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Hello and welcome. It's wonderful to have you all with us today.
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Whether this is your first Stripe Sessions or your second or your third,
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or if you've been with us since 2019,
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I hope that you're all feeling as invigorated and inspired as I am
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about all of the great things Stripe is building and all of the promise still to
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come for the internet economy. My name is Raphael Daste.
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I lead media entertainment, gaming and sports for Stripe.
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I will be your moderator for today where we will be talking about what it
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takes to build a world-class streaming service.
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Joining us will be John Fiedler from FOX,
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where he is the EVP of product and engineering. And later,
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Max Walden will join us from our ProServe team to really go under the
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hood to show you what it takes to make that happen.
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Allow me to set the stage. Like many,
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I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones. In 2017,
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my subscription had lapsed,
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which I only realized moments before the season premiere.
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It seems that I wasn't alone as millions of others in fact had the same
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issue. So card in hand,
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I went to hbo.com, ready to subscribe.
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As it turns out, the site crashed.
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Not only was I left in a position where I was not able to watch the season
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premiere of Game of Thrones and the White Walkers and the zombies and
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all of the juicy entertainment that I wanted to consume,
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but it was a moment like this, right? A moment of intent, high intent,
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card in hand, ready to convert,
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and the infrastructure failed.
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Millions were left without the ability to subscribe at that
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precise moment.
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And I think given the broader attention economy,
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it is critical that your ambition
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matches with your infrastructure, reliability, and
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onus to convert your subscribers when they're there and ready for you.
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Getting payments right matters for every moment,
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not just the big launches,
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whether it's presenting the right payment at the right time to the right
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consumer.
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Whether it's giving the subscriber the ability to upgrade or
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downgrade seamlessly.
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Having the right features to scale natively could be the difference
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between linear growth and parabolic
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exponential growth. Today,
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we're going to take you behind the scenes for FOX One,
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which bet on live streaming across news, entertainment,
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and sports. Let's take a look here.
[VIDEO]
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I'm
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excited to join John on stage. Please. Hey, welcome,
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John.
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How are you?
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Awesome.
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So that's a good looking product. Very excited.
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Indeed, indeed.
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Thanks for having me.
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Yeah. Well, please have a seat. So as we get started,
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John, would love to just hear a little bit about you, your journey,
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your scope at FOX.
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Yeah. Well, thanks again for having me.
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And I'm honored to be here and honored that all of you are here. Also,
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a quick shout-out. I'm up here speaking about FOX One.
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The whole journey for FOX One was this great team effort behind the scenes from
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people at FOX, many of whom are here in the audience.
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I won't call them out by name,
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mostly because I don't want any of you to hire them. However,
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they are incredible and the partnership between FOX and Stripe throughout this
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whole experience was really amazing. Also, just a quick thing.
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Raphael and I have spent a few moments talking about this session in the last
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few weeks, and then at dinner last night, this is a true story.
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Great restaurant, wine is flowing.
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I'm on East Coast time because I'm from New York. Right as I'm leaving,
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exhausted. He's like, "By the way,
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I have some ideas for changing the session." I actually don't remember anything
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of what he said. I think he said AI a few times. I'm not sure. But anyways,
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this should be a good conversation.
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We're here to keep the suspense for the audience.
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Exactly. Even suspense for me, which was unexpected.
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So my journey at FOX is actually... I've been at FOX for 20 years, but
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there's a slight funny story here. When I was much younger in the 1990s,
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whereas my kids call it the 1900s,
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I operated a fan website for the Simpsons,
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a huge Simpsons fan.
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And FOX at that time found out that it existed.
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And it turns out you cannot just take Simpson's IP and
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do whatever you want with it on the internet. Shocker. Yeah.
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So they sent me these things that were called cease and desist letters.
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Never heard of them.
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No, I hadn't either.
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And so I tucked them away under my bed as they were coming in and this went on
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for a couple months. And then my parents found them and they were like,
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"What is all this lawyer legal stuff that we found?" And
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anyways, long story short, FOX had me shut down the website.
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Men with a three-letter acronym didn't show up outside your door at least.
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Yeah. I think I was moments away from that probably.
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Good, good.
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But long story short, I then ended up applying for a job at FOX after college,
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and here I am 21 years later working there.
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So my responsibility is running what we call product and engineering across FOX.
