Gate.io, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced a partnership with reigning champions of Serie A, FC Internazionale Milano – one of the most prestigious football clubs in the world, with more than 500 million followers worldwide.
For the 2024/25 season, Gate.io will become the Official Sleeve Partner for Inter, which will see its logo on the sleeves of the playing kits for both Men’s and Women’s teams, in addition to the Club’s U20 teams.
The club’s trophy haul includes 20 Italian league titles, 9 Coppa Italias, 9 Italian Super Cups, 3 UEFA Cups, 2 European Cups, 1 UEFA Champions League, 2 Intercontinental Cups and 1 FIFA Club World Cup.
The new partnership will focus on enhancing the fan experience and providing innovative services and engagements to the Club’s global fan base.
Throughout this exciting collaboration, fans can look forward to a range of exclusive content, joint-marketing activations, co-branded merchandise, alongside unique opportunities for fans to connect both on and off the field.
This partnership symbolises the fusion of traditional sports excellence with cutting-edge digital technology. Together, Gate.io and Inter are set to redefine the fan experience, offering unparalleled engagement to a global audience.
Gate.io is one of the world’s earliest cryptocurrency exchanges and a leader among compliant and secure digital asset platforms, offering diverse trading services with 100% user-verifiable Proof of Reserves. Further, the platform has consistently ranked as one of the top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges based on liquidity and trading volume on CoinGecko.
Besides its primary exchange services, Gate.io has diversified its ecosystem to offer decentralised finance, research and analytics, venture capital investing, wallet services, startup incubation, and more. The platform currently serves more than 17 million active users worldwide.
Alessandro Antonello, CEO Corporate, Inter, said: “We are delighted to welcome Gate.io as our new Sleeve Partner for our prestigious jersey. Thanks to this new agreement, Gate.io – which has over ten years’ experience in the sector and shares our innovative spirit – will gain extensive visibility in all the competitions that we will participate in.”
Dr. Han Lin, the founder and CEO of Gate.io, said “We are thrilled to partner with Inter, a club with a rich history and a passionate fan base. This partnership aligns with our commitment to innovation and community engagement. We are excited to bring new and exciting experiences to Inter fans around the world and to explore the many synergies between the worlds of football and digital assets.”
iSportConnect’s Taruka Srivastav recently sat down with Aleksander Kravanja, President of Federation for International FootGolf (FIFG) where he highlighted the accessibility and competitiveness of footgolf, the significance of incorporating fun and creativity into sports, with a growing number of countries and regions adopting footgolf globally.
Could you tell me more about FootGolf as the sport is very recent since it was founded in 2018?
The sport actually started independently in two places globally, without knowledge of each other. The first mentions and actions were in Mexico, and then Michael Johnson introduced the sport in Holland. Michael Johnson is actually the founder of footgolf and also the World Federation. So, the first countries involved were Holland and Mexico, and then it grew in the US, UK, and other countries. Now, we have 40 countries in our membership globally, across all continents, with 19 more in the process of being accepted. We are growing sustainably and quickly, but we try to maintain controlled growth, helping new member countries avoid the mistakes and hard lessons we faced. We are guiding them through the onboarding process and supporting them in the early years of introducing the sport in their countries.
In recent years, we’ve seen sports like Pickleball and Paddle tennis gain popularity, with widespread participation and celebrity involvement. How are you marketing this sport and raising awareness?
To be completely honest, we’re currently doing it with passion and sincerity, rather than a heavy focus on marketing. We are on the verge of a big step, which is to bring our sport to TV and broadcast major competitions, possibly by next year. Our most important step now is to establish a solid foundation before diving into large-scale marketing. We’re setting up solid rules, ethics, and support systems within our member countries and World Federation, so that when we take the next step in marketing, we’re prepared. Recently, after a meeting in Birmingham at SportAccord, we engaged two agencies to help us grow the sport and attract new partners. I believe we’re now ready for new partnerships with strategic partners and sponsors.
Which are these two agencies, and who are your current partners?
We have one agency in the States and one in France, taking advantage of the cultural aspects of each region. Member countries often work with local agencies as well. We’re connecting global and cultural perspectives through these agencies, which have experience in helping new sports. Although our budget isn’t large at the moment, these agencies see significant potential in our sport, which makes us optimistic. They believe in the future of footgolf.
