The Shintaro Higashi Show - JUDOTV.COM

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

The IJF recently launched a new streaming website called JUDOTV.COM, which caused a bit of controversy on Reddit, especially around its cost. What's Shintaro and Peter's take on IJF's new venture? Is it an obvious money grab by the IJF, or is it going to usher in a new era for the sport of Judo? Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. First and foremost, let's give a shout out to LeVon, who is one of our major sponsors now. Thank you so much for sponsoring us. We really appreciate you. Thank you for your support, LeVon. Thank you very much. And today we're going to talk about a little bit of a controversial topic, which is judotv.com.

judotv.com, judotv.com. Just like that. I know people are bitching about it on Reddit. I saw it. I read that. Yeah. I was going to respond. You know, people were complaining about a hundred euro subscription for the year. All right.

So full disclosure, this is not paid. This is not paid. It's my personal opinion. Your personal opinion. Yeah. I actually immediately bought it, the membership, to watch the world championships. In Doha, that's happening right now. Yeah, happening right now today as we record this May 8th.

It's a whole week thing. It goes from May 7th to the 14th. It's the world championships. It's amazing. Right, right. Amazing. Yeah, we had some upsets already. Upsets, yeah.

Maruyama versus Abe. Oh, yeah, I missed that one. Did it happen? It happened already, yeah. Okay, so we'll talk about that later. Takato hasn't lost since 2019. I know, and he got rocked by this weird Maki Komi, right? Yes, yes, yes.

Well, we can talk about this thanks to IGF's great effort to live stream this and then, you know, cut clips, post them on all kinds of social, right? So, let's kind of, let's first summarize the controversy first. What are people complaining about? The cost.

The cost. Yeah. 100 euros. Per what is that? For the year. For a year. Oh, okay. The streaming service, essentially. And, Per what is that? For the year. For a year. Oh, okay. The streaming service, essentially.

And you know, I looked up Judo TV app on like Google Play, couldn't find it, couldn't stream it on the TV. At least with YouTube, right? You pull up YouTube and it's like, oh, streaming or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. But now you have to do it from judotv.com. Right? It feels a little bit kind of like going backwards because YouTube is so accessible to everybody.

Yeah. But I think the problem is they probably can't generate steady income. Probably not. Yeah. And they put a lot of money behind judotv.com. And first and foremost, it costs 100 euros for the year.

I don't know what people are bitching about. I'm not trying to like, what know, what's a hundred dollars. Like I'm not trying to say that, but like, what kind of stuff do you spend a hundred dollars? Right. You go out to dinner, you know, and think about the dinner that you went on, you know, like what'd you go to like Chili's or whatever the hell it is.

You get the first step food from us through not even great food. Like all the meat comes from factory farm. Right. Then I get in the highest quality stuff. It's loaded with sodium, not quality ingredients. It's these corporate machines turning stuff for you to consume and you're paying a hundred dollars for it. You can't support your industry and watch this professionally put together thing. They must've paid hundreds of thousand dollars to developers to put together this website. I mean, the user experience is amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm logged on right now because I was watching it this morning. So here's an interesting situation because I have never, I don't even have an account yet. Yeah. So I'm like the,

I'm like a potential user. Yeah. So you're saying the UI is good. Yeah. UI is amazing. You go to Judo TV and then you click on the World Championships, enter the World Championships, ando tv and then you click on the world championships

enter the world championships now there's overview and on the front page it says next stop elimination rounds in 13 hours oh nice and then does it show like replays of the full matches like categorized by players and stuff that's exactly right and then the next tab over is live so if it's live playing you could go click on it then Then you can go to the draw. And the draw is not like, remember those epone.org days? Yeah, yeah. Dude, that was like awful. This is even better.

This is even, I mean, epone.org, the initial one was great. When they revamped it, it was like, you know, really difficult to use. That's what,

the one I remember. I didn't love that one. But now with this, the draws, it's so clean. It's so pretty. Right? It's got all the different countries and

everything and then once these matches are done you could click on an individual matches from the stream and then right so like i don't need to like watch the entire live stream i can go back i'm like looking through right now at 60 i could be like you know what let me watch the semi-final between takato and garrigos from spain I could just click on that and play, and it'll immediately play. That's very responsive. I think you couldn't do that on YouTube. No, of course not. And then I go, okay, in the reperchars,

Takato lost to Korea. Lee, did you know this for third? Oh, man, that loss must have really... Wow, look how happy you look. You can't even hide it. He just smiles like that. I'm all about the underdogs because Takato is a dominant boy. Yeah, he's so happy.

