SVG Sit-Down: Swerve Sports’ Christy Tanner Explores the Young FAST Channel’s Early Success

Exploding interest in women’s sports, notably the WNBA, has been key

With more than 2,000 FAST channels competing for global viewership, newcomer Swerve TV faced a daunting challenge when it launched its second FAST channel in June. Sure, the indie media company has already successfully deployed its fight-sports–focused Swerve Combat into the market, and its four-year-old Combat channel is firmly rooted in major FAST distribution hubs and saw its audience grow by 215%, to 20 million viewers, last year.

Startup Swerve Sports has moved into an uncrowded niche, women’s live sports, at a seemingly opportune moment, when interest in leagues like the WNBA has exploded. But Swerve can’t control its own destiny by calling the shots with its own platform; it needs good things to happen.

Fortunately, the breaks have been going Swerve’s way, at least early on. Notably, Roku, which just expanded its Roku Channel to the UK, made Swerve Sports one of the 45 FAST channels it’s packing in its trans-Atlantic journey.

To get an update on the Swerve Sports launch, SVG caught up with former AP, Washington Post, and CBS News exec Christy Tanner, chair, Swerve TV.

Swerve Sports’ Christy Tanner: “Companies and partners we’re working with have libraries of content about women athletes that they haven’t showcased. This is also about giving content creators another shot at reaching a wider audience.”

Three months in, what has gone great? What has gone not so well?
What has gone great has been the momentum and enthusiasm in the space for women’s sports, and the fact that multiple large distributors are supporting women’s sports in a big way. There’s a vast world of women’s sports, and there’s no history of success for dedicated women’s-sports channels on broadcast and cable. I think what has tremendous potential in the streaming world is that we have a shot.

[To] dive a little deeper into that, companies and partners we’re working with have libraries of content about women athletes that they haven’t showcased because they have had other areas of focus. This is also about giving content creators another shot at reaching a wider audience. I would also cite the number of new leagues that are starting up and benefiting from the investment and momentum in this space. The number-one thing that’s going well is that this is providing them greater ability to build fandom for their sports.

I’m thinking of Athletes Unlimited when you say that.
Athletes Unlimited is the great example. They’re a startup professional league that includes softball, volleyball, and basketball. We’ve been re-airing their last season of volleyball and basketball games, and we now plan to stream live nine of the 24 matches in their 2025 volleyball season. The ability to build fandom around live events is tremendous in FAST right now. We’re leveraging all our marketing capability to bring the biggest possible audience to those live volleyball matches, and we’re seeing enthusiasm not only for volleyball but for the ability to watch these games live.

How do you create awareness?
In general, with live FAST events across all the sports we’ve worked with — and that’s everything from boxing and MMA to volleyball and softball and tennis and even timber sports — what works best is when athletes with social followings promote viewing on FAST. I will say hands down the number-one driver of incremental viewership is athletes promoting awareness to their followings. They have such tremendous influence. Outside of that, it’s platforms using their promotional mechanisms to drive viewership. We know that the platforms like live events because they drive engagement, they drive duration of viewership.

Platform-wise, where is the elbow grease going right now?
Our largest two platforms are Roku and Pluto in the U.S. and Canada. We launched on Roku in the UK on Oct. 1. That’s obviously a different marketplace. Right now, we’re using the same feed that we’re using for the U.S. and Canada, but, over time, we will localize the UK feed to cater to the sports tastes of the UK audience. As we grow, we expect to launch in other international markets.

I have to say that one of the most exciting things about this is the ability to bring sports played by women to an international audience. These are among the best athletes in the world, and they have generally had the most exposure every four years during the Olympics; the vast majority of these athletes don’t necessarily see wide exposure in the other three years.

Swerve Sports is just getting started, and it ventures off into Europe. That seems ambitious.
It’s pretty simple. We received an offer from Roku to launch in the UK, and we said, “That sounds great.”

Between you and your production partners, who provides the production resources?
We are seeing a range of production investment and capabilities on the part of the leagues. I would say, at this point, it’s table stakes for a league to invest in video production. Controlling their IP, controlling their own image and storytelling is, I think, very important for some of these startup leagues. We’re happy to work with them, no matter what their production capability is, and we will co-invest in production.

I would just say, without my Swerve hat on, if I were a sports league right now, I would be investing as much as I could in production, and not only for live matches. The need for short-form video is urgent for anybody seeking to capture the attention of all audiences, particularly younger audiences. Not all the leagues we work with have the financial capability to shoot with more than one camera, and that can be an issue for smaller leagues seeking to build fandom.

What’s a good number of camera feeds for a Swerve Sports partner?
It totally depends on the sport. I think, with volleyball, you can get away with one or two cameras. But other sports demand multiple cameras, and the level of production investment that fans are used to seeing creates an expectation that they’re going to see the same level on FAST. That includes seeing fans in seats in the arenas and stadium.

They also need competent play-by-play, right?
Technology — AI translation and captioning —  has enabled really good play-by-play in any language in real time. It’s kind of an unsung hero of sports right now.

Do you shoot in only HD at this point?
We’re not sticklers for camera quality right now. Number of cameras is a bigger priority. But I do think any investment you can make in high-quality production pays off.

Do you regularly consult with your partners on how they can produce better content?
I’m not sure they always need us, but we are happy to share whatever intelligence we have about what’s working with our league partners. You have to understand our distinction as a women’s-sports channel as opposed to some of the single-sport–focused FAST channels. That does present some production challenges. There’s a learning curve for all of us, because there are such different production needs for different sports. I’m getting in the weeds with this example, but you have to know when you can trigger ads and when you can’t, and that varies by sport. We have a team that is now very well-trained on more than 300 live combat events in the last year in terms of when to trigger ads in a live event.

I’m sure Swerve Sports definitely wants to avoid its “Heidi Moment.” What is the hardest sport to shoot?
It’s probably gymnastics, just because of the way the arenas are set up. You have like all these events happening in different spots.

I know you’re operating a channel and not a FAST platform, but does the sheer number of TVOs and FAST platforms present confusion for you?
The lack of standardization across the streaming-TV industry continues to create challenges for consumers and content creators. Tracking analytics across different platforms is challenging, and there’s a lack of third-party metrics.

I think what creates a real stumbling block for the industry is the unwillingness to share data. The unwillingness to agree to and adhere to some common standards is a failure on the part of the industry, in my view. Discovery can be such a challenge across these different TV platforms. Consistency is a challenge.

I know it’s early, but have there been any metrics you woke up to and went, “Wow!”?
It’s fun to discover what people like. In terms of things that we were happy to see perform well, I have to mention startup tennis league INTENNSE. We carried their championships live, and it performed really well. These are professional tennis players, it’s a new league, they have some different rules, and they’re trying to make the sport more action-oriented. Also doing well are our timber sports; that’s competitive chainsawing and axe-chopping and wood-chopping. And women’s tackle football is just killing it. The Athletes Unlimited basketball and volleyball we have have been tremendous.

You announced a partnership with Rebel Girls last week. Tell us about that.
Rebel Girls creates content by and for tweens. They have a new show called Rebel Girls Sport Hour, and it’s launching as a family program in a Saturday-morning time slot. I think we are seeing FAST audiences become younger. The range of sports that we’ve seen perform well reflects younger audiences’ willingness and interest in following more than a handful of sports.