The topic for day 4 of SIW2021 was Sports Business, Media, Technology & Innovation. The day started with a Portuguese spoken webinar followed by a relevant SIGA / ILO Open Forum, on Promoting Decent Jobs For Youth Through Sports. Maja Cappello keynote opened the discussion on digital piracy. Right after, five top journalists discussed the challenges facing the media regarding Sport Integrity.
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Day 3 / Part 2/2
Stage Europe: Macaronesia: Different Atlantic Islands, Common Strategic Goals
(Watch Here – Portuguese Spoken)
Portuguese spoken islands in the Atlantic Ocean combine mystic approach, wonderful landscapes, warm people and a unique passion for the game. So called “Macaronesia” unite Azores (nine portuguese islands between Europe and North America), Madeira (another portuguese archipelago with two islands, closer to the african coast), and Cape Verde, an independent country with ten islands (nine of which are inhabited). Despite natural constraints, these three portuguese spoken regions share common goals on sports integrity. They have a strong commitment about grassroots, playing an important role on compliance and integrity training of the officials, coaches, staff and media.
Separated by the ocean, they remain together in passion and commitment to the game.
Moderated by Rui Almeida, Deputy in the office of the Government of the Azores for Culture, Science and Digital Transition, this panel had the participation of Rui Marote, President, Madeira Football Association, Fernanda Borga, Vice-Presidente, Ponta Delgada Football Association, and Igo Gomes, Representative, ARF Ilha do Sal.
SIGA / ILO Open Forum: Promoting Decent Jobs For Youth Through Sports
(Watch Here)
Youth employment is a pressing global challenge. Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, young people – those aged 15 to 24 – were three times more likely to be unemployed than those aged 25 and over. The COVID-19 crisis has only made matters worse. Sports can play a valuable role in improving youth mental health and well-being. It is also known to have vast potential in equipping young people with key skills for life including teamwork, leadership, communication, discipline and other soft skills. Sports acts as an important medium for boosting youth self-esteem and self-worth, especially among at-risk and vulnerable youth, including young women. This session discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people’s education, employment, mental well-being and rights, with a view to highlighting the positive role sports can play in helping young people recover from the crisis. Young sportspersons and youth working in the sports industry will share their unique experiences on how sports has contributed to their life and the potential of the sports industry in promoting decent jobs for youth.
Eesha Moitra, Youth Employment Officer, International Labour Organization was the moderator of this great conversation, that had the participation of the following panelists:
- Yassin Gai, Associate Officer, International Trade Center
- Veronic Malak, Assistant Women Football Coordinator, Gambia Football Federation
- Susana Puerto-Gonzalez, Senior Youth Employment Specialist, International Labour Organization, and Coordinator of the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth
- Laura Maria Tiidla, Project Manager, International Sport and Culture Association
- Jean Claude Rugigana, IT & Communication Officer, Rwanda National Olympic and Sports Committee
Maja Cappello Keynote: The Fight Against Sports Piracy: Which Remedies?
(Watch Here)
Maja Cappello, Head of the Department for Legal Information, European Audiovisual Observatory launched the first webinar of the day “Game Over! What Europe Needs to do to End Illegal Streaming & Broadcasting In Sport”
“The online environment provides several opportunities for the exploitation of audiovisual content. Rights holders and distributors get access to new outlets, new audiences and additional revenues, but the online world at the same time facilitates the development of a dark side. Commercial scale piracy operations are gaining more and more space. Piracy causes immediate and unrecoverable losses, both of audience and revenues. The issue has been in the regulatory spotlight for quite some time already. A recent self-initiative resolution of the European Parliament underlines that the problem of existing measures is that enforcement comes too late, and calls on a commission to clarify and adapt existing legislation, including the possibility of issuing injunctions requesting the real-time blocking of access to or removal of unauthorized online content.
The European Audiovisual Observatory has been studying the topic for almost a year now, and we will soon publish a comprehensive analysis of national remedies against online piracy of sport content. It is evident that harmonization at European level is still missing. Considering the global outreach of
internet websites and need also for cross-border enforcement activities, the variety if not even the fragmentation of national solutions that have been developed so far could have a negative impact on the development of this segment of the audiovisual industry, and also on the financing of sport activities themselves. Harmonization initiatives are based on the idea that there is an overall strategic objective and a shared vision, so maybe the time has arrived to set up some minimum common standards”.
Game Over! What Europe Needs to do to End Illegal Streaming & Broadcasting In Sport
(Watch Here)
This year the English Premier League unanimously agreed to a proposal to conclude a three year renewal of broadcasting rights for a combined £5bn. Despite such record figures Sport in Europe has reached an economic crisis point due to the severe consequences of the global pandemic. Reassuringly we see spectators slowly returning to stadiums and revenues gradually increasing but we can be in no doubt lasting damage has been done. That being said, we cannot avoid the fact that there are other sports, lower leagues from virtually every nation that were already at economic breaking point irrespective of the implications of COVID. The commercialisation and financial climate of sports has, for many, created an economic ecosystem that is entirely unsustainable when operating in such restrictive financial climates. This brings the issue of broadcasting rights and illegal streaming under ever greater scrutiny. This panel examined the costs and threats of this and considered the opportunities for action to redress the balance.
