Sportel America Returns to Miami -- Conferences & Conventions

(ATR) Organizers of one of the important tradeshows for sports programming say they are adapting to changing conditions in the industry.

The annual Sportel Americas gathering in Miami will wrap up Friday, a four day meeting that increasingly is focused on the technology side of the distribution of sport programming.

Sportel CEO Laurent Puons tells Around the Rings that the days have passed when large media agencies booked out-sized exhibits in the trade show.

"Since our first Sportel Americas, the business model has changed. We have to adapt our event to the industry.

In 2017, the market was bigger. We understand. The choice of our exhibitors is not to take four units of exhibition space, but maybe two units. That is not a big issue. Our job is to adapt the model of the event to the community," he tells ATR.

Sportel Miami is an offshoot of Sportel Monaco, now in its 31st year as the premier marketplace for sports programming. Nearly two thousand participants make it the world’s biggest trade show of its kind.

Sportel America is a different scale, attracting about 300 participants and a dozen exhibitors for 2020. The show returns to Miami after a two year hiatus with a redefined program that Puons says reflects the changes in the industry.

But the return of Sportel to Miami comes amid concerns for the spread of coronavirus around the globe. Puons says the emergence of the illness just a month ago has affected attendance by about five percent.

"It’s not a lot," he says, although some high profile speakers did drop out due to travel restrictions. Instead of handshakes, Sportel organizers suggested elbow bumping as a hygienic greeting in Miami.

Since the launch of the Sportel conventions decades ago, sports programming is no longer the exclusive domain of traditional broadcasters.

Streaming services and Over the Top delivery are taking a larger share of the audience, particularly among younger fans who watch sport through small screens and not linear TV.

Puons says the new format of Sportel Miami that debuted this week opened with a day of presentations on this changing landscape of producing and delivering sports programming.

"New technology is an orientation I wanted to bring to this event three years ago, and I think we made a good choice," he says.

Among the headliners for the conference: Ray Warren, president of Miami-based Telemundo Deportes, Concacaf chief commercial officer Heidi Pellerano and representatives of important sports properties such as the NBA, PGA and La Liga.

The Spanish football league has a huge audience in Latin America and its exhibition space at Sportel Miami was the largest.

Puons says Sportel America will be back in 2021, perhaps with a new venue after 20 years in Miami. He says a survey taken after the event will assess the appetite for a move to a city in South America, for example. The objective is to bring more people to Sportel.

"It’s really important for us each year to bring new participants and new exhibitors. For them it is new business opportunities," he says.

"We have to develop the quality of the event. All around the world now there is a lot of competition for events other than Sportel. So our job is to create a Sportel for the future,’’ Puons says.

Reported in Miami by Ed Hula.