Advertising News South Africa

Sports conference to maximise ad return

WAN-IFRA is to hold an international conference, Using Sports News to Optimise your Revenues, dedicated to helping newspapers better exploit the value of their sports coverage in Paris on 14-15 January 2010. The conference will present solutions for monetising sports information with readers and advertisers.
Sports conference to maximise ad return

The latest speaker to join the conference is Nicola Speroni, marketing manager at La Gazzetta dello Sport, who will show how the newspaper evolved from an old-style, traditional newspaper into a multimedia brand for sports ‘infotainment'.

In 2005, La Gazzetta dello Sport was a black-and-white newspaper printed on distinctive pink paper. Both circulation and advertising revenues were falling. Its website traffic was growing substantially but not producing significant revenue. To face this situation, they reformulated their approach, carried out deep market analysis to refocus and implement a “radical” new multimedia strategy.

The event is designed for all media that publish sports information: sports dailies, national dailies, regional dailies, online sites, magazines, and others.

Claude Droussent, deputy director general at Le 10 Sport, will chair the conference, which will feature simultaneous interpretation in French and English. Spanish will be added if more than 10 Spanish speakers register.

Other presentations

• Turning yesterday's news into tomorrow's profit - Matt Kelly, associate editor, the Daily Mirror, UK
• Monetizing sports content on mobile devices, with cases studies from the French sport newspaper L'Equipe and Sport.gr, a leading interactive publishing sports network in Greece - Constantine Kamaras CEO of the company will make the sport.gr presentation
• Should newspaper groups use sports betting? - Christian Kalb, founder of CK Consulting, a consulting company specialising in sports and prize games where sporting values are prominent
• Sports coverage: news or entertainment? - by Larry Kilman, director of communications and public affairs for WAN-IFRA, and a member of the FIFA media committee

• Feedback from the first worldwide community site for sports fans, Thefanclub - Jean-Sébastien Cruz, CEO Netco Sports in France.

Full programme and registration details can be found at www.ifra.com/eventsport.

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