Discovery Sports president Andrew Georgiou says the introduction of sport onto the ’general entertainment product’ has been hugely successful

Andrew Georgiou and Radzi Chinyanganya

Discovery Sports president Andrew Georgiou has revealed some insight into Discovery’s decision to make sport content such a prominent part of streaming platform Discovery+.

Speaking at Discovery’s Winter Olympics launch, Georgiou said the extensive coverage of The Olympics on Discovery+ last year resulted in a sizeable uptake in new subscriptions to the OTT service.

“The Olympics did an amazing job and really got the product into the hands of a number of consumers,” said Georgiou. “When we made the decision to put sport on Discovery+, we saw people staying for longer. We saw people buy more annual passes than monthly passes.”

“The introduction of sport onto our general entertainment product has been hugely successful.”

He continued: “We saw when people engaged with the entertainment content as well as the sports content, they were four times more likely to renew with us. So, the introduction of sport onto our general entertainment product has been hugely successful and we hope to continue to improve those numbers as we continue to get from a broad audience for the Olympic Games into Beijing.”

Discovery is broadcasting The Winter Olympics in 50 different markets in 19 different languages and is localising the content in 11 different markets.

“We saw people buy more annual passes than monthly passes.”

Georgiou revealed that 175 million watched its coverage of The Olympics in Europe. He said: “The numbers we saw from PyeongChang was a huge uplift. Discovery+ showed a much higher retention of consumers, especially in the cohort of users that are exposed to the Olympic and non-Olympic content. The benefits between PyeongChang and Tokyo went up four times for those users.”

The Winter Olympics will be the third Olympics where Discovery will be using digital platforms and subscription as part of its strategy.

“What’s changed [in terms of sport on Discovery+] is how we’ll position the content in the home page and how that will boost the engagement with the content,” says Georgiou. “Our number one priority is getting consumers on board as fast as possible. The focus is on engagement and the experience of the broader product and the entertainment content.”