With sports dominating the entertainment landscape and viewer demand for diverse formats surging, industry professionals at a BroadcastPro ME roundtable explored the changes in sports consumption and what spread to offer a sports-hungry audience.
Beyond the growth of broadcast services and audiences spread across devices, sports consumption follows a brisk upward trajectory. Preferences change swiftly and sports media rights holders intensify operational methods as fans meander through apps and devices. With the popularity of short-form content, highlights are often on-the-go. However, even as digital media influences sports consumption and transforms the globe, the linear TV domain continues to reign.
Understanding the paradigm shift in producing content, changes in sport consumption and its impact on the sports broadcasting world, content experiences and what’s next in AI were some of the subjects discussed at a high-profile roundtable hosted by BroadcastPro ME recently, in conjunction with WSC Sports. Presided over by Ross Munro, Head of Commercial for WSC Sports, the speakers were Amill Lone, CEO of Saudi Sports Company (SSC); Danny Bates, co-founder and COO of StarzPlay; JP McKerlie, VP Marketing & Sales of TOD/ BeIN Media Group; Peter Van Dam, COO of SPL Media House; Sunil Joy, Head of Content at Evision/e&; and Tanweer Anwar, Head of Monetisation at Noon.
Meeting Fans’ Expectations
As businesses maximise video content to increase reach in real time, Munro set the tone by trying to understand some of the challenges and lack of resources rights owners face in an ever-changing landscape.
“As we are serving platforms with completely different content requirements, the media manager must be creative with sizes, types and quality, and build responsive formats,” commented Peter Van Dam of SPL Media House.
With sports consumption becoming increasingly dynamic, fans are no longer focused solely on the game; they want to dive deeper, with more of a focus on players and what goes on behind closed doors. Hence sports media rights holders are now creating player-specific content. This shift is evident, with Gen Zs consuming content in bits and pieces “and the requirement for snackable content”, remarked Sunil Joy of Evision/e&. “The IPL is an obvious example. If you look at Insta Reels, a popular player gets over a million likes just by walking into the field – that’s the impact of bite-sized content, and we need to begin with that kind of engagement.”
Keeping Fans Engaged Beyond the Game
Shoulder content is significant for sports consumption, commented Noon Head of Monetisation Tanweer Anwar: “Sports is not just focused on a match itself. It’s like a multi-course meal. What one is looking for is obviously the sports and also the shoulder content, especially stats and highlights, etc – like what’s the next upcoming match, the scoreline, what happens off the field before an actual game, during breaks and so on.”
Which then brings up gamification. “On our e-commerce platform we see that the moment we couple games with content, consumption goes up. Duration is another factor, where traffic on the platform spikes during specific periods. Identifying these trigger trends is important for broadcasters.”
Going Global
Generating interest is quintessential to driving value into the game and consequently, the way everything gets funded. Players can create a buzz, but the bigger objective is reaching more viewers worldwide. Traditionally sport was broadcast onto a linear platform, so broadcasters built studios and the whole facility was built into that stream.
“And the commentator’s role was to educate the audience on what was happening in the game,” stated JP McKerlie from TOD. “Digital changed that mechanism, and suddenly all the other parts that you’re cling-wrapping with the production become part of the story. The minute a player steps onto the pitch, everyone’s paying attention to the screen again – it’s triggered by some other distribution channel and broadcasters are now looking at distribution strategy as part of the selection process. Fifty percent of the engagement in sport is not on linear anymore, it is somewhere else.”
Danny Bates from StarzPlay remarked: “We’re seeing rights holders asking for social strategy and a lot of leagues are bringing social teams into the region to support the rights holder. LaLiga, Serie A, among others, see that cycles are challenging, that they need to help build the product and assist in having a clear digital strategy. The way NBA produces content for example, during the week, in the lead-ups, is supported with a clear file structure; it allows for consistency.”
Scaling Content Production
Rights holders don’t always have the resources to get that maximum exposure and leagues need to step up support for them, agreed the panellists. There are many challenges that come with the complexity of scaling content production, especially as viewers want to see football throughout the year. SPL tries to provide shoulder content to the rights holders to ensure maximum exposure to the league. This includes non-match days and the off-season, said Van Dam.
As you produce a high-quality version of a six-second clip and 50 platforms across the planet get to use it, you get that consistency, remarked McKerlie. “It is something you want, because you’re going to get varying degrees of quality from each of the broadcasters depending on their scale and capabilities. It becomes a case of which one to pick, with so many options – what are the segments interested in sport, which platform, what’s the territory, all become functional requirements.”
As players and teams strategise via social media, Dror Yousef, Business Development Manager at WSC Sports, queried whether global broadcasters were serving demand or urged to manage a community.
“It’s a bit of both,” stated Bates, “but I guess you’re serving what you want to. It’s about capturing the demand and making that demand aware of where that product is. But to capture that, you need to connect with that consumer.”
Making sure to have a good product and turning it into something you can develop is key, the panellists agreed. “You can create all the short forms and everything, but our Saudi audience can be unforgiving,” noted Amill Lone, CEO of SSC. “We’ve had missed goals, different greens of grass, everything you can mention, and all of that resonates in how we now build our strategy. We see the trends on social media, work closely with the league, see our growth impressions and the number of people coming on, and it’s about taking that plunge to develop a strategy and monetise it.”