If I were a brand, why should I sponsor footgolf? What reasons would you give to invest in this sport?
The most important reason is that the sport is fantastic and accessible to everyone. It’s easy to learn, and we’re expanding from a competition-focused sport to include recreational play, which will be a significant step forward. We’re also introducing a handicapping system, similar to golf. Footgolf combines the excitement of soccer with the ethics and tradition of golf, creating a unique sport with a bright future. The companies working with us strongly believe in our sport, and we are committed to upholding strong sports values. We respect Olympic principles and are focused on long-term growth, making us a reliable partner for sponsorships and investments.
Would you say that Footgolf offers a younger, more accessible take on the traditionally elite sport of golf?
No, not exactly. I’ve been playing golf for over 40 years, and while Golf has its challenges and is often seen as an elite sport, it’s accessible in many countries. Footgolf, on the other hand, is much quicker to learn, more competitive, and requires less time investment. The demographics favor footgolf, with 80% of our players being between 24 and 45 years old. We’re also seeing more seniors and women getting involved, which is encouraging.
Fan expectations pose an existential threat to fan-centric businesses. And that’s because what it means to be a fan has changed. Fandom used to be watching the Monday night game on TV or getting tickets for a concert when your favorite artist rolled through town.
But social platforms have made us all into content creators. And now fans want to play an active role. Increasingly, they expect ongoing interactive experiences that connect them with the creators, sports teams, and artists they love – and in some cases with millions of other fans. This has created an enormous opportunity for fan-centric organizations to open new revenue streams and strengthen their relationships with their audiences. As a result, we are witnessing a period of accelerated change and innovation in the experiences that fan-centric brands deliver.
However, companies face technological challenges that risk making these new experiences economically infeasible. In particular, the wrong architectural choices can mean that the cost of serving each new fan increases exponentially – making the most successful events become the least commercially viable.
Fortunately, with the right design decisions, fan-centric organizations can build fan experiences that succeed at scale. Here, I’m going to share what we’ve learned from helping broadcasters, artists, and sports organizations the world over make realtime fan experiences economically viable.
The exponential scaling problem
So, what is it about modern fan engagement that leads to this problem of exponential growth in costs? The core challenge comes from user generated content (e.g. chats, comments, and reactions) and, in particular, the need to deliver potentially huge volumes of data to each and every fan. Let’s put it in context to understand why.
Traditional broadcasting operates under a fixed cost model, meaning the expenses for infrastructure—ranging from satellite trucks to broadcast towers—stay the same regardless of audience size. Whether a football game is viewed by ten people or ten million, these initial costs remain unchanged. Once the broadcast signal is transmitted, it can be accessed by anyone within the service area. Therefore, while the up-front investment is considerable, there are no additional costs as the viewership within the geographic region increases.
In contrast, streaming economics are variable and scale with audience size. Each new viewer adds incrementally to the total cost, as streaming requires additional bandwidth and server capacity per viewer. But as the number of viewers increases, economies of scale kick-in. Content delivery networks (CDNs), media servers placed within ISP networks, and bulk bandwidth purchasing reduce the cost per viewer as the audience grows. That’s what made it economically viable for Indian over-the-top (OTT) streaming service Disney Hotstar+ to serve a record breaking 59 million concurrent viewers during the 2023 Cricket World Cup.
As fans now engage with potentially millions of other fans, the data requirements necessitate a complete rethink of the economics.
Both broadcasting and streaming are one-way, whether you’re paying for geographic reach or per minute streamed. But interactive fan experiences turn everyone into a data generator. As more fans interact with each other, the number of interactions increases exponentially—this is the N-Squared problem.
The N-Squared problem in numbers
Unlike video streaming, where costs per viewer decrease, the cost of message delivery in a many-to-many environment grows exponentially. Instead of economies of scale, success means higher costs.
Let’s use the example of an interactive fan experience during a tennis match. Alongside the livestream, a chat-like feature allows fans to post messages and reactions. We have 10,000 fans watching the livestream and participating in the interactive experience.
