48 If MIPCOM participants get excited about drama, in Monte Carlo, just 37 km east of Cannes, SPORTELMonaco attendees get ecstatic about sports, especially in view of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup and the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics. Though international TV rights to those events were sold long ago, themany TV programs related to those events — and the issues brought on by those events — are still important to SPORTEL attendees. In March, SPORTEL organizers touched on these issues head-on with the second edition of SPORTELRio. And the SPORTELMonaco exhibition and conference, which will be held October 14-17, will include a presentation by FIFA, the international football governing body that organizes the World Cup. But there are also other issues to be addressed, like the increasing costs of subscription television due to a growing number of sports channels. Reportedly, this year alone sports fees paid by U.S. subscription TV companies will increase by 12 percent to $17 billion. Subscribers who are not sports fans are likely to start cord-cutting, causing service companies to increase subscription fees, and thus igniting a vicious circle. As usual SPORTELMonaco will have three parts — a market attended by decision makers across the sports content industry; a series of international conferences and expert panels, and the Golden Podium Awards Ceremony, which recognizes the best sports TV images of the year. Some 90 exhibitors, a few coming from MIPCOM, will set up their booths on levels 0 and 1 of the Grimaldi Forum Convention Center in Monte Carlo. The majority of attendees at SPORTEL are representatives from broadcast, television networks and cable companies. About 70 percent are from Europe; and North America has the second-largest contingent. According to organizers, the United Kingdom will also be well represented and Asia is growing. Confirmed exhibitors include Globo TV Sports, NBA, ESPN, BBC, RAI and Eurosport. “I am happy to say that, at this time and compared to last year’s registration at the same time, we are 10 percent above 2012. We expect to welcome at least 2,600 participants from all over the world,” said Amparo Di Fede, general manager of SPORTELMonaco. For the first time, Germany’s DFL Sports Enterprises GmbH and SPORTEL have signed a long-term partnership, which will see DFL enhance the presence of its brand and content at the next three SPORTELMonaco markets. This year, a special conference on Monday, October 14 entitled “Second Screen: The Big Game,” a collaboration with the Associated Press, will explore how the second screen has affected the way viewers interact with sports programming. That conference follows one entitled “FIFA World Cup TV & Multimedia — Getting Ready for the Greatest Show on Earth.” “We will have one session about 4K technology and an expert panel in collaboration with Sports Video Group entitled ‘Understanding the TV Anywhere Market: What Fans Want and How You Can Give it to Them.’ I expect these two sessions to be the most popular this year,” said Di Fede. “Also, The International Symposium will examine the evolving and dynamic relationship between major sporting event broadcasters and the new technologies that are providing viewers with more value than ever before.” From this year on, an official Conference Room in the Diaghilev Exhibition Hall of the Grimaldi Forum will play host to all official conference events, expert panels and meetings. “Due to the tremendous interest from the industry and early registrations, we have taken the time to reorganize our venues,” said Di Fede. “We were able to create a nice flow in both venues with more visibility for exhibitors. Further, we specifically have improved the layout of the Diaghilev venue with more and new exhibitors and have moved the conference room into that venue, concentrating all interaction on two floors only. Every day we will offer free coffee breaks and a lunch buffet in the Diaghilev venue. In the evenings we invite all participants to a get together at our daily happy hour from 6-7p.m.” Mitchell Mortaza of the Vegas-based Legends Football League (formerly the Lingerie Football League), an all-female American league, said his company exhibited at SPORTELMonaco for the first time last year. “Our first and only SPORTELMonaco exhibition was incredibly successful as we acquired several new broadcasters. We were scheduled in back-to-back meetings each of the three days we attended.” Nathan Leong, head of Television at the Londonbased Audio Network, a production music company for TV and film, said that their meeting schedules were so jam-packed the first time they attended SPORTELMonaco two years ago that they upped their presence and investment for the second year and took their own meeting space. This year — their third at the market — the company will return to a stand in the “increasingly popular — and busy — Diaghilev Hall.” The company will also attend MIPCOM. By attending SPORTEL again this year, Mortaza hopes to “further our international television distribution and establish the LFL as a credible sports franchise alongside the other major American sports exhibiting such as WWE, NFL and UFC.” At the market, “Our team meets with the heads of programming and acquisition from broadcasters all over the world,” he said. His company does not attend MIPCOM. “SPORTEL is vital for Audio Network because of the nature of sports programming — it travels and music travels with it,” said Leong. “Having music that is cleared for worldwide, multiplatform distribution off the bat means there is one less worry for distributors and broadcasters. Attendees of SPORTEL understand that rights and distribution are really important,” he said. And, he added, “Audio Network already counts Perform Group, MP & Silva, Sky Sports, UEFA and Eurosport (among many others) as clients. SPORTEL has also opened up relationships with the likes of Dream Team TV, ACB, Quattro Media, Youthstream Media and some that cannot yet be announced, who have all been signed as a result of the event.” It’s for this reason that “SPORTEL continues to be one of the most important events on the calendar for Audio Network. As long as there are companies selling sports programming around the world and needing music for that production, Audio Network will be on hand,” Leong said. We asked Mortaza to pinpoint how specifically SPORTEL organizers can continue to keep the event relevant and he said that among other things, they should “keep the show affordable for up and coming sports properties such as the LFL.” Sports TV Content Biz Prepares For Busy Game Plays October 2013 Focus on SPORTELMonaco A view of the floor at SPORTELMonaco A judo demonstration put on by the International Judo Federation at SPORTELMonaco 2012 Last year’s Golden Podium Awards
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