The 24th edition of SPORTELMonaco came to a close last week on the heel of MIPCOM in nearby Cannes, and VideoAge is ready to give you the report sent from our staff on the floor at the Grimaldi Forum exhibition and conference venue in Monte Carlo.
All the stands (200 in total) at this year’s event were sold out. Amparo Di Fede, General Manager of SPORTEL, officially announced the final figures: 2, 551 total participants, representing 994 companies of 65 nations (last year there were 2,400 participants, 980 companies and 75 nations). There was also a more than 20 percent increase in companies attending the event for the first time this year.
“The outcome is exciting, especially the increase of new companies exhibiting, presenting a wider variety of new business opportunities offered to the sports content business. Further we are extremely happy to receive reports of high quality deals been made during the convention,” Di Fede said in a statement.
SPORTEL is continuing to focus on new media, incorporating more of the Second Screen into its conferences, and its market. Its tagline, “World Sports Content Media Convention” reflects the focus.
Honorary President of SPORTEL, Prince Albert II of Monaco, was quoted in SportsFeatures.com as saying: “What began at the 2012 London Olympics will be bolstered by the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. A new relationship between Sport events and viewers is emerging across multiple devices.
“Sport is simultaneously thriving on television, tablets, smartphones, and becoming interactive with users being given the opportunity to respond through social networks, gain access to additional content and choose the broadcast formats they want, all against a backdrop of greater visual detail thanks to the new technology providers.”
This year’s conferences included a panel on monetizing social media and one on next-generation event broadcasting, among many more (conferences were streamed from the SPORTEL website for those who couldn’t make it to the event and wanted to take advantage of the Second Screen themselves).
The CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services, Yiannis Exarchos, gave a masterclass and discussed the role of host broadcaster and what it takes to manage over 1,000 cameras at the Olympics.
“We have been preparing in Sochi for months already, and what we have been doing there is the result of a plan that started four years ago,” Exarchos said, according to SportsFeatures.com. “The Host Broadcasting System was started as an absolute necessity in the 80s because it had become impossible for any single broadcaster to maintain the level of coverage and quality that fans expect,” he said.
“At the London Olympics we had 1,070 cameras, and we recruited 6,000 technical staff from 45 countries, which in itself was a huge challenge, and that was only for the live coverage. On top of that there are all the additional services such as interviews and content for second screens and mobile devices. The Host Broadcasting System is in fact a huge achievement of synergies and efficiencies that has fundamentally changed how big events are covered,” he added.
“All I know really is that whatever happens three years from now will surprise us,” Exarchos said. “But what intrigues me the most is the vast numbers of people in emerging markets who are happy to watch sport on mobile devices, in itself an interesting phenomenon, but what is really exciting is the ability to share and comment about what is happening on the screen.”
“For me the revolution will be in social sharing, and my hunch is that we will really see this in Japan during the 2020 Olympics. Japan is already a country with a very young population and a highly developed infrastructure. So all the elements are in place,” he said.
Next up: SPORTELAsia, which will take place March 3-5 in Shanghai
And mark your calendars: Next year’s SPORTELMonaco will take place October 7-10, 2014.
