Laurent Puons, chief executive of Sportel, reviews the 2024 edition of the internationally acclaimed convention at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, which took place in late October, with GlobalData.

What are your feelings around the direction Sportel needs to go in the future, related to the success of this year’s event?

“Our goal is to provide high-quality business to our community. To do that, it’s very important to attract new participants and companies. We’d like to continue the event’s development - we need to be attracting new technology clients to Sportel. I’m sure this market is huge, and it’s huge for Sportel to have this sector here.

“This year, for example, we had a lot of new technology companies here. For example, on the Wednesday at Sportel, we had AI as the main theme that day. That’s a very important subject, alongside all the new technology themes.

“Another new element this year was our Pitch Session, which was a success this year - we had a lot of attendees and we are very happy with it. It’s very important for us to have that sort of content here - Sportel has a market at its heart, 100%, but the conference program element is also very important, as we are saying year after year.

“In terms of the speakers, it’s very important for us to have a high level of attendees in the sessions, and we had that this year.

“The appeal of the speakers is huge, that is the difference between a good conference and a great conference. Overall, we would like to continue developing the level of this conference and the speakers."

What areas will the Monaco conference move towards during upcoming editions?

“We need to make sure that what we do for 2024 is not automatically repeated in 2025 - time flies, and so does business.

“We need to adapt the content of the market and the conference, at the request of our community. We have to be the first - we’re the only major conference dedicated to sports media rights, so from my point of view it’s very important we take the lead.

“We’d like to have more exhibitors from this sector and have more discussions concerning AI on the conference program.”
                                                                                              
What can we expect from the first iteration of Sportel Talks New York (December 16)?

“For the first time, we will be in New York, in a different format, through a partnership with SVG.

“It’s a pre-Christmas get-together, and the goal is to bring in innovators, professionals, leaders, to discuss new technologies in this sector and the situation regarding major sports rights.”