The second day of the FINA World Water Polo Conference started with speakers from the broadcast world.
International Olympic Committee’s Jochen Farber, Head of Olympic Channel Service, shared his vision of what makes a sport attractive for the screens and what allows nowadays a sport to engage with the youth of the world.
“The experience on the ground, the fans experience at the game is of course very important. Peter Diamond (NBC Executive Vice-President Programming) and the other speakers explained that the venues need to be full, not huge, but full of emotions and focus on the athletes and sport presentation.”
“This is undoubtedly the first thing to look at.”
“Then you have to spread the message across and put it outside to the world. You can either do the big stuff with a costly live TV production or you can choose to do less and focus on a smaller production and prepare smaller pieces that work very well on social media. Putting your event out on social media is key without breaching the TV contract that FINA has put place of course.”
“There are some very easy creative ideas how you can do it and share it across your platforms. There are many ways to engage with your community.”
During his interview with FINA, Farber came back on the importance of creating stars and giving a voice to the athletes was underlined.
“Ahead of the event you can start creating content around the athletes and their preparation. You can do a lot of funny content with the athletes arriving to the venue. You start creating more personal pieces of content that will already allow the public to feel closer to the players. The personalities of your sport will stand out.”
“You can then cross-promote all of this content on all your platforms building up to your events. During the event, you repeat the process with quick flash quotes and first reactions. You put emotions out. And again, the same when they fly home, you can do a recap and ask them about the near future.”
Regarding OTT streaming platforms and in particular FINAtv that was launched days before the 17th FINA World Championships in Budapest last summer, Farber said:
“This is the biggest challenge. The paid platforms are always a big discussion. It would probably work with a huge World Championships or a major international competition but will it work with water polo?”
“The IOC launched the Olympic channel with a clear objective – approaching the youth. We have decided not to put it behind a paid wall because we didn’t see an opportunity to really make money with this. We saw there a unique way to reach to the younger generations and speaking with them and sharing our values.”
“We always offer to FINA and other IFs to use this platform to share their content instead of creating their own. We can easily cross-promote your aquatic content and drive the viewers to your platforms.”