The Pace Report: Volume 7

Amazon Prime Video is making significant strides in revolutionizing the way we experience NFL's Thursday Night Football. Building on its successful streaming-only broadcasts from the previous season, Amazon is diving into the realm of AI and machine learning to offer viewers a more engaging, analytical football experience.

The tech giant purchased the streaming rights for $1B in 2021. As the 2023 season is slated for kickoff on September 7th, the company has announced that it’s geared to deliver a series of strategic views that go beyond the immediate scope of the gameplay on the field.

Amazon is introducing the data-rich broadcasts under the "Prime Vision" broadcast stream, catering to data-hungry fans with features like fourth-down decision analytics and dynamic field insights. The company has developed 20 AI features in total including “Defensive Alerts,” a point of view powered by a machine learning model that seeks to predict defensive moves before the snap occurs, giving viewers insights similar to those of quarterbacks and coaches.

Additionally, Amazon is stepping up its game by streaming in HDR, enhancing the visual quality for viewers. As Amazon continues its journey into live sports broadcasting, it’s incorporating a robust AI strategy in an effort to add a new layer of insight not seen previously in the medium.

In a twist of fate, Shopify is partnering with two competitive threats to deliver a new set of offerings for their network of roughly 2M merchants.

The Canadian tech firm has announced a highly visible partnership with Amazon that will see the latter’s “Buy with Prime” service integrated into the Shopify app ecosystem. The integration will allow participating merchants to add the Prime logo to their store and offer consumers Amazon’s expedient delivery options. Just one year ago, Shopify infamously claimed merchants leveraging “Buy With Prime” in 2022 would be doing so in violation of Shopify’s own terms of service.

Meanwhile, in an exclusive scoop by The Information, Shopify is additionally softening its guard against TikTok to offer merchants the ability to integrate their Shopify-powered stores with TikTok’s growing e-commerce solutions. Research from Ecommerce Platforms suggests that based on Tiktok’s favorable engagement rates and attention-metrics, the short-form video platform remains the top driver of consumer spend online.

The average cost to experience Taylor Swift’s record-setting “Eras Tour” was $1,300. The entire tour is expected to eclipse $2.2B in revenue, making it the highest grossing venture of its kind.

But fans need only pay a small fraction of that price, $19.89 to be exact, to experience the superstar’s Eras Tour Documentary, which is slated to hit theaters on October 13th. Since its announcement last week, the film is already breaking presale box office records with AMC reporting $26M in advance ticket sales on day one alone.

The unconventional agreement between Swift and AMC bypasses Hollywood studio involvement, thereby illuminating the potential for similar independent go-to-market strategies additional creators may hold in the future.

Established in 2019, Karat Financial is a creator-focused financial services firm. Instead of relying on conventional credit metrics, Karat extends lines of credit as determined by a content creator's digital footprint.

The company’s latest offering aims to connect creators within the platform’s network with startup founders for the purposes of facilitating angel investing opportunities. While 90% of startups historically fail, Karat’s Head of Product Shubha Raghvendra tells The Publish Press that there is still substantial demand from creators looking to exchange their distribution value for equity.

Raghvendra elaborates that the program has successfully led to three investment deals thus far.