Game Changer: Transforming Sports for a Digital World

[music] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. Thank you for coming so early. I know some of you had a reasonably late night last night. This is the first breakout briefing session of the day. Today our theme is Transforming Sports for a Digital World. There's no doubt that the use of technology in sports is transforming the industry, allowing for the rapid rise of innovations within the sector. I will keep everything quite brief because we don't have a great deal of time, but our distingu

ished panels today will discuss what impact the integration of technology into the sports industry will have on fan engagement and revenue generation going forward. With that, I would like to invite the first panel on stage. [applause] -I think I'm there. Just some very, very brief introductions. I will start at the end. Danny Marti is the head of Public Affairs and Global Policy at Tencent, where he also serves as a member of Tencent America's Management Committee. Next to him, fellow Londoner,

Manoj Badale, who is the co-founder and managing partner of Blenheim Chalcotand of course, the chairman and lead owner of the IPL team Rajasthan Royals. Next to him, very nice to see you, Sandrine Nzeukou-- sorry, I beg your pardon, Nzeukou, who's the founder and chief executive officer of Tessa an Africa focus sports marketing firm. Next to her is Alex Dreyfus, who is a serial web entrepreneur with more than 27 years of experience in the digital space. He is the CEO of Chiliz and Socios.com. T

hen finally Donn Davis, who is the chairman and founder of the Professional Fighters League and the founding partner of Revolution, which is a Washington-based venture capital firm. I thought I'd kick it off really with a question that I hope will appeal to everyone and give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about who you are and what your interests are. It's an obvious one. What are the most promising areas of innovation in sports tech and gaming, and where do you see the greatest potenti

al for growth? I'll start with you Donn, and then perhaps we can go down. Again, I would encourage you to make this a conversation as best as you can and intervene where you think it's appropriate. Donn, I'll kick it off with you. -Well, maybe since I'm 60 years old and was early in AOL, I'll start with an old technology, but technologies, when they go mass market, have the biggest impact. It's all named streaming. We're now connected actually at a mass tipping point of streaming. What we're see

ing in sports is now changing everything. It doesn't matter about your DMA anymore. It used to matter about your local market, and then it used to matter about your regional broadcasting market. This is the first year they're more streaming than linear viewers in the world. Whether you're in soccer or whether you're in basketball or whether you're in the United States, or whether you're in Indonesia, streaming is your biggest revenue stream as a sports property. It's now at the tipping point tha

t it will change everything, how you're connected to your fans and how your business model is changing. Sometimes the oldest has the biggest impact. It just takes 10 years, and that's this year. -Alex, [?]. -Of course, when he says soccer he means football, the real football. It's important to say that. For us-- not for us, but the way we see the growth and the innovation and technology and how it's going to change fan engagement and most importantly, fan monetization is we believe that most of

sports property are going to become more and more direct to consumer-facing. Meaning that to what said Donn is streaming is one piece of it, but for the last 30, 40 years, fans were passive fan. They were just watching. We believe that the future of fan engagement and monetization is active fan, where a fan has a say to the team, which is what we do, but most importantly where the fans anywhere in the world, from Brazil, from Korea, from Japan, anywhere will be able to engage and actually to eng

age, will have to spend some money in order to achieve that. We think that 99% of sports fans that are not in the stadium, not in the city, not even in the country of the team they support are actually under-monetized. That's where we believe most of the growth is going to come in the next 10 years. -Sandrine, what's your experience or your sort of thoughts on this? I assume you have a particularly fascinating business that you're looking at. -Yes. In an interesting way, Donn, you're exactly rig

ht when you're talking about streaming, but on the African continent, we have a lot of infrastructural challenges. The way that I see it is almost like a release valve. To give you a little bit of context of the cost of data, Africans pay on average approximately 7% of their annual income on data. The affordability of data is a huge, huge problem. Once that is able to be resolved, there will be an influx of interest. An influx of the streaming then can grow in ways that we can see tangible reven

ue. When you're thinking about access to servers, for example, cost of data, those are some of the challenges that we see. In terms of the opportunities for growth, what's really, really special about the African continent when you're talking even specifically about eSports is that the culture around convening is very different. Across the rest of the world, because they have cheaper access to data, everyone tends to play at home. In Africa, that's not the case. They go to video gaming cafes, th

