Sport and New Media – 21.04.10 A SportBusiness Group Conference April 21st 2010 Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, United Kingdom www.sportandnewmedia.com Conference Review 9.30 – 10.00 Opening Keyote - Sport in a multiplatform world Ben Gallop (Head of Interactive and Formula One, BBC Sport) One of the findings of BBC’s research for the UK government’s free-to-air listed events review was how respective the audience it is of the broadcaster’s multiplatform approach to sport, even though new media is still to give the big step to become mainstream in Gallop’s view. He stressed that new media is not always about video, citing as examples live text commentary, user generated content and the personalisation of news coverage through the usage of blogs. However, video is something BBC is focused on maximising on the digital space. Anytime a Formula One car is on a circuit, the BBC website shows it live. The broadcaster will stream every one of their World Cup matches on the web, integrating video with the live text commentary. It is also working with mobile operators to increase spectrum capacity and harness video on mobile. Gallop said IPTV and the idea of achieving what is being done on the web on a television platform is a really exciting prospect. The BBC iPlayer is already available on video game consoles (Nintendo Wii and Playstation) and plans for the London 2012 Olympics include using the web and IPTV to show all the 5,000 hours produced by the host broadcasters. There have also been talks with the IOC to broadcast some events in 3D.
10.00 – 10.30 Showcase One - England vs. Ukraine live and only online Andrew Croker (Executive Chairman, Perform) When Setanta collapsed in the UK last year, the England vs. Ukraine World Cup qualifier became available. As it was a dead rubber, with England already qualified, Perform saw an opportunity to stream for the first time, live and online, a European
qualifier in the country of one of the participating teams. The company was confident that the trend of video-driven websites would pay dividends.
It teamed up with sports agency Kentaro to acquire the rights and came up with a subscription-based model whereby the earlier one subscribed, the cheaper it got. This helped Perform have an idea of how many people would be watching the game – key to streaming sport on the internet – and prepare itself accordingly. About half a million people watched the game, which equates what is believed to be the world’s largest ever audience to a pay-per-view sports event online Promotional deals were agreed with most English newspapers’ websites in exchange for a stream tailored to their branding and revenue shares. The broadcast generated a lot of publicity for Perform, which runs about 120 football clubs’ websites. It also partnered with Virgin, which has the online highlight rights for the English Premier League, to create a video player that is embedded to news websites and carries advertising as the source of reenue. Perform also provides 23 bookmakers licensees across the world with live online steams of around 12,000 sports events a year. Betting companies have realised that their turnover goes up three to five times if there is a live feed. Additionally, Perform says it can develop and run an online TV channel for a sport federation in three days, also on a subscription basis. Croker does not believe in anything live online being given away for nothing if the audience is not big enough to sustain an advertisingbased model. 10.30– 11.15 Discussion One - What does the future hold for the consumption of live sport? Panellists – Dipesh Morjaria (Head of Digital Content Distribution, IMG), Dave Kerr (Director, British Eurosport) & Ciaran Quinn (Director of Strategic Business Development, deltatre) Moderator – Kevin Roberts (Editorial Director, SportBusiness Group) The discussion revolved around which platforms and business models will succeed and be best suited for sports broadcasts in the future. Ciaran Quinn, of deltratre, an IT and media services provider for sports and entertainment, bet on iPad as one of the platforms that will thrive, but said the best way to find out is experimenting, earlier and often. He said that in the future there will only be a screen where people will turn the internet on. For him, the key for sports broadcasts is to take advantage of this internet platform and make as much hours of coverage as possible available, turning the individuals into executive
producers by providing a navigation system that enables them to choose the footage they want see and on which language they want their commentary. Dipesh Morjaria, of IMG, pointed out that smartphones revolutionised the market over the past 12 months and the iPhone has enabled consumers to bypass the operators, which have been very slow in increasing their offer. He stated that a subscription model is very difficult to work and that with bandwidth growing and streaming directly to TVs close to becoming a reality, there is a strong opportunity for ad funded and sponsor funded models. Dave Kerr, of Eurosport, recommended the diversification of platforms, explaining that mobile might be good for sports that take place during day time on workdays, like cycling or tennis, and it even makes people more likely to go and watch it on TV at home. He also highlighted the role of packaging sports against the trend of setting up sport-specific channels as he believes being around other sports in the same environment brings a number of advantages to rights owners. During the Q&A session, the threat of piracy heightened by user generated content tools was raised and Quinn emphasised that people will always prefer better produced content if they are given the option. Morjaria added that there is an opportunity for user generated content as a complement to a better produced source. 11.45 – 12.15 Showcase Two - Facebook and British Universities & Colleges Sport (Andy Smith, BUCS) Over the past months, the BUCS has delivered a project called Sports Hub, aimed at making people active using the tools of social media. It sought to overcome barriers to participation in sport, such as a lack of resources at universities, and take advantage of a network of 4,000 teams involved in university and college competitions. With funding from Sport England, a series of Facebook applications was developed, allowing 19 universities to link with governing bodies of six sports and engage students and university staff. Employing apps that enable the sharing of video, photos, competition and sponsors information, BUCS group page grew to over 6,000 fans. Putting good content up was crucial to attracting fans and using Facebook as a signpost to directing people to BUCS website, taking them to specific areas like volunteering opportunities and the online shop.