If one fan posts a message predicting the outcome of the match, it must be delivered more or less instantly to the other 9,999 viewers. Things become complex when the other fans start responding. Even if just 1% of the other fans—100 people—react with emojis or replies, each of those 100 responses must be sent to all 9,999 other fans. This results in nearly a million message deliveries, all stemming from a single fan’s message and a small number of responses.
Let’s up the ante. With 100,000 fans, each posting twice and 1,000 of them reply to each original post, we’d see 2 million responses totalling 220 billion message deliveries!
But, of course, we’re not just talking about one fan posting once. If the average fan posts two original messages each hour and, in turn, each post generates ten responses, delivering everything to every fan gives us some very large numbers.
This leads us to an almost existential question for realtime fan experiences: is it possible to deliver them to growing numbers of fans in an economically viable way?
Serving fans and the bottom line
Delivering fan engagement experiences isn’t optional, so we need to find a way to make it work financially.
Live events like the Super Bowl or the Eurovision Song Contest draw massive international audiences. Many of those people feel that their experience is incomplete if they’re just passive viewers. More and more, people’s enjoyment of an event is tied up in their ability to interact with other fans in realtime.
So, how do you overcome the N-Squared problem in order to arrive at a predictable cost per user per hour?
The answer lies in the architectural decisions that feed into your fan engagement platform. Understanding the key challenge of fan engagement is crucial—that user-generated content causes costs to rise exponentially as more people join the experience. Knowing this, we can proactively design our systems to scale linearly rather than exponentially.
In particular, three architectural patterns hold the answer:
Batching: This is where you deliver groups of messages together rather than sending each message individually.
Aggregating: With aggregation, you compute what has changed and send only the results rather than the individual updates, reducing the overall amount of data transferred.
Partitioning: An approach based on segmenting the fanbase into sub-groups, so that messages are delivered to a predictable number of fans rather than to every fan every time.
Both approaches break the link between the number of fans engaged and the number of messages we must deliver. Let’s look at them in some more detail.
Batching: balance immediacy with efficiency
The N-Squared problem arises when we attempt to deliver messages and other interactions among a growing number of fans. In part, that rests on the assumption that every message must arrive as quickly as possible. But that isn’t true. Here’s why:
Not all messages are created equal: A goal notification needs to be delivered as quickly as possible but a slight delay in seeing reaction emojis—whether they appear instantly or half a second later—likely won’t affect anyone’s experience.
Human perception threshold: There’s a natural limit to how fast we can perceive information. Especially when fan attention is directed elsewhere, it’s unlikely that the difference between a single message delivered in 200 milliseconds (ms) versus waiting a little longer so that two or three messages can be delivered together would be noticeable.
By batching messages together we can significantly reduce the number of messages the system needs to send. This results in slight delays to message delivery, but as mentioned above it’s unlikely to degrade the fan experience.
There are several strategies for batching, each coming with its own pros and cons. Which you choose is less a technical decision and more about what type of experience you want to offer. In practice, you might combine them to help you balance fan experience with the cost to deliver the service.
Time-based batching
One way to get that fixed cost per user is to send messages at set intervals. With reactions in particular, they’re often happening in a narrow window. Let’s say there’s a big event in the livestream, such as a sports team scoring a goal or a musical artist playing a fan favorite song. Reactions will take place around the same time, so a lot of these events fire in very close succession.
Rather than send each reaction individually, we can queue them and send them in batches every 500ms or whatever time interval is appropriate. That will introduce a little latency but that’s the trade-off for achieving a predictable cost per user.
Priority based batching
One way to address the latency that comes with time-based batching is by organizing messages according to their importance. This method ensures that critical updates, like a goal scored in a sports match or an important announcement during a live concert, are delivered immediately.
High-priority messages bypass the regular queue through a system of tiered batching, where essential messages are sent on a more frequent schedule than those of lower priority.
Quota-based batching
Another way to address the latency introduced by time-based batching is to send messages once a certain number is in the queue. In quota-based batching, messages are accumulated until they reach a predefined limit, at which point the batch is sent.
During quieter periods, this method can introduce more delay, though, because messages must wait until the quota is filled before being sent. Another potential issue is that, in busier times, quota-based batching might make it harder to predict costs per user. As audience interaction spikes, the predefined quota is reached more quickly, resulting in more frequent batch dispatches.