The new era. This guy, Korea beats Japan. He can't even hide. I can click on it right now. Here we go. Boom. Yeah, yeah. It immediately starts playing, right?

Nice. Oh, there it is. Look, and I can fast forward through it. Very high speed scrubbing. You could click on it, replay it. I can even just like fast forward right now and see what he threw him with. Okay, nice.

Yeah. And it tells you like 524 golden score, right? There's a knee palm. Ooh. Nah, okay. Don't spoil it. I'm going to go and watch it. You know what?

Maybe I'm okay for this. I could have gotten a score out of this one. I don't spoil it. I'm going to go and watch it. You know what, maybe I'll pay for this. Dr. Tom could have gotten a score out of this one. I don't know, man. It's going to go all the way, dude. You know? I think this, so this kind of shows, you know, the content monetization schemes have been moving away from the ad model.

You know, the, have you heard of the curiosity stream like the nebula stuff you probably you've probably heard of this if you watch a lot of youtube somewhat so it's basically similar like you pay fifty dollars a year yeah and then the creators get a half of the cut of of the whole the income i think so that uh the idea is that the content creators don't have to rely on ad clicks so they can be more they can have a steady stream of income yeah without being worried about what the most viral stuff could be you know yeah so i think in the way in that way i the ijf also realized that the putting this on youtube yeah i mean maybe it could be have more reach but then probably didn't cover the costs or like it probably couldn't you they couldn't customize it as much you know like the stuff like you what you

just said oh like go go to individual matches. You probably couldn't do that on YouTube. Dude, this interaction, like this thing is amazing, right? So like I go to 73 kilos, which is contested tomorrow, and I'm looking at the draws, and it's amazing, right? So Soichi's fighting Dukali from Morocco first round, and he could vote and be like entering into like a prediction league. I'm going to say vote for Hashimoto. 96% of the people have voted for that. 96% of people who voted thinks Japan's going to be Morocco first round.

So Hashimoto is going to be Ducali first round. Of course. Right. But then they're putting this platform for it to be sort of gambler friendly. Maybe. I know they're messing around with this because they have like an NFT thing. People are like, what the hell are they doing? But they're really trying

to innovate and be ahead of the ball, right? Every grappling sport's doing this. Wrestling's doing it. BJJ's doing it. Flow grappling is already a thing. And you know what? Flow grappling did it first, I think. The gambling? No, no, for jiu-jitsu.

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Not the gambling, but like- Oh, the streaming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. And you know, they control it, similar pricing, all this stuff. But I logged on to Judo TV, and I'm really blown away by like how professional this whole thing is.

So, you know, how can you like bitch about the justify, like, oh, how can you justify this cost, whatever, when you haven't even like experienced the actual product? You know what I mean? You spend $100 at Chili's. Oh, like the family restaurant? Yes.

Or you go to Olive Garden, family of five, you get some breadsticks and soup for free, but then you get, you spend $100 for dinner. You know what I mean? It's $100 a year

and unlimited, right? Dude, yeah. And then you can go back, like, you know, like I'm not It's $100 a year and unlimited, right? Dude, yeah. And then you can go back. Like, you know, I'm not going to sit there and watch the live all the way through. I'm just going to get up

at four in the morning and watch this. No way. But the moment I woke up, I'm like, all right, let's see the brackets, see what's up, right? And then I'm going back

like, oh my God. You know, when I woke up and I turned it on, Abe had already made the finals. Maruyama's fighting in the semifinals against Mongolia. And usually I don't give a shit. I really don't. I don't watch

sports at all. I don't give a shit. I know. But because this website's so incredible, it made me like, you know what? Let's watch that match. Maruyama kind of looked tired and fatigued before with this guy in Mongolia.

Like he's having a hard time. Let me go back match or two and see how he looks. And you know, like, and now I'm getting into it. And now if I could bet on the fighters, that'd be more interesting. Right. The contest order, when they're going to fight is everything is there. You know what I mean? And then you click on judoka.

Right. And then immediately, because it knows where I am, it pulls up all the American judokas that are competing. I love that, right? Like by nation, by the category, and stuff like that, right?

And then I can know immediately the top-ranked U.S. person competing on that team is Angelica Delgado. She's ranked 18th in the world. I know her personally. She's an amazing person, right? I can click on her and be like, oh, shit, she's ranked 18th in the world i know personally she's an amazing person right i can click on her and be like oh shit she's 32 years old damn you know it's 160 centimeters whoa let me look at some of these results from here in the back right oh yeah

yeah she competed here with uh you know i know exactly the two people who she fought right yeah and i can watch it oh wow so it's all the head-to-head history. You remember that website where Judo Inside or something? Yeah, guys, do not Google me on Judo Inside. I could go back. Look, I'm watching Angie Delgado right now go for a triangle five minutes into her match

against the French. That's very interesting because all the major sports have this type of statistic websites. Soccer has it. Baseball's really heavy on this. Dude, and I'm watching this.

