We have reached a major milestone in our company, announcing earlier this month the launch of Universal Sports in partnership with NBC Universal and, more specifically, with NBC Sports. A couple of recent articles in the New York Times caught my attention, and I wanted to share some thoughts.

One was a story by George Vecsey about Dick Ebersol, the Chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, and his early days working on the Olympic games as an assistant to Jim McKay. Universal Sports will now have the good fortune to take advantage of the substantial skills, knowledge and relationships that Dick Ebersol and the NBC Sports team have established to help us further grow our network capabilities.

We have already seen some of this early support from a number of members of the NBC Sports team, particularly from David Michaels, who has worked tirelessly together with the team at Andrita ⎯ our broadcast production facility⎯ to help us launch the Universal Sports branded TV channel.  The network went live on June 16 at 6 a.m. throughout the greater New York area, more than doubling our distribution in one day.  It also went live today in Los Angeles, so in the two weeks since announcing our partnership with NBC, Universal Sports Television is now available in over 13 million households, making all our great programming and the athletes that compete in these events that much more accessible to the millions of fans of these sports.

Being live in the cable digital households in the two biggest DMA’s in the United States is very significant for us, but also it means lots of people will be watching us, both enjoying and analyzing our product. We need to make sure we deliver on the promise to our consumers and advertisers to achieve success.

The second article was about Jim McKay, one of the most famous Olympic sports journalists of our time and the former voice of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, a show I grew up with and admired greatly. The show helped influence our decision to develop a 24/7 network for U.S. consumers to experience many of the sports that Wide World of Sports used to cover for one hour once a week.

Our coverage and the success of our network will depend on presenting our consumers with entertaining and compelling programming, complemented by good journalism. We must provide good coverage of our sports but also⎯just as importantly⎯provide our audience with the information about these sports and their athletes that will help them fully appreciate the stories we are showing them.

We have every opportunity to succeed. Together we have made great progress to get us to where we are today, and with NBCU as our partner, Universal Sports will deliver high-quality programming that I have no doubt will provide our viewers with “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”  We have already started this with great coverage of the Olympic Trials. All of the events have been beautifully produced by the NBC Sports team and there have been many compelling moments so far and lots more to come.

In the coming weeks, we will provide more news about our partnership with NBCU. We invite you to stay tuned and join us for what promises to be a pioneering journey into the dynamic world of Olympic sports and other activities that help shape our sports universe.

We have consistently worked to champion the many underleveraged sports and their athletes that together form the sports program for the Olympic movement, and despite strong fan and participant support, they have lacked the support they deserve from the media and advertising community in the U.S.

We are working hard to make these sports relevant and provide our fans a depth of interaction not offered anywhere else with the ability to hear from coaches, trainers, family, friends, equipment manufacturers and the athletes themselves about how they become swifter, faster and stronger. Through our aggregation of Olympic sports rights and delivery on multiple platforms, we hope we can effectively surround our fans with consistently compelling content and other unique offerings that can enrich their lives by providing them the ability to consume and understand these sports and their athletic heroes in a way that has never been effectively offered before.

It is our aspiration at Universal Sports to go beyond merely entertaining our viewers but inspiring them to be better at what they love to do or at minimum enhance their appreciation for what they love to watch.

I know a blog should have more frequent updates, but here we are a year later at the 2008 edition of SportAccord in Athens, Greece, so I felt it was time to start things up again.

A number of interesting offerings are in store for the conference participants and most of the sessions will be available as video on demand files as part of the project WCSN is undertaking jointly with SportAccord. Some of the sessions I plan to watch include:

Patrick Walker, Director of Video Partnerships, with YouTube/Google, whose address is titled: “Staying relevant in changing times.” This should offer some interesting insights about online video distribution of sports content, consumer trends in the marketplace and how Federations should respond to these opportunities. While we at WCSN use YouTube for content distribution for some of the event we cover, we also find ourselves frequently working with them to help us take down content on their site that violates various exclusivities that have been granted to us by our rights holders. YouTube has made good efforts to help us remove infringing content and at the same time WCSN makes sure consumers are able to see all the key parts of the events we cover with the clips we distribute on our site, on our Sports Federation partner sites and with the various online affiliate partners who we work with, including YouTube, but also, Yahoo, AOL, FoxSports, among others.