Aggregating messages
Batching works because it reduces the number of messages the platform needs to send. But it can’t solve the N-Squared problem entirely. That’s because it doesn’t affect the overall size of the data the system needs to process.
Here’s why:
Message sizes become unwieldy: As the number of people engaged in an experience grows, there comes a point where we start to hit the practical limits of how much bandwidth a single device can reasonably consume.
Bandwidth isn’t free: Although we’re lowering resource usage by reducing the number of messages sent, the system’s bandwidth usage still increases as more people join. So, at larger scales the N-Squared problem presents itself in a different way.
What we need is a way to reduce the overall amount of data transferred. Instead of just batching messages together, we can adopt a more strategic approach known as aggregation.
With aggregation, we compute what has changed and send only the results rather than the individual updates.
Let’s go back to our tennis match example. Imagine we have four fans, one of whom sends a clapping emoji, while the other three send a thumbs-up emoji. Instead of emitting four emojis, we can send the thumbs-up emoji with a count of three, and the clapping emoji with a count of one. Even at this small scale, aggregation halves the volume of data we need to send.
But it becomes even more effective as fan numbers grow. Let’s say we now have 16 fans taking part. Seven send a thumbs-up and nine send a clapping emoji. Despite the increase in fans, we still need to send just two messages: clapping: 9and thumbs-up: 7. That gives us a compression ratio of 87.5%.
Computing changes in this way and then batching them together effectively eliminates the N-Squared problem, giving us a fixed cost per user regardless of the number of fans. This makes the cost of delivering realtime fan experiences more predictable, and more economically viable.
Partitioning
Partitioning is another strategy for addressing the N-Squared problem. The idea is to divide fans into separate groups or rooms so that we reduce the overall number of messages the system needs to deliver. Ideally, partitioning should be seamless, meaning individual fans enjoy the experience without being aware of the segmentation.
To explore how partitioning works, let’s imagine an event with 1 million people taking part in the fan engagement. When one person posts a chat message that results in 999,999 deliveries. If just a fraction of the other participants responds, say 1,000 people, that then requires sending those 1,000 responses to the remaining 999,999 viewers. This results in nearly 1 billion message deliveries (1,000 responses × 999,999 recipients).
However, if we split the fanbase into separate groups then we can enforce an upper limit on how many messages we need to send. Instead of a single 1 million-person experience, we could run ten groups of 100,000 each. From a fan’s perspective, the core interaction – sharing excitement – remains the same.
But from a cost perspective, the number of message deliveries drops dramatically, enabling the cost per user (per hour) to remain the same. This contrasts to unpartitioned audiences, where the cost per user increases with audience size. Smaller partitions would make the cost per user even lower.
Smaller partitions would have an even greater impact. The lower pace of messages in a smaller partition probably offers a better fan experience since the number of messages they receive becomes more manageable. But, of course, this comes with trade-offs, too. While a fan probably doesn’t care if they see 1,000 or 10,000 cheering emojis, they might notice the absence of a friend or a popular community figure (VIP).
Both can be solved for. For VIPs, their messages could be broadcast across all partitions, maintaining their visibility and influence across the entire fanbase. For applications where having friends together is key to the experience, functionalities such as “watch parties” can be introduced so that friends can partition themselves, instead of being partitioned by the app.
Solving the realtime fan engagement problem at Ably
At Ably, we’ve worked with sports franchises, creators, entertainers, and broadcasters globally – including NASCAR, Genius Sports, Tennis Australia, and SRF – to help deliver reliable, scalable, low-latency fan experiences that provide a healthy return on investment. The infrastructure that we provide already makes our platform well suited to the fan engagement experiences of these customers. But we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what more we can do to overcome the unique challenges of delivering fan engagement experiences in an economically viable way. This includes us trying to solve the N-Squared problem.
So, we have been actively revising our pricing model and building new features based on some of the architectural patterns mentioned above. As a result, we will be introducing:
Message batching: This feature is designed to optimize costs and enhance performance in large-scale, high-throughput applications.
LiveObjects: This feature moves the aggregation problem down into the platform and API layer of our stack. It allows you to compute what’s changed and to only emit the computed change as opposed to the batch of each individual change.
Partitioning: We are at early stages of developing a partitioning solution and are actively talking to customers now on how best to design that. Please reach out to find out more, we’d welcome further insights.
