Community, Author at iSportConnect

IRONMAN To Return To The Netherlands

After a three-year hiatus, the Netherlands welcomes back a full-distance IRONMAN® triathlon event with the re-introduction of IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg. The event will make its return on Sunday, August 7, 2022, marking its fifth edition of racing after the inaugural event in 2015. IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg will feature an all-new course promising an exciting addition to the IRONMAN triathlon racing calendar in Europe.

The community in the southeastern part of the Netherlands have successfully hosted the Maastricht Multisport Festival since 2019 – consisting of IRONMAN® 70.3® Maastricht-Limburg, a 5150™ Triathlon Series Event, a 4:18:4 Short Course Triathlon and an IRONKIDS® race. The addition of IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg to the weekend of triathlon festivities firmly positions the weekend as the country’s pinnacle triathlon event.

“We are delighted to be further growing the IRONMAN brand in the Netherlands with the announcement of IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg,” said Stefan Petschnig, Managing Director of Europe, Middle East and Africa for The IRONMAN Group. “After announcing a return to the country last year with IRONMAN 70.3 Maastricht-Limburg and IRONMAN 70.3 Westfriesland, which was well received by both the community and our athletes, we believe adding a full-distance IRONMAN event to be the marquee of the Maastricht Multisport Festival further bolsters a great weekend of racing.”

Athletes joining IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg will start their race at “St. Servaasbrug”, The Netherlands’ oldest street bridge, as they set out on a 3.8 km (2.4-mile) spectator-friendly swim course in the Maas River. Athletes then transition onto the newly designed 180 km (112-mile) bike course that leads along various beautiful hotspots in the South of Limburg. With a few small climbs and some straight roads, this bike course offers the best of both worlds. The final 42.2 km (26-mile) run course provides athletes with an unforgettable experience as they run through the historic city center and pass famous Maastricht city sites like “Onze Lieve Vrouweplein” and the cobblestones streets of “het Vrijthof”. Finally, athletes will be greeted by a red-carpet finish line moment as they cross the line in the city’s historic square, “de Markt”.

Rob Frambach of Extra Leisure B.V. and Race Director of IRONMAN Maastricht-Limburg added, “We are truly delighted by the return of the full-distance triathlon in the city where it all started for The Netherlands. Since 2019, we have been building on the concept ‘Sporting your entire life’ by offering the Multisport Festivals and of course the IRONKIDS races, with many of our athletes stepping up to do IRONMAN 70.3 events. We are incredibly grateful to the athletes, municipality of Maastricht and the Province of Limburg for the trust over the last few years.”

Tennis Australia Launch Venture Capital Fund Wildcard Ventures

Tennis Australia launches its own venture capital fund to help advance SportsTech startups from the very beginning of their journey.

Tennis Australia is set to follow the lead of America’s top sporting organisations NFL, NBA and MLB by launching its own venture capital fund to help advance SportsTech startups from the very beginning of their journey.

Wildcard Ventures invests in early stage companies that focus on technologies that will benefit the sports, health and entertainment industry. In a world-first, the opportunity is open to investors to join a syndicate alongside some of the biggest names in tennis.

“We’ve been on a journey of innovation for a number of years now as we work to increase our connection with fans across the world by looking at new ways they can play, compete in and consume our sport,” Tennis Australia CEO & Australian Open Tournament Director Craig Tiley said.

“Wildcard Ventures gives us the opportunity to identify new sports, health and entertainment technologies at the earliest stages, so we can lend our vast experience and global events platform to test and mould these start-ups into companies that will benefit all sports in the long run.

“By setting the fund up as a syndicate opportunity, it allows us to team up with like-minded investors who are also looking to advance the world of SportsTech so we can have a broader impact.”

The core Investment team comprises Techstars Managing Director Todd Deacon, Tennis Australia Head of Innovation Dr Machar Reid and Finance Business Partner Lauren Coridas. The team will be responsible for identifying early stage technology companies from around the world with ambition and the will to succeed in sports and entertainment.