Laurent-Eric Le Lay, Chairman and CEO of Eurosport will speak about new ways of delivering and consuming sports content. From my perspective it’s not just about being multi-platform but offering the consumer an enhanced viewing experience that allows them to interact with content not just on the platform and time of their choice but also to capture data, sports metrics and athlete information that enhances the value of the video images and gets our consumers more engaged with our sports because they develop a stronger emotional attachment through their increased understanding. In addition, I think offerings should be tailored to allow sports consumers to interact with the content on platforms where they like to spend their time, offering widgets that can be embedded on a variety of personalized homepages or even on your computer desktop so you can be keep up to date on the things you care about. At WCSN we are constantly exploring ways for us to be innovative in our offerings by talking to our consumers about their level of satisfaction and how we can offer them greater value in their experience with our content. We want to give our viewers an entertaining experience that fully satisfy’s their needs and interests around a sport or athlete.

The Media Forum Round Table on Thursday has a stellar cast of participants who know a lot about exploring new television markets. Some things I would like to hear the panel address includes: Does enhanced online viewing cannibalize consumer consumption on television or just enhance interest in these sports and drive higher TV viewership? How can new technologies be leveraged to improve the consumer experience and level of interest?

One thing we have worked hard to achieve with WCSN in the USA is to grow awareness, interest and participation in the Olympic sports we cover. Many of them disappear from the consumer landscape in the USA in between each Olympic games. We think we have gone a long way to creating a permanent destination for Olympic sports in between the games where our customers can enjoy an entire season of their favorite Olympic sport.

Our consumers what to be involved in the process of how we deliver content to them and its not enough for WCSN, as a media company, to just offer them what has always been offered before. We are constantly working to experiment and brainstorm about what and how we offer content to our consumers to ensure that we are delivering an offering in the marketplace that is competitive. In early July WCSN will come out with a re-launch of its existing website. This has been a huge undertaking but it has allowed us to think a lot about what our existing consumers have told us they like or don’t like about our online offerings. I think our new site, as it rolls out over the summer months should go a long way to delivering on consumer expectations and satisfy their needs.

Many of the other sessions will offer valuable information about a variety of interesting topics around sport. Watch for the video offerings that should be posted online at the end of each day and should be linked to digital version of the various presentations each participant gave and I will provide you some additional thoughts as SportAccord gets started later this week.

One of the featured speakers for Thursday’s session at Sportaccord was Sir Martin Sorrell the Chief Executive of WPP. The focus of his presentation touched up four main topics:

The economic importance of sport

The cultural importance of sport

The good and the bad of new technology

What you need to do to future proof your sports brands

These topics linked perfectly with the objectives of Sportaccord, which is to further educate the participants about significant trends in their industry.

In discussing the economic importance of sport Sir Martin pointed out that “there is clear evidence that there is a significant quadrennial effect associated with the Olympics.” “In all but one Olympics we saw higher growth in the year of the Olympics. As such we can see that major sports events like the Olympics, and increasingly the World Cup, spur further growth in the global economy.  The growth comes from increased advertising spending, greater investment, greater government spending (in the host country) and greater consumption.”

He went on to note that the Beijing Olympics will shatter spending records. “$40 billion is being spent on construction around the Olympics in this great city. The most expensive games yet was the Athens Olympics which spent nearly $12 billion. To put this number into even sharper focus, this $40 billion represents over 40% of all money spent on the Olympics since the Montreal games. The spend in Beijing is estimated by The Economist to be adding 2.2% on Beijing’s underlying growth rate.”

As was later pointed out by Peter Ueberroth, Chairman of the USOC, who followed Sir Martin, its important to note that the return on these investments is not about the 16 day ROI of the Olympic Games themselves, but the long term legacy and return to those cities that host the Games with the improved infrastructure and capabilities that are left behind as a result of the Games.