Universities followed through and also created their Facebook pages, using the apps and sharing content uploaded by BUCS. It was agreed that sport department staff, rather than marketing and PR, was the right people to be trained and upskilled to take charge of the pages. Facebook has made it possible for BUCS and universities to present information in a way that they would not be able to do on a conventional website with the resources they currently have. Sports Hub got 12,000 people active by using social media to advertise events and sessions and giving tools for groups to organise themselves. 12.15 – 13.00 Discussion Two - Driving participation and sporting activity through new media Panellists – Urvasi Naidoo (Chief Executive, International Federation of Netball Associations (IFNA)), Chris Lightfoot (CEO, Whitestone International), Hugo Sharman (Director, Fast Web Media (FWM)) & (Andy Smith, BUCS) Moderator – Phil Savage (Publishing Director,SportBusiness Group) Urvasi Naidoo, of International Federation of Netball Associations, opened the discussion saying that, for a resource-poor sport like netball, “simple” works. She gave examples of how tweets or text messages reminding people of practice sessions can drive participation at a very grassroots level and engage people who are not already engaged. Chris Lightfoot, of specialist sports branding consultancy Whitestone International, underlined how getting people engaged from as early as five years old is a very objective way to address a massive drop out in sports at the age of 16. Lightfoot reminded the audience that the kids today are the first generation who is converting to developing relationships though new media. For him, persuasion, and not budget, is the real barrier to sports organisations using new media. But he was sceptical about employing high profile athletes as a tool to get people active. He argued that social media complicates the usage for brands as much as it helps athletes connect since it cannot be controlled. Andy Smith also stated that budget should not be a barrier and said that BUCS would still have a following on Facebook even without the applications they developed. He advised sports organisations to analyse their data in order to make sure they do not waste money and reinvest resources in the right channels. Hugo Sharman, of full service digital agency Fast Web Media, told cash-deprived rights owners to look at brands as partners in tapping into social media as opposed to think about how much money they can give. He said that evidence shows that simply watching a sport is not going make people more likely to start practising it if they have not had an interest before. Sharman made the point that search engine marketing and optimisation still have a huge part to play in connecting users to
sport, especially now that Goole results pages are populated by real time news, tweets, photographs and a variety of different content. Lightfoot praised an idea brought up during the Q&A session about using sports video games to drive participation, explaining that the relationship between governing bodies and game developers does not need to be always commercial. 14.00 – 14.30 Presentation - “The State of Mobile Sport” (Alistair Hill, comScore) Alistair Hill provided the audience with a great deal of data analysis coming from his company’s measurement of online behaviour on mobile. He revealed that mobile usage in the UK mirrors the football season, with a 15 per cent drop noted in June 2008, when England did not qualify for the European Championship. The top 10 paid sports iPhone applications are generally around football. Men are already the majority of mobile internet services users (60 to 70 per cent) and sports information is primarily accessed by male individuals averaged 34 years old. However, social media is driving the uptake of the mobile world and younger demographics make up the heavy user group of social media networking. Sports is the fifth most popular content genre, behind search, social networking, news and weather, with Facebook being the most popular mobile internet site in the UK. Twitter is growing impressively, but does not have the mass appeal of Facebook. Mobile banner advertising is growing steadily and the amount of money spent on mobile content was $8 billion worldwide (on demand mobile video viewers have grown 55 per cent since April). It is a huge difference from what people spend on content for PCs, but the number is declining with more free content becoming available. Hill gave examples of innovative apps being developed by sports organisations, such as the one NHL team Pittsburgh Penguins targeted at season ticket holders, offering exclusive live video feeds to be viewed while sitting in the audience during games. The augmented reality IBM app for Wimbledon last year was also highlighted. It allowed users to get information by pointing the camera to specific locations within the event’s venue. 14.30 – 15.30 Discussion Three - Social Media: New opportunity - new threats? Panellists – Darryl Newton (CEO, Factory Media), Chris Bignell (Director, XL Communications) and David Fuller (CEO, Pilote Media). Moderator – Rachel Froggatt (Director of Sport, Braben Sport)
