Axios’ Sara Fischer in conversation with Tubi CEO Anjali Sud

Yes, and I keep coming back. Love that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I mean, you heard Karthik talk a little bit about this, but for sure, learning number one is when you can offer live sporting events that are also cultural moments, when you can offer them for free, and you can intentionally try and drive young, female-forward, multicultural audiences, it works. It expands the pie. And that's what we saw. We had 24 million viewers on Tubi on game day. 40% were between the ages of 18 to 34. We indexed younger, more female, more diverse. And it was great. It's great for the league, it's great for fans. And I think you'll see us do more of that, and hopefully you'll see more of that in general. I think the thing that we also learned, though, is you do have to meet audiences where they are. And one of the ways that we engaged with those fans, you know, we marketed via digital influencers. We had TikTok stars telling their friends about the game. We had a red carpet before the game with Olivia Culpo talking about the fashion. We had a live interactive shopping experience. And we had brands like beauty brands, ELF Beauty, advertising there. So I do think you have to know your audience, you have to focus on serving them well, but you can expand the pie. And then I think there was another topic that Karthik brought up around discoverability. It is a challenge. And I'd say another thing that we learned was we did partner with all of the Rokus, Amazons, LGs, Vizios of the world to just make it super easy for Americans when they turned on their television that day. It was very clear and easy to find where you can watch the game for free. And that took a lot of industry partnership. And I think that made a really big difference. So these are all things that, you know, I hopefully will just be doing more of.

I think they will because we've hopefully demonstrated the value here. But I'll tell you, it is on platforms like Tubi to keep extending that and learning. And I'll give you an example. One thing we know about Gen Z audiences is they care as much sometimes about the athletes and the stories behind the athletes, what we call shoulder content and programming, as they do the live event. And so one of the things Tubi will look to do to make this a compelling proposition for our partners and for the fans is invest more in shoulder content. We just announced, speaking of tennis, a Naomi Osaka doc that's going to be coming out on Tubi in August. It's going to be talking about her journey coming back into the game after having a baby. We are doing a docu-series with Cam Ward, the number one NFL draft pick. We're going to be doing World Cup programming following some of the footballers. And I think it's just recognizing that beyond the diehard sports fans, there are people who are in it for the culture, and we need to serve them with compelling stories and content and build that momentum. So I'm quite optimistic actually that this is not a one-off, it's the beginning of a needed sea change.

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, some of it is being a marketing vehicle, right? It's expanding the audience. And obviously if we can have the live rights to stream something, we certainly will. But there are times when we won't, and that's okay, because again, it's more about showing those non-diehard sports fans that there's something in this that's exciting. And I do think across different kinds of sports, we're seeing this and it is real. I think for women in sports in particular, there's a need here, there's a vacuum that we have an opportunity to fill.

Yeah, I think the answer is we would if we could make the math work, but it's very expensive today. And I think it's a hard strategy in this current environment to scale. But obviously we're playing the long game, and as we grow, we just crossed 100 million monthly active users. We have an opportunity. And by the way, we're one of the few free platforms that invest in hundreds of originals. A couple years ago, no one thought we could make originals work, and yet here we are. So I never say never. But right now, we kind of see that our opportunity to add value is in and around the game. It is worth noting, actually, we are doing more live rights in Mexico. We have the free exclusive platform for Concacaf and English Premier League MX. So there are markets where we are starting to see this model actually work and scale. And so hopefully one day that will be in the US as well.

I mean, look, I think certainly if you're a free, ad-supported business like ours, engagement, your audience being engaged, earning their time and attention which is extremely scarce, I think is the metric. That being said, and this is something that's hard to measure, but I'd say if it were measurable in a consistent way, for me it's more about the quality of engagement. Because the reality is that every minute of viewing time isn't the same. And Tubi is a platform, 95% of our viewing is on demand. So this isn't folks turning on a live linear channel and maybe watching in the background for hours. This is more like a free Netflix viewing experience. It's lean forward. People are choosing to watch that content. And I think for us, we want to keep driving that level of engagement. And we even look at our social channels and how much commentary there is, and are people coming back, are they fans, are they advocates for us? I think more and more that's going to be really important because we're in a super competitive market for consumer attention. And for advertisers, obviously they care a lot about putting their ads and paying to put their ads in front of audiences that are paying attention and that are actually going to buy.

Yeah, I think you know, when I first joined Tubi, we were a Silicon Valley startup that had been acquired. And in classic form, we were kind of running it on our own, doing our own thing. And there's a lot of power in that. You can move fast, you can be entrepreneurial, you can be focused. But certainly we have made an attempt, and you will see us continue to do this, to come together for advertisers and give them opportunities to buy across. I think this upfront in particular with Fox Sports, having the World Cup and NFL, and then combining that with Tubi's entertainment reach and that younger audience, we do feel that we are able to offer brands something that's very complementary, not duplicative, and therefore incremental. And that is very valuable. And I think more broadly, our focus is on those younger audiences, those cordless audiences. So it should be expansive. And every time we grow, we're not taking away from the traditional Fox business, we're actually helping expand from there. So we will continue to work together, and I think there's so much more we can do.

We're a free Netflix. We have the world's largest collection of free movies and TV series, hundreds of originals, all super culturally relevant, and we put viewers first. We're everywhere. You can watch TV on any device, anywhere. And we're sort of ubiquitous and focused on the viewer.

Thank you. Thank you all.