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That's largely any consumer-facing digital property,
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whether it's FOX Sports, FOX News, FOX Weather, FOX Business, mobile apps,
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websites, et cetera, and our latest sort of shining star, FOX One.
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Brilliant, brilliant.
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So maybe sometimes we get some students joining Sessions.
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So for any students in the audience,
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maybe the best way to join a potential employer is not in fact to
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steal their IP.
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Correct. Correct.
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That's the takeaway here.
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I would not recommend it. It worked out for me, but I might be the first case.
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Cool. So thank you, John. I think
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fair enough to say that streaming has really become the industry standard
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now.
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That's right.
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And investors have really shifted from subscriber
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growth at all cost to really sort of a focus on profitability on ARPU.
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There's a lot of shifts happening in our industry.
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I think fair to say media and entertainment at large is really at the forefront
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of so much disruption.
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What were the catalysts for FOX One and particularly sort of at this time?
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Yeah.
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So for those in the audience who may not quite have the
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background in media and what's sort of happening in the ecosystem, media,
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of course, for a long time, video media and streaming media,
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the cable industry, the traditional cable industry has long dominated.
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And as the internet began to rise and streaming platforms like
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Netflix started their journey,
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the growth of cable began to plateau.
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And so what we began to see is that more and more consumers were preferring
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video streaming platforms over the internet and through their TV.
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And so what that led to was a lot of media companies
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beginning to pivot and spin up streaming platforms,
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and as you infer, sort of growth at all costs.
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And so lots of heavy content investments and
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ultimately some of that, of course,
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to the detriment of that cable plateau.
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And so we started to see some further decreases in cable and streaming was
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growing.
And so for us at FOX,
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we admittingly sat on the sidelines of that because the cable business is a
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good,
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strong business and we wanted to pick the right time for us to
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enter the business with our linear cable assets
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and not do it too early where we make the steep or where we make the curve of
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the cable drop more aggressive than it already was. And so again,
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we stood on the sidelines,
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but it reached that point where we saw that there was roughly 60 to
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65 million consumers in the marketplace who are cord-cutters, cord-nevers,
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as we call them. And at some point,
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those consumers
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demand the ability for us to provide them FOX's content.
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And so the time was right. Again, to be fair,
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we were probably the last large media company to enter the space,
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but it was a pivotal and monumental moment for us to finally make that move and
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to bundle up all of our video assets into a single product and put it out of the
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marketplace. And we're thrilled to do it.
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Brilliant. Yeah. And I mean, I'd say FOX is
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certainly a leader in the AVOD space through obviously your Tubi offering,
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and I think now this is very complimentary from an SVOD perspective.
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Absolutely. Yep.
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So for the builders in the room, what was the blueprint for FOX One?
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And from your perspective, what was it sort of working? Ideally,
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what was the perfect state for you for FOX One?
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Well,
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the perfect state was to launch in the short window of time that we were given
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to launch. That was the definition of success.
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I think the irony when building a product like this is because we were the
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last entrant, major entrant into the streaming space,
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sort of in the media ecosystem,
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the product challenge was actually that there had been years and years of
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development of features, functionality,
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concepts on the product side that all of a sudden when we were given
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seven months to launch this,
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those became the table stakes bar for a streaming product that we had to
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meet. And so we're all looking at each other like,
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everyone else has had years to build this stuff,
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and we had a couple months to basically get up to the level of quality and
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feature set and parity that our competitive set had. So
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that was ultimately the definition of perfect for us,
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which is get a fully functional,
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robust product into market that worked, that scaled,
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and had a few bells and whistles that we could hang our hat on as well when we
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got out the door.
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Yeah. Very, very impressive and certainly a daunting task, it sounds like.
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Yeah, yeah. Definitely a big team effort.
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How did Stripe, as your partner, your financial infrastructure,
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how did Stripe handle the launch?
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So Stripe was actually probably one of our first phone calls. It was,
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we knew that one of the critical touchpoints for the product and for this kind
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of product is that commerce component.
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And when you think about what this product really is, it is all about live.
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It is about live news, it is about live sports, it is about live moments.
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And as such, anybody who works in
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digital experiences around live content,
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we know what the thundering herd looks like.
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You actually alluded to it during the Game of Thrones example,
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where suddenly there's this tune-in moment and you have just a
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stampede of people trying to get through the front door.
