Sports / Media / Tech at NYC Media Lab 2018

On March 6, 2018, Sports / Media / Tech debated that the future of sports will be driven by technology tools by combining media and communications, that will create endless opportunities for brands and companies to grow. From virtual and augmented reality to streaming and 5G wireless, technological trends will change and will shape the way that brands communicate and approach sports, as well as how consumers see and interact with it.

According to Christian Guirnalda, director of open innovation at Verizon, "Technology is going to change how you behave, it is going to change the way you look at data, how you consume and how stadiums are built". Indeed, technology has, nowadays, a huge influence in everything we do and, most importantly, in everything our target does. In a highly competitive environment where brands must constantly innovate and adapt, it is time for sports to embrace technological experiences to reach its audience. 

As specialists from the industry discussed future trends that would most likely define the next generation of sports media and technology, a few key aspects and learnings mentioned by speakers were content personalization, stop relying in big cable companies, the target's appetite for experiential, digital and streaming, truly capturing fans spirit.

Throughout the conference, it was clear that one stood out: content. Personalized content. Local content. Content that addresses specific interests - "30% of people subscribe [to newsletters] because of the content is local" Deepen Parikh, partner at Courtside VC. Local, in his opinion, is the most important aspect, as it impacts the audience in a personal and relatable way.

Bringing local to global or local from one country to another also seems an opportunity, according to Evan Silverman, EVP of digital media t A+E Networks. He explains how the love that Brazilians feel for soccer is unconditional and is able to inspire and motivate masses. Silverman believes that, if soccer has such a powerful influence over Brazilian, why can't it also have in Americans? With that thinking in mind, A+E Networks is investing on new and technological ways of showing how soccer can be America's next most loved sport.

Brands are looking for new ways to encourage consumers to interact with their content and brand, create experiences, engage them while they are in the venue, purchasing tickets or entering the arena.

"The future is to expand outside of just playing the game (...) we rather have a million articles and one person that reads each article, then a million people reading one single article" Nick Haynes, lead data scientist at Automated Insights, highlighting that consumers want personalization and reinforcing the "local content" idea and that the target is interested in specific information that impacts their reality and their specific market and lifestyle.

According to Jayne Bussman-Wise, senior director of content and communications at New York Red Bulls, authentic interactions with and from influencers have and will continue to have a huge power over audiences.

From new technologies that are created in the digital era, merging reality with fantasy: artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, e-sports - the future of sports should consider and include machine content, as per NYC Media Lab 2018 conference.

Jason Xu, CEO of Battlefy said that, when he did his first pitch to start his own company, the most common feedback that he would receive was that no one would watch other people playing video games, much less a video of other people playing. Nowadays, video games are the largest content on Youtube and platforms that enables users to both play and watch other people play at the same time, are a trend and hit among the target audience. Most impressive of all, video games took five years to achieve this level of success, while other sports that did not include technology took decades to be as popular as. 

To those experts, technological and sports minds that attended Sports / Media / Tech NYC Media Lab 2018, the future of sports will be based on interaction, content and augmented reality.

Three key takeaways from this year's NYC Media Lab Sports / Media / Tech conference are:

• Personalized content is key to drive interaction with consumers and reach them in a way that they can relate
• The demand for experiential increases as consumers and brands are looking for new ways of engaging and creating relationships with one another
• There is no where to hide and brands and companies can't ignore it any longer: digital and technology are the future of every market industry, including sports. It is up to them to find innovative and creative ways to combine technological aspects to their business