The Wildcard Ventures Advisory Committee includes partners from some of the biggest venture capital firms such as Techstars, Greycroft Partners, Foundry Group, Blackbird, TDM Growth Partners and Rampersand to advise on the viability of the opportunities identified.

“Last year’s inaugural Techstars SportsTech Melbourne Accelerator demonstrated Tennis Australia’s experience in identifying and adopting cutting-edge SportsTech and I jumped at the opportunity to join the Advisory Committee of Wildcard Ventures,” Techstars Co-Founder & Chairman David Cohen said.

“My focus has always been on identifying early stage companies in the consumer internet and mobile communications markets and I’m really looking forward to working with Tennis Australia on Wildcard Ventures to bring an entertainment lens to SportsTech,” Greycroft Partners Founding Partner Dana Settle said.

About Tennis Australia & SportsTech

Tennis Australia took over the Host Broadcast of the Australian Open and lead-in events in 2015 and has since built its coverage hours and revenue substantially
The Australian Open was the first event to introduce coverage of every match court and now provides coverage of 21 courts, including five practice courts, guaranteeing that every point played during the tournament is captured
The Grand Slam also developed the use of NetCam in 2018, EyeCam embedded in the umpire’s chair in 2017 and GCam which is used to deliver Augmented Reality graphics from 2018
360° immersive technology at AO 2021 gave fans a choice of more than 12 camera angles inside Rod Laver Arena via the Occulus headset
More than 150 cameras across the Melbourne Park precinct provide content for a dedicated behind-the-scenes feed, which gives greater insight into how players prepare for the Grand Slam
The development and integration of the player walk-on experience has brought the tournament’s history of champions into the digital age and enhanced the coverage globally
Launched and designed the ATP Cup with broadcast content in mind, providing unique insight into the players through team benches, data access and the strategy room
Launched the Laver Cup in 2017, retaining a 20 per cent stake in the event
Partnered with Techstars, Victoria University and LaunchVic to run the Techstars SportsTech Melbourne Accelerator last year. The second edition is due to commence in 2022
Developed the leading tennis console game AO Tennis 1 & 2 with Big Ant Studios, along with the free mobile edition which has had more than two million downloads
Partnered with Epic Games to produce the AO Summer Smash Fortnite esports tournament held during the AO
Held a hackathon with CrowdANALYTIX to find a way to automate the call of forced and unforced errors in professional tennis using machine learning
Introduced the Game Insights Group in partnership with Victoria University to provide a new set of statistical data to give fans a better understanding of the stories behind the points
Developed the Tennis Lab, which uses state-of-the-art tracking technology to analyse hundreds of players and test 80 per cent of the racquets on the market across the top five brands to build a world-first algorithm that recommends the best three racquets online
Partnered with start-up SwingVision to bring game-changing technology to coaches and players through real-time artificial intelligence video analysis from just a single smartphone or tablet.

About Wildcard Ventures

INVESTMENT TEAM

Todd Deacon, General Partner

Machar Reid, General Partner

Lauren Coridas, Operations Manager

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Brad Feld, Co-Founder & Partner at Foundry Group

Dana Settle, Founding Partner at Greycroft Partners

David Cohen, Co-Founder & Chairman at Techstars

Hannah Brown, Ex Head of Investments at Sky (UK)

Nick Crocker, Partner at Blackbird Ventures

Ed Cowan, Investor at TDM Growth Partners

Paul Naphtali, Founding partner at Rampersand

Head to wildcardventures.vc for more information

Rajasthan Royals Owners Announce Acquisition Of CPL Franchise Barbados Tridents

Royals Sports Group (EM Holdings Ltd), the owners of the Rajasthan Royals IPL franchise, have acquired a majority stake in the Barbados Tridents, CPL franchise. The two-time CPL champions will be rebranded as the Barbados Royals, a partner franchise of the Rajasthan Royals, as the Royals sports group seeks to expand its global presence.

Royal Sports Group Chairperson, and lead owner of the Rajasthan Royals, Manoj Badale, commented: “We are delighted to have signed this deal with Manish Patel, to acquire a majority stake in the Barbados CPL franchise. We are extremely grateful to the Barbados government for their continued support, and we look forward to making a positive impact on both cricket and tourism for the country. We have ambitious plans for the Royals brand globally, and this is an important strategic step.”