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And so in order for that launch to go well,
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we were also launching on the first weekend of college football,
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and there was a huge game that weekend, Texas game,
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and we knew that this was a potential problem.
And so we
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got you guys involved early and we architected what is actually a
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relatively complex system.
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And I say that in such a positive way.
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Just to peel back a bit on the product itself and what it does,
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there's a few things that are really interesting from a commerce perspective
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that we worked really closely with Stripe on.
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One is that the product itself actually allows for what we
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call add-ons within the product.
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So you can enter the product in sort of a base tier,
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but then you can purchase additional services within.
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So we have a premium service called FOX Nation,
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which is a separate SVOD product that you can actually now buy directly within
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the FOX One product. And then we have something called Big Ten Plus,
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which is almost an extended version of the Big Ten network that we have
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within our portfolio.
And so it's basically a product within a product and a
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marketplace within a product.
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And so that's one layer of complexity that's interesting.
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The other is that within the media ecosystem,
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this idea of bundling partnerships is also prevalent.
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And our first bundle that we went to market with was with ESPN.
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And so being able to execute a bundle,
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a complex bundle offering where somebody can enter in through either ESPN or
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through FOX One and get access to both services, highly complicated.
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So we worked together for the months up to launch to
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construct something that performs extremely well,
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and thankfully we all walked away from that first weekend
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relatively unscathed, which is good.
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Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah. I mean,
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the ability to bundle both sort of FOX-owned
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services with partners in the streaming ecosystem just
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presents a tremendous amount of value and stickiness with your subscribers.
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That's right. Yeah.
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The more that you can make that package of content
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and products more sticky, whether it's content, product features,
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et cetera, then the less likely people are to churn through the service.
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So it's a great opportunity for all of media to come together and start to think
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of ways to work more collectively together to help drive the entire ecosystem.
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Cable 2.0, if you will.
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Yeah, you could call it that.
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There is a little bit of rebundling concept that's out there for sure.
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Brilliant. Well, listen,
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to dive in a little bit further and pull back that curtain,
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I'd like to welcome Max to the stage to join us.
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Hey, welcome Max.
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Hey everybody. I'm Max. I'm with Stripe professional services.
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We work with users like FOX directly to embed alongside their teams,
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some of whom are here tonight, today, sorry,
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to design the integration,
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take them from ideation all the way through change management and going live.
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We were there as we released the gates for the thundering herd.
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Awesome. Welcome.
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So launching a new streaming service is a massive
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project and undertaking. And I think,
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especially hearing from John sort of the scale, right?
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We're talking about a service that is really sort of focused on live streaming,
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which is even more difficult than video on demand. So Max,
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could you walk us through a little bit the architecture of what that experience
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looks like? And I'll pass this over to you so that you can get into the details.
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Yeah, sure thing. So when we first start with a new user,
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we always try to get a lay of the land first.
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So we spend a lot of time mapping out the architecture of FOX's tech stack,
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which like many large organizations is complicated,
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disparate. And rather than just throw Stripe into the mix,
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the goal was to try to make it the connective tissue between those different
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systems. So we'll walk through the whole thing. In the top left,
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we'll start with our user. The user logs on to foxone.com,
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chooses a plan, maybe adds a bundle,
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and then enters their payment information using the Stripe payment
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element.
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That is a PCI-compliant UI widget that FOX branded to look and
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feel just like the website so that
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users didn't even know that they were actually interacting directly with Stripe
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so that FOX doesn't have to take on that PCI compliance burden.
At the same
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time, the customer enters their billing address.
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We just required the ZIP code in that case,
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so that Stripe Tax can calculate the relevant tax amount
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to add to the subtotal. So based on that customer's jurisdiction, we know, okay,
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we need to add 5% sales tax. At that point,
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the customer is choosing what payment method they want to enter,
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and we might see this in just a minute.
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We have options for wallets like Google Pay, Apple Pay, cards.
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Obviously we'll have PayPal as well. And as they enter that payment information,
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Stripe Radar runs behind the scenes through a lot of different rules that we
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worked with the FOX team to create to evaluate certain
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attributes that could be suspicious indicators of potential fraud.
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So think suspicious IP addresses, bogus email addresses,
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mismatches between the card and maybe the billing address.
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All that then would either block or allow a payment to go through.
