Celebrating a journey of growth, collaboration and innovation.
It’s been 13 years since we launched the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit and Awards, and by God’s grace we saw the event enjoy significant growth this year compared to previous editions. We had several firsts in the 13th edition, where we ventured out of our usual hotel space to the Dubai Knowledge Park Conference Centre, quite unsure of how it would impact attendance. Fortunately, attendance was back to pre-Covid numbers with a little under 300 attendees in the morning and a good 270-odd guests at the evening gala.
For the first time at the conference this year, we also attempted seven panel discussions instead of the traditional four, explored a fresh set of topics, took a few risks in terms of timing but managed to wrap the whole event up by 5pm.
Summaries of the discussions will be shared between this issue and the next, but what struck me the most was how the industry had matured in its discussions since those initial days, when CEOs of premium offerings were adamant they wouldn’t lower prices but had no flexible options to attract new entry-level customers. I recall most CEOs shaking their heads in the negative when the first discussions of potential collaboration took place at our conference.
At this year’s summit, it appeared that all were working closely with each other, either formally or informally. In fact, Evision, a telco division, has gone so far as to take a telco-agnostic approach with regard to its media distribution and is working with multiple telco operators within the Arab world.
The gala awards in the evening celebrated a stellar mix of big and small innovators and disruptors from the content, sports, tech, OTT and broadcast spaces. We have compiled a whole section with this year’s winners. We invite you to enjoy the photos, videos and discussions as well as highlights from the summit and awards on our website. It’s a great prelude to the festive season. Have yourselves a merry Christmas and see you all in the New Year.