Usage-based pricing that’s billed by the hour: Our pricing model gives you granular control over your costs. You only pay for what you use: messages sent, channels active, and connections made). This means you can budget effectively and avoid surprise charges. Ideal for limiting the costs of peaky high volume traffic surges.
The World Freestyle Football Association, together with acclaimed energy drink brands Predator Energy and Fury Energy, both trademarks of Monster Energy Corporation, have announced their collaboration to elevate four National Freestyle Football Championships in Africa and support their local communities in taking their competitive scene to the next level.
The four countries included in the partnership are Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda (together with Predator Energy), as well as Egypt (thanks to the support of Fury Energy). The agreement will allow these four tournaments to feature not just an electrifying Grand Final both for male and female freestylers, but also a touring roadshow in several locations across each of the countries to further excite and engage local football communities.
A core component of the roadshow will be the education and mentoring of 100 community leaders (Football coaches, NGO workers and teachers) within each country who are working with 16-to-25 year-olds. The WFFA’s FsLife Development training course will equip all community leaders in attendance with the resources and ability to build self-esteem and entrepreneurship through football within their communities.
The dates and locations for the National Freestyle Football Championships are as follows:
Nigeria: Lagos,21st September 2024
Egypt: Cairo, 9th November 2024
Kenya: Nairobi, 29th November 2024
Uganda: Kampala, 6th December 2024
Dan Wood, Head of Partnerships at the WFFA, said: “It has been a fantastic process to collaborate and map this partnership with the team at Predator & Fury. Their commitment to grassroots and the development communities across Africa is what really excites us at the WFFA and are proud to team up initially in these four dynamic countries”
Valentine Ozigbo, WFFA Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the event promoter Feet’N’Tricks, added: “We are really thankful to Predator Energy in Nigeria for this great partnership; we are able to build a flagship example of how Freestyle Football can transform the lives of people across Africa and the world when key stakeholders come together. We are truly excited for what can be developed together in the future”
Rob Adkins, Predator & Fury Energy Brand Director, said: “We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with WFFA and to further strengthen our presence within football. Our ultimate mission is to build fans of our brands and to add value to local communities through football. The WFFA is already making an impact in that respect, so we’re keen to see how we can take this to the next level via our partnership.”
McLaren Racing is expanding its partnership with NTT DATA, which will become an Official Partner of the McLaren F1 Academy Team.
Starting this weekend with the race in Zandvoort, the partnership will see the logo of NTT DATA, a global innovator of business and technology services, carried on the race car of driver Bianca Bustamante for the remaining races of the 2024 season and beyond.
The expanded partnership builds on NTT DATA’s existing agreement with the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team. NTT DATA has been Arrow McLaren’s Official IT Services Partner since the 2023 season, supporting the team with data strategies and scaling analytical capability as well as being the title sponsor of the NTT DATA Strategy Control engineering centre that travels to track.
Matt Dennington, Co-Chief Commercial Officer, McLaren Racing, said: “We are delighted to further develop our partnership with NTT DATA into the world of F1 Academy – a relationship which has gone from strength to strength with our Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team. We’re proud to work closely with our partners to continue to open up motorsport to female drivers, and we are pleased to have NTT DATA join us on this journey.”
Mona Charif, Chief Marketing Officer, NTT DATA, Inc., said: “As a trusted global innovator of business and technology services, NTT DATA is proud to be associated with F1 Academy to support emerging talent and promote diversity across all levels of motorsport. Our partnership with McLaren Racing reflects our shared values and commitment to creating a more diverse and equal playing field on and off the track.”
Riyadh Air, Saudi Arabia’s new digitally native airline wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Concacaf, the FIFA Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, have announced a multi-year partnership.
This partnership underscores Riyadh Air’s dedication to expanding its presence in global sports and connecting fans and communities worldwide.
As the “Official Airline Partner” of Concacaf, Riyadh Air will support all of the Confederation’s national and club competitions across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, supporting the growth of men’s, women’s, and youth football. The partnership will bring together two ambitious organizations with a shared commitment to excellence and connectivity.
