A Sports Federation: Navigating Future Media Strategies for Global Engagement and Impact

The allure of global sporting events lies with their impact on viewers across generations and international borders. For many younger viewers these events can be the inspirational spark for future participation or the start of a lifetime interest in multiple sporting disciplines. As such, sports federations must formulate strategies with economic and social dimensions to ensure their events are impactful, financially prudent and create a positive legacy.

Audiovisual distribution is a core consideration. The proliferation of digital platforms and infinite content choices make it harder than ever to generate, grow and retain mass global audiences. This means media partners must be assessed on their Individual merits in each market to ensure live coverage is prominent, supported and of the highest quality.

To truly understand the consumer sports federations, we must go deeper than the assessment of media infrastructure. There Is a need to optimize each market's unique set of viewing preferences, habits and behaviors to help make events universally popular. This can be supported by the effective, engaging and affordable use of immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR).

Today's global sports calendar is incredibly crowded with many pan-regional or even national competitions that are garnering huge viewing figures through increasing popularity. International sporting federations have been increasingly forced to work harder on branding exercises to elevate the status of their events above other competitions. They continue to leverage history and cultural significance, presenting each of their events as the pinnacle of global competitive sport.

Pain Points

This sports rights holder, responsible for issuing television, radio, mobile, and internet rights to media companies worldwide, requires a long-term view of media markets for optimal decision-making in developing the most lucrative media and sponsorship deals.

The primary aim of the federation is to ensure It reaches the highest number of viewers while achieving the widest global audience. Commercial agreements must support this objective, illustrating the need for a deep understanding of global media distribution by platform and operator. Additionally, the federation must consider the impact of changing consumer habits due to digitalization along with the emergence of leading streaming companies and private equity.

Members of the client's business intelligence team faced several specific pain points in preparing market intelligence to assess country-level data and insights that included: Total addressable market, video delivery distribution platforms, and market share across various markets. Company-specific insights included subscriber footprint and projections by delivery platform, sports rights expenditures, a long-term view of advertising expenditures by platform or region, and other metrics. Consumer insights were needed to understand viewership behavior across markets, connected devices in use, as well as consumer device trends such as AR/VR headset adoption and media device shipment trends and forecasts.

Without a comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, including country- and company-level intelligence, best-in-class

subscriber estimates, and timely insights into the streaming media ecosystem, the client was vulnerable to making decisions based on incomplete or outdated information. The following solutions were the most relevant:

• Country & regional TMT-sector specific forecasts to aid understanding of the total addressable market, video platform distribution market share dynamics, subscriber and revenue metrics as well as a long-term view of advertising expenditure by platform.
• TMT Operator-specific subscriber footprint data by delivery platform to understand subscriber footprint and projections by delivery platform, inclusive of asset-level data.
• Deep sector insights on TV network economics for relevant channels to understand the most lucrative media partners.
• Expenditures on sports rights deals using historical data to understand which operators have a high propensity to spend on sports rights deals.
• Online streaming subscriber data and insights to understand the magnitude and outlook of the streaming transition and to obtain a view of the complete sports video universe inclusive of adjoining services.
• Broadcast rights benchmarks to gain insights into historical expenditure of other sports leagues to gauge renewal trends.
• Sports customer survey data points supporting consumer participation frequency, services, devices, and league sentiment responses to aid in assessing the appetite for product potential in the local market.
• Consumer technology trends help with assessing consumer device adoption and the uptake of new technologies such as augmented reality/virtual reality and media devices in use.

The Solution

At S&P Global Market Intelligence, we understand the dynamic challenges and opportunities shaping the sports media industry. Our comprehensive suite of solutions empowers stakeholders to navigate future media strategies for global engagement and impact.

Key Benefits

Members of the business strategy & intelligence team quickly saw the value in having access to S&P Capital IQ Pro with Kagan research. Today, team members are benefiting from having:

• Ready access to valuable information, saving time locating details and working in a cost-effective manner.
• Details on the characteristics of addressable market to examine the size, segments and demographics of audience to understand the market landscape in their local market and beyond.
• An understanding of TV networks' cash flow models, sports direct-to-consumer offerings available and consumer insights on fan behavior.
• Ongoing market monitoring to gain deep insights into the risks and opportunities presented by disruptive technologies and new market participants.
• Understand adoption rates of new technologies across its customer segments to assess possible displacement of current products.
• Dig deeper to uncover market-moving insights with access to analysts with extensive subject matter expertise.
• An extensive selection of prebuilt model templates, reports, and charts to streamline workflows.
• Strong ongoing support from seasoned professionals.

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