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Photo: COURTESY OF SPONSORS
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T he key thing about sports business everywhere is that, first of all, we are very lucky to be in it, and as a sports fan, there’s no better thing to be doing. Broadcasting sports and dealing in sports is really the same the world over because you look for people that share your passion for sport and you look to give them what they want. As long as you keep that at the heart of what you offer then you are in the right place. It’s not such a complicated business.
It’s a very interesting journey to turn around a company like Eurosport. Most people in the room, [at the SpoBiS conference] they’ve grown up with Eurosport. It’s been for 25-30 years. It’s part of the way you see sports on TV. We are trying to make Eurosport a very different experience. That clearly takes time. It’s a real challenge and a real opportunity.
We’ve tried to give it more personality. We’ve tried to take it in an area where I think it needs to be, which is bigger sports events done properly; more production; more on-site presence. If we can do all those things then we are taking it in the right place.
It was a huge step by the [International Olympic Committee to award Eurosport European television rights for the Olympic Games] but it was also a huge sign that they believed in the Discovery message and Eurosport now obviously part of the wider Discovery Group. We went very clearly to the IOC and said, “We want to treat the Olympics with respect.” Respect its traditions. Respect the free-to-air TV broadcasters it has worked with around Europe. But we also want to take it to new audiences. Treat it in a different way. Make more of it available to more people.
We told them a story and I think a story that we have to deliver on, that the IOC agreed with. We said, “Our challenge as Eurosport is very similar to the challenge of the IOC.” We want to widen our audience. We want to go to a younger audience. We want to look after a major sports right in a way that deals with the reality of how an audience will now be experiencing that right, which means it has to be multiscreen.
It has to be every single minute of the Olympics available to every single person. I think that went straight to what [IOC President] Thomas Bach is trying to do and his work with projects like the Olympic Channel, where he’s looking to widen the appeal of the Olympics, looking to build on its real legacy.
The Olympics has a premium value. It’s the big rights that go up and up in value because you want more and more quality and increasingly you want less and less of the rest. That also sums up Eurosport. Eurosport was a bulk product. It was about thousands of hours of live content. Whereas now we are trying to say, “Look, we are far more about giving a better experience about a premium content.” If you take that as a philosophy, then to look at the numbers in the Olympics was something we are very comfortable with.
Certainly the negotiations that we’ve had post-Olympics have backed us up, which is a nice place to be because then you can really say, “We need to also not just spend that 1.3 billion euros but we need to spend heavily on production, on promotion and marketing.” To try and make it a bigger event than it’s ever been before, and that’s our promise to the IOC.
[The Olympic Channel is] definitely part of the cooperation and it’s definitely part of our agreement with the IOC. The model behind it is a very interesting one, which is how do you keep Olympic sports alive year-round? How do you make sure that the Olympic story is told year-round? We can contribute to that and be part of it, not just as Eurosport but also the rest of the Discovery channels.
The Olympics is unique in that you can make someone a national hero for two weeks and then they disappear completely. So you know there’s more room there to build up the story and more room to carry on the story.
My technicians are probably the people that like me least in the building. Increasingly we are doing more and more single-territory feeds. As countries became more ambitious in their sports rights, Eurosport ran the risk of becoming marginalized. Only showing the lowest denominator that nobody really wanted. We have to go after the big sports events, which inevitably means going on a more country-by-country basis.
As a business, the economy of scale that Eurosport offers as a pan-European and pan-Asian service is a really good business model. It also offers a lot to the federations. The FIS was saying how great it was that we show all their events in Asia where otherwise they wouldn’t have an audience.
But the reality is you also need a national personality. You need more of a face to the channel. You need an identification with the biggest stars of that country. To do that you have to then focus your efforts on creating a truly national vision of what sports matter.
It’s very easy to make a big announcement and say, “We’ve bought this and we’ve bought that.” We also need to think about what’s wrong about what’s been on Eurosport. This year, for example, you see no more “Rolex Wednesday Selection,” which has been on the channel for years and years. “Rolex Wednesday Selection” was all about showing content that was three or four days old, even 10 days old sometimes. That’s not where we should be as a sports channel. We should either be live, same day or absolutely classic. That as a philosophy therefore determines your schedule as a whole.
We want to build a better relationship between the sports fan and an event, offer them more from an event. Therefore multiple feeds, multiple layers of content means a heavily digital future, and that’s something we know we need to invest in.
