With the demand for content at an all-time high, Meadowlark CEO and co-founder, John Skipper, plans to target non-live sports programs, according to Sportico.
The report notes that Skipper believes there will be “north of $100 billion spent annually on content in the next few years”—including billions of dollars on non-live sports.
As BSM recently reported, Meadowlark added Kate Fagan and Tom Haberstroh to its talent roster. Fagan and Haberstroh join Dan Le Batard, Hank Azaria and Adnan Virk, making it fair to suggest that the company will focus much of its content on podcasting.
However, according to Sportico, Skipper noted, “The rest of [Meadowlark’s content] will be video. Documentaries. We want to do unscripted reality. We want to do shoulder programming for live events. We think over time we will enter the scripted world. And by the way, while we’re going to be sports-led early, we certainly think of sports as a lens to [eventually] look at other kinds of cultural [subjects].”
Meadowlark’s content plan looks similar to the “30 for 30” franchise that launched while John Skipper was at ESPN, as noted by Sportico. Skipper also said the company has big ideas and plans to go out and find super storytellers to tell them.
While production of the video content will rely on third-party companies and directors, Skipper’s company does not plan to create a streaming service of its own. Instead, Sportico notes it “intends to sell the content to distributors, at a profit, before production begins.”
“The existential thing going on [right now] is this battle for share among what is already hundreds of platforms,” John Skipper said. “The headwinds [to create a new B2C brand] are very strong, and if you create one, you have to feed it. Subscription services are hard [and costly], and not many of them are going to succeed.”
