have suffered for quite some time with an inability to own the entire end-to-end dialogue with their fans. There is always something disrupting that conversation, right? Whether it's an advert that's blocked on YouTube or a payment system, they don't have full control. We're trying to give these guys and girls at the content creation level an ability to reach their consumers as simply and efficiently as possible without interruption from another voice. And in that sense, we're trying to level the playing field, right, by removing the financial and operational barriers that stop Federations and teams and clubs from monetizing their direct-to-consumer audience. Yeah, the impact of COVID, the need to diversify revenues, the way tech is going with companies like us will improve sport and improve the way that fans can engage with sports. And I want to make an underline, I'm not talking about the top stuff, right? I'm not talking about the Premier League. And whenever we talk about the democratization of stuff like Premier League rights, what we're talking about is worsening the user experience. To watch Premier League now, I need to basically have streaming services, like three or four of them enabled, to watch the Premier League. So that's not democratization. That's just, that's just more people having a part of the same pie. Frankly, true democratization is about enabling grassroots sports customers clubs, rather than going DTC well, without interruption and without someone disrupting that conversation.

Ronen Ainbinder 19:19

I like that definition. I like it a lot. And I feel like democratization is one of the things that are being enabled due to technology; before, it wasn't easy to get access to fans, athletes, or any of the other stakeholders in the industry so easily fast. So we're going to see more, we're going to see more democratization of the sport in different sports areas, not only Ott or streaming or broadcasting as Join what he's doing. And that's also a very exciting element of the industry that I'd be looking forward to seeing. I find it interesting about Joymo also is that they're their business, or the technology collects data continuously because it can either be streams or broadcasts or players, or I don't know what type of data you guys collect. But I feel like data is the new currency. And data is the way businesses make better decisions. So I want to know if you have any take on the advantages of dealing with data in 2021? And how do you think about it strategically? How do you envision data as potentially an investment for your future? I mean, the future of Joymo. So how do you look at it? Very specific in data?

Mike Emery 21:16

Yeah, tremendous question. This is a real balance within a startup where you can't always make every decision of data because the data doesn't exist. But so you have to, you have to trust yourself and trust your team to make decisions going after data to get data so you can understand it. But when the data is there, you have to read it, you have to understand it, and you have to use it to make decisions, right. Generally, for tech companies like ourselves or others, data helps you understand your customers better. Their likes, dislikes, successes, failures, you can understand the market better current trends, understand your marketing efforts, how you're spending money, improve your internal processes, and clear bottlenecks. To improve the way that the customer succeeds with the product. You can use bait; you can use data to get to make better decisions because the gut decision will be right, sometimes to be wrong. But typically, if you analyze data correctly, you will be pulling in the right direction. Now, from Joymo's perspective, we try to be a data lead decision-making company. But we are also breaking a little bit of new ground, right? So when it comes to what people would be willing to pay to watch an under 14-year-old girl's handball game in Norway, no one could tell you that before we started doing it. And so you can't make that decision. Based on data, right, but now we can because we have it. So from Joymo's perspective, we use data to test and analyze new features that we develop, forecast sales trends, and determine which opportunities will help us bring more revenue. We help athletes through data to analyze their performance. We help the coaches make informed decisions from game footage, then we help them by providing them with a tool to read video data. Data basically helps us with our r&d in terms of how we improve our video pipeline and our latency. So the delay between the moment happening and the delivery to the consumer. Yeah, so we try our best to be a data-led organization? Of course, we do. But the fascinating thing with startups is that there is that balance between when there's no data.

Ronen Ainbinder 23:49

What is the future of Joymo?

Mike Emery 23:52

Well, that's a question that I often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about, and there are times when I feel incredibly encouraged by what we're doing and proud of what we've created, and see that we've developed something that people are genuinely excited by. And there are times when I think, well, the sky's the limit, right? We can do this now if we get the right funders along the way. And if we get the right ability to grow, then who knows what will go. And then there are times when I stopped when I think, oh my god, am I trying to take on YouTube? I mean, how bullish is that? I mean, the reality is, when we come down to it, we realize. No, we have a product that people need and that people enjoy. And our job is to keep creating that product and keep improving that product and keep getting people to use it and enjoying it. And as long as we do that, then the future will map itself out. I feel the more tangibly for you. I mean, we've received some good investment last year as a business because we showed that what we got is cool and exciting and people like it and as a benefit. And as a CEO, I've never, I never stopped fundraising, right. So I suspect, and halfway through this year, I will put my fundraising hat on, and I will start talking to VCs and not the Nordics or Europe or the US; they want to be part of this. Because once you see something, once you have something that can grow, then you need, then you need to grow it. And we're there. COVID is a huge variable for us. So we're just trying to take a big breath while we understand what's happening with the Coronavirus and the pandemic. But once we've taken that breath, I think we're going to be ready to grow. So, yeah, let's see. Call me up in a year. And we'll see where we are.

Ronen Ainbinder 26:01

I definitely will, Mike. But yeah, would you say it's totally true? As also CEO, your role is to convince me and convince everyone that it is something that we need, and I can see it through your words and your passion for Joymo. And I appreciate that. Mike, I'm sure that the team at Jones appreciated this win. And since we're running out of time, I cannot leave this interview, this awesome interview this Halftime Snack, without asking you about one is what is one person that you admire in the sports industry. And why?

Mike Emery 26:45

I grew up idolizing Eric Cantona, and I still have his shirt, sign shirt in my house, but he was just a phenomenal footballer, but what, I'm going to come down to my former boss. So his name is Johan Olive, cos and he's a four-time Olympic gold medalist speed skater from Norway. I'm impressed by his medals because I couldn't have done it myself. But the reason why I'm saying him is that when he retired from the sport, he didn't go into becoming a presenter, or he didn't create a clothing company as many do, he created a global children's charity that supports millions of children across the world. So I mean, he used his poor as an athlete to do something incredibly good for others. We all have it in ourselves to make a difference. And your hand did that on a scale that I yeah, that's truly impressive.

Ronen Ainbinder 27:44

That is absolutely inspiring. Mike, thank you so much for sharing. I want to thank you also so much for coming to the halftime snacks. I feel like this was a complete lesson on so many diverse topics like the media, business data, sports broadcasting, your story, you, and your personality is one to admire. And I want to thank you so much for coming to the halftime snacks and voting camp portion of your time. We need the listeners and everyone else out there in the world. Man, it was an absolute pleasure to host you, and I hope that you can do this again sometime in the future.