Mind the Tech London 2024"Sports brings hundreds of millions of viewers together"
Mind the Tech London 2024
"Sports brings hundreds of millions of viewers together"
"Our digital audience is huge, a sports magazine will increase it." Asaf Peled, CEO of Minute Media, was speakingat Calcalist and Bank Leumi's Mind the Tech London conference. Steve Cannella, Sports Illustrated Editor-in-chief, added: "People also want a deeper understanding of sports"
Steve Cannella, Asaf Peled
(Photo: Alex Kolomoyski)
"The new collaboration between Minute Media and Sports Illustrated creates new opportunities for us," said Steve Cannella, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, and Asaf Peled, Founder and CEO of Minute Media, in a conversation with Yarden Rozanski of Calcalist at Calcalist and Bank Leumi's Mind the Tech London conference. Last year, Israeli company Minute Media acquired operations of the prestigious sports magazine, and at the conference the two said that sport is currently the only field where there is significant value to live broadcasting and the ability to target hundreds of millions of viewers in one moment.
You've been at the magazine for about 30 years and its editor for five - tell us about it.
Cannella: "We are one of the most iconic magazines in the history of American sports. Many brands dream of recognition like ours, and we have enormous content that people love."
Minute announced that this is the largest purchase in its history. What do you intend to gain from the purchase of the magazine?
Peled: "We realized that through our technology we can promote sports brands and not just the magazine. We acquired the possibility to distribute it digitally and we have a lot to gain from the partnership. Our digital audience is huge and if we combine the portfolios of the two bodies - we will reach the highest places of sports media in the U.S. We intend to strengthen the brand in Europe and throughout the world. Sports fans are very young today, and most of them follow sports through their mobile first. We use technology that will enable the exposure of these consumers to sports. We will focus on innovation, technology, and mobile phones above all and renew the way we convey the story of Sports Illustrated."
How do you monetize the field beyond advertising?
Cannella: "The advertising field is huge in dimensions, especially the video field, and this will be an important focus of ours, but we will look for other ways to generate income. In the past, we mainly profited from subscriptions and we'll try to expand exposure to the digital world as well: we'll ask people to be part of our community and not just pay for the subscription. We're able to bring in a huge audience that will be focused around the live broadcast."
Does the audience have the ability to focus on an in-depth analysis of sports beyond a few seconds?
Cannella: "The audience is changing and the way sports are consumed is changing, but at the same time we feel that there is a huge passion for the content and people want to be part of the conversation, and this includes nostalgia, watching documentaries, building more and more stories like this and putting them into the video world as well. This is an area where people are very involved. People want to feel the world of sports and I want to reach them at every stage. Our big challenge is to reach the entire sports audience. I want us to be much more than a magazine - but a multimedia platform."
Watch the full exchange in the video above.