ey're paying approximately $1 to $2 every hour in order to play. It creates naturally this really incredible environment where people are able to stream, but live. They're watching their peers be able to play in person. Once we see some of the cost of that data come down, once we see some games actually building servers on the continent that allows for tangible opportunities to play at the same parity of access to internet, then we'll see I think a tremendous amount of change. -Manoj. -Actually,

it was interesting listening to both Donn and Sandrine there. Sandrine talking about the structural impact of the cost of data. If you like where we have a sports team, which is in India, I do remember that exact moment when Jio came into the market with 5G, brought down the cost of data just what that did to the valuable of all content, including sports content. A bit like Donn, I'm old tech, so I've been building tech businesses now for 25 years. You see all these different waves and you get

asked this question every year. The one I'm going to pick is the tech of this year actually, which is AI. When you ask a question like what's profound, you have to start I think with the definition of profound. For me, there's only two things that really matter in sports. One is the fans and the second is the players. Those are the two most critical assets. Donn's bang on, I think, with fans around streaming and the impact that's going to have, but players is interesting as well. When I look at

the advancement around data and analytics and the use of AI now in terms of predictive modeling, and I look at what we're doing with our teams and the use of data in terms of getting those marginal improvements, I think that's going to be massive as well. The ability of data and the presentation of data to bring fans into understanding what greatness actually is, I think is going to be a really exciting component, the evolution of how we watch and how we perform. -One of the benefits of speaking

last is that you can agree with all the panelists. [laughter] In addition to what was said right now I think there are a number of advancements in the technology space that will revolutionize how we participate and engage in both traditional sports and video game and eSports. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, we'll talk about the whole spectrum as extended reality. We see continued developments in this space that will change over time. As haptic and motion gesture control gets

better, as tracking gets better, as hardware prices go down and become lighter, we'll see more immersive gameplay both in traditional sports and being able to participate virtually as well as in the game space. Cloud gaming is a huge development. Right now you have, of course, mobile, console, and PC. Cloud gaming would allow you to stream high-data games from any device. It could be your mobile phone, right now would not support such a large game file, or your home TV, for example. That will br

ing more people onto the digital space, given some limitations of current console hardware. Then you also have AI, as you mentioned, but AI and game development, AI and game testing, and also in gameplay. Right now we have these nonplayable characters, NPCs. AI will make it more interesting to interact with these nonplayable characters in games giving you a really unique environment. Then the big, big one, which is a precursor to the metaverse, is cross-platform cross-game play. Whether technolo

gy will allow you to take your digital assets and digital tokens from one game to another across platforms. That will bring the digital space together. -Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for bringing us on to that because that is the next topic. I did want to talk specifically about AR and VR. I think it's a hugely exciting space. Talking to some of my colleagues, they're saying, "Well, we think it's probably going to be primarily about a gaming platform." Sandrine, I want to come to you with us because

I think you're going to have a unique perspective. From your point of view, how does this manifest itself in your world? How are we going to see it, particularly in the African continent? -What I would say is that certainly, we're not there yet. We're still in reality, reality. When I was mentioning a little bit about the culture, I think that that's really where the opportunity for innovation is because as we see, generally when you advance in technology when you have all of these new advances

that develop, a lot of times you also see the older forms of technology starts to resurface as well. People value being in person more than they ever have, especially after COVID. When we're able to really see some of those promoters get tangible investments from the private sector and sponsorships from the private sector for them to actually be able to produce these events, I think that's where we'll see a lot of really interesting things start to happen in terms of how do you engage as an in-

person streamer. What opportunities are there in order to leverage your mobile phone to be able to interact with the person playing live right in front of you? I think that's where we'll see some really exciting advancements. -Now let's pursue that as sort of in terms of the business model of this side of things. Manoj, you could talk a little bit about what it looks like for you, the way you're thinking about it. -Look, AR and VR, it's a bit like Donn's comment earlier about technology comes al

ong, then it takes 10 years to really, really land. I still think we're a bit in that place with AR and VR, personally, if you like, as an investor, someone that's always looking to monetize these trends. That said, it is going to happen, it is going to get embedded. I come back to what are the basic needs that sports fans and sports players are trying to satiate. For fans, it's that engagement. The idea of virtual watch parties, the ideas of being able to bring that live experience into the hom

e, I find that reasonably compelling. On the playing side, again, high performance is all about getting those marginal gains. The sport that I'm most involved in with, which is cricket, one of the things we are looking at, for example, is preparation of players right before they go out to perform. There're some of the emerging virtual recognition technology. We have a phrase in cricket, which is, "Get your eye in," which is all about it takes you a couple of balls to adjust your eye to the posit

