NBA, DAZN, Mtech, WTFast, Hub Will Talk Next-Gen Sports Streaming at Streaming Media Connect
On Thursday, May 22, Jon Giegengack, Principal and Founder, Hub Entertainment Research, will moderate the Streaming Media Connect May panel “Highlights First: Gen AI, Gen Z, and Next-Generation Sports Streaming.” As a new generation of highlights-first fans moves into the sports fandom mainstream, sports broadcasters need the agility and tech-savviness to produce and monetize personalized, short-form sports content at scale that meets the experiential demands of Millennial and Gen Z fans. If you’re a sports rightsholder and you’re not gaming out how to bring a personalized SportsCenter to every viewer, you’re looking at where the puck was and not where it’s going. This panel of sports streaming tech experts and programming innovators will explore where sports streaming is heading and how we’re going to get there.
Confirmed panelists include:
- Michelle Auguste, VP of Global Media Insights, NBA
- Joe Caporoso, President, Team Whistle, A DAZN Company
- Darcy Lorincz, Chairman and President, WTFast
- Matt Stagg, Senior Consultant and Founder, MTech Sport, Media & Entertainment
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Jon Giegengack is the principal at Hub Entertainment Research, which he founded in 2013. Thanks to his more than 20 years of experience in research for the entertainment industry, he recognized the need for real-time insight about the changing world of digital entertainment: from how people discover new content, to how they consume it, to how they pay for it (if they pay at all). Giegengack works with leading entertainment brands including ABC, Comcast, Netflix, Sony, AMC, and AT&T. He is a regular speaker at industry events and has been quoted in publications like Variety, TheWrap, Forbes, and Bloomberg.
“In 2025, sports remain the only truly irreplaceable form of content. If you want to watch the NFL, NBA, or F1, there is simply no substitute: More than 80% of fans say they’d sign up for a new service if they needed it to watch their sport. That’s why sports rights continue to get more expensive, and why it’s critical for media companies to understand how the next generation of fans engage with sports content,” says Giegengack. He offers a list of the discussion topics he expects to address with regard to “the preferences and habits of Gen Z,” including the following:
- The dominance of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram when it comes to news, highlights, and clips
- How AI can augment the fan experience (without getting in the way)
- How to engage with fans across multiple touchpoints: sports, teams, and athletes
Michelle Auguste is VP of Global Media Insights at the National Basketball Association (NBA). She has more than 20 years’ experience in media analytics, insights, and strategy development. At the NBA, Auguste leads a team of researchers who transform complex media research data into actionable insights. These insights are pivotal in shaping key tactical and strategic initiatives throughout the league. Under her leadership, the NBA has achieved a threefold increase in the revenue from media distribution deals, highlighting the significant value of the league’s media assets. Auguste’s previous jobs have included VP of Research at Lifetime Networks, Logo/MTV Networks, and Fuse Media. She began her career at BET.
“When it comes to measuring success in short-form sports content, I believe there are two key buckets to focus on,” Auguste shares. “The first is content performance—metrics like unique viewers, total views, and time spent watching. These help assess the immediate reach and engagement of the content itself. The second is impact on broader objectives, such as driving live game viewership and enhancing brand affinity. This includes metrics that track how many viewers were influenced by short-form content to watch live games. Ideally, we could go deeper—looking at the percentage of those viewers who were likely to tune in anyway versus those who were newly converted because of the short-form content.”
Auguste has the following questions for discussion on her mind: “What’s the correlation between short-form engagement and live game viewership? If short-form content attracts a large audience but fails to convert them into live viewers or engage them through other league touchpoints, how successful is it really?”
Joe Caporoso is President of Team Whistle, which was acquired by DAZN in 2022. Caporoso describes Team Whistle as a global sports media and entertainment company that creates, curates, and distributes positive, brand-safe, and relatable content . He has been with the company for twelve years, previously serving as the company's head of content and social monetization. Caporoso now sets and manages Team Whistle’s overall growth strategy and leads on TW's integration into DAZN as their internal global social agency.
“A key driver of DAZN’s acquisition of Team Whistle was blending the ability to maintain an audience’s attention through both live, long-form rights and short-form, non-live, and highlight-driven content. To appeal to all demographics, particularly Gen Z, you need to be able to move rapidly with every tool available, especially automation and AI where applicable to meet demand in every moment of the sports calendar,” Caporoso says. “Streaming platforms need to support their rights distribution with engagement-driving tools in their own app ecosystem but also have a savvy social strategy that maximizes audience reach on YouTube, TikTok, and Meta in particular to fully tap audience development and monetization.”
Darcy Lorincz is the Chairman and President of WTFast and President of Fiber Gaming Network, a WTFast company. He is also Chairman of Creatraction, which he founded in 2014. Other roles have included Founder of Origin Digital, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture; Global Sports and Technology Practice Lead at CAN; and Founder, CTO, and President of AerNow, an automotive and motorsports technology company. Lorincz says in his conference bio, “Continuous presence in this ever-evolving digital media industry these past three decades has afforded a unique perspective to evaluate, implement and lead rapid adaptation of digital business models. Predicting and applying technology to new services and solutions in this constantly evolving industry landscape is a passion.”
"AI isn’t about removing creative control, it’s about giving creators superpowers to scale [and] personalize at the same time," Lorincz asserts. He believes companies shouldn't take a one-platform-fits-all approach, because it's not the existence of ads that Gen Z minds—it's the irrelevance of them. "Creating highlight-driven content that works everywhere our gamers and fans gather, from TikTok to Twitch to OTT, gives sponsors, advertisers and our operator partners reach plus relevance," he says. "Our highlights become a canvas for brands to align natively without interrupting the viewer."
Matt Stagg is Senior Consultant of MTech Sport, Media & Entertainment, which he founded in 2023. Stagg has more than 30 years’ experience in mobile media and entertainment and sports. He was voted in the top 50 most influential people in online TV for four years, and in 2017, he was awarded the TV Connect People’s Choice award for his impact on the connected entertainment industry. He was previously responsible for developing BT Sport’s mobile capabilities and long-term mobile strategy, and he led the team that delivered the award-winning, first-remotely-produced, live sports event over 5G. Stagg is also Non-Executive Director of Condense, a startup that develops software for creating immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences.
“The industry keeps slicing games into smaller clips, hoping to win over Gen Z—but we’re missing the point,” Stagg cautions. “Gen Z isn’t asking for less sport, they’re asking for better sport: content that’s personalised, interactive, and delivered in formats that fit their daily lives. In this panel, I’ll be talking about how AI and automation can finally deliver that at scale—and why now is the moment for broadcasters to stop chasing trends and start setting them.”
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