Look at this. Obviously, you can't watch it, right? But it has the result of the match and it says, okay, at 38 seconds, Shido escaped with head. And Angie got that. At 209, Shido illegal grip breaking.

And then at 317, a Wazari was scored by the French. So I'm going to click on that, and it takes me exactly to that moment. To that moment. Oh, my God. Okay. That is. Oh, there it is. Katagumo.

Bang. Dude, this is so good. This is so good, dude. And let me tell you guys something. I'm not getting paid to say this. And if it was bad, I'll tell you it's trash. Because they've done, you know, things that I was like, oh, say this and if it was bad I'll tell you it's trash because they've done you know things that I was like oh man like

I can't really support this I can't even say nice this is nice this makes me want to deep dive and watch more judo because I don't usually watch judo dude I don't like you said it's pretty hard like

if there's a huge tournament happening and they put it up on YouTube, it's hard to find. Like you have to kind of know the tournament structure and you have to know when they play. This is amazing. I can't wait. Because tomorrow, Jack Hineska from the U.S., he's 58th on the world's ranking list, is fighting.

And then I could click on it right now, right? Can you get alerted maybe? Yeah uh yeah i mean look at this you know it tells you like uh what round it is and what match it is and dude he's fighting uh gabler first round oh right and you could follow these athletes i'm gonna follow him right now see what happens if i follow him oh you can follow look i'm following right now first athlete that i follow jack follow him. Oh, you can follow. Look, I'm following him right now. First athlete that I follow, Jack Inesco. He's a local, too, a New Jersey guy. Yeah, yeah.

Amazing. It's Gus Sensei. Yeah, you can look at results. Wow, this is an amazing thing. Nice. All right. So you're fully in support. You think it's worth – so you're saying it's worth $100 a year.

Yes. Oh, shoot. Look at this. You could actually... Wow, there's a prediction league. And there's a ranking of me, like how wrong I was, how right I was. Is this like fantasy judo?

It's like fantasy judo, dude. This kid, Nicholas, is 5,900 points. I'm in full competition, 19,000th place. I can totally see. Didn't you say, what's his name? The president of the IAJF. He was kind of in this business before. Yeah, dude.

Marius Weiser was a casino boss from Romania. Did you guys know this? He's a very statistically driven person who owned casinos, right? And, you know, that's what he did. He looked at all the statistics. He said, hey, fourth minute of the judo match for the last minute of the judo match. No one throws anybody. That makes the sport really boring.

Why does it need to be five minutes and make it four? Yeah. So he cut the last minute. He actually cut women's first. Yeah. Because women really don't throw statistically significantly more than men in the last minute. And then they looked at it like, you know, men don't really throw that much either in the last minute. Yeah.

And then the quality thing came in. So now that's why judo matches are four minutes. Yeah. So now that's why judo matches are four minutes. Yeah, I'm sure. Look at the, like, right now he's, you know, the IHF is tracking every single second, every single second of the match all recorded.

So now they can do more analyses. Dude, they are on the right track. And this is how you bring money into the sport. Why do you think the NFL is so popular in the United States? All the presentation, broadcasting. Dude, the guys listening right now who are bitching about the 100 euros for this membership, dude, you probably bet $400

on Super Bowl last year and lost it. You guys are betting $400, $300 on like the color of Gatorade that gets dumped on the head coach after the match is done. And you guys are bitching about a $100 subscription for a professional thing

that the IJF is doing that you can support so you could start using that money instead of betting on the color blue Gatorade at the Super Bowl, you could bet on your favorite judokas. This is a good thing. This is a good thing. And let's just say, right, 100,000 people spend $100 a year to subscribe for this thing. Okay.

Now there's money coming in. Right? Where's that money go? Maybe it goes into the pool for the person who makes the best prediction league or who's at the top of the ranking list

and there's a sort of payout. Right? So now all of a sudden you're playing legitimate fantasy judo with a little bit of like a money prize that makes it much more interesting.

People are much more engaged. Right? There's more conversations within the community. Right? And you could own your, have your own little leagues within the dojo. Like guys, sign up for this thing. Like we'll all play the pool. Like we'll guess the winners or whatever, whoever gets the top thing. Yeah. We'll make it a pool in the dojo and everyone just go in the thing, be a part of this thing. And then the winner gets a thousand dollars, something. I don't know.

