Fresh Perspectives and Growing Tech Presence Define SPORTEL Monaco’s 34th Edition
November 7, 2024
SPORTEL Monaco has never been an event that stays still. Last week there were 160 companies attending for the first time. That means a whopping 20% of the 800 companies present from October 28-20 were newcomers.
“It’s hugely important for us to attract new companies and a large part of the reason is that the companies that have attended year after year, even for 30 years, need the fresh input and interaction,” said Loris Menoni, at his first market as Executive Director of SPORTEL Monaco. “This is a fast-changing business and in order to stay on top you need to be learning and evolving all the time.”
Once again, the numbers speak for themselves. The world’s top sports business trade event drew 2000 participants to the 34th edition and most significantly, 29% of them were content buyers, with 46% of the overall attendance C-level executives.
While Europe supplied two-thirds of the delegates, 16% of them came from the Americas, 10% from Asia and another 10% from the Middle East and Oceania.
“Every year we are seeing technology playing a bigger role in the media market,” added Laurent Puons, Managing Director of SPORTEL. “Anti-piracy, fan engagement and AI already have a strong presence here and the importance of technology will only continue to grow.”
New this year in the in the Grimaldi Forum was an innovation showcase enabling companies to demonstrate their game-changing technology and products.
But tech will not be the only source of new energy for SPORTEL, according to event sales advisor Nick Volante. He predicts the re-emergence of the small agency model. “When I started at SPORTEL almost 15 years ago, we had agencies like MP & Silva and Lagardère here. Now they are gone and the market is dominated by the really big players like IMG and Infront and Dentsu. They will remain because they are so big powerful. But there is a gap for serving smaller rights owners such as many international federations and smaller leagues that don’t get the attention from the biggest agencies and have small staffs, sometimes only one person responsible for all the TV and media work, and just do not have the in-house bandwidth to manage their own media rights. It makes sense for smaller agencies to be playing a renewed role.”
In a month’s time SPORTEL heads to New York for the first SPORTEL Talks taking place December 16th at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. The new format will offer an intense afternoon of high-impact discussions and networking opportunities at a fraction of the cost of the annual market.
Puons said. “New York is obviously an important place to be with so many companies there, but it’s also very expensive too, so we are co-locating the event with our friends at SVG. The aim is ultimately to attract new participants to SPORTEL markets.”
SPORTEL Miami will return from April 1-2 at the downtown JW Marriott. The first event in Florida was held more than 20 years ago. There were 1000 attendees then and with the growing profile of Miami as an innovation hub it’s a safe bet that the event will attract a strong turnout next year.
And there may be new destinations farther afield the horizon for SPORTEL. Discussions have taken place about holding an event in India and South Africa is also a possible destination in a couple of years. “We are willing to take risks going to new places, that is not a problem at all,” Puons said. “The question for us is always can we bring participants from the region that we go to? We can always attract European delegates, but if we go to South Africa, for example, we need to have people from the continent there to deliver value for our community.”
The author is Ray James, COO of iSportConnect.