Moderator Pedro Pinto, Founder and CEO, Empower Sport started the conversation by bringing up a study he read in 2020, that found 89 per cent of fans worldwide pay for a TV subscription at the time to watch sports, but just over half also tuned into pirate sports services at least once a month. That led to a rich debate and consensus on the main issues facing the industry.
Miruna Herovanu, Senior EU Affairs Officer, Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT)
“There are several moving pieces that could provide solutions for more robust measures against online piracy. There was a report that was specific to live sports events, that was adopted by the European Parliament in May, that contained all of the answers that the the commission could envisage for actually limiting the phenomena of piracy in the EU. There is also another legislative proposal that is called the Digital Services Act, that is what we call the constitution of the Internet. However, it is true that the political leaders don’t necessarily have the understanding of the urgency with which such measures are are actually needed. The Digital Services Act is an opportunity to actually revise the e-commerce directive and create more clarity for right holders, and even for end users into what are they and what they are not allowed to do online”.
Mathieu Moreuil, Director of International Football Relations and EU Affairs, The Premier League
“The pandemic has created a whole new environment, and what we have seen in terms of piracy was an increase in illegal streams on our matches during the lockdowns. It has created expectations that content should be more broadcasted on tv and on the internet, so that people should have more opportunities to watch their favorite sports. However, it also created issues around the increase of illegal streams. Hopefully we’ll slowly but surely get out of it. Blocking streams has been successful, literally… It’s been very efficient, and it works very well in the UK. Obviously it requires a lot of work and cooperation with the ISPs. We are grateful we have that cooperation. We have a legal system in the UK which allows for a judge to accept a list of servers which would be infringing, and accept that you know every other week the Premier League comes back with an additional list of servers which obviously are dedicated to piracy. It works very well for us, but I think that’s a very specific situation, because it’s the UK legal system and we have very good cooperation with ISPs. We also have the financial means and human resources to deal with it, because you need to monitor the internet, find the servers, the IP addresses, work with a series of of vendors to identify.”
Simon Brydon, Senior Director, Security Business Development – Sports, Synamedia
“The report Pedro Pinto mentioned was actually commissioned by us at Synamedia, and it included a pre-covered research on pirates, so that pre-covered research identified the rationale of why they pirated, what they spent, where they watched, their rationale, the balance of their legal spend to their illegal spend. What we saw and what we reported on was obviously a big growth in piracy. We have another report coming out about what leads people to their first piracy. In the UK it’s not necessarily Premier League that starts somebody on the route to piracy: It is pay-per-view boxing. The pandemic opened a big window for people to learn how easy piracy is, and for what the high quality they can get, at a much, much cheaper price. We provide intelligence to highlight just how sophisticated these criminal organisations are. This is organized criminal activity, and they’re very sophisticated. We need to highlight the values at stake for sport: our groundbreaking analysis said potentially another 28 billion dollars! People think sports got enough, but just remember how much of that money going into rights owners and broadcasters is reinvested back in sport. This is not a victimless crime, and the the scale of what these sophisticated businesses are doing means we must have the best intelligence how they’re operating. The lawmakers and each jurisdiction need to understand that with live sport we have to act quickly and immediately, within the 30 minutes. We have to make the cost of running these pirate networks more expensive. We have to make it impossible”.
Media and Sport Integrity: Bystander or Agents of Change
(Watch Here)
Is journalism still the 4th pillar of democracy, or are we moving towards a sound-byte global society where attention is limited to the next tweet, snapchat or Instagram post? When journalists sense a lack of Integrity many take significant risks to uncover the reality as they feel a moral obligation to disclose the truth at all costs – but is anyone still listening?
With media companies in crisis, deepened by the Covid pandemic, and the growing influence of sport governing media departments, how do we ensure this mission is accomplished? How do we evolve with the times before the journalist goes the way of the dinosaur? Would media companies survive without Integrity in sport? And what are they doing to be a motor for the change?
José Manuel Delgado, Deputy director of Portuguese daily Sports newspaper A Bola grouped with a luxury panel to discuss Integrity, journalism, and the risks to free press. Is there a future for investigative journalism?
Paul Nicholson, Editor-In-Chief & CEO, Inside World Football
“Probably there is more holding of sport to account than ever before, but i would caveat that with the saying that it’s only held to account on certain issues: the ones that sell newspapers, or sell media; one being discrimination issues, which are front and present for all of us and challenging for all of us, because we all have to reassess the way that we look at that whole area. There’s a whole range of other issues that aren’t held accountable, nor get particularly interesting, specially for people within the business and people within the participation side of it, no matter what level you’re at.”
