SportAccord Preview, Some Thoughts on Trends and What 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.