Rajasthan Royals Director of Cricket, Kumar Sangakkara, whose role now includes the Barbados Royals, added, “Barbados Royals will be an important part of the Royals’ cricket ecosystem. With a fantastic talent pool of local players, we have the opportunity to innovate and develop strategies that will benefit the Royals Group. We are also excited at the prospect of how we can promote growth in the game of cricket.”

Manish Patel, principal of the Barbados Tridents franchise added, “We are extremely excited about the partnership with Manoj and Rajasthan Royals family, which will further advance cricket in Barbados and the region.”

Earlier in June, Rajasthan Royals had announced a groundbreaking collaboration with RedBird Capital Partners, the leading sports-focused investor in the United States. The acquisition of Barbados Tridents is a testament of the continued vision of the team to expand the Royals brand globally.

The Barbados Royals, led by the experienced Jason Holder, are scheduled to start the forthcoming Caribbean Premier League campaign on 26th August 2021.

UEFA Champions League And PlayStation® Renew Partnership Until 2024

UEFA has today announced the renewal of its UEFA Champions League partnership with PlayStation® for the 2021–24 cycle, continuing its long-running relationship which began in 1997. The agreement also includes sponsorship rights for the UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Youth League and UEFA Futsal Champions League in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Guy-Laurent Epstein, UEFA marketing director said: “PlayStation has been a valued partner of the UEFA Champions League for more than 23 years, so I am delighted that we are able to celebrate a three-year extension to our relationship.

“UEFA’s long-term partnerships with innovative brands like PlayStation are invaluable to UEFA in promoting our competitions globally, and in particular in the digital space, so we look forward to continuing our relationship as we enter a new UEFA Champions League cycle.”

As part of the extended agreement, PlayStation will present the Official Player of the Match award at each UEFA Champions League encounter and the Player of the Week across UEFA’s digital channels. Furthermore, PlayStation will continue to support the UEFA Champions League Gaming Hub with the enhanced UCL Fantasy and Predictor games, which are available across both mobile and desktop applications.

Eric Lempel, senior vice-president and head of global marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment added: “We have enjoyed a strong collaborative relationship with the UEFA Champions League for over 23 years, delivering unique football experiences to our community of PlayStation fans around the world.

“Football is integral to the PlayStation DNA, and we know many of our gamers are as passionate about football as we are. We look forward to our continued partnership and the excitement of the upcoming 2021-24 cycle.”

This is the seventh sponsorship announcement for the 2021-24 UEFA Champions League cycle, with Heineken, PepsiCo, Mastercard, Gazprom and FedEx signing new agreements, while Just-Eat Takeaway has joined as a new partner. The worldwide sales of all UEFA club competition sponsorship rights are being carried out by TEAM Marketing AG on UEFA’s behalf.

New Digital Studio Yellow Panther Launches

Yellow Panther is a full-service digital studio that has already created ground-breaking tech products for Nike, Rajasthan Royals and eBay since its inception.

Founded by former Digital Director of the ATP Tour, Rajasthan Royals and Blenheim Chalcot, Stuart Cope, and CEO of Industrial Software Systems, Gunjan Parikh. The company has scaled fast with a team of 28 best in class software engineers and project managers. Yellow Panther is based out of two offices in the UK and one in India.

Yellow Panther’s services include app and website development, augmented and virtual reality creation, gamification, 3d rendering and e-commerce builds. The studio is already working with over 40+ different clients and has achieved staggering results in driving revenue and first party data.

Stuart Cope said “Our philosophy is simple, we aim to build beautiful digital products that put people first, that’s why we have been trusted by some of the biggest brands in the sport and lifestyle sectors. The team we have created is truly innovative and they push each other every day. Gunjan and I complement one another well, my background is heavily focused on marketing & project delivery whilst Gunjan’s 20 years of experience specialises in product development and software engineering. We’re excited to help grow the digital footprint of sports properties around the world”.