ion of the ball. Now, why can't you use that using technology before you go into bat? That's the sort of thing that we are looking at just to get those marginal edges in the game. -Alex, I'm going to come to you on this as well because, again, it feels like you have a very, I wouldn't call it a very different business model, but it's a unique business model. How does it look for you? -Yes. I guess our business is actually to sell digital assets called fan tokens. They're like membership program

or loyalty program that allows fans from all over the world to have a say, feel like connected to their favorite team. One of the thing we looked at as a benefit of being a fan token holder is, can I have access to the VR rights potentially in the stadium or for a match? I don't have the answer to that because what's going to be interesting first is the technology is objectively not here yet either to broadcast, but most importantly to [?] and watch it, but most importantly is who's going to own

the right? Is it the league? Is it already part of the TV packages that the TV are buying, et cetera? Is there a shift in the 10, 15 years about TV rights where it's going to become more of a B2C model or D2C model because VR rights will be more team-based rather than league-based? I don't know. I don't have this term, but for sure it's going to be interesting. -Donn, your thoughts on that. -I won't be surprised. All the companies I've been involved in, it's always about taking technology and m

aking it invisible or easy for the consumer. Whether it's America Online, whether it's DraftKings, or whether it's Professional Fighters League, it's only about growing the audience and growing the engagement. It's not about technology itself. For example, at the Professional Fighters League, we're the first to have the SmartCage. It's sensors in the glove, motion capture cameras, but all that does just give you punch speed, kick speed, real-time odds on who's winning, fan engagement on the scre

en because MMA is a sport that 50% of the people who watch another sport don't yet watch. PFL now has all the fans of UFC, but 50% of the fans that watch soccer or basketball or hockey or football. That's because of technology just making it, "Oh, that's what's going on inside this cage." Whether it's VR or any other technology, I think it's important to remember, no consumer fan cares about that. They care about, how is this game more interesting. How do I understand more what's going on here?

How do I engage with this more? The more you make that invisible or easy and bury it and bring the features to the top is the win. -The expectation, as far as I can see, is that that is now the norm. It's no longer something special. The expectation is just out of the package. -It is, but too many times people say, "Cool technology, let's get to AI, let's get to the metaverse." That doesn't win in sports. What wins in sports is that yellow line that shows me the first down, the ball and strike w

ith the pitch speed. These things that now become, "Oh, that's how I enjoyed this game." The very few aha features, those are the winning features, not this futuristic stuff that 25 years from now will be the yellow line or will be the ball and strike. That's I think what we're always trying to do with PFL, because right now we're 50% of UFC's audience. Nobody in this room had heard of PFL probably before this morning. That's because our product is so engaging, bringing in regular sports fans to

say, "I wasn't a big MMA fan. Huh, this is pretty interesting. I understand what's going on here," because the simple ways we use technology to explain what's going on this fight. -One of the challenges, I think with technology is that it's has to maintain the connectivity as Donn was talking about. Sports is fun because you do it with friends, you do it with family, you do it as part of a town, a community and technology just can't be cold and sterile. Part of the advancement is, how do we kee

p that connectivity in the digital space. I think it's one of the reasons that video games has succeeded the way it has because it allows you now in these massive multi-player online games to connect with your friends, your colleagues, your family, and stay online to play a game. In many of these games, you can now stay after you play and participate digitally in a music concert, for example. It's that socialization that I think will be key to have some of these technologies really take off. -Go

od. Well, I'm going to probe a little bit more. We're still in the theme of the business model, but I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on how technology is transforming sponsorship and brand partnerships and this sort of area because again, it is changing, but how is it changing? I'm sure you will each have your own view. Well, Donn, let's start with you. -Sure. I would separate from teams and leagues because the Professional Fighters League, we're a league. The players are under centr

al contract to us, and all the decision-making is centralized, so we can be way more innovative. If you're just a team, you're part of a league, there's a collective bargaining association, so you need three people to sign off at the EPL, you need one person to sign off at the PFL, so we can do things that are way more innovative. We were the first partner ever in America for Socios three years ago. Those are the kind of things we like to do. We integrate. I would use just two words to answer yo

ur question. We integrate. Most sponsors still today buy 32nd ads. As weird as it seems 85% of the sponsor spending in sports is a 32nd ad on TV. That's insane, 85%. If you want to talk about something that should change rapidly, that should change rapidly. We integrate. Somebody comes to us like Anheuser-Busch, Bose, two big sponsors of ours, we say, let's not sell you a 32nd ad on ESPN, how do we integrate your message in every other way? We rip out a white piece of paper and let's say, let's

