Creator Commentary Instead of Romo and Nantz? YouTube Hints at NFL Future

The top sports executive at YouTube, which is paying $2 billion a year for NFL rights, has a bold prediction about the future of sports broadcasts: more creator-hosted game commentary streams.

Jon Cruz, the Google-owned streamer’s head of global sports partnerships, is unsurprisingly bullish on the integration of content creators into live sports. “We’ve barely scratched the surface,” he said onstage at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York this month. 

So, what could be on the horizon for live sports streaming on YouTube?

“The expectation will be that if I want to hear NFL commentary from [someone like] Brett Kollmann—who’s an up-and-coming football strategist on YouTube—I’m going to be able to choose that over maybe Tony Romo and Jim Nantz,” Cruz said.

Alternate sports broadcasts (or “altcasts”) are nothing new—think ManningCast, LeBron James’s The Shop, or the ESPN coaches room MegaCasts during college football bowl games—but evolving technology from streamers could ultimately offer even more flexibility for viewers. 

Still, it’s not as simple as micing up anyone who has millions of followers.

“It’s not just about bringing in Mr. Beast or the largest influencer you know printing money off of that,” Cruz said. “You have to figure out: How does this fit into our broader strategy? And how do we bring in these personalities and creators in such a way that it’s unique to us?”

Showcasing YouTube’s growing market share, in July, it became the first streaming platform to lead monthly TV usage with 10.4% of all viewing, according to a media distributor gauge report from Nielsen. Disney was second with 9.9%. 

Sports are a core part of the growth for YouTube. Views of sports-related content on YouTube are up over 45% year-over-year, and sports living room watch time on YouTube has grown by over 30%.

The onus will be on leagues and rights holders to figure out how to tap into new forms of talent. “Fans care about the relationship they have with the personality,” Cruz said. “They’re not worried about production budget, or paywall this, or distribution platform that.”