Transitioning to the Cultural Importance of Sport the key point was that “sport will become even more important as the process of globalisation gathers pace….because globalisation and modernisation, even in very cohesive and collective societies creates, greater individualism.”
As a result “Family unit size becomes smaller, women marry later, we move further away from home and divorce rates increase.  Meanwhile technologies like the mobile phone and the internet allow us to achieve a great deal, on our own.  TV is increasingly delivered on digital platforms, which allows us to watch more of what we want, when we want.  Very simply, our lives become more and more atomised.  In such a world where atomisation is abundant, the thing that is scarce, collective experience, becomes ever more valuable.  Family friends and hobbies become more important to us and for that reason sporting hobbies can be characterized as the building blocks of our communities.” And the web offers a great platform to aggregate and leverage these communities efficiently.

In closing Sir Martin offered ten points to consider in light of the rapid changes occurring in the distribution and consumption of sports media, as he described it “What you need to do to future proof your sports brands.”  Below is his list:
#1 Understand your competition

At a time of technological discontinuity it is vital that you think broadly about your competition.  As it will prevent you from being blind-sided. The late Theodore Levitt in “Marketing Myopia” wrote about peril of narrowly defining your business.  He illustrated this by looking at the decline of the rail industry in the US.  You need to judge your brand not against other sporting brands but against other forms of entertainment.  If you don’t do this you could end up in trouble Speaking of the rail industry – Levitt said  “The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.”

#2 Develop a Customer Mindset

Think like your consumers.  If they are going online – you go online. Don’t deny it.  Don’t file it in the “too difficult folder”  Be constantly fascinated as to what your fans are up to.

#3 Understand what you have to protect, enhance and explain

Think of your business as a brand.  Understand its values. Values are timeless, but you may want to express those values in new and more contemporary ways.  Look at Formula One it is glamorous and values technology.  Today the expression of the value of technology is in how you can make the sport greener through the application of leading edge technology.

#4 Are you talking to the young?  If not, why not?

The young take their media habits with them.  So if you are not part of their habit now – you most definitely won’t be in their future.

#5 Don’t rely too much on one partner

Sleep around.  You need to develop multiple partners and wean yourself of an over-reliance on broadcast partners.

#6 Start Understanding Best Practices

Start up an audit of leading players who you admire.  We’ve been involved in a number of projects recently in this area and we have looked with interest at the way MLB have developed their new media property.  They are now driving nearly $200 million directly from subscription revenues to their website.
#7 Audit Your Long Tail

Great sporting brands have a long tail of wonderful content.  You should start a process of auditing what you’ve got and how you can exploit it.  Long tail economics work when the cost of distribution drops – hence you can start to make significant money from small numbers.

#8 Think of ways of growing the franchise – and value

Related to this point is to start to think about how you can build the footprint of your brands from moving it from live broadcast to more non-live content that lives online.

#9 Create more contestable markets and start to talk to “new” media players

The other element related to multiple partners is if you are unbundling rights don’t do it by platform but by time.  That way you create more contestable markets with more players bidding for the rights.  By doing this you will create more value for your brand

#10 Think about what digital inventory you can offer sponsors and partners

Finally start thinking about the digital inventory you can offer sponsors and partners.  Many large global sporting brands still think in a very analogue manner about their inventory.  But what many advertisers want is more exclusive digital inventory.  You can mark yourselves out from your competitors by bringing real innovation into this space.

Rogge addresses gathering of world-wide
sports leaders in Beijing (© IOC/Julliart)

The participants were treated 15 minute presentations from the three Winter Olympic Bid Cities. All three had strong offers and handicapping the results for these type of Olympic decisions is virtually impossible.

The IOC released comments made by the IOC President Jacques Rogge at the Sportaccord Opening Ceremony. Of particular interest were his comments on the role of sport in society and the need for the IOC and the International Federations to help make these sports more relevant to youth, who these days have a large number of choices in their lives in deciding what they want to do. He closed by making a point about the value sport provides as a social movement in our society.

