NBC Sports Group, BBC and Canal Plus all won awards at last week’s 2016 Sportel World Sports Marketing & Media Convention, which finished on Thursday, October 27. But the real star of the convention in Monaco was digital media, according to Variety.
The gathering’s two biggest presentations featured Yu Hang, the new COO of LeSports, the subsidiary of Chinese internet group Le Eco, and Dan Reed, Facebook’s head of Global Sports Partnerships. Another panel focused on “Social Media: From Ancillary Option to Primary Distribution Platform.”
A streaming giant whose $1.23-billion share issue in March was hugely oversubscribed, Le Sports owns new-media rights to Chinese Super League soccer and Hong Kong rights to England’s Premier League. Its launch of a Chinese pay-per-view offer in April keys off two global trends in the sports business, Yu said in Monaco: young viewers’ abandonment of linear TV for OTT entertainment, and the slow decline of a traditional TV-advertising model.
A laggard in the sports broadcasting business only a few years ago, China was hailed at Le Sports’ panel as now defining its future – at least for OTT, PPV and subscription models – though classic pay-TV operators such as Sky, which has paid enormous sums for Premier League and German Bundesliga soccer rights, might beg to differ.
Deals announced at and during Sportel also pointed to the use of sports to drive new online pay-TV propositions or telecom bundles in a fast-evolving sector, as well as the use of Internet to fuel take-up of historic TV services.
Sportel’s Jury Prize went to Canal Plus France’s “Tout en douceur,” Jean-Jacques Amsellem’s edited highlights of a WBA cruiserweight boxing title contest in May between Cuba’s Yunier Dorticos and Youri Kalenga of France. Set to the music of Bjork’s big band love lament “It’s So Quiet,” Ansellem’s highlights focused on Kalenga’s bloodied face as its crumples and ripples from the impact of the victorious Dorticos’ punches. (Photos: Sportel)