do everything you've thought of other than a 32nd ad, and that's where we start. Integrate would be word one. Some of that has technology, but some of it is just creativity. The second word is global. Almost every brand today is global, yet they're still having to knit around and buy these 32nd ads in different markets. When you start to take streaming plus integration and take that message global, everything changes. I really come at this once again by integration and globalization, and forget

the 32nd ad, and then sponsorship will change dramatically. -Alex, you're doing this as well. What do you think? -We are on the other side because we are the buyers. We sponsor, I think, like 100 sports property all over the world, even though the term sponsoring is not the right one because we are partners, whatever that means. We work with football teams, soccer teams, NBA teams, NFL teams, PFL, Formula 1, et cetera. We learn how to work with these properties to try to promote our brand and ou

r product. I'd say that sports is probably one of the last industry that hasn't been disrupted for the last 30 years from a technology point of view, and it's probably the one where we can be all collectively be the most creative in the next 10 to 15 years, I hope at least. The game will most likely never change, except on the PFL, for example, where the gameplay is different. In most traditional sports, the game is not going to change, but the way we consume it will be. Therefore, the sponsorin

g or the way these models will evolve will change as well. -Sandrine, you are the marketing expert. How are you thinking about it? -Sponsorship is a bit different in Africa because a lot of people still see sports across the continent as a civic endeavor and don't really quite understand the business opportunity that's there. What's happened over the course of the past two to three years has been really incredible. We've seen the NBA create the Basketball Africa League, we've seen NFL create NFL

Africa. F1 is looking at South Africa for a potential F1 race. Some of these major entities are really entering into the African market in a meaningful way. PFL is one of them. I'll get back to that, I have a question for you. In a really beautiful way, we're seeing these big brands who are coming into the content and it's forcing the private sector to have to adjust, to have to recognize it as a business opportunity, and little by little we're seeing sponsorship grow in a really, really incred

ible way. I really wanted to touch on something that you said, Donn, and ask you a question because, first and foremost, you mentioned that we probably haven't heard of PFL since this morning, but I would say, hopefully, a lot of us have heard about the news in the past week and a half. It's incredible. For those of you that are not familiar and I'm a little bit biased because I'm also from Cameroon. The former UFC two-time heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou just signed with the PFL in an incr

edibly groundbreaking deal where you have an active athlete who now not only has equity in the business but also has a management position in helping to grow a new sector of your business, PFL Africa. It is incredibly innovative, and I would love at some point to also hear your thoughts around how you see leveraging PFL Africa in order to grow sponsorship on the African continent and how you're really thinking about that. -Love to, and I'll just add two sentences on it right now. For everybody w

ho didn't see it, last week will be the week that MMA changed the entire market. It's the first major free agent in MMA history. We all remember when free agency changed in baseball or in soccer. [laughter] Last week was the first major free agency, the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world left UFC to come to PFL. He wasn't happy there, it takes leadership and courage because rarely do you get the best to also be a leader to show the way to others. What he wanted to do is be able to b

ox not just compete in MMA. He wanted to open up his entire country to MMA in a way that was aligned with our vision. He wanted to be the executive chairman and have a real hands-on role in building that business. He is an equity owner of that business for real. We talked 15 minutes on his economic deal. For 18 months, UFC couldn't come to agreement on his pay per fight. It took us 15 minutes. He said, "They offered me x, will you pay me x?" We said, "Yes. Done. What else is on your mind, Franci

s?" It was everything else that he wanted to accomplish for other athletes, including minimum pay for his opponent to make sure his opponent was legitimate and strong. Last week is the beginning of the change of the MMA market and the opening up new territories, India will be next, Africa will be next, and the true development of those markets. Thank you for pointing it out, because even though the panel is on technology, innovation in these young sports, because MMA is a 25-year-old sport, socc

er is a 150-year-old sport, baseball in the United States, 160-year-old sport. We all take for granted how much change has happened in those sports to empower the athletes and to give them control and freedom that hasn't happened in MMA until last week. Thank you. -Thank you. Manoj, talk a bit about, back to the sponsorship and branding and so on, how does that manifest itself? -I don't want to talk about brands, but I want to find out how I invest in MMA. [laughter] The answer to your question,

and Donn alluded to this, is that the rate at which we answer your question is in the hands of marketing managers and the marketing director, the brand managers in the big corporations, because right now there's a lag. There's a big lag between what you can do and what we are doing. There's no technology issue as to how you get deeper integration, how you get greater content integration. To Donn's point, we still find, particularly in India, actually, that most companies see sponsorship as a me

dia buy. Until they make the leap that a lot of brands have, which is you should be spending four times what you spend on the front of the share on the activation of that front of the share, then the technology is all there-- A good example for me as someone like Red Bull. Red Bull as an organization have been lightyears ahead of other brands in terms of how they use sport to promote their brand. Whatever you think of their brand and their product, you have to admire the way they've used content

