Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Sportel

I am on my way back from Sportel. The past few days have been very intense meeting over 30 sport organizations, media companies and teams. It seems that the sport world like most of TV is still trying to figure out the whole new media world. They have built very successful business on selling TV rights and charging advertisers a premium to cover their costs. The Internet is changing a lot of that, the broadcasters that paid hundreds of millions of dollars are afraid that the Internet will cut into their audience while the right holders are trying to figure out the balance between embracing the new medium and protecting their bread and butter TV deals.

I believe that the industry needs to look at new media as a way to increase the contact with the fans and fill a growing appetite for fresh content. TV will never have the time or the resource to show a 4 day golf tournament, they will show highlights and a few hours of life coverage on the weekend. If the right holders provide full coverage of the tournament on the Internet it will only grow the interest in the tournament and the amount of people that will view the live coverage on the TV.

We hope that Sportingo will be able to work with many of these right holders and provide more ways for fans to enjoy their favorite sports.

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