Hernán Donnari de 1190 Sports
For Hernán Donnari, co-founder and CEO of 1190 Sports, sports and sports channels are “a natural justification for cable operator subscriptions, satellite operators, OTT. Sports have become a great resource of value for platforms, whether streaming or linear. But we also have to find mechanisms for exploiting that content that allows for innovation. It’s no longer just about selling the game, but everything that happens around it,” he said.
Donnari believes that sports content can no longer be sold as it was 10 years ago. “Now we have to innovate, we have to learn the way in which sports rights are exploited. I no longer sell just the sports match but everything that happens around it: the press conference, the highlights, the preparation, the training, the goals, and the subsequent interviews.”
He highlighted that it is necessary to know how to approach audiences that are dispersed and consume content differently. “I have to go to all social media platforms, from Snapchat, Twitter to Facebook. All of them have to be approached differently because the 90-minute content goes to some, others don’t. The goals go to some of them and not others. Different audiences are addressed with different languages, different communication codes, and the screen in vertical or horizontal for a phone, for a large TV. All those content cuts have to be made simultaneously and optimize monetization on each of those platforms. It’s super complex, it’s what we do. We’re dedicated to that. We’ve found an exploitation model that allows us to maximize that for leagues and federations and is one of the reasons why our model is thriving and growing strongly in the region.”
Regarding the challenges he sees, Donnari mentions that streaming platforms have created “a huge atomization” of the offer for subscribers. “And that, from the consumer experience, is messy. The disaggregation of content into multiple platforms is dangerous because it generates enormous frustration. I give a lot of value to the aggregator of content.”
He adds that streaming is a mechanism for broadcasting content and what needs to be put back at the center is the consumer experience, whether it’s streaming, linear channel, platform, or through the cell phone. “What I want is to have access to content in the best and most user-friendly way possible. That’s where the challenge for aggregation lies: creating destinations that aggregate the most content and we’ll see that trend in the coming years.”
“Another challenge is piracy. “We try to set up collaborative mechanisms to combat piracy, we invest a lot of money in this and we induce our partners and clients to do the same. This has to be a joint effort. The distribution industry has to take care of it, as well as those of us who generate the content, those who make it available, and also the leagues. It’s a problem that we take seriously. We hire the best solution providers to combat piracy, we interact with all the players in the industry who participate in these anti-piracy alliances, we interact with government entities in each territory where we do business,” he said. He mentioned the case of Peru where the government has been a very useful partner for 1190 Sports. “We have to extend these best practices to other territories and have other players join us. This has to do with the consumer, laws, governments, and the industry in general. It’s everyone’s problem,” he concluded.