Sport Is The Key Driver Of Orlando’s Tourism Recovery

“Greater Orlando has a ten to twelve-month head start on many other major city travel destinations”
Influential voices endorse sport’s vital role in supercharging recovery from the pandemic.
Orlando’s emphasis on soccer tourism underlines the city’s 2026 World Cup™ host credentials ahead of FIFA visits.
City’s $26billion tourism industry biggest in the US

Al Kidd, President & CEO of Sports ETA, the international association for the sports events and tourism industry, is one of a several influential voices hailing Orlando’s rapidly recovering tourism industry and identifying sport as a key driver.

“As we emerge from the restrictions and challenges of the pandemic and return to business, great cities like Orlando are poised to recover faster than others. Sports events and sports tourism in Orlando have shown to be the re-entry catalyst, generating new and much needed business”, he said.

Jesse Martinez, General Manager at The Alfond Inn, Chairman of the Central Florida Lodging Association Board of Directors, and Board Member at Visit Florida, agrees. “In my opinion, Central Florida has a tremendous head start on all other major city travel destinations. After seeing a huge influx of travelers this past spring break, we have not slowed down since.”

“In my opinion, Central Florida has a tremendous head start on all other major city travel destinations. After seeing a huge influx of travelers this past spring break, we have not slowed down since.”

“Sports tourism was an early bright spot when Orlando began to reopen in the summer of 2020 as we hosted the NBA bubble, the MLS is Back Tournament and youth events such as the AAU’s Jr. National Volleyball Championship,” said Casandra Matej, president and CEO of Visit Orlando, who echoed the sentiments of Jesse Martinez by saying that “Orlando has a one-year head start”.

To underline this, the 2021 edition of the same AAU Youth Volleyball event – hosted just a few weeks ago – drew over 130,000 participants and visitors. Mark Tester, Executive Director at the Orange County Convention Center said: “The event drove one of our highest food and beverage totals in the Center’s history.”

Don Welsh, President and CEO of Destinations International, added: “All eyes were on Orlando during the pandemic as the NBA and MLS restarted their seasons. It was impressive to watch their collaborative community come together to host in the most trying of circumstances.”

Orlando believes its emphasis on encouraging sports-related travel and welcoming teams and players has been a game-changing factor in keeping its infrastructure ticking over.

“When business travel collapsed, some cities were saved by their youth and amateur sport travel business” said Jason Siegel, CEO of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission. “There is no doubt in my mind that sports tourism is a viable pathway for generating visitor spending and promoting a destination – which is why Orlando puts such a high priority on it”.

“I believe our reputation as a collaborative tourism community and reliable partner to sport – and our popularity as a destination – suggest we surely deserve a place”

In normal times, Orlando has the largest tourism industry in the USA, producing $26 billion a year, exceeding Las Vegas with $19 million. One in five workers in Orlando (21%) worked directly in hospitality and leisure in 2019. When COVID-19 struck, the unemployment rate skyrocketed. “Our neighbors at Port Canaveral, who derive significant revenue from the cruise industry, lost 43% of their workforce,” said Siegel.

But as life normalizes, the recovery is swift, much more so than many anticipated. Hotels are taking bookings; forward occupancy is very promising and optimism abounds.

According to a study authored by Adam Sacks of Tourism Economics, hotel room demand overall has reached 89% of 2019 figures and air passengers are at 71% (June 2021). Leisure trips will be nearly back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, although business will take longer. He has said: “Overall, sports are outperforming the market as youth sports have returned well before other business-related events. In fact, we are hearing from clients that sports have been the star performer in what has been an otherwise dismal market”

Orlando, one of 17 US candidate host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup™, is hoping to be selected for the final 10. “I believe our reputation as a collaborative tourism community and reliable partner to sport – and our popularity as a destination – suggest we surely deserve a place” Siegel summed up.