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And once that payment goes through, it hits the processor. In most cases,
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that's through Stripe payments, but in the case of PayPal,
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PayPal's not available currently in the US on Stripe, so that went externally.
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Then the processor tells us, "Hey, that payment succeeded." At that point,
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we create kind of the heart and soul of this connective tissue,
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the subscription in Stripe Billing.
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That subscription we can use to manage the payment lifecycle.
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So every month or every year, we'd cut an invoice and charge the customer.
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And then that would fire off a whole host of events that go to some of those
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disparate systems.
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So the FOX backend would receive an event saying that subscription's been paid.
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We would use Stripe Data Pipeline,
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which syncs every three hours out to FOX's data warehouse, Snowflake,
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for all the architecture or sorry,
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all the analytics.
We also would shoot off events to Braze
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for the customer messaging. So that welcome email, that receipt.
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You can also think like renewal emails when the subscription renews or upgrades,
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even win back campaigns, Stripe events will help trigger.
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And then finally, we also update Salesforce, the CRM.
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So that's the entire infrastructure. We designed it such that
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Stripe could kind of keep all of those other systems in sync,
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reduce a lot of complexity for the FOX team.
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Thanks, Max.
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It's amazing how the level of complexity on the backend is
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entirely invisible from the subscriber view.
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So John, would love to hear from you,
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what is that subscriber experience? Yeah.
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Could you talk us through a little bit?
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Yeah, that's right.
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So we have a video here that walks you through the actual consumer experience.
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You could see somebody clicking on the FOX One. This is the base plan.
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Typing in an email address into the flow,
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this is somebody who already has an account through FOX.
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Type in your FOX password. And then you get into this link
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UI where you can just easily enter the code that gets sent to you,
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put in your billing name, your ZIP code, and you're in.
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That is as simple as the process possibly gets.
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The Radar piece is extremely noteworthy and unique, we found.
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And if you think about the type of content that we have on FOX One,
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this is our most valuable content. This is premium,
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linear content. It is sports, it is news, it is entertainment.
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It is extremely critical that we don't find that people are gaming the
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system and trying to work around the system.
And so that detection is extremely
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noteworthy. You can also see on this animation,
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the bundling and the plans that exist. So there you can see the ESPN bundle,
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you can also see the FOX Nation bundle and how you can then get access to
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easily upgrade your existing base tier and plan into additional content
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beyond the actual base tier.
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Speaking of bad actors,
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was there any sort of deliberate prevention in terms of
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fraud and free trial abuse?
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Well,
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I would say that the topic of free trials is interesting in general in this
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space especially. I think when you're dealing with premium content,
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especially in some cases where the content that you may be there for
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is a short-term piece of content.
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Imagine a big NFL playoff game or the World Cup coming up.
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I think there's always a question mark around whether you should even have a
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free trial.
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And I think what you will always see is people seeing that there's this
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opportunity for a free trial and maybe trying to figure out ways to work around
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that.
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But through the partnership that we've built and the technology stack that we've
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built, I'm speaking on behalf, I think of the entire organization.
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We feel extremely confident about where we are from a fraud prevention point of
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view. And
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we just want to ensure that the experience for the bulk of the consumers who are
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trying to acquire the service is as seamless and easy as possible.
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Great.
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So we've spoken a lot about the build and what it took to
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launch. So once you flipped the switch, you launched,
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you made it in time for the Texas game.
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That's right.
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How were the results? How did this go for you?
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It was incredible, actually. That initial weekend,
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obviously all hands on deck for the team,
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and we were watching the traffic come in and watching this velocity of users
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come into this new product.
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It's always exciting as a product builder to see such a big launch
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and see consumers using the application and reading what users'
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experiences are. And of course, with any big launch,
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especially in a short timeframe,
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you're going to run into some edge cases and issues that you're trying to patch.
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We went through this initial period post launch of what we call hypercare,
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which is just really
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addressing and jumping on with the full force of the team,
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every bug and issue that came up.
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But it was a tremendous effort across the team and everyone's really excited.
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The product as it sits today is we're a few months in.
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We launched in August of 2025 and we continue to grow
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extremely happy with the results of what we've built together and the number of
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users that we have on the service today.
And then what you'll see as you
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begin to use the service, especially as we get into World Cup,
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is a slew of new features that I think are going to be really
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impactful and really fun. So stay tuned.
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World Cup's going to be an awesome event on the platform.
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You should definitely watch it there.