Chris Bignell, of PR and marketing communications agency XL Communications, got the ball rolling with an assertive remark: social media is a conversation; it is possible to try to influence the conversation but not to control it. Organisations prepared to accept that will be able to take advantage of opportunities like location-based applications to help people find their way in and out of stadiums and discover how close they are from other people, or crowd-sourcing initiatives to engage fans. David Fuller, of Pilot Media, picked up where Bignell left off stressing that the conversations going on via social media are between individuals and not commercial-to-person communication. It is a personal decision to invite brands and companies to those conversations. Once they get invited, they can use social media to monitor attitudes and behaviours of their target audience. He believes there are fans that are desperate for content that is neither on BBC nor on Sky and ready to pay or acknowledge a sponsor prepared to offer this content for free. On the integration between social media and video games, Fuller said it will get to a point where fans will be able to compete against real sportspeople, like racing an online Grand Prix against someone on the track. Leading action sports media owner Factory Media, of which Darryl Newton is managing director, is an example of monetisation possibilities online. Newton says that extreme sports content is exceptionally difficult to find and almost impossible to find offline. Brands who are willing to make it available will most definitely receive due recognition from fans. 16.00 – 16.15 Showcase Three - Creating a web 2.0 platform for fans – England Squash and Racketball (Ben Taylor & Phil Jeffs, Fudge) Taylor and Jeffs also highlighted the concept of conversation. They explained that the central point for brands and organisations to successfully engage with online communities is to think about conversations rather than campaigns. There are a billion of conversations going on online. Some of them will involve an organisation’s target audience and, if this organisation does not start talking to them soon, someone else will. Essential questions to ask are: What are your aims? Who is your target audience? Where do they spend time online? How can you enhance their online experience? What are you doing to earn five minutes of your fans/customers time? Fudge put those questions to England Squash and Racketball, which wanted to engage with current participants and attract new people to sport. Their brand and website did nothing to sell the sport; there was no way to find out how or where to
play. All those services were brought online to put in place the foundations to take the relationship with the participants’ community to a deeper level. Both also advocated the power of Facebook Connect applications, which they used in a project for clothing brand Bank because the app is easy to register for those who have Facebook accounts and gives access to users’ information and their database of friends. Taylor and Jeffs underlined the importance of making sure anything a brand develops become available where its consumers want to consume it – thinking beyond the web browser due to the constant advent of new devices. 16.15 – 17.15 Discussion Four - Building, maintaining and marketing to an online fanbase Panellists – Jerry Newman (Chelsea FC Digital Media, Digital Product Manager), Ben Taylor (Client Services Director, Fudge) and Jeff Nathenson (YouTube Partnerships Manager, Google) Moderator – Kevin Roberts (Editorial Director, SportBusiness Group) Strategies to reach fans and consumers where they are were the main topics of the final discussion of the day. Jerry Newman explained that the main objective of Chelsea building social communities like fan forums and channels on YouTube and Facebook was to find people that do not want to engage with the club’s official website, but are happy to do it elsewhere online. The communications team was convinced to see new media as an opportunity rather than a threat, and then trained to develop tones and skills to talk to those communities. Jeff Nathenson called on small clubs and sports organisations to use YouTube, as it is great equaliser. All organisations are provided with the same free tools, what can be a major accelerator and multiplier if they are willing to learn how to use them and to put in the resources. He tells about how the most successful users of Facebook and YouTube would probably not look good on an HD screen. For him, the values of TV production do not apply to social media, where it is all about personality and the level of engagement; functionality rather than graphics. Ben Taylor, of online agency Fudge reinforced the importance of listening to users and recalled how his company took feedback from them at every step of the redesign of England Squash and Racketball’s website, instead of making general assumptions about how people use the internet. Questions about how to deal with the unpredictability of online conversations were again asked during the Q&A session. Newman revealed that Chelsea is reviewing its policy about players’ blogs and Twitter accounts as they are sub-brands of the club, but spoke about how the conversations Chelsea has with fans developed advocates
that are now backing the controversial introduction of red details on the team’s new home kit. Nathenson urged organisations not to use tools such as disabling comments thinking they are protecting their image. He said those tools will only keep them from enlarging their audience and getting important feedback. The key is to be flexible and create solutions that can be moved across platforms as new platforms or territories arise. In this fast-changing landscape, mistakes will be made and the worst thing to do it is not do anything. Author – Bernardo Domingues (SportBusiness Group)