Linear vs Digital
The linear versus digital viewer is another factor to consider, pointed out Noon’s Anwar. “The mindshare is less for someone on digital because notifications, messages and so on continuously pop up. It’s easy to drop out, unless it’s Ronaldo or a penalty shootout or a last-minute key moment of the match. So, the same content and form can’t be served on both platforms, it must be modulated and customised accordingly.”
It’s like having multi-cuisine restaurants and speciality restaurants, seconded Joy. “Is one broadcaster taking care of different requirements, or do we have those specialising in one format or content? A scenario where somebody will pick up the digital rights and make sure the digital format is managed in different ways? Having said that, traditional widescreen consumption is still the most attractive to viewers. The future lies in a multi-platform approach, offering engaging, on-demand content that is readily available on their preferred mobile devices, while recognising the enduring appeal for live, high-production broadcasts.”
Though linear rules still, multi-screen adaptation is edging into the viewing space. “In Saudi Arabia specifically, linear consumption is high. Culturally, the viewing habit is family-oriented. We need to look at dispersing content to adapt to various generations that are watching the same content,” said Lone. “SSC exclusively resides on nine channels, and among all that entertainment content sport is what’s bringing everyone in, and we have seen that with Shahid – how important sport is to that platform, because it is driving the rest of the content as well.”
Sport has that organic following. “People come to you,” said Bates. “One of the challenges we face is whether your sports account is helping build the reach on your entertainment accounts. And then balancing posts on a weekend between entertainment shows and highlight clips. Do you want to put that goal out straight away, or hold that for an hour after the game?”
The Role of AI
As fan engagement drives digital content, rights holders use it to harvest data. Social media metrics potentially affect subscriptions, and digital content converts to a new revenue source in terms of advertised revenue. “For someone licensing the rights, it’s important to mine that data which can help broadcasters decide more strategically what they need to do,” said Joy, “and with AI allowing data crunch in real-time, it’ll help during long-duration games or when there are multiple games happening to create snippets or snackable content.”
AI is helping improve organic search by getting clips up in real time with metadata “and we are seeing the impact of doing that; it’s become more relevant as we build our scope”, noted Bates.
With standard game highlights, different aspect ratios, languages, graphics and sponsors, Munro asked if hitting all deliverables with a manual operation becomes nearly impossible.
“It’s a function of scale,” remarked McKerlie. “The facility provides capacity, and the capacity gives you the ability to focus on quality. So, you can change where you focus. It doesn’t mean you’re going to; it means that you do more if you choose to do so. But can you survive without it? Can you do better with it? Yes.”
“On our e-commerce platform, … the moment we couple games with content, consumption goes up” – Tanweer Anwar, Head of Monetisation, Noon.
“AI helps move up with the same resources, in terms of value-added and non-value-added activities,” added Tanweer. “There was no requirement earlier, now there is. It is a force multiplier.”
Given the multi-faceted audiences of the Middle East, localising content to fit wider and diverse audiences is key, and one aspect of that is the commentary, a big draw when seasoned, recognised commentators bring their talent and expertise. “As a football fan, it makes a huge difference. If I don’t have my commentary on, I do miss it in the game even though I enjoyed the game. I like to see the pundits before the show, their half-time argument, it’s all part of the experience,” said Bates.
Indexing the main game moments and then creating highlights automatically on the back of it is trouble-free, but to automate the copy or the commentary is often a challenge to which WSC Sports has a solution, pitched Munro. “Sports models are specific and adding commentary post-production becomes tricky because it cannot be applied from an open-source generative AI. So we built language models and now we can apply Chinese, Spanish and German commentary after the game because we have got the metadata.”
A varied, assorted commentary typically helps unlock access to a more targeted audience, noted Anwar. “For brands that are advertising, language as an option is very important to open new income from a specific audience, especially if you’re looking to access people with certain language preferences. This would be difficult in a linear TV set-up. Tailor-made ads and ads from specific brands can be served, which otherwise won’t be possible.”
Having a massive amount of content is one thing; making that copy more descriptive is where generative AI steps up the game. A built-in captioning tool, the choice of words and freshness drive more engagement, the participants agreed.
Just as highlights are super important, some of the best-performing content happens away from the game and often tends to go viral, Munro pointed out.
“We need to look at dispersing content to adapt to various generations that are watching the same content” – Amill Lone, CEO, Saudi Sports Company.
With tech innovation moving exponentially, the way forward is a learning process, the participants concluded. Developing responsive strategies to promote approaches – the continuous ability to deliver quality service, working with the leagues, rethinking ways of monetising the fanbase, employing AI to leverage the commercialisation opportunities, ROI – all the collaboration will benefit the larger end of sports storytelling. Mobilising AI offers a chance to work in combination with people’s talent and gives them more time to be better at what they’re doing. “That’s the real power,” noted Bates.
Content rights are not cheap, and neither is making content available on multiple platforms. Operators need to bring technology that makes commercial sense, while audiences continue to dictate what’s to come and drive content consumption patterns and the way sports will be broadcast.