CONTACTS:

Jennifer Lastik

Senior Vice President, Events

Greater Orlando Sports Commission

jlastik@greaterorlandosports.com

+44 724 516 1940

Richard Gillis

International media consultant

RichardGillis@me.com

+44 7825 409109

Sports Leagues & Federations Heralding The Change From Pay-Per-View To Average Revenue Per User

Ivan Katanaev, deputy CEO of Sportrecs looks at the changing dynamic of sporting organisations now being directly engaged with their fans through OTT channels.

How do the leading sports leagues and federations around the world generate revenue today? By selling their video content rights. For leading sports organizations it has long been their main source of income. In parallel with the sale of their media rights, leading sports organizations have increasingly moved into the D2C space and created their own OTT platforms. For the first time in history, they are able to engage directly with their audience.

For now, the sale of media rights makes much more money than selling subscriptions. Therefore NBA League Pass or UFC Fight Pass subscribers can access only very limited content. In some regions, they get access only to archive content as a consequence of the broadcast rights having been sold in the region to a large local broadcaster.

“What kind of audience coverage would the league achieve if all of its games and all of its content was available for free?”

The English Premier League (EPL) reported that in the 2018/19 season, the league’s total audience worldwide reached 1.35 billion people. In the same year (according to a Deloitte report), the league earned about €3.46 billion from selling its media rights.

In other words, the main football league in England generated approximately €2.50 per fan.

Revenue of the top 5 European football leagues in the 2018/19 season

Now let’s ask ourselves a few crucial questions.

1. What kind of audience coverage would the league achieve if all of its games and all of its content was available for free? Would the audience increase by a factor of 2 or 3?

2. How can the league increase the revenue generated from each fan (commonly known as ARPU or Average Revenue per User)?.

For me, it is obvious that today with the development of a huge number of fan engagement services – watch together, interactive voting (and various other live widgets), gamification, NFT technologies and much more – there is an opportunity for the right holders to earn more and more on each individual fan.

Moreover, for the majority of sports leagues and federations, this will soon become the only opportunity to earn money with their video content. Why? Because there are only 20-30 leagues in the world that are comparable to the EPL. The majority of sports organizations will never earn even a fraction of what the EPL, NBA, NHL or F1 can earn on their media rights today. For this reason, a focus on ARPU is the cornerstone of the revenue model for the sports business of tomorrow.

Recently, Rob Shaw, Facebook’s director of sports league and media partnerships, spoke about how the world’s largest social network is pulling out of the race for sports rights around the world. Facebook has a crucial advantage over everyone else – they have more data on the fans than anyone else (okay, maybe Google will disagree with this statement!). Facebook’s strategic vision is simply to analyze and leverage the huge amount of user data it holds.

“Broadcasts and highlights will be the entry points for the audience to interact with brands.”

Most recently, the biggest players in the US were fighting for the NFL media rights. Amazon invested more than a billion dollars in them, and Facebook did not even participate in the auction. Facebook is not even trying to extend its rights to the UEFA Champions League and La Liga in Latin America and India. Starting this year, I don’t see Facebook renewing any of its sports rights contracts in any country in the world! They just got out of the race.

Why?

They believe that they can offer sports rights holders more than just money for the rights. They believe that sports right holders will be able to make more profit not from selling their media rights, but from monetizing each individual fan. Broadcasts and highlights will be the entry points for the audience to interact with brands. You watch football – and immediately buy boots like your favorite player. You watch MMA and sign up for the nearest gym. You watch hockey and make a bet with a bookmaker.

And Facebook proves this with specific examples.

MLB sold half a million dollars worth of tickets alone to their games to those who watched their free broadcasts on Facebook.
IRONMAN drives the sales of advertising spots for its races with live broadcasts. Furthermore, they calculated that these broadcasts generate 14.6 times (!) more ROI compared to placing regular race ads!
World Surf League is increasing its sponsorship contracts with better brand integration into its Facebook broadcasts.

“Today, there are more and more companies on the market that offer rights holders interactive services that involve fans with the content.”

Today, there are more and more companies on the market that offer rights holders interactive services that involve fans with the content (and create revenue generating opportunities) such as watch together and others I mentioned previously. Today, most of these services are forced to work with large regional or domestic broadcasters who buy the rights to all the leading sports events in their region or country. As a consequence of this, these interactive services are not available for right holders from Tier2 and Tier3.

