Sportel reveals plans for its first Bali event

Having just finished its 33rd annual sports content media rights and technology convention in Monaco, Sportel is now focused on its first show in Bali.

The Bali edition will be a Sportel Rendez-vous event, which is a streamlined two-day event featuring a concentrated market complemented by an conference summit.

The inaugural Sportel Rendez-vous Bali will take place 23-24 February 2023 and, if all goes to plan, will be the first in an annual series of Sportel events in the Indonesian province.

Broadcast Sport caught up with Sportel chief executive Laurent Puons, Sportel sales agent Nick Volante and Peter F. Gontha, presenter of Sportel Rendez-vous Bali during Sportel Monaco.

Puons explained: “Sportel Monaco is our main event, bringing together all the sports community in the same place. But I think it’s very important for us to develop the market and give the European community an opportunity to meet and do business with other countries and territories.

“It’s for this reason that Peter contacted me to organise with him a Sportel in Bali. I immediately said yes because I know our community wants to go back to Asia but they don’t want to go to China or Singapore. Now we have an opportunity to run an event in Bali that’s perfect for business and for vacation. It will give our European community a unique opportunity to do business with new communities, to sign contracts and make money.”

Gontha adds: “I don’t think Laurent immediately said yes to Bali. He wanted to make sure we knew what we were talking about, so we went through a whole process of convincing and explaining the reasoning behind coming to Bali. Basically, I emphasised to Laurent and the team at Sportel that Asia is where economies are growing much faster than the economies of the Western World and the Latin World. The Indonesian economy is the fastest growing economy anywhere.

“Sports people are business people and they go where there is a market. Soccer is huge in Indonesia, as are sports like triathlons and marathons.”

Volante picks up on this, saying: “In Indonesia they love sports – they love football, but they also love all the other sports. If you look at how they consume, there are 200 million watching content on mobile phones in Indonesia, so that’s a distribution channel that’s unique. The growth potential in North and South America and Europe has slowly plateaued and if you look for where there’s real potential, that’s in South East Asia and particularly Indonesia. When we say we’re going to Bali, people love it.”