Last week’s announcement that Dew Tour would be forming a video content partnership with skate industry leader The Berrics marked that latest initiative to come out of the NBC Sports Ventures unit. The division now hosts a roster of properties that include NBC Sports Radio, Dew Tour, Lucas Oil Pro Motocross and the Red Bull Signature Series. Recent forays have also included a partnership for Reebok Spartan Race, taking a stake in fantasy-sports startup FanDuel, as well as adding the likes of Mike Florio to the radio lineup.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Rob Simmelkjaer, Senior Vice President, NBC Sports Ventures, about the growing role of the brand, its plans for radio as well as his on-air role on MSNBC’s Sports Matters.
Simmelkjaer on his position at NBC Sports: I am lucky to have a very unique role in this industry. It is something very different every day, running properties from the Dew Tour to our Red Bull relationship to our partnership with Spartan Race, as well as getting to oversee NBC Sports Radio, as well as doing a little on-air work. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a fun, varied career.
Of course, my role has evolved in large part because of what we’ve added since I’ve been here. When I came, we had Alli Sports, which at that time was dominated by the Dew Tour. We also had a motocross tour. Since I’ve been here we added Red Bull, which diversified the action sports portfolio. Then we added our radio network and that has been gratifying to watch grow into a national presence and a player in the radio space and this year we added Mike Florio to that. We then added another property last year in Spartan Race, which I believe has a lot of upside as a media property and as a business by bringing America into this world of obstacle racing and mud runs. In addition, there is my role now in the international side of the business, where our team has grown dramatically the NBC Sports footprint internationally. Our television distribution across all the programming that we own or license domestically has grown more than two-fold since I’ve been here.
On the role of action sports for the company: The role it plays for us is simple. It reaches an audience we want to reach and that aren’t always watching traditional sports. Younger audiences, non-traditional sports fans, people who are living their lives on their snowboards or skateboards and not necessarily watching football, basketball, etc. It keep us relevant with the population of teens and 20-somethings and it is a space we want to continue to be in. That said, it is also changing a lot. The things that are attracting people in that space are always changing. That space is all about progression and the next hot thing and we have to be very aggressive in trying to reinvent ourselves pretty frequently to stay relevant in that world.
On international trends: I’m seeing a much greater acceptance across borders of sports that were previously unfamiliar to an audience. When I am out in markets, I am typically selling American content, but I think when you look at the way that the Premier League has been received in the US, that is a shining example of borders coming down for sports. There was a time when Americans only cared about American sports, British only cared about British sports and so forth, but that has changed an things are becoming more relevant now on both sides of a border. Being a sports executive in 2015, you’ve got to be paying attention to tends across the world, whether it is in cricket or rugby or any other sport that are played in the United States.
On the future of NBC Sports Radio: First of all, Mike Florio has been a game changer for us in a very short amount of time. He’s raised the profile for the network, he is breaking news. Going forward, we want to increase distribution. We have 434 stations, which is the hot-off-the-presses number we are at right now. We want to be in more markets and more terrestrial stations around the country. We want to grow our digital footprint and are looking to do things such as introducing podcasting, as we have not been in that space yet. I think you can expect to see some podcasting product come out from us this year.
On his on-air gigs: Every Monday, I’ve been lucky enough for our friends at MSNBC to host a show as part of their new digital initiative called Shift. As part of that, every week I tape a show called Sports Matters, a sports interview and news show. We delve into issues of sports and society, tackling the big issues affecting the industry, such as sports and gambling. We’ve had some great guests, for example, I got Evander Holyfield coming on to start looking ahead to the Mayweather fight.
