Sportel extends tech focus at flagship Monaco event

Tech played a larger role than ever before at Sportel Monaco this year, with the event organiser giving prominence to sports tech innovations that are having an increasingly significant impact on the sports sector.

Broadcast Sport caught up with Laurent Puons, CEO, Sportel and Nick Volante, sales advisor, Sportel as the second day of Sportel Monaco was drawing to a close, to talk about the advancement of tech companies at the show.

Puons said: “On the exhibition floor, you’ll see more and more new exhibitors and attendees from the technology sector. New technology is very important for us, and the development of our events will be on this tech sector.

“We need to keep the traditional broadcaster happy and provide good business for them. But if we want to continue to develop the market, we need to attract new technologies.”

Volante added: “If you look at the 35-year history of Sportel, back in the day it was just the buying and selling of linear media rights and now, with the evolution of technology and digital and everything else, it’s a lot more complicated.

“Also, the way to overcome many of the industry’s challenges is through new technologies. So we need to bring new technology providers to the show to solve challenges so the industry can continue to evolve in a healthy state.”

A natural example of this is with AI, with Sportel Monaco’s exhibition hosting a plethora of companies automating the production of sports and sports highlights, and AI featuring heavily in the conference programme.

Similarly, piracy was another key focus at the show. Puons explained: “It’s very important to discuss about piracy, because it’s a nightmare for our community here. And unfortunately, today we cannot find a good solution”.

Volante points to the sheer number of sports services fans need to subscribe to, to access different sports, as a turn off for viewers and a driver for turning to pirated streams. “You used to, say, get Sky Sports and you could watch all the sports there – now it’s like, okay DAZN has this, Discovery has this, Sky has this, and then you’ve got this sports streaming on here. So, if you want to watch all the sports content, you need 10 subscriptions, which you have to pay for. Nobody wants to do that. So, what’s the alternative? You turn to piracy.”

As well as extending the exhibition space to accommodate new tech developments, Sportel Monaco doubled down on innovations with the introduction of a second stage for its conference programme.

The aptly titled Innovation Stage was a dedicated space for discussions from startups and tech pioneers. “We want everybody in the same place - broadcasters, sellers, buyers, new technologies and startups too, hence the opening of this stage,” said Puons.

Next for Sportel is new event Sportel Talks in New York later this month (16 December), and then next year Sportel returns to Miami in April, before once again heading to Monaco in October.