Charly Classen, the senior director of digital media, commercial and marketing for sports broadcaster ESPN in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, this week described sport as “the saviour of television.”
Classen also predicted that the growth of sports consumption across mobile devices and the internet would lead to far greater overall audiences for sport, rather than cannibalising television audiences. He was speaking at a TV Sports Markets webinar on the digital consumption of sport.
“Sport is the saviour of television in so many ways,” he said. “If you look at the different genres and look at what percentage of the programming is watched delayed on DVRs, sport – for obvious reasons – is the one genre that is least affected.”
He added that five years from now, “sport [on TV] in its pure live element will be very similar. What is growing enormously is how people consume it over and above the traditional TV experience. People who watch the most TV and are engaged with digital are consuming more and more sport, so digital is very much supplementary and not a substitute for what we have seen.”
Classen said that the future for broadcasters like ESPN was “about making the best experience available to the right screen,” which meant being “on all platforms and all devices,” and being able to personalise online content to the needs of the individual sports fan.
Classen joined Simon Greenberg, global head of rights for News Corp, and Oliver Slipper, joint chief executive of the Perform Group, in the webinar Digital Sport: new platforms, new behaviours, new models.
To download the webinar FREE follow this link: http://www.sportbusiness.com/webinar-digital-sport-new-platforms-new-behaviours-new-models?src=1310WT26DXX08
The webinar was a discussion of the findings of the Global Sports Media Consumption Report 2013. To order your copy of the report contact Scott Longhurst on +44 (0) 207 954 3484 or email scott.longhurst@tvsportsmarkets.com