What will happen when these services eventually become available to all sports rights holders and they will have direct access to their audience and to all the tools to monetize them effectively? The answer is clear – the rules of the game will change again. Given current realities and how quickly new technologies come into our lives, I would be surprised if this doesn’t already happen in the next 2-3 years.

The Hundred – Challenging Status Quo And Designing Sport From Bottom-Up

Gareth Balch, Chief Executive & Co-Founder of Two Circles, looks at the journey The Hundred has taken to get to the launch, six years after the idea was first broached.

Two Circles has partnered with cricket, and the ECB, from day one. Before we had an office. Even before we had a name.

Cricket is in our DNA, and over the last 10 years we’re hugely proud that we’ve been able to play a small role in bringing this amazing sport into the lives of more people across clubs, counties, countries and continents.

But I wanted to write something today because this afternoon’s match at the Kia Oval represents one of our biggest days yet in cricket. I know others Two Circlers feel the same.

“A very simple question was posed: ‘How do we protect and grow the game of cricket in England and Wales?'”

I can remember the day in 2015 when the journey for The Hundred began…of course we didn’t know it would be called The Hundred, or even indeed that it would be a new format of cricket, but I do vividly remember a strong sense of being brave and bold to grow the game.

That day was a workshop at Lord’s which Sanjay Patel had asked Two Circles to attend. A very simple question was posed: “How do we protect and grow the game of cricket in England and Wales?”

The answer arose easily – cricket, after all, has amazing qualities. There’s enough simplicity – who scores the most runs wins – but a level of complexity for those who want it. And for centuries bat versus ball sport has delivered unscripted gladiatorial battles for moments or even days at a time.

But the ‘how’ was far from easy. That’s because challenging the status quo is never easy, particularly in sport, and as someone who has been involved in the long-term building of businesses I know first-hand that pioneers are often cast as failures until they succeed.

The six-year journey to today represents pioneering innovation and a challenging of the status quo on a level that I haven’t seen from another national governing body in my time in the sports industry. Over the last six years the ECB have made bold decision after bold decision to ensure a strong future for cricket. Their moral compass to grow the game and make it better has never wavered.

I thought hard about what picture to put on this piece. This afternoon, for the first time, I’ll be taking my kids to see a professional sports event that has been designed for them from the bottom-up. A family experience. I don’t think that ever happened to me, or most of us reading this for that matter. They and the other millions of kids in the UK are why The Hundred exists.

The fact that through The Hundred we’ve built a family-first experience that can engage my five-year-old daughter whilst simultaneously creating a best-versus-best cricket product that the cricket badgers in the Two Circles offices around the world will love too is completely unprecedented.

I’m in no doubt that cricket will benefit from The Hundred and flourish in the years ahead as it helps cricket fans deepen their love of the game, helps create new lovers of cricket, helps engage new brands with new propositions, and crucially helps create a media audience unparalleled in English cricket previously.

The data is already telling us The Hundred will succeed. As Sanjay said over the weekend, The Hundred will be profitable in year one. The broadcast and brand partnerships deals signed have been outstanding.

But I’m most excited and interested by fan engagement. That underpins every sustainably-successful sports property in the post-internet era. I’ve been on The Hundred dashboard this morning and all the meaningful metrics around engagement – content consumption, ticket sales, fan demographics and others – are flying, and beyond expectations. Not to mention a record attendance for a domestic women’s match in England awaits. All of this despite the uncontrollable and continued challenge of Covid.

“The data is already telling us The Hundred will succeed. As Sanjay said over the weekend, The Hundred will be profitable in year one.”

So, as I sit there waiting the first ball of The Hundred with my wife, kids, Two Circlers and thousands of other people – many attending a sports event with their families too – it’ll be emotional.

And as Two Circles we’ll raise a toast to everyone who wrote the case of change, who participated in an experience cricket workshop, attended fan research groups, was in the room that day at Royal Institute of British Architects or at a COVID-scenario planning meet. This has been a massive team effort, the results of which I’m certain will grow and protect the game of cricket for generations to come.

