SPORTEL MIAMI: Spotlight on the 2025 Conference Summit

The vibrant city of Miami is set to welcome back SPORTEL, the world’s leading market and conference summit for the sports media and tech industry, from 1-2 April at the prestigious JW Marriott Miami. This exclusive gathering will invite participants to connect under the stunning backdrop of the cosmopolitan sunshine state and gateway for sports business in the Americas.

Times and technology have evolved since Miami first played host to SPORTEL over 25 years ago and so has this regional event, which is reflected both on the market and exhibit floor and complemented by an expertly curated conference summit. A dynamic mix of international sports executive leaders and disruptive innovators, who are collectively shaping the future of the industry and producing groundbreaking solutions for sports media, will take to the stage at Speakers Corner, to share engaging masterclass panels and presentation sessions throughout the two-day event.

Day one (1 April), opens with a Miami and US focus, as a celebrated host city and country discussing, “The American Dream: A Media Hub for Major Sports Events” and how the biggest media market in the world, ticks all the boxes from infrastructure, to fans to sustainability to broadcast and more with Hard Rock Stadium & Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix (Jillian Falduto), FIFA World Cup 2026™ Miami Host Committee (Janelle M. Prieto) Formula E (Jonathan Salt), Homestead-Miami Speedway (Guillermo Santa Cruz) and moderated by Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (Mat Ratner).

Next up, we’ll move into the rapidly evolving world of AI, already redefining the industry. Kicking off, a presentation by Greenfly (Ethan Podell) and partner Iron Mountain (Greg Maratea) will share insight “From Archives to Opportunity – The Power of Historical Content” proving how archived content can be a powerful asset that drives fan engagement, storytelling, and new revenue opportunities. 

Following on, Harmonic (Mikel Darrigues) will talk about, “The AI Revolution in Sports Content: Enhancing Production, Broadcasting & Fan Engagement” divulging further AI use cases such as automatic sports highlights, scheduling for FAST channels, streamline content curation and delivery, multilingual commentaries and virtual product placement, to name a few.

Two panels led by SVG (Ken Kerschbaumer), will address, “It all Starts With Data – The Untapped Goldmine” revealing how understanding every attribute of data is crucial not only for monetization but also for staying agile and relevant in the fast-paced world of sports.  Expert panelists include PGA Tour (Scott Gutterman) and Veritone (Craig Carruso). Then, “Generative AI for Sports Media & Storytelling”, will further explore use cases from rights to sponsorship and debate how generative AI make the world of sports business more efficient and drives growth. Expert perspectives from AI innovators and users will include Spectatr (Shifa Garg), Blinkfire (Johnny Kutnowski), LFP Media (David Labrune) and MultiTV Solutions (Vikash Samota).

Switching directions, “A New Era of Live Sports Streaming” in collaboration with SportBusiness (Jon Rest), will debate how Netflix is upping its stakes to incorporate live streaming of premium events, plus the growth of live sports content on FAST platforms and models and success and challenges for leagues leveraging their own DTC channels. Hear more on where things are heading from our executive line up of Paramount/Pluto TV (Eduardo Arias), FOX Deportes (Angelina Losada), YouTube (Victor Machado) and Octagon (William Mao).

Closing the day, will be the first of two sessions for the ever popular “Pitch Perfect” which continues to gain traction in popularity, providing a fantastic showcase for emerging companies new to SPORTEL who have a creative or innovative solution, to present in this quick-fire session. Each company is allocated just three minutes pitch time and two minutes question time, with the lucky winner receiving a full access visitor pass to SPORTEL Monaco 2025. Pitchers over the two days include: Tagboard (Farren Benjamin), Absolut Sport (Antonio Paz), Teradek (Jefferson Pichinte), Blinkfire (Johnny Kutnowski), 1h Media (Carlos Lopes), Artlist (Jack Robertson), MultiTV Solutions (Vikash Samota), Spectatr.ai (Riche Singh) and Spyrosoft (Jonathan Witte), ensuring an innovative highlight to end an invigorating two days of knowledge sharing and business exchange between executive attendees

Day two (2 April), kicks off with an open discussion around “European Football Leagues Making a Strike in the US” on how the big soccer (football) clubs and leagues are ramping up their investment in the US market and how this will be financed. Leading the discussion will be SportBusiness (Jon Rest) with European and domestic insights from Televisa Univision (Andrew Captan), LALIGA North America (Nicolas Garcia Hemme) and OneFootball (Yannick Ramcke).

Next up, “Winning with Scale & Personalization – The Future of (Fan Driven) Sports Media”, presented by Vivaro Media (Daniel Gonzalez), will share how sports media can balance global reach with hyper-personalization through data-driven insights, AI-powered content strategies, and next-gen platforms reshaping the industry.

A growing area at SPORTEL and the next masterclass, “Sponsorship: The Revenue Dream for Rights Holders” pinpoints how sponsorship is now the second most important revenue stream for most rights holders, looking at the dynamics of regional models and how these influence brands to connect with their target audiences. The lineup features some of the biggest brands in the industry including, FIFA26, Inc.  (Iris Diaz), DAZN (Lou Garate), Qualcomm (Julie Yamamoto) and moderated by SPORTEL (Giovanni Aquilanti).

Fully focusing on FANS, the “FANtastic FANcentric Formulas for Future FANS” panel will give exciting updates on how next gen fans are consuming content and engaging with their favourite sports, plus new means of monetization for leagues offering hyper personalized content while gaining invaluable data. Our panel of platform specialists include moderator Protocol Sports (Lowell Conn), Fever (Tom McElwee), Lights Out Sports TV (Shawne Merriman), Pro League Network (Mike Salvaris) and TrillerTV (Eric Winter).

Closing the programe will be be part two of the “Pitch Perfect” session and Pitch Perfect Winner announcement ensuring an innovative highlight to end an invigorating two days of knowledge sharing and business exchange between executive attendees.