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Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
Dublin, Ireland |
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Key Points:
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The New Media Sportscasting
Summit held in Dublin yesterday saw leading
experts from the Sports Industry gathered
together to discuss the trends and opportunities
for the delivery of sport over broadband and
3G. |
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Amongst the Keynote speakers
were LiverpoolFC.TV, Setanta Sports Nth America,
leading online sports advertising agency,
Aura Sports, Google Video, The Rugby Football
League and Vodafone. |
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A survey of the delegation
reveals that that broadband consumption of
sports content will increase by 25% over the
next 3 years. |
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The delegation heard that
best way to minimise subscriber churn from
broadband sports subscription services is
to incentivise customers towards annual rather
than monthly subscription. |
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Simon Green, CEO of Setanta
Sports US, emphasised that the new phenomenon
of 'Placeshifting' means that the desire to
have sports content anytime, any place is
driving new media sportscasting. |
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Reduction in time delay
to 'as live' will increase opportunities to
incorporate in-running betting with online
sports content; live pictures can sit alongside
prices for events and web content dictated
by the broadcast. |
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Creation of more web-specific
content will create opportunities to sponsor
on-demand broadcasts linked to major racing
events. |
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The fourth screen - the
mobile phone - is vital in the communications
mix for new media sports content. An understanding
of mobile personalization, content recommendations
and search capabilities in a wireless environment
are key to enabling the success of mobile
portal content propositions in the sports
industry. |
New media consumption of sports content will
increase by 25% over the next 3 years as indicated
by a survey of the delegation at the Servecast
hosted event, the New Media Sportscasting Summit
which took place yesterday in The Berkeley Court
Hotel in Dublin. The one day conference saw leading
experts from the Sports Industry gathered together
to discuss the trends and opportunities for the
delivery of sport over broadband and 3G. Amongst
the Keynote speakers were LiverpoolFC.TV, Setanta
Sports, leading online sports advertising agency,
Aura Sports, Google Video and Vodafone. The delegation
included senior representatives from all elements
of the new media value chain for Sport - Sports
organizations SportFive, Sporever, GlobalSportNet;
Premiership Soccer clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool,
Everton and Southampton; the Rugby Football League,
the Canadian Football League and UK cricket clubs;
TV broadcasters the BBC, Danish broadcaster Viasat
and RTE as well as bookmakers Tote and Skybet.
Chairing the conference was Sky Sports presenter
Paul Dempsey.
The event was hosted by Servecast, the leading
supplier of advanced streaming media solutions
for the Sports Industry. Servecast has a strong
pedigree in the delivery of high quality and profitable
streaming solutions for the sports and media industry.
Many of Servecast's high profile customers were
present at the conference and keynote speakers
consisted of customers and partners of Servecast.
Speaking at the conference regarding the best
commercial models for New Media Sportscasting,
Stephen Michael, General Manager of Liverpool
FC.TV said "Having a well presented preview
function with sample content and offering occasional
free video samples to get customer more used to
watching video online is essential for successful
subscriber recruitment. The best way to minimise
subscriber churn is to incentivise customers towards
annual rather than monthly subscriptions. Investing
heavily in customer services and technical support
is also key to keeping online subscribers."
Simon Green, Managing Director of Setanta US
emphasised the need to understand the time-starved
individual who lives in an 'information overload'
society. He emphasized that the sports industry
must react strongly to this "We are in the
ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS and must compete for our
customer's attention in a very busy market dominated
by MTV, ipods, PSPs, TV Soaps, Cinema, Pubs and
PCs." He also emphasized the 'Placeshifiting'
phenonmenon "Placeshifting - this means having
content anytime any place. In the US, this is
reflected in the Slingbox which enables users
to watch their TV programming from wherever they
are by turning virtually any Internet-connected
PC into a personal TV. In the US it is selling
three times as fast as TIVO did." This phenonmenon
is reflecting the needs and demands of time starved,
busy individuals who want sports information anytime,
anywhere. According to Simon, one potential problem
for Broadcasters is that national territorial
rights deals could get eroded.
Matthew Taylor, Editor of At The Races maintained
that streaming services are now succeeding because
"…the delay on the television picture
is cut down to 7 seconds, more users now understand
the relationship between PC Spec, Connection Speed
and picture quality and broadband penetration
is growing rapidly". Matthew sees the future
is bright for new media sportscasting with further
improvements to quality of the stream, reductions
in the delay as well as enhancements to the Free
and Archive Video services. In particular, he
stated that "Closer interaction with betting
and the reduction in time delay to 'as live' will
increase opportunities to incorporate in-running
betting". Matthew emphasized the huge potential
of online gambling and the opportunities to integrate
broadband video with a 'Bet & Watch' facility
which has been pioneered by At The Races. He also
highlighted that the creation of more web-specific
content will create opportunities to sponsor on-demand
broadcasts linked to major racing events.
The emerging role of 3G and mobile data services
was clearly articulated by Kieran Mahon, Head
of Media from Vodafone. He clearly sees sport
as the most compelling content to distribute over
mobile. He described the importance of the fourth
screen - the mobile screen. He outlined that recent
developments in mobile data delivery means that
mobile sports content can be consumed easily "Personalisation
of mobile content has improved usability by learning
about users' mobile content preferences, dynamically
building the user a personalised menu and reducing
the time and clicks to services." For a sports
fan using their mobile to access sports content,
this means the link to their favourite sports
content will be top of the menu on their mobile
phone. Kieran also emphasised that an understanding
of personalisation, automatic content recommendation
and mobile search in a wireless environment is
key to enabling the success of mobile portal content
propositions.
Paul Wright, Managing Director of Online Sports
Advertising agency, Aura Sports, gave a valuable
insight into the best ways to develop an advertising
revenue stream from digital sports properties.
Paul stated that sponsorship and advertising was
equally important and beneficial online as on
TV and that the interactivity that can be achieved
through online advertising is extremely valuable.
The strong view emerging from the conference
was that New Media Sportscasting is becoming increasingly
important to the sports industry as part of the
marketing mix ensuring brand development, greater
reach and introducing new opportunities for revenue
growth. Simon Green from Setanta Sports does maintain
however that broadband subscription services and
mobile alerts compliment traditional TV broadcasting
in many ways and satisfies sport fans' hunger
for frequent and comprehensive news updates and
features.
It is clear that there continues to be a seismic
shift in the world of broadcasting of Sports content
and that broadcasters are adapting to this. The
availability of broadband is increasing rapidly,
now exceeding cable-TV penetration in most markets.
The mobile phone has eclipsed every other consumer
product in the history of innovation. With increased
broadband access and mobile connectivity, consumers
now expect to be able to easily access sports
news and coverage via their
medium of choice be it a TV, a PC or a mobile
phone, wherever they are in the world.
For more details contact:
Kathrina Gallogly
Marketing and Communications Manager
Servecast Ltd.,
http://www.servecast.com
Phone: +353 (0)1 4748013
Fax: +353 (0)1 4748003
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