It used to be that sports business conferences would schedule out so as not to split audiences and step on the space of both participants, attendees, and even social presence. You knew when MIT Sloan was, when Cynopsys sports did their awards, when the Ivy Sports Symposium was (November), SEAT took place (July), and hashtag Sports(late June to finish the spring) and we usually had a week in May that tied together Leaders, the Sports PR Summit and the Sports Business Awards. Others…Sports PR Summit, Sportel, Soccerex, Michigan Sports Business Summit, Wharton Sports Business, etc. etc. all found there own window so as not to encroach, but also benefit. You might have a few run into each other, and new small breakfast and dinner events popped in and out that were really targeted, but you could get a feel and not think you missed a great deal, even if you missed an event or two every year.
The key was the ability to network, schedule meetings and hopefully listen and learn from industry professionals you did not always get the chance to connect with, especially new and engaged executives of every level who could help you improve. Did you expect breaking news, like you got when Adam Silver first talked about embracing gambling at a Bloomberg Sports event a few years ago? No. You actually hoped to extract a few nuggets, hear a lot of the same platitudes, and pull value from the people and the coffees and lunches more than what went on in the big room.
The network, and the people, were the value.
So, we get to the late spring and the lack of in person events for the rest of the summer and most of the fall, and what do we have? The Zoom overload in sports business. Technology and connectivity have never been better, but it has led us to the point of screen overload. How much overload?
The week of June 8 there were no less than 75 “sports business” chats, most on Zoom or Microsoft teams, from 7 AM until as late as 10 PM. On Wednesday June 10 we hit the peak of the sports business curve…as there were NINE events at THE SAME TIME. Noon to one.
Missed opportunities, and overloaded scheduling yes, but even more importantly we have seen a wide range of user experiences, from pristine ones like Sports Business Journal and Sporttechie have done, to ones with poor connectivity, lost speakers, multiple log in’s for signups and lost recordings. Like we have seen in podcasting, there is a rush to host a ZOOM chat with your industry experts and try and engage a community without games, but in reality, how many people are ZOOM watching?
Why the rush to ZOOM on any topic you want? It’s cheap, you have a captive audience at home, and people are looking to find ways to connect in a time efficient manner. There are also any number of event companies, brands and organizations scrambling to create value add for those who would spend money against attending events. Find a topic, grab three or four people with some knowledge, give them a log in and let them go. Value add created, and also a point of view that is expanded for the creator of the chat as an influencer in his or her or their space. That also is perceived value for some.
The solution it seems, was simple. However, the problem that has arisen is on multiple fronts. Most are free to anyone you can pull in, so those who may even have a higher and more engaged level of speaker and want to charge any amount will suffer, and in some cases, be accused of tone deafness. Create added opportunities for someone who has already paid a premium, like a brand partner or a season ticketholder to get added access to the star quarterback or coach? Great idea. Go out to the consumer or the business community and ask for a few more hundred bucks on top of a challenging economy with plenty of free content? Tough one. Now if there is a cause involved, or even additional paywalled content or access that may be a different story for some. But just to charge for speakers in a Zoom room? Tough sell.
So, what have been some of the best practices? One is recording the segments and making sure the user experience is clean. The best segments have been ones that are not live and run the risk of people dropping off or quality of signal not being strong. There certainly is a bit of fun when everyone watches as a group, but for quality and messaging to a large group, prerecord and playback as live certainly helps.
Prerecording also keeps you away from being tied to a particular time. Need to go in a window not encumbered? Record when your guests are available and then show it. It gives a great deal more flexibility as well.
There is also a feeling of doing a series that is tied to a day and time. While consistency is nice, the reality is the only person really looking at appointment viewing is…you. We no longer are encumbered by having to do something every week, every day at a set time. the reality with many of these panels is that people are highly distracted during the calls as my colleague Tom Richardson pointed out this week. The value is in the replay, that people are pulling quality info on their schedule, not on yours. If you can’t get the quality voices on a given week, then let it go. No need to force it.
Then there is the backing up the quality with social sharing. The soundbites, tied to still images and a hashtag to track interest, is also a forgotten piece of the project. It has a stickiness that just hoping people pay attention by word of mouth doesn’t have. Out of every quality conversation, especially since in most of these the dialogue is not impromptu it is very targeted, should come two or three nuggets that everyone goes away with. Just getting the chat done isn’t good enough. What’s important are the key learnings which will probably drive even more viewers after the fact. Get the soundbite and share it widely.
Keep a watch of time. The best conversations are usually the most concise. A half hour to 45 minutes, similar to the interest on podcasts. People are going to be time challenged during the day, so set your window and make the points work. You always see the drop off coming in engaged users, so as they drop, start to wrap. Don’t go on forever, we only have so much time.
Now will live and taped video chats be here when we go back to a sense of normalcy and events become things we attended again? I sure hope so. The story sharing, the ability to drop in on demand, the ability to have faces and names along with sound, are one of the takeaways of positive things we should continue to have. They are nice live look-in’s with some of those that we never see in such an environment; they are a great compliment to the work many do face to face.
So, keep Zooming but let’s make it quality over quantity, especially as the summer goes along. And like with in person events, let’s maybe work a little better not to step on each other’s windows. Scheduling isn’t always easy, but splitting an audience isn’t great either.
