Laurent Puons: “Sportel Rendez-vous is a new format, more adapted to our community”

On March 14-15, Sportel celebrated its “Rendez-vous,” a new format for the overseas event series, launched in Miami, home of the first of many Sportel’s held in the Americas, starting 25 years ago. This new concept, which featured a streamlined two-day event, gathered more than 500 participants from 290 companies, including 80 new companies that have never attended Sportel before.

“My team and I love change, and we made the decision to come back to America, in Miami, because the city was open, so it was an easier location for an event like Sportel. It was also very important for us to find the right concept and format for the event because we wanted to make a difference between Monaco and Miami. After an internal meeting, we decided to put in place a new format more adapted to our community,”  Laurent Puons, CEO of Monaco Mediax, told Señal News.

According to Puons, the “Rendez-vous” concept is actually really simple. “It is the same as Monaco, but not with the same cost, of course. For example, we allowed very small companies to be in Miami with a stand and do exactly the same as in Monaco, but at a smaller cost. That is a winner format, it was very busy, and we actually had more participants than in the two last editions in Miami,”  he said.

Over two days, participants were able to discover first-time exhibitors such as Blueshape and Yuvod, providers of innovative broadcast solutions; Buzzer, an app curating the best live moments in sports to each fan's preferences; Newsbridge, with an AI and data-driven media asset management; NXTID, who shared the creative process behind the design of sports NFT; and GreenPark Sports, whose immersive social platforms are designed to engage digitally-native fans with their favorite sports, teams, and athletes. Traditional exhibitors also showcased innovation, including LaLiga Tech, a new entity within LaLiga that offers a custom-built ecosystem of sports technologies for broadcasters and sports properties to accelerate their digital transformation.

Nick Volante, Sales Agent and Industry Advisor Sales at Sportel, considers this new format to be a lot more cost-efficient. “In the past, if you looked at having a stand at Sportel Monaco, which had 2000-3000 people, and also having a stand in Miami, the level of investment was similar, but the return on investment, as the event was so much smaller, did not make sense. Laurent already knew that he needed to change this market. And then, of course, the pandemic came, and we realized this market has to be a lot more cost-effective,”  he added.

“It was an obligation for us how to adapt the concept and the format to our community. They needed different things, they were in a different stage of the business, and they wanted to reduce the budget. This is a new opportunity for us. That means that we can continue the development of the markets, because there are a lot of new actors in the sector,”  Puons said.

Looking ahead, on October 24-26, Sportel will celebrate its traditional Sportel Monaco event. In its last edition before the pandemic, the market gathered more than 2000 participants, a figure that its organizers aim to reach again. “We had a lot of new companies during Sportel Miami, and I am sure that more than half of them will be in Monaco. Maybe not as delegates but with a stand like exhibitors. They will think: ‘if we did good business with 500 people in Miami, I cannot image my business with 2000 participants’,”  the CEO of Monaco Mediax concluded.

By Diego Alfagemez & Federico Marzullo