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Pay TV, Online Dominate Monaco’s 2016 Sportel Convention

NBC Sports Group, BBC and Canal Plus all won awards at this week’s 2016 Sportel World Sports Marketing & Media Convention, which wrapped Thursday. But the real star of the convention in Monaco was digital media.

The gathering’s two biggest presentations featured Yu Hang, the new COO of LeSports, the sports subsidiary of Chinese internet group Le Eco, and Dan Reed, Facebook’s head of global sports partnerships. Another panel focused on “Social Media: From Ancillary Option to Primary Distribution Platform.”

A streaming giant whose $1.23-billion share issue in March was hugely oversubscribed, Le Sports owns new-media rights to Chinese Super League soccer and Hong Kong rights to England’s Premier League. Its launch of a Chinese pay-per-view offer in April keys off two global trends in the sports business, Yu said in Monaco: young viewers’ abandonment of linear TV for OTT entertainment, and the slow decline of a traditional TV-advertising model.

A laggard in the sports broadcasting business only a few years ago, China was hailed at Le Sports’ panel as now defining its future – at least for OTT, PPV and subscription models – though classic pay-TV operators such as Sky, which has paid enormous sums for Premier League and German Bundesliga soccer rights, might beg to differ.

“There are regular newspaper headlines suggesting the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Twitter will buy up global rights to premium sports properties,” said Robin Jellis, editor of TV Sports Markets, “but these players are yet to really show their hand with regard to their intention of buying sports rights.”

Specific market conditions boost the emergence of digital sports players, he added. “Better access to the Internet, regulatory change and the lack of growth of traditional pay-TV operators has facilitated the arrival on the scene of digital sports TV players in China, where we have seen the likes of Le Sports, PPTV, Sina and Tencent drastically increase the rights fees paid for sport in the country,” Jellis commented.

What is unquestionable is the emergence of powerful new players in mature markets, such as telecom companies or rights broker like BeIN Sports, creating new competition for incumbent pay-TV giants. Meanwhile, mobile-first digital distribution models are consolidating in China and Africa.

Deals announced at and during Sportel certainly pointed to the use of sports to drive new online pay-TV propositions or telecom bundles in a fast-evolving sector, as well as the use of Internet to fuel take-up of historic TV services:

* Replacing Canal Plus, Telecom Altice/SFR bought broadcast and Internet rights from the French Athletics Federation (FFA) for 15 events over 2017-20. Deal marks the first time the FFA has signed an exclusive broadcast deal with a telecom.

* ESPN announced a multi-year programming agreement with Kwese, part of South Africa’s Econet group. As part of the deal, Kwese plans to push cellphone pay-TV in Africa; the partners will also launch a Kwese/ESPN app targeting mobile phone users.

* The Sportel Start-Up Competition was won by Solive, a French company which, in line with Reed’s advice, generates real-time content on social media platforms to develop fan engagement as sports viewership becomes ever more a multi-screen experience.

Historic TV operators and organizations – NBC Sports Group, BBC, and Canal Plus – were still among major prizewinners at Sportel, for slow-motion images, program promotion, and innovation, respectively. But if the two top prizes this year are anything to go by, sports entertainment at its very best can be not about winning, nor even taking part. It’s about losing.

Sportel’s Jury Prize went to Canal Plus France’s “Tout en douceur,” Jean-Jacques Ansellem’s edited highlights of a WBA cruiserweight boxing title contest in May between Cuba’s Yunier Dorticos and Youri Kalenga of France. Dorticos won. Set to the music of Bjork’s big band love lament “It’s So Quiet,” Ansellem’s highlights focus on Kalenga’s bloodied face as its crumples and ripples from the impact of Dorticos’ punches.

The biggest draw of “FISE World Denver 2016 Highlights,” the Sportel Audience Award winner, was an amateur freestyle bicycle ramp jumper, 19-year-old Chucky Covey, attempting a double front flip, one of freestyle’s most challenging tricks, even for pros. He failed at least twice before pulling it off.

Other winning works, often short-formats, succeeded in delivering a touch of humanity, originality or class to sporting figures and moments. NBC Sports Group’s “Neymar in Slow Motion,” which won in the Sportel Awards slow-motion category, captures Brazil’s biggest soccer player as he scores the winning penalty in the Rio Olympics soccer final. Neymar seems at a loss about how to celebrate, finally sinking to his knees and appearing to burst into tears.

Sportel’s Best Promotion Prize went to BBC Sports’ Rio 2016 Olympic Games trailer, directed by Againstallodds’ Derek Picken and Niklas Rissler for RKCR/Y&R, which features animated Amazon animals limbering up for gymnastics, synchronized diving and volleyball.

Produced by the Sundance Institute, among many other companies, Amber Fares’ “Speed Sisters” won a Peace and Sport Documentary Prize for his portraits of the four members of the Middle East’s first all-women racing car team, which is based out of the Palestinian territories. In a sports world plagued by clichés, it questions stereotypes of gender and place.

Sportel ran Oct.24-27.

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