SPORTEL Claims Monopoly of Sports-TV Trade Shows.

Now entering its 11th year, SPORTEL has emerged as the leading sports-programming television market in the world -- bringing together broadcasters, cable and satellite services, distributors, acquisitions executives, producers, event organizers, marketing agencies, sports federations and sponsors from the growing world of televised sports.

Held every autumn in Monte Carlo, Monaco, this year's SPORTEL will be held November 5-8 at its new venue, the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco's ultramodern conference center. Last year, the market attracted 1,484 participants representing 606 companies from 67 countries, a 19 percent increase over 1998. So far, more than 1300 people representing 416 companies from 57 countries have signed up for the 2000 edition. There have been 182 stands sold, an increase of 35 percent over last year.

William Vitale, whose Vitale Communications serves as SPORTEL's exclusive worldwide sales and marketing representative, readily admitted sports programming is still very much "a niche market. On a scale compared to a NATPE or a MIP-TV market, we're nowhere near that size." However, he added, "For sports programming, SPORTEL is really a Who's Who of the sports TV industry. As far as I know, we're the only sports market so we have no competition. In that sense, we're kind of a monopoly." So much so that in 1997, Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, gave SPORTEL the official IOC sponsorship.

SPORTEL was originally created in 1990 as the brainchild of Monegasque journalist Georges Bertellotti and was quickly embraced by the Monaco Tourist and Convention Authority as well as the General Association of International Sports Federations, which -- according to Vitale -- is the parent body overseeing about 90 Federations for all the sports in the world. "They got together and said, 'Look, there's a MIP-TV. There's a NATPE. We don't have anything specifically for sports so why don't we create something?'"

The first marker attracted only a handful of people -- 125 attendees with a dozen stands. But every year since then, the market has grown steadily until it experienced a tremendous growth spurt five years ago that continues to show no signs of leveling off.

"I think part of the growth is due to the fact that since 1990 the industry as a whole has grown," explained Vitale. "There are people coming to the market representing companies that didn't exist four or five years ago. You have new satellite services, new cable systems coming online with deregulation in certain areas, you have new terrestrial broadcasters coming online, you have pay platforms and now in the past two years, we've seen an explosion of dot-coms come to SPORTEL because sports are so much a part of Internet growth. If the Internet TV companies want to participate, if they want to buy rights, if they want to get involved in production and what have you, SPORTEL is the place to meet all of the people involved in those aspects."

In addition, new technologies such as streaming media are beginning to make their presence felt. "That's not a huge market at the moment but there are advertising dollars being spent in that area and production going on specifically for broadband enough that there's something there. Give it another couple of years and it will develop, I'm sure," Vitale predicted.

Not only has SPORTEL benefited from emerging technologies, but from the overall increase in professional sports. "It's still a growing market. For example, extreme sports have become very popular in the past few years -- which historically they weren't -- so now we have a couple of companies that do nothing but extreme sports that exhibit at our market. Every time there is a new wrinkle in the industry -- be it Internet, be it a particular sport or genre that becomes popular -- the producers, the rights holders, the event organizers, the people that distribute the events will come to SPORTEL to buy and sell their wares and we benefit from that. We're kind of riding the crest of that continued growth of sports and we'll see where it takes us."

Although SPORTEL began as and primarily remains a program market, Vitale has noticed "there is now a hardware component to SPORTEL. We've started in the past four or five years to get more and more facilities companies, post-production folks and satellite companies such as PanAm Sat and IntelSat and all of those more hardware and delivery-type systems coming to do business with clients."

Digital companies have also started plying their wares, such as virtual signage companies that project digital billboards onto a screen, which allows for targeted advertising. Because it's virtual, they can have it change for each market where it is shown. While a sports viewer in Germany may be looking at a Mercedes billboard, a viewer in France -- watching the same program at the exact same time -- will be looking at a billboard for Air France. "We don't pretend to be a NAB or IBC in any way," said Vitale, "but that's another area that seems to be growing within SPORTEL."

Due to SPORTEL's continued growth, SPORTELamerica was launched in 1997 as a sister market, although Vitale admits there has been some confusion as to its purpose. "When we decided in 1996 that the SPORTEL in Monaco had grown sufficiently so that we wanted to do a second one somewhere before somebody else did, we thought about having it in the Far East or in Latin America, maybe Brazil or Argentina. We settled on Miami with the idea of bringing more Latin Americans and Canadians to our sports market than might typically come for geographic or financial reasons to Monaco."

Because of its location, many in the industry incorrectly assumed that SPORTELamerica was aimed solely at the Latin markets. "It is true there are a lot more Latin countries at SPORTELamerica than are in Monaco, but SPORTELamerica is by no means the Latin SPORTEL or the American SPORTEL. The SPORTELamerica name really refers more to where it is than what it is. Most of the big exhibitors and many, many of the buyers go to both markets. So we really kind of mirror MIP and MIPCOM. We have a fall market and a spring market. They are equal," asserted Vitale.

"The one in Miami is growing by leaps and bounds and I think in a year or two will probably be literally as big as the one in Monaco. So I want to get away from people thinking, 'Gee, I don't need to go there because I don't do business in Latin America.' You'll see people from India and Japan and wherever. They're sister markets that complement and work with each other very well."

More than anything, SPORTEL intends to bring together the sports-programming community under one roof. "There's a perceived value for a face-to-face meeting that you don't get just doing e-mail business, fax and phones," notes Vitale. "So even for people who don't necessarily come with the prospect of doing deals on-site, there's a value to sit down and start something, move something along or, very often, conclude something face to face."

SPORTEL is used by distribution companies like Puerto Rico-based Sport International to launch new shows. The first series from Sport is a hybrid sports/entertainment show called Thunderbox. Ernesto Akaba, creative director for Sport International, describes the program as being "a combination of boxing, beautiful women and live music."