The author Gareth Balch is Chief Executive & Co-Founder of Two Circles.

Experts Weigh In Their Opinions At The iSportConnect’s Blockchain And NFT eMasterclass

iSportConnect’s Blockchain and NFT eMasterclass today provided a platform for those within the sports industry to gain a greater understanding of how these two new innovations will play a role in the development of the business of sport.

To open our event we had a session on ‘Blockchain 101 – The Fundamentals of Blockchain Technology and Cryptos/Coins’, where John Palfreyman, former Director of Blockchain at IBM and Sam Volkering, Investment Director and Editor at Southbank Investment Research.

John and Sam took you through the basic principles of both blockchain and cryptocurrencies, which provided all of our attendees with some great knowledge and additional background to how these technologies work.

As to why blockchain gained the sudden momentum despite being around for so long, John said: “If you look at blockchain, it is really interesting because it is plugged together from different technologies. Starting from file sharing technology which was pioneered in 1999, privacy that is cryptography so you can clearly see the components of the technology have been around for very long.

But clearly in the computational context, we need to wind the clock to 1970 when computer security started to be taken very seriously. My old employer IBM started the world’s first crypto group in the early 1970s looking at securing customer data. Then all the components moved really forward to when bitcoins was created. Blockchain is the technology that underpins bitcoin. Bitcoin was first used as donation for WikiLeaks in 2007.”

When it comes to defining bitcoin, one can use lot of different approaches as per Sam. He said: “We are talking about security, computing networks and fundamentally that’s what blockchain technology is. It’s a network between peers whether those are public peers or private peers. It can be a data network, monetary network and can hold many different forms. One of the thing that irks me is when someone talks about ‘The Blockchain’ ; in a singular form. In a reality when we look at this space, there are number of different blockchains and there are some networks involved with data sharing that don’t use blockchain technology but are still fundamentally computational or peer networks.”

“People want to know how they can use the blockchain and what it means and how they can utilise it for themselves and their organisations. When we talk about NFTs or bitcoin, we need to look at what does the network represent in this sense. Bitcoin originally is designed to be a medium of exchange, a monetary network and that’s how it started and it has now evolved into what some will consider to store as value, some would consider property. Bitcoin is something we have never had before like it is not property, money, it is not shares and equity but it could be all of these things. When we start to look around the new concepts of what money is, what assets are, how can people transact it anywhere around the world, we are cutting new grand really and so everyone is really finding their feet in this industry,” explained Sam.

Following the opening session, our second panel was centred on ‘Blockchain Applications for the Sports Industry’, featuring Emma McGuigan, Lead – Intelligent Platform Services at Accenture and Leo Matlock, VP – Commercial for BLAST, looking at how this technology is infiltrating the sports industry and the best potential uses for it.

As to how blockchain is revolutionary for the sports industry, Leo explains: “When I look at blockchain, we have already been using things like NFT and build in the gaming environment. I am looking at blockchain both as a customer and a seller and how we can use this technology on the front in customer using applications to drive our business forward commercially. Some of those are new commercial activities like NFTs and some are replacing our current activities with more efficient and better ways of working.”

Our final session looked at ‘NFTs – The New Trend in Sport’, where we heard from three people working within the NFT space, Fred Antunes, CEO of RealFevr, Nuno Lima da Luz, Principal Associate at Cuatrecasas and Diogo Caldas, Executive Board Member of Sport Multimedia.

The market for collectible digital products has been growing stratospherically during 2021, with sales already in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Our panel looked at how you can use NFTs to unlock the value of your organisation’s content assets.

Fred shared his experience of starting his career in the gaming industry and his first conact with bitcoin happened in 2010. He explained NFTs as “digital representation of something that is unique and non-fungible”.

“There are multiple applications of digital representation of something. It started ofcourse with the idea of the digital kits that were represented inside the blockchain. We have reached around 1.2 active million users in our app store, website,” he added.