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You'll see things there that you don't see on other streaming services,
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and it's going to be awesome.
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Well, we're very excited. Personally,
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the World Cup is my favorite sporting event of all time. Yeah,
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really excited to tune in.
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Moving to a new platform and launching a new service at this
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scale is always complex. It's never easy.
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So would love to hear from you,
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we always believe that we're not done yet.
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And so what could we have done better?
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What were some challenges that maybe you had with us?
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I would say it's never too early, first of all, to
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get you guys involved in a product like this and a project like this.
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I think building from the very beginning architecting solutions together is
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the most critical, rewarding thing you could possibly do.
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And again,
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it's never too early to make that phone call and have that conversation and
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begin that dialogue. This only works when you look at that architecture,
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we made it look simple on the slide, I would say.
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There's a lot going on behind the scenes, of course, and
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that whole system doesn't work perfectly unless everyone is on the same
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page and everybody's working together. So I would say,
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I think we actually did a good job with that.
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I know the question was more about what could we have done better,
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but I would say that had we not gotten you all involved
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as early as we did,
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things could have gone really poorly very quickly because sometimes
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folks like us might think we know better or that we don't need that yet.
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We can wait a couple months, et cetera.
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But I disagree and I think that we should absolutely always try to have that
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conversation early.
And then the other thing is just that ongoing communication.
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I think that that's also hugely critical.
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Having the Stripe team in Slack channels with us and with our engineers and with
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our product people and having every single conversation together and trying to
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drive transparency,
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I actually think together both sides can continue to work on that.
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What are we working on that's affecting the product
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that may impact or may not impact the payment flow,
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us doing that with you all. And then of course,
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Stripe doing that with us through those same communication channels,
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I think is also hugely valuable because you guys are also racing in tons of
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directions and it's awesome to see,
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but there's so much that we also want to take advantage of at the same time.
427
00:27:01.710 --> 00:27:02.543
Well, listen,
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the partnership is very much sort of critical for us and we appreciate the
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trust on both sides.
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Likewise, yeah.
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So as we look ahead,
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and obviously this is Stripe's Sessions,
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we index very heavily on the future and what's to come.
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As you think about FOX One, what's top of mind?
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I think we saw some really cool features announced yesterday and
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today,
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things like the platform Grow Studio where you're able to potentially
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understand the needs of your subscribers at a level of detail
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and for a level of personalization,
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whether it's some of the bundles you mentioned,
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making sure that you're sort of meeting them,
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maybe even sort of something along the lines of transactional commerce.
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Just curious, we've got agents on the horizon.
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How are you thinking about the future of FOX One?
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It is a whole new world out there, as everybody knows.
446
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I think as a product person in general,
447
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I think about extremes.
448
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I think about you see where technology's going and you start to wonder
449
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what if people don't use UIs anymore?
450
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And what if they actually don't use apps and websites?
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What if everything that is being done is getting orchestrated through these sort
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of AI agents, then what? First of all,
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what is the role of true product design to a certain extent?
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But also how do we enable our content and our
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platform to work within those environments?
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So I think the AI stuff that Stripe walked through yesterday,
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especially around like the Link wallet and basically allowing
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an agent to execute a transaction on your own behalf,
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I think is extremely fascinating. The question is,
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if you're in a ChatGPT and you say, "Hey,
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I want to watch this NFL game or I want to watch this World Cup game," can we
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actually execute a registration login into FOX One
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payment and then surface that content all sort of under the hood back into
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the interface?
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It's a crazy thing to think about given everything that we've built on
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towards to this point,
467
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but it feels like that's where things are going.
Everyone wants to be able to
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orchestrate directly through an agent interface.
469
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And so I actually think solving the payments thing is great.
470
00:29:37.210 --> 00:29:40.510
Maybe there's a bit more work to do around account creation and password storage
471
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and how we actually handle that.
472
00:29:41.930 --> 00:29:43.890
Making sure that from an entitlements perspective,
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entitlements platforms can interface with AI agents. But man,
474
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it's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out.
475
00:29:51.010 --> 00:29:52.710
Agreed. And John,
476
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I want to thank you for the partnership and just we're really excited to
477
00:29:57.670 --> 00:30:02.610
continue building with you to better serve FOX subscribers and fans.
478
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Thank you. Thank you, Stripe. I appreciate it. Thank you.