Right. They should hire you. Can you imagine? I was thinking to myself, they should hire me for the announcing. Oh, as a commentator? Yeah. Oh, guy goes to Toshimi. What's his name? Neil Adams?

Yeah, Neil Adams, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He knows you too, I remember. He knows every single English-speaking judoka or something. Well, yeah, back around. Look at this. Spotlight.

You know, world number one. Grigashvili, Suleimanidze, Adhanjit. You're watching through these, right? And it has the world ranking list. And it kind of gives me a more personalized way to like interact this stuff yeah yeah i mean and you can look at it and say hey the statistics right we're on the front page 99 nations participating in this world championship 657 judoka oh my god that's a lot yeah that is incredible and you know what they need to do

man they need to do a brown belt world championships that's what they need to do oh man they really do what I feel like that kind of what does that even mean what's the qualification what's the definition of a brown belt I kind of don't like having

belt classes like that no but it makes it good I think that's what you need man you need the support not everyone can get here well either way this is the thing

not everyone can get to the stage. Not everyone deserves to be on the stage. But the people who are hobbyists who are making a run at it, maybe they're not tier one athletes, but they deserve their spotlight. Where is it?

Liberty Bell Tournament, you know, these local things. At least if they could compete on a world stage at their level, right, for their country or something, and then they could have it showcased on a platform like Judo TV, and they could feel like professional athletes. Well, as you can see, Shintaro's been doing BJJ a lot lately.

Yeah. M4, Masters, World World Champion Blue Belt they need those differentiated divisions I believe this man I'm like a believer in this they need to take care

of the veterans they need to take care of the Masters guys you know Masters means something different on the IJF circuit right that's like the

higher level tournament right yeah the Masters is not you know and they call the old people judo veterans I see I don't know and they call the old people judo veterans

yeah i don't know why they do that but anyway dude i judo tv.com you know if you're listening to us this is not an advertisement i don't get paid by them or anything but i highly suggest you you try it out and interact with this thing you know um i'm a big fan of this i'm so happy that they did it i mean like it makes the world championship so fun. I logged into it, and then I logged into it on my father's computer, and he's been on it all morning. Oh, man. You know what?

That's very good to hear because he had never had access to that kind of judo content when he was doing judo. No. And then, you know what? Now it's on YouTube, he watches like the previous world championships and such on YouTube. But it's like not an amazing

user experience. Yeah. They need the app to be able to like have this on a be, you know. And of course, if you're a little bit tech savvy,

you could like airplay it. Yeah. On your TV. I'm sure this, it's in the works. I'm sure the app will come out yeah yeah dude it'll be great man and then you could you know they gotta push the instagram heavy thing man like where's

the share button on this thing i think that's what they need to do i know judo gallery is a very very popular yeah instagram channel now and they're really making this huge social media push and uh you know that makes me really happy right because it's more visible globally and you know the issue with judo i've been saying is like you don't get access to the best guys because the best guys are global they're in france they're in russia they're in japan they don't speak our language which is english right but you can have like consumable media that transcends language and communities and cultures and all this stuff because it's a freaking guy bombing another person and the video is professional right yeah and then it could be

shared over and over like you could watch like i watch clips from like the russian somebody so and so who like took a clip of a russian guy slamming like a i don't know uzbekistan guy or something like you know i could watch it share it like it's really that's what we need to do I mean I get it yeah so I mean this actually is an extension of you know the episode we published a few

weeks ago like what can you do for Judo right now and you can pay for this subscription $100 a year think about all the dumb shit that you've spent $100 on. Peter, what is something stupid that you spent? Peter spent $3,000 on Coachella tickets the other day. It's not $3,000.

It is not $3,000, but the overall trip took probably around that. It was an incredible experience. Yeah. But you're right. I could definitely afford $100,000 a year. No, I was talking to my friend, right? I was talking to my friend.

He's like, great guy, you know, and he's like, talking about like CPAP there and CPAP. I was like, yeah, but CPAP's so expensive, though. What do you mean expensive? Like, this machine can save your life, dude. $1,000, like, you should be paying $10,000 for this thing. It'll save your life, though. What do you mean expensive? Like, this machine can save your life, dude. $1,000, like, you should be paying $10,000 for this thing. It'll save your life, man. Like, you spend $1,000 on appetizers at a freaking restaurant with your family.

Like, dude, that's not a lot of money. You know, it's like, put it into perspective, like judo, right? Like, you know, there's days of, like, judo should be free. I should walk into a dojo and get free classes because I'm a black belt. Those days are over. Seriously. You know what I mean? If you want the IJF to step up

and make everything professional and make it a really good user experience, like they need to pay developers to do this. Yeah. And developers are not cheap. They're not cheap, man. I tried to make an app. I know.

