The Sky’s The Limit
Centered around the consolidation and improvement of the fan experience, Sky Sports focuses on enhancing fan engagement both at the venue and remotely. Sky powers the social nature of viewing sports and allows friends to connect for shared experiences in real-time. Its mobile device view allows for the experience to occur right at your fingertips so you can engage from anywhere with customized content.
Advisors
Steve Smith
Executive Director, Sky Sports
Steve is responsible for the overall output on Sky Sports across linear, digital & social channels. Steve works with his Heads of Sport team across all Sky Sports genre channels as well as key senior personnel from across Sky. He helps to ensure coverage is at the forefront of sports broadcasting.
Steve joined Sky Sports in 1994 and has held multiple roles within the company including junior production team member, live football production, and Director where he directed over 1,500 live events for Sky.
David Gibbs
Digital Director, Sky Sports
David currently leads Europe’s leading network of sports and news products and helps distribute channels with millions of users and fans across the globe at Sky Sports. He has spent the past 20 creating innovative and profitable digital media products and services. David has been at the forefront of the creation of some of Europe’s most successful sports product experiences: Sports on Sky Q, Sky Go, Skysports.com, OTT PPV, Sky Sports mobile apps.
James Clement
Director of Operations
James focuses on the planning, long term operational strategy, and ensures the smooth operation of systems, workflows, and contracts within Sky Sports. He ensures that Sky Production Services are better defined, better owned, and efficient while ensuring the future of the sports industry is diverse, fair, and sustainable. Originally from an outside broadcast engineering background, James has spent the past 20 years building a wide-ranging industry experience across live content in light entertainment, Sports, music, and factual which led him to a previous role as Head of Operations and evolved into his current position as Director of Operations.
Innovation Focus
Media & Entertainment
Sports media is becoming a participatory event that extends far beyond the televised slots of scheduled games. Immersive and interactive media is fueling video production and democratization of both production and sports video content is creating entirely new distribution models for new companies that had never even been considered part of the sports media ecosystem.
Business of Sports
Sports organizations are able to extend their brands in new ways, from leveraging cross-platform data to better reaching and understanding targeted audiences. Now, sports teams are focusing more on new forms of business like eCommerce and are enabled to do so with new tools that enhance cybersecurity, data visualization, and even booking platforms that put the power of ticketing in the hands of the sports team.
Venue & Event Innovation
Because fans can watch sports virtually anywhere, stadiums are being built with the latest technology enhancements that can create an unparalleled gameday experience. Now, they’re catching up to the changes in technology to create smart stadiums that are thinking about scheduling, ticketing and merchandising in new, innovative ways. Increasingly, as consumers are also seeing ways that teams are thinking about cybersecurity to protect consumers from ticketing to in-game purchases.
Fan/Player Engagement
The way fans consume sports is changing. With increasing demand for multichannel entertainment and more personalized interactions with both teams and players, fans are getting closer to the action and real-time engagement before and after sporting events. Younger, mobile generations are consuming more and more content on smartphones. Every technology innovation has the opportunity to change and influence the way we experience sports.