24 April 2007
“Coming not far behind on the list of challenges we face today, is the growing trend in sport’s decline in relevance. In a world where so many other temptations and leisure activities compete for young people’s attention, the appeal of sport finds itself under question. We have a duty to find solutions to this issue. Why? For two key reasons; first, in order to shift young people away from a sedentary way of life towards an active lifestyle, and thereby tackle the frightening increase in obesity amongst many populations. Second, because the values sport can teach – friendship, respect, and excellence – are arguably more important than ever in today’s world. It is our duty to make sport an inspiration, to help young people discover why sport matters.”

A vision for sport to improve life through collaborative efforts.
Ending on an up-beat note, Rogge concluded, “Sport is a social movement that has the power to offer young people the chance of a better and more meaningful life. By collaborating around the same vision, the sports bodies and governments can play a meaningful role in ensuring that generations, young and old, have a healthier and more wholesome lifestyle based on physical activity and physical education. Let us all focus our energies in this direction.”Coming up today will be the Keynote address by Martin Sorrell, Chairman of WPP Group and a one on one interview with Peter Ueberroth, Chairman of the USOC. The interview, conducted by Rick Burton should provide the attendees on the current thinking of the USOC on its bid efforts, now that they have selected Chicago to bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and on any new changes that have taken place at the USOC in terms of strategy and focus since Ueberroth became USOC Chairman.

All the various exhibitor booths are constructed and the three that are most prominently positioned near the entrance to the conference are for the three Winter Olympic Games bid cities of PyeongChang, Korea; Salzburg, Austria and Sochi, Russia. The IOC members will vote on July 4, 2007 in at their upcoming meeting in Guatemala City, Guatemala on which of these three finalist cities will be chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. All three have the traditional characteristics of a modern Olympic Bid with new villages centralized near the competition venues, sophisticated and efficient modern public transport offerings, nearby airports, main venues located near each other, and a number of new sports venues that will be built for the event offering the sports and their spectators a compelling value proposition for the organization and viewing of these competitions.

The three cities will be making a presentation to the assembled delegates at Sportaccord tomorrow and this should offer everyone attending a final look at what is being offered by each city and their respective bids.

Since its inception in Madrid in 2003 I have always felt that the Sportaccord conference offered a great environment for the leaders and marketers from the various International Sports Federations to have an opportunity to gain new insights in the marketing, distribution and promotion of their sports worldwide.  All of the sessions and speakers for this year’s event look outstanding but some of the speakers scheduled for this upcoming Sportaccord I have heard before and they often have had some outstanding insights to share.  Some of the hightlights for me would include hearing:

Sir Martin Sorrell Chief Executive of WPP, who has his keynote address on Thursday at 9:20am

Mr. Peter Ueberroth, Chairman of the USOC, who will be interviewed right afterwards at 10:00am

Because of the great leadership they have both shown in their respective communities, Sorrell in Advertising and Ueberroth in Sports their words are well worth hearing.

I would also certainly try and catch Manolo Romero and Alan Pascoe at the TV & New Media Session on Wednesday at 11:30am.  The two of them practically invented their respective areas of expertise, live global event sports television and sports marketing and their wealth of knowledge and perspective is unparalleled.

Finally, the session on Thursday at 11:30am hosted by Sarah Lewis, Secretary General of FIS, on “How Sponsors Make their Investment Pay Off in Host Cities and Elsewhere” should offer some great insights from the assembled heads of marketing who make up the panel.  It will be good to hear what they are looking for to get their needed ROI on their various investments.

Sport Accord launches 21 days from now in Beijing, China. This event first started in 2003 in Madrid, Spain. It’s there where we first started talking to International Federations about trying to help them with the development of their online content distribution and expanding their TV broadcast distribution in the USA. We are off to a good start, in 2006 alone we distributed over 100 International Federation events and over 2,000 hours of live or delayed event content online and on TV.