SportsPro Live – A Refreshing Sports Industry Event

I love attending sports industry events, meeting existing and new contacts always provides a breath of fresh air, instigating new and  exciting thoughts and ideas. The optimism that events generate is brilliant for the soul.

Having been involved in marketing, selling and delivering many events over the years it’s invigorating being on the other side of the fence and working out how to maximise a two-day window of opportunity.

This week I attended SportsPro Live at Wembley Stadium, my first visit there. This itself was a thrill, and – yes! – I took the obligatory selfie with the hallowed turf in the background. It was the closest I was ever going to get to action on the pitch.

If I could sum up SportsPro Live in one word it would be refreshing.

Why? For many reasons, but I have distilled these down to four:

1. Event culture –the SportsPro team on site is very relaxed. They are obviously having fun. There are no egos. Conference moderators engage with interviewees, panellists and audiences in a fun way. Everyone is put at ease. This relaxed ‘event culture’ is soaked up and adopted by all participants.

1. No glass walls – at many events you have groups of buyers and groups of sellers. The sellers want to do business with the buyers, but the buyers are often trying their best to stay out of sight or escape the networking action. At SportsPro Live everyone’s prepared to have a conversation, no matter where it leads – people just appreciate the opportunity to talk.

1. Current content – as sports industry media specialists, you expect conference content to be current, which it was, but the exhibition content was also extremely interesting. I experienced Virtual Reality for the first time courtesy of Virtually Live. Wow! It was so real it gave me vertigo at one point. If you haven’t tried it, you must. It’s got massive potential in sport. It will be fascinating to see how rights holders and fans adopt VR in the coming years. Technology-based companies showcasing products pushing industry boundaries provided the largest sector in the exhibition. These companies were of particular significance to us at RedTorch as we look to use new technologies and ideas to create and deliver fresh campaigns for clients.

1. Inspiration – I manage a small agency, which means I usually focus on the micro-environment. Listening to people like Philippe Blatter, President and CEO of Wanda Sports Holdings talk about their development and the potential that China offers the sports industry was really eye-opening. His insights into the macro-environment were fascinating. It might be a long way from our everyday world, but it’s inspiring to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. This isn’t unique to SportsPro Live, but they do get impressive people in to talk about enthralling stuff.

Is there room for improvement? Of course there is. But I think SportsPro Live has created a great event culture with a great vibe, which is refreshing. I look forward to the 2017 edition and hope more people attend, experience and embrace this “we’re all in it together so we may as well enjoy it” culture.

Bravo! Encore!