Category: Media & Sport

At a unique event, Savannah Group in collaboration with Google Cloud brought together a panel of sporting leaders to discuss parallels and lessons for business from succeeding – and failing – at a high-performance level. Our diverse panel of leaders included Vicky Gosling OBE, CEO of GB Snowsport,  Nick Fry, chairman of McLaren Applied, Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE, former captain of the Great Britain and England hockey teams and Iain Nairn MBE, former England Physical Disability cricket team captain.

It is the golden age of content, and marketing, brand and distribution revenues are all driven, to a large extent, by creating compelling content. Our report looks at the findings of a survey of over 100 industry executives to get a sense of the trends and challenges taking place within the sports, media & entertainment sector, which finds itself in a state of flux and transformation. With the consumer exercising more power than ever before in how they consume content, the report discusses the concept of customer centricity, how organisations use content to create and capture value and the importance of the role of Chief Content Officer.

The role of social media in today’s society combined with significant increases in the quantity, quality and the availability of content is having a marked effect on the dynamic between parent brands and the personal brands of the stars they employ. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sports and media industry, and to discuss this topic, Savannah Group recently hosted a private dinner for senior executives in the sector.The topics of discussion focused on the role of content for these organisations; how they are looking to monetise their content and the carefully balanced dynamic between the commercial arm of the business and the talent they have within them.

On the eve of Euro 2016, I asked the question in an article, as to whether broadcasters viewed social media as a ‘friend’ or ‘foe’. Two years on and the debate still rages. Although I would argue that the terminology needs updating and simplifying, replacing ‘social media businesses’ for ‘digital businesses’. What hasn’t become simpler is the somewhat awkward or evolving co-existence broadcasters and digital businesses share. On the one hand they are in open competition bidding against each other for sports rights, which in some cases has resulted in rights holders opting to move away from traditional linear deals and create partnerships with digital businesses.