Interview to John Barker, Chairman of Gana Media Group
We wanted to build a connected sports entertainment business around the way fans actually experience sport today. Fans move continuously between news, video, live matches, statistics, apps, gaming, and conversation. Our strategy has been to build an ecosystem around that behavior. Today that ecosystem spans gaming platforms, sports content, mobile apps, live football streaming, premium video, real-time data, technology partnerships, and interactive fan experiences.
One of our biggest strategic advantages is that we own that ecosystem. We are not trying to stitch together a customer journey across businesses that we do not control. Our content, streaming, apps, data, customer experiences, and gaming products can increasingly work together as one connected environment. That matters because the value is not simply in owning each individual product.
The value comes from connecting them. Content creates an audience. Live sport creates engagement. Data makes the experience richer. Gaming creates another way for the fan to participate. AI increasingly becomes the intelligence layer connecting those experiences around the individual customer. Over the past year we have been putting those pieces together at a considerable pace.
Our Liga Premier partnership brought live Mexican football into the ecosystem. Our relationship with OneFootball expanded our premium football video offering. We have introduced AI-powered sports content and predictive experiences, expanded our apps, and continued developing our gaming products. Each development is important individually, but strategically they are much more powerful together.
Mexico gives us an exceptional environment in which to execute that strategy.
More than 100 million people are online, and football fandom is significantly higher than the global average. We also saw the strength of that sporting passion during the World Cup, when gaming turnover in the final week was more than 162% higher than the first week of June, registrations increased by 136%, and Gross Gaming Revenue increased by 227%.
Major sporting events are incredibly powerful moments for customer acquisition, but our strategy is about building a relationship that extends beyond a single tournament or sport. Football is enormously important in Mexico, but fans also follow the NFL, basketball, baseball, boxing, UFC, and major global sporting events throughout the year.
Owning the ecosystem gives us multiple opportunities to engage with that same customer. And increasingly AI allows us to connect the intelligence generated across that ecosystem.
The more we understand what someone watches, reads, follows, and interacts with, the more relevant the experience can become. That creates a simple strategic flywheel. Better understanding creates better experiences. Better experiences create stronger engagement. Stronger engagement drives retention and ultimately creates a more valuable customer relationship.
That is why we have consistently talked about GANA as an integrated sports entertainment ecosystem rather than simply a gaming business. We are building the audience, content, distribution, technology, data, and gaming infrastructure together.
The industries of sports media, technology, data, and gaming are converging. For the fan, they are increasingly part of the same experience.
That is exactly the business we are building at GANA
