Current thinking and comment

Blog by Coral Grainger: 7 May 2009

On 21st April 2010, a new conference was launched in Manchester by SportBusiness Group entitled Sport and New Media In making this happen, we had two main objectives: 1) to raise awareness of the power new media in supporting the growth of sport related businesses and clubs, engaging fan bases etc – and 2) to create opportunities for digital and media businesses to network and connect with sports clubs, broadcasters and other businesses in the supply chain.

These are baby steps towards our dream. There is no disputing the fact that Manchester is an amazing, creative city with some incredibly bright and brilliant people working in different areas of the digital sector – more than the rest of Northern England put together. We also have more sports businesses (and bigger sports businesses) than anywhere else in the Northwest. These strengths will only be amplified when the BBC moves to MediaCity:UK, with the relocation of BBC Sport and the Radio 5live, and the embedding of Manchester based FM&T, the home of Adrian Woolard and the BBC R&D team.

Photo Title: Andrew Croker (Executive Chairman, Perform) on the first ever
live & exclusively online World Cup Qualifier.

The keynote presentation came from Ben Gallop, Head of Sport Interactive and Formula 1 at the Beeb, who was a student in Manchester and is looking forward to the move back North. Ben believes that timing and technology will ‘hit a sweet spot’ in 2012 and the Olympics will be the event that really takes digital sport mainstream.

I asked Ben if Sport would follow the lead of BBC Children’s @North project, which opened up the commissioning process to increase the supply chain opportunities for smaller companies. I was pleased to get the answer ‘Yes’ to this, and I’m really looking forward to some creative collaborations in a year or two’s time as a result.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second panel of Sport and New Media presented a contrast to the European Soccerex entertainment panel I attended (also in Manchester) earlier in the month. At Soccerex the panel was asked about the future of sports entertainment, and John Skipper, Executive Vice President, ESPN answered ‘more TV’.

At Sport and New Media we heard that the future is on demand, on screen (not TV) and in bite-size casual viewings. The panel also referenced the game changing significance of smartphones and iPad’s – but the most honest, safe (and probably accurate) answer came from Ciaran Quinn of Deltatre who predicted that there wouldn’t be one single platform. ‘We should try lots of platforms. Some wont work, so drop them quickly, but some will flourish’.
This belies an important truth about growing innovation in Manchester – not only do we need to increase the spread and benefit of innovative practices, but we must also create conditions for rapid development and testing.

I loved the geeky stats from Alistair Hill of comscore which offered great insight into mobile media usage and the size and demographic nature of the market – but most of all it was the examples of Augmented Reality apps for the Pittsburgh Penguins and for Wimbledon Tennis that sparked my imagination of what we could be doing here in Manchester.

The IBM project for Wimbledon utilises AR, location awareness and Twitter to transform the whole live experience.

I’ve never been to Wimbledon, but I understand it’s quite a busy and sometimes confusing experience. Now, imagine that you are in your No.1 Court seat, The Seer application allows you to:

• Look at Centre Court through the screen on your smartphone. A live feed from the court scoring system will provide’ up to the minute match scores for the court in your screen, as well as indicating what subsequent matches would take place there.

• Feeds from ‘Scouts’ are integrated with real time information from coffee stands, taxi queues etc so you know when and where to go for a break.
  *If you get lost, a ‘Radar’ function provides an interesting overview of the your current location and nearby points of interest.

To me AR offers mind blowing potential – and what’s really cool is that we have expertise here in Manchester germinated through MadLab’s AR Dev workshops held in 2009

I’d really love to hear your views on how we can get more connectivity between these two very different, but equally awesome sectors and groups of people – and really get some cutting edge applications and some world class sporting experiences here in Manchester.

I’ve only covered a fraction of the content from one great day. You can read the conference review from SportBusiness Group here

What’s most satisfying (and equally frustrating) is that there were Manchester digital businesses in the audience who I know can do all this stuff – maybe even better, and in more innovative ways. SportBusiness Group are really happy with the event so chances are it will run again. Next year, I want YOU on the stage, showing the world how it’s done in new exciting ways – please get in touch if you want to take part!