SportBusiness speaks to the chief executive of the convention for the international sports media and technology industry, which is taking place in Miami, March 3-6.
How does Sportel Miami reflect and address the changing nature of the sports media business?
Sportel Miami is reflecting and addressing these changes with an evolved format including new added-value content and targeted networking events for the spring convention. A fresh but trusted Sportel quality business setting will unite both our traditional clients, who are embracing these new trends that influence their deal making at Sportel, along with new players emerging in parallel with mainstream media, who have been growing in number at our events. The continuous arrival of emerging technologies opens exciting new business opportunities between all players, and we are looking forward to seeing what comes out of Sportel Miami.
How does it complement the Monaco event?
The spring event format is more of an intimate gathering than Sportel Monaco, with Sportel Miami providing more variety of thought leadership platforms, different networking opportunities and more buyers than Sportel Macau 2019 did. Delegates will have more time per meeting to develop business relationships with the key established and emerging stakeholders from across the Americas and globally. In contrast, Sportel Monaco is much larger and very fast paced, with the mission of maximizing business and delegates having back-to-back 30-minute meetings throughout the three-day event.
What’s new for this year?
More content, more networking and more buyers! Kicking off Sportel Miami is our new high-level one-day conference, which will set the tone for the convention over the following days. We are delighted so many of the Sportel community have welcomed this new initiative and engaged with us as speakers, sponsors or signed up to attend and network. This new format of back-to-back sessions with no trade floor in parallel on the same day is a first for the spring event.
Added to that, buyers are always a high priority at Sportel conventions, with clients requesting to meet more buyers at our spring events. In response, we are not only ensuring more buyers in attendance, we have scheduled a two-day series of invitation only ‘Buyers Breakfasts’ during the convention, to facilitate interaction between select buyers and sellers of sports media content and new technologies that raise the bar for the industry. We believe these two new additions could become a footprint at future events.
Which elements of the conference programme are you most looking forward to?
The calibre and diversity of the international speaker line-up is second to none. I am looking forward to the engaged discussions and open floor dialogue between the panellists and conference attendees relating to trends and issues impacting the industry and our community. Specific session highlights will include an inspiring fireside chat with local but global Telemundo Deportes president Ray Warren, and the keynote panel bringing together two of the world’s greatest boxing promoters – Oscar De La Hoya, chief executive of Golden Boy, and Eddie Hearn, group managing director of Matchroom Sport – alongside the esteemed John Skipper, executive chairman of the DAZN Group, to share how boxing is moving into the digital area.