Host City: What are the main challenges and opportunities facing the sports broadcasting sector right now and how is SPORTELMonaco addressing these questions?

Laurent Puons: The main issue the industry faces these days is that the world is becoming smaller for everybody. Broadcasting is not only a territorial effort, but with new technologies that enable broadcasting and streaming via internet and social media, territorial and legal matters have become a major headache for rights owners. Broadcasters are facing more and more competition from OTT providers and classic broadcasters must face the reality of extinction, although many still don’t believe it.

The fact is however that audiences worldwide demand variety and freedom of choice. This, for the sport industry is of course a great development and opportunity! The more fans can be rounded up across the globe to see just one sports event, the greater the opportunity to build brand, event and merchandise deals in multiple territories globally.

It’s impossible to cram all issues into one conference, there is simply not enough time to address all at once, but during SPORTELMonaco we can definitively address issues such as OTT, social media and new developments in Asia, which will lead up to our next spring convention SPORTELAsia 2018, in Singapore.

Host City: SPORTELMonaco is now described as “The World Sports Marketing & Media Convention”, reflecting a wider remit than the traditional focus on broadcasting. Why have you changed focus in this way?

Laurent Puons: We haven’t changed our focus, rather evolved “with” the industry, as more and more technologies appear every year that enable events, productions and broadcasters to deliver more sports content to viewers and fans on a massive variety of platforms and change the content business significantly. Also this part of the industry is a lot more influenced by marketing objectives of agencies, federations and brands. In result it is of course a necessary and natural progression of SPORTEL to provide these business opportunities to our community. No other event, but SPORTEL can realistically provide this wide variety.

3/ How can SPORTELMonaco help rights holders to find new ways to reach audiences?

Laurent Puons: For close to 30 years, SPORTEL has always been part of the industry development. Our team knows the industry personally, which is why we never address them as clients but our “community”. We have open and direct dialogues, built on years of trust and know how, understand which companies do what and know what will happen before most in the industry do. This gives us the advantage to prepare and build real business opportunities for the community.

SPORTEL truly is on the frontline of the industry and together with international decision makers we are in the position to see the future of our industry and react accordingly.