K-pop, live sports key to streamer Kiswe's growth strategy

➤ Kiswe is a leader in the K-pop music industry, streaming live or virtual genre concerts every other weekend at prices ranging from $20 to $60 per event.

➤ The company provides direct-to-consumer subscription services for five NBA, WNBA and NHL teams.

➤ Working with Smosh and Mythical, among others, Kiswe is bolstering its position in the creator realm.

In sports media circles, Kiswe Mobile Inc. is known as a streaming platform that provides fans direct-to-consumer subscription access for several NBA, WNBA and NHL teams. However, the New Jersey-based cloud video specialist is also a major player in the music world, particularly in the K-pop realm, and is increasingly working with the creator community to expand the reach of their content.

Wim Sweldens, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Kiswe. Source: Kiswe Mobile Inc.

S&P Global Market Intelligence recently caught up with co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Wim Sweldens to discuss the monetization opportunities around its streaming holdings and how Kiswe came to work on the farewell concert for Black Sabbath and its lead singer, Ozzy Osbourne, just 17 days before the heavy metal icon passed away. An edited transcript follows.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: When did Kiswe start with K-pop?

Wim Sweldens: Going back five, almost six years. We did events with some smaller, unknown K-pop bands, and they got a good reaction. Through some of our investors, we connected with BTS management in the summer of 2019.

We did our first BTS concert at the Kyocera Dome Osaka in Osaka, Japan, in December 2019. It was a huge success. BTS management said they were going to do a world tour in 2020 and asked if they could stream that. Then, there were virtual shows that blew up. And then other groups wanted to work with us.

Over the last three or four years, we must have streamed 300 shows. We're streaming one pretty much every weekend, working with small and big players, including Seventeen and Blackpink, which is the female version of BTS.

Kids from Southeast Asia are buying the shows and at what price?

Fans in Korea, the Philippines and Japan are the bulk of the audience. There is some activity from every country. I'm from Belgium, so I check there. There are guys from New Jersey. K-pop is a global phenomenon.

The range is $20 to $60. It's real money, especially when tens of thousands, or in some cases, hundreds of thousands, are buying the shows. The promoter and the record label work with the group to get 70,000 people to sell out MetLife Stadium in Jersey. With streaming, it's essentially unlimited seating capacity. Many K-pop fans are young teenagers, not of age to attend concerts on their own. That's why the virtual shows also work well. As you can imagine, more girls want to see the boy bands. And more boys want to see the girl K-pop groups.

Let's talk about Ozzy Osbourne. Take us back, if you will, to the beginning of Back to the Beginning in his hometown of Birmingham, England.

For the Ozzy show, [the show's promoter] Mercury and Sharon Osborne [the late singer's wife] approached us in May. The show had immediately sold out. They realized there are a lot of metal devotees around the world. None of us really expected it to become THAT big. But you could see it in the weeks and then the days beforehand, when most of the tickets are sold. We realized there was interest from around the world.

It wasn't just Ozzy and Black Sabbath, but a whole lineup of bands for metal die-hards and casual fans alike. It was an era-defining event with Metallica, Aerosmith. One of my favorites, Gorisha, who played at the Olympics, was there.

[Editor's note: Kiswe worked with Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) on the "Athlete Moment" first during the Tokyo Summer Games in response to COVID-19's impact on spectators. During these moments, athletes connected with their families and loved ones live on video immediately after competing in their events. For the Paris Games in 2024, OBS/Kiswe enhanced the initiative, allowing athletes from 35 sports to make the post-event connections.]

Some reports suggest there were 5.8 million Back to the Beginning streams. That many people bought the show?

With 40,000 fans in Villa Park and 275,000 households and venues from 174 countries that purchased a livestream ticket, the show became a truly global event, watched in every corner of the world. Kiswe's tech creates an interactive bidirectional experience using millions of chat, cheers and video selfies.

There have been reports of a two-hour recap of the show hitting theaters early next year. Would Kiswe receive any rights payments from that?

The footage is archived in our cloud, but it's 100% Mercury's IP. All of a sudden [with Osbourne's passing], it's become even more valuable. There are a bunch of ideas about how it could be released in various formats. It's quite likely we would be the streaming partner.

I approached the story late; I wanted to find out about the marketing behind Back to the Beginning.

[Mercury] did the brunt of marketing. They didn't share all the plans with us, but you can imagine paid banners, social. That's not atypical of how we work. The marketing is largely left to our partner, as well as the physical setup for camera angles. We have a small, in-house marketing team that functions more like a data group. We collect the raw data. There is AI and analytics about the interactions, and that info is marketing gold. Ultimately, we're a bunch of high-tech geeks.

Kiswe works with the NBA Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans. You also have the WNBA Phoenix Mercury and the NHL's Utah Mammoth. Will Kiswe be adding any NBA or NHL teams during their upcoming 2025-26 seasons?

Kiswe powered the Pelicans' new localized streaming platform for the 2024-25 NBA season. Source: Kiswe Mobile Inc.

We're in constant conversation with the leagues and teams. But it's not like there is a big announcement next week.

There was talk that the Jazz had 20,000 full-season direct-to-consumer subscribers in their first year with Kiswe. What can you say here?

The Suns and Mercury came to us late. We got it up and running within a month, marking our foray into [regional sports network] distribution. Like any change, the first year is one of transition, and in this case, it was a move away from the traditional ways to watch the games on TV. We have seen continued growth. There is a lot of mobile use. Many fans are coming back between games. When the game is on ESPN (US) or a national carrier, the window closes. When fans watch games on direct-to-consumer, they can come back to watch the game again, see clips. There is better engagement.

The Jazz have developed "Shoot the Shot" with the coach coming back and talking about the game. There are integrations to buy Suns and Jazz merchandise; that's a big part of our platforms. We work with fulfillment houses. For Ozzy, there was a crazy amount of goods sold. I'm still waiting for mine.

Generally speaking, Kiswe gets paid a flat fee for streaming the games? Or do you get more as the subscriptions rise?

It's a percentage.

I can watch Kiswe stream on my devices. What about in bars/restaurants?

I have to bite my tongue here. We're very close to an announcement with a big partner in the commercial space. A lot of bars called up wanting to stream Ozzy. Stay tuned.

You are also working with creators and marketing influencers?

The creator space is shaping up to be a third vertical. When we got into that business during COVID-19, the old-timers were skeptical. But we sold a lot of tickets and received a lot of attention. Now it's one of our fastest-growing businesses. We have worked with top creators like Smosh or Mythical and others who have millions of followers. It's a fun group to work with. One of the creators did a sketch show with fan participation, as the audience influenced what the characters would say or do. Our platform works uniquely that way.

There are a lot of one-off deals?

Our investors are also asking us about that. "Is it like with Ozzy, something you can get up and running quickly?" But creators keep coming back. They are doing tentpole events every three or six months. Some, like Smosh, are at six events (annually) and want to create subscription models. The business is warming up.