It did not go well. I was priced out. It's, yeah, I mean, I know it did not go well I was priced out it's yeah I mean I know I'm one I am one I'm a student now but I used to be one

and yeah why would they what is the what is the dumbest thing you spent $100 on Peter go ahead I would say I bought

oh you laugh at this I went to Universal Studios with Dayoung my wife and her friends and

went to the Harry Potter world and I really wanted that wand Jesus Christ I wanted the Sirius Flex wand that was 70 bucks with taxes like almost 80

so almost 100 bucks Wow you bought that but you're having hesitation about supporting judo, international judo and what they're doing. You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Do you still have that wand?

I do. It was such a nuisance. I'm going to admit, Dayoung, my wife, was all like, what are you doing? Why are you paying for this? You have to carry that all around. And I even put it into a locker and then I didn't know

that there was a time limit for the locker. When I went back to the locker to check it out, I had to pay five bucks for it to get a retreat. Jesus Christ. Do you still have it?

I did. In your house right now? It's in the house. Jesus, Peter. Jesus. But Sirius Black is my favorite character man you know

and I wanted that wand the wand looks good it's all like interactable and stuff so next time I go I can like swish and swash you know

do some magic but anyway you're right yeah you can shame me yeah shame on you that

those those hundred bucks should have been spent on Yeah, you can shame me. Shame on you. Those 100 bucks should have been spent on judotv.com. No, judotv.com, man. They did a great job with this. And I hope this is a thing moving forward, man. I hope they come up with an app that you could watch it on your computer, on your TV, you know, like a smart TV. I hope they do this for all the major tournaments. You know, I hope they expand on, you know, like a smart TV. I hope they do this for all the major tournaments. You know, I hope

they expand on, you know, the Prediction League and interaction on that and make it more of a social thing. I hope they do all these things, man, because I'm a fan of judo. I'm always rooting for judo. I'm always looking for ways to support judo. You know, as you can tell,

I really like judo. And you know what? This is the thing. I love judo, but in the past, I haven't really watched. Right. Right. It's different from doing it. There's a difference between doing judo and watching judo. No, because even watching judo was not a pleasurable experience because it's like the stream is choppy.

It doesn't work. It's on YouTube. You know, like you can't pick and choose your matches. Like you didn't know when it was on. It's just like all these other, these like friction points made me like, you know, I don't care about it enough to watch it. Right. Because I'm like doing it much more anyway. But now that they have this, I'm much more likely to watch it on a consistent basis, which is good for my judo, which is good for all my viewers too.

Because I get to watch this and be like, hey, you can reference this match from this tournament and this is a new technique that I've never seen before like how takuto got thrown, I can teach it on my YouTube channel, right? Oh yeah, you can put the link to the video on judotv.co in your description.

Maybe that could be a good reference. Daijun has no need to pay me for that one I'm not giving them clicks for free I'm kidding I'm kidding I want to do my best

to support this but yeah seriously go check it out judotv.com you know man I wish you know and I understand

some people don't have it yeah you know but a lot of these guys who don't have it spend money frivolously on dumb things too you know and you know if you like judo care about judo and you want to support the judo community this is the way you do it and the more people get on there more people interact with it the more

people share it i think it's good for our our community you know that's how we move forward hopefully yeah this money will flow down and maybe, like you said, eventually if this model is successful, maybe they'll start broadcasting local tournaments too. You know? I really don't want to watch any local tournaments.

But anyway. No, but it's true. I wish one day, right? right yeah you could watch your jujitsu peers now on the ibjjf website or flow grappling or youtube whatever it is any open that you go to the blue belt division you know the masters three like the guy's 48 years old your training partner he's you know signed up for a tournament. You can watch it. You can watch it.

It's pretty accessible. It's all in one central location. I know I'm like US Judo doing smooth comp and all this stuff. I haven't even been following it so much, actually. This product's professional. JudoTV.com. Go check it out, please know go check it out please

I'm gonna go check it out myself too reach out to me on Instagram and let me know if you liked it I was gonna reply to Reddit but you know I was like yeah you don't wanna jump into the Reddit fight

well yeah I hope you guys check it out i'm gonna check it out yeah and yeah and and if you guys have any thoughts you can reach out to us on instagram or support us on patreon and join our discord server and have a more personal conversation with us and anything else about judoTV.com? Nope. Check it out. Thank you guys. Yeah. Yep. All right. Well,

that's about it for today and thanks for listening and we'll see you guys in the next episode.