Osamah Alnuaiser, SVP, Marketing and Corporate Communications at Riyadh Air, said, “We are glad in Riyadh Air to announce this strategic partnership as the power of sport draws the world closer together. In Riyadh Air we connect communities and build bridges across cultures, languages and experiences. As one of the Kingdom’s most beloved sports, our partnership with Concacaf will bring passionate football fans closer to thrilling games and action where we reach all over the globe, especially in countries and territories in the Concacaf region. As the official airline partner of Concacaf, we are committed to developing the sport, enshrining our shared values of excellence in the skies and on the field.”
Philippe Moggio, General Secretary of Concacaf, said, “This partnership with Riyadh Air marks an exciting new chapter for Concacaf. Their global vision will support us in elevating all aspects of football in Concacaf, from grassroots programs to our world-class tournaments. We are particularly excited about the opportunities this partnership will create to connect fans across continents and inspire them to passionately follow the beautiful game.”
Fans will see the Fever logo on the men’s first-team kits worn today. It will also feature on the Chelsea Women and Academy players’ kits for their forthcoming seasons.
Full details of the partnership and the enhanced Chelsea fan experience will be unveiled at a press event in September at Stamford Bridge, where additional surprises and experiences for fans will also be announced.
Inspiring more than 200 million people every month, Fever has become the world’s leading technology platform for entertainment discovery. Fever has partnered with some of the leading brands and creators worldwide to power over 150,000 experiences and venues across all major live entertainment categories, including music, theatre, sports, cultural institutions, and blockbuster immersive experiences.
Chelsea fans can sign up at feverup.com starting today to be the first to know about the upcoming partnership and benefits.
Chelsea Football Club’s chief revenue officer Casper Stylsvig said of the partnership: ‘We are delighted to welcome Fever to the club as Principal Partner. As a company they have been hugely innovative in the live entertainment industry, helping their users to access events and experiences in a new way. Their service level is first-class, and we know they will help people discover not only Chelsea but also London as a city as well, in a unique and immersive way.’
Fever’s SVP of global business development, Mariano Otero, said: ‘Fever is thrilled to partner with Chelsea FC as we further our mission to elevate the fan experience for the world’s leading brands through innovative technology. This partnership will equip one of the world’s top football clubs with cutting-edge technology, creating even more exciting and creative ways for fans to engage with their team.’
As France hosted the hip-hop Olympics and broke every coverage record, David Granger, director of Arc & Foundry looks back at the highs, the lows and the breaking.
As the baton passes across the Atlantic, as LA takes over from La belle France, as the Olympics goes to Hollywood, how will Paris 2024 be remembered? And what lessons can be learned from the good, the bad and the breaking for future coverage and partnership activation?
The XXXIII Olympiad set out its stall with an opening ceremony which fiercely divided opinion, bringing heavy metal to historical settings and revealing a deep lack of knowledge amongst some viewers. It also had its critics when the athletes arrived by boat, rather than traditional track parade – and during the event there was the odd disgruntled Parisian and tourist, inconvenienced by the boarding up of the Eiffel Tower and lack of boat rides along the Seine. It may have been a contentious start, but not one which was subsequently affected coverage.
Looking back, the uptake, interaction and consumption globally was beyond even the most optimistic of expectations.
Top six stats?
In the UK BBC Sport had 36.1 million viewers watched 15 minutes or more of the Paris Olympics on BBC TV – equivalent to 59% of the UK population.
In the US, NBC averaged 32.2 million daily viewers – a 76% rise from the Tokyo Games
In France, the opening ceremony was seen by 24.4 million viewers the most-watched event on French TV
The official social media handles had more than over 12 billion engagements, more than double that of Tokyo 2020
The Olympics was the No. 1 sports app in over 70 countries and the top used overall in key markets, including the USA, France and Italy
The IOC president Thomas Bach said half the world’s eight billion population will have tuned into the 2024 edition or connected with it on social networks
But… not everything was sporting and not everything was planned content.
From those opening controversies there followed a series of arguments which were more fuel for social rage as subject for sporting commentary. From Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati’s anatomy and from French diver Jules Bouyer’s swimsuit to Turkey shooter Yusuf Dikec, the online debates and opinions came thick and fast.
They weren’t always warranted, they weren’t always in the spirit of the games, and for much of the time they were not related to sport. The debate rages as to whether Australia’s b-girls were inspired or put off by their athlete, Raygun. The irony of that event of course is that it won’t be contested in the US, the home of hip-hop culture which spawned break dancing. (In its place? Cricket. An interesting substitution).