“There are big issues within football that never get addressed. They get shuffled under the carpet or get played out in the Public Relations realm. That’s the frightening part in the ongoing P.R. manipulation, which is now bigger and better than ever before. While there is more media in the soundbite age that will ask the question, there’s not enough following up of it quite often. It takes months before the big papers and the big media will pick up on a scandal that has been going for in many cases years. We’re seeing that in the US at with the gymnastics scandals. The FBI knew about it, but it took the press to actually bring it out into the open for things to happen. Where was the protection of the athletes? Where were the press when they needed it? Where were the lawmakers when they were needed? Sometimes, at we are doing is asking the questions, not necessarily investigating deeply, just asking the questions because they seem to be the obvious questions. The worrying part is when the questions get brushed under the carpet or don’t get answered at all.“
Bria Felicien, Founder, The Black Sportswoman
“Sports integrity is, from the media perspective, being honest and not chasing trends. In the United States of America there’s a lot of NFL, there’s the NBA, and there’s a lot of brands that are popping up with social media, following sound bites. I prefer to take the opportunity to focus on black women and their lived experiences in the United States and around the world. Historically, and still now, there is a lot of segregation in sports, and in media. In my view, Sport Integrity from the media perspective is shining a light. When i see all the money Liverpool pays to sign a player, I think about the women’s club that gets no investment. Part of my job is to look at this obvious discrepancy, or thinking about the Olympics, and who’s actually benefiting from. Usually black women are on display, but they’re not necessarily getting any financial benefits.”
“There’s a lot of small publications that really don’t have anything to lose. They are very unique and interesting, and more are popping up, looking for their niche, doing interesting things. I really do feel optimistic that things will change, because the state of mainstream media is kind of corrupt, to be honest, and it doesn’t look good.”
David Conn, Journalist and Author, Guardian News & Media
“Journalism and traditional newspapers are in a time of huge financial challenges. Some smaller newspapers have been under pressure because the internet free availability of information has damaged the model where they used to be almost a monopoly of information, and therefore advertisers used to have to advertise in newspapers, which no longer happens. Although, where newspapers and the media are flourishing, there’s tremendously strong journalism that is being done, specially in sport. I think that people can be quite gloomy and think that somehow there was more investigative journalism and more holding the powerful to account at some particular time in the past. My opinion is that currently there’s more holding of sport to account, because there’s just more media sport. One great example is anti-racism. There is a very big focus of those in the media. There’s a big recognition of the need for Integrity and equity. The question may be if that voice gets heard in the general ecosystem of sport as entertainment, sport as brands, sport as a vehicle for gambling, sport as a vehicle for superstars to
to promote products, sport as a vehicle for investors from anywhere to make money for themselves out of the loyalty that supporters have. That’s the big challenge or journalists: to make our voice heard and make our work have impact”
“Investigative journalism does sell papers, because these are the stories that make a big impact. When the papers look back at the year that they’ve had, the big stories that have made the most impact are very often the investigative ones. I have quite a positive view that although there is a lot of financial pressure, which has been very hurtful to smaller newspapers that didn’t have the capacity to withstand it, the major newspapers in the UK they all really still invest in investigative journalism. A lot of holding sport to account is in the news. It’s just in the way that you’re asking the questions, as things are developing.”
“The clubs themselves are very powerful media organisations now, with a very powerful social media. Obviously they’re the ones that are broadcast. They’ve got the superstars, they’ve got the machinery to get their message out. It is a major challenge for the media to be more diverse, to be more representative of current society.”
Sarah Castro, Director, AS Colombia
“We’re facing a moment in time where we are constantly questioning the relevance journalism continues to have inside the ecosystem, with social platforms and the new ways of consuming information. Despite all the obstacles that journalism and media companies face, it is impossible to deny that the audience is still interested in reading, watching, or listening to relevant stories about sports and everything that surrounds the industry. Journalism continues to matter. Because we’re living in historic times, we need good reporters, producers, editors. To understand this unprecedented moment, more objectivity and best practices are needed. We need a journalism that can explain and present the new social context. We’re talking about equity, diversity, social and racial justice, and intersectionality, to name a few. Journalism is still the place where society finds context, different voices, narratives and stories that help us understand the world around us. Information is still power. The power to decide and act accordingly”.
“I think that we’re facing challenges. It’s not talking just about corruption, or the money. There are issues related to a culture in sports that make things hard. I believe media outlets in Latin America are facing the same problems than all over the world. We have to bring diversity to our newsrooms. We have to address issues that are not well. The audience is looking for stories that are not just commentaries. We’re trying to bring stories that can tell the the history of these times that we’re facing.”
“I’m optimistic about the future of journalism, because even if we are facing a transformation of the new dynamics of news consumption, and the relationship between our services and our audience, their responsibility to form and add value to the conversation goes beyond the industry, because at the end of the day experts amplify the transformation of society is undergoing”.
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