Fanatics Makes Push into Livestream Shopping

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Fanatics has hired a senior Google executive to head up a new livestream shopping division. Here are some details on the move:

* Nick Bell, formerly a Product Leader at Google has been named head the CEO of the new initiative. Nick was previously Head of Content at Snap and other digital content properties such as News Corp.

* Fanatics has a database of 90 million sports fans and will focus on creating content and community for creators who sell trading cards.

* The initial content will focus on breaking new boxes of trading cards, and selling them to followers. This is a great idea, because this idea is already popular on Youtube.

After years of the industry wondering if livestream shopping would ever succeed in the US, is this the coming out party?

Sadly, this is not the case. That doesn’t mean it won’t be valuable for Fanatics however. Here’s why:

* Fanatics has an extremely focused audience that doesn’t have to appeal to every type of person.

* Great organic content, including video, is one of the best acquisition strategies for any kind of content creator at the moment.

* Fanatics can follow the lead of Youtube and Tiktok. The more unique content Fanatics can put on its website, the more engagement it will have.

It’s important to note here that when you have an engaged audience, the best thing you can do is to keep creating higher and higher quality content to delight them. This is great advice for any modern brand. Figure out who those fans are, and constantly experiment with what content they will love.

The Watson Weekly podcast itself is an example of building content for eCommerce fans - it’s not going to change the world by itself, but if it’s creating more engagement, then it should be an area of increased investment.