We would like to thank all of our speakers for their participation in today’s event which provided a huge amount of knowledge and insight for our audience into burgeoning areas within the industry that will play a key role over the coming years across various sectors of sport.

The full video will be available for viewing next week. Stay tuned to iSportConnect till then.

Wimbledon Viewership Remains Strong Despite Impact Of Euros Clashes

Wimbledon was back on our screens this summer after a year off due to the pandemic, but how did fans at home respond to the tournament’s return? At the same time as the tennis event was staged, EURO2020 was also being held, Andy Milnes, Head of Client Services for Nielsen Sports looked at how UK TV viewers reacted to Tennis’ showpiece event.

After last year’s cancellation due to the pandemic, the 2021 Wimbledon Championships went ahead, albeit with a few differences. The traditional queue was absent, all tickets were sold online and there were fewer spectators on the ground to witness the action prior to the finals.

While the event eventually allowed for full capacity crowds during the finals, the initial 50% capacity didn’t impact the way people viewed at home. As a permanent fixture of the British sporting calendar every year, Wimbledon has become more of a cultural event, according to Nielsen Fan Insights. One that sporting and non-sporting fans alike have grown to love, which was reflected in the viewership figures once again, remaining consistently high year on year.

“Overall, the combined viewership is slightly down compared to 2019. This can mostly be attributed to the much more congested viewing schedule and competition for audience share.”

Looking at the viewership for the Finals alone we can see that the Ladies Final attracted an average audience of 2.54m vs. 2.49m in 2019. Similarly, the Men’s Final attracted an average audience of 5.08m vs 6.00m in 2019, only a small decline despite many English fans no doubt making plans to watch the final of the Euros later in the evening.

Overall, the combined viewership is slightly down compared to 2019. This can mostly be attributed to the much more congested viewing schedule and competition for audience share, with the Euros, Lions Tour and Home Nations rugby also occupying free to air TV slots.

While the audiences remain largely consistent with what we expected to see pre-tournament, there seems to have been a slight move towards showing the bigger matches, often involving British talent, towards later start times to encourage larger viewership’s.

This was also driven by excellent performances on display from young British talent resulting in some exciting ties with big players. For example, Emma Raducanu’s early success as a British wild card resulted in her 4^th round tie with world number 51 Alja Tomljanovic, giving her a chance to play on Centre Court.

Similarly, Britain’s’ Katie Boulter and Cameron Norrie were also given the opportunity to play on Centre Court during their ties with Aryna Sabalenka and Roger Federer respectively. This British success coupled with Andy Murray’s resurgence all contributed to spikes in TV viewership figures at various points during the tournament. For instance, Andy Murray and Emma Raducanu’s matches alone attracted almost double the audience of matches scheduled at the same timeslots in 2019.

While there was a large interest in the British talent on show at Wimbledon, the knockout stages of the Euros still managed to have an impact on viewership. For example, Andy Murray’s third round match vs Denis Shapovalov clashed with both Switzerland vs Spain (5pm KO) on ITV which attracted 1.7m viewers (peaking at 3.2m for the penalties at 7.35pm) and Belgium vs Italy on BBC 1 (8pm KO) which generated 7.2m viewers and 38% share of audience. Murray’s match started at 7pm on BBC2 and had an average audience of 2.6m and peak of 3.7m at 7.55pm, which was considerably lower than his second-round match vs Otte which benefited from not clashing with the Euros and being a more competitive game. The numbers from that match drew an average audience of 4.36m, which peaked at 6.75m in the deciding set.

“Despite the limited capacity at this year’s event, Wimbledon has been able to adapt to the new post-covid age which prioritises digital activation over those on site.”

Despite the limited capacity at this year’s event, Wimbledon has been able to adapt to the new post-covid age which prioritises digital activation over those on site. Wimbledon has always been a leader in digital activation and while this pivot has most certainly impacted sponsors ability to engage with fans it has also advanced their digital offering.

This improved digital offering combined with the consistently high audiences results in a reliable and exciting opportunity for brands to engage with fans and gain exposure to new audiences during this unprecedented summer of sport.