Whoever came up with the concept of sending Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (or Snoop Dogg to his fans) along to France needs to get a bonus equal to the pay day the West Coast rapper allegedly received. From torch bearer to closing ceremony and everything in between, including full equestrian get up, the man Molly Solomon, NBC’s executive producer of the Olympics described as an “ambassador of happiness” brought a whole new level of insight, information and entertainment to the event. And not just for the US audiences.
He was quite excellent at bringing not only the games, but the spirit of the games to audiences.
After the misfortunate which Covid cast over the Tokyo games, the Olympics were looking to re-set and Paris did exactly that. From the spectacle of the ceremonies to the full houses and sporting triumphs, it delivered.
The organisers and the athletes demonstrated that there is still exceptional return on the investment for those involved, but also it can appeal across channels and across demographics. LA has a tough act to follow. Paris brought the ancient venues, the traditional sports and the modern games and ensured sport triumphed in terms of coverage, athleticism and engagement, right across the demographics.
iSportConnect is delighted to announce mycrocast as the latest client of its Advisory division.
mycrocast is a SaaS audio platform that enables clubs, associations and leagues to create live audio broadcasts that can be consumed inside and outside the venue, without any need of special hardware.
Along with UEFA & the EHF, more than half of the German Bundesliga clubs, Ajax Amsterdam & BSC Young Boys have already adopted the technology.
Joe Rowland, Head of Partnerships, iSportConnect: “I’m delighted to welcome mycrocast to the iSportConnect network. When we first spoke with Marcel, it was clear they had developed a product which offers real value to clients in sport and the case studies they produced backed that up. We are excited to work alongside Marcel and the team to continue that growth journey as they look to expand into new markets”.
Marcel Hesse, CEO, mycrocast: “We are delighted to be working with iSportConnect to push ahead with our internationalisation. From the very beginning, we have been able to quickly build trust through our conversations”.
iSportConnect Advisory is a full-365 service offering strategic guidance, market positioning and relationship building in sport. iSportConnect is helping many organisations, such as InCrowd, ATPI, Magnifi, Tixr, EXL and many more, drive new business in sport.
Multi award-winning production house Aurora Media Worldwide is expanding into the Middle East and has announced the appointment of James Pearce to the newly created role of Managing Director, MENA.
This strategic move is underpinned by the opening of a new Riyadh office alongside advanced plans to also operate a production hub in Abu Dhabi. It underscores Aurora’s commitment to delivering pioneering, high-end content across live, original, branded, and digital formats that aligns with the region’s ambitions for growth in sports, entertainment, and major events.
The new production bases will be led by James Pearce, who has been instrumental in driving Aurora’s expansion into the region over the past few years. Pearce previously held the post of Partnerships Director at Aurora and has a proven track record in developing new business, building strong relationships, and managing teams.
“Aurora’s unique position in the marketplace for innovative, high-quality content makes this expansion a natural progression,” said Lawrence Duffy, CEO of Aurora Media Worldwide. “Our pioneering approach and focus on innovation aligns perfectly with the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s own ambitions to forge ahead with building on the growing interest in sport, entertainment and major events.”
James Pearce expressed his enthusiasm for the new role: “I am thrilled to lead Aurora’s expansion in the Middle East. The region is rich with talent and opportunity, and we are eager to harness and contribute to its growing media landscape.”
Aurora, part of the All3Media Group which was recently acquired by joint venture investment platform RedBird IMI, has already established a significant presence in Saudi Arabia. Projects include various live and non-live productions, including host broadcasts for Formula E, Extreme E, E1 Series and Supertri, hosted in Riyadh, Jeddah and NEOM, and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Endurance Cup in AlUla.
In addition to live productions, Aurora has been involved in a host of original, branded, and digital content projects in the region. These include content for the Royal Commission for AlUla, covering short form originals to digital branded content during the festival seasons, and programmes for the Fursan and Camel Cup. Aurora has also created a short form documentary for the Saudi Surfing Federation, hosted on Shahid. In the UAE, Aurora is producing digital content for Nike, including the new football kit launch for Al Ain FC, the UAE’s most successful football club.