, the way they've bought properties, the way they've worked with their own Performance Centre, which is an incredible facility in Salzburg. Their depth of integration into the sport. recognizes that unless you do that, you don't get the return on investment they seek. -I'll shift the focus just a bit. If we look at the history of marketing, of branding, it's been fairly static over time. Print, can be newspaper, magazines, billboards, et cetera, then you had TV, but still static, you're just see

ing something. Then we have the birth of the commercial internet and there's a little bit more excitement in the space, but it's still a largely sit back and watch. I think in video games, we're now seeing a much more interactive engagement with brands than we've ever seen before. In some of our largest games, we have a number of household names from automotive to luxury brands to footwear, apparel, et cetera, where you can drop a pair of sneakers in a video game and your player can wear them. Y

our favorite shoe. You can have a car, a test drive that's about to be launched, and you can be driving it in a game. You can also crash it, you can go off a cliff. You can do a lot of fun things with it. Brands are now trying to experiment, how can we work closely with consumers so they feel a connection and can interact with our brand in new and meaningful ways? -Thank you. This will be the final question. We are almost out of time. We have a few minutes still. I felt I should be obliged as a

representative of my profession to ask, we're natural warriors. What's the greatest risk here? What keeps you up at night? What worries you? We all get very excited about innovation, the integration of tech. There are always risks associated with every change. What worries you the most? Perhaps, Alex, we'll start with you on this one. -It maybe perhaps isn't the right answer, but I'm genuinely not worried. I'm genuinely not worried. I think the upside is incredible when it comes to the African c

ontinent. When we are able to really help to resolve some of those infrastructural problems, I think we'll see a massive change in the adoption of gaming. We have approximately 186 million gamers on the continent right now. It's approximately 16% of our population. That number has doubled in the past 5 years, and that's not with advancements really in terms of the cost of data. When we start to see some of those things change, it's just going to explode. We see in a lot of different instances in

India, there were approximately-- in the span of 6 years, there were approximately 20 YouTube accounts that had a million followers and after-- or a million subscribers, excuse me. Then after 6 years, because the cost of data went down, there were over 1,000. That was simply just because of the cost of data. We are really encouraging people in the private sector to start positioning themselves to get ready for that change because, once it happens, I think you'll see a really, really incredible

way of interest and growth. -I think in soccer slash real football, one of the biggest risks with the technology is how you balance so-called legacy fans, the people that are in the stadium, been there for 100 years, and the new casual fans that are more global, that are less exclusive to one sport or to one team. You need to keep in mind that actually, a football fan is a fan of 4.6 team average. That's true for most of casual fan, but that's less true for the fan that lives in Liverpool and br

eathe only with his own team. The balance with the technology, how you enhance and empower somehow international fan and more casual fan without alienating your traditional fan base. That's going to be a big challenge. -Do you have some initial thoughts on how you're going to do that? -Absolutely not. [laughter] I do have a little bit but-- No, it's difficult because in our case, we give power to fans that are everywhere in the world to have a say in their favorite team. I'll take Juventus as an

example, in Italy, fans all over the world were able to vote for which music do you want to have in the stadium every time there is a goal. It sounds silly, but for eight years, it was the same music every time in the stadium, and now for the first time, it's this. PFL we were able to vote on the fact that you were able to choose actually the-- How do you call that when the players fight against each other? -The matchups. -Yes, exactly. The question is, does a fan in Korea, Japan, or in the Mid

dle East, should be entitled to do that versus someone who lives in the city of the team? For us, we do believe so, but I understand that sometimes it can be frustrating. -Thank you. Danny, what are you worried about, in general, but specifically on this question maybe? -I share my panelists' excitement for the future, but clearly, the debates of our time right now is how does generative AI impact and affect the creatives in our society. What happens to the writers' positions, the movie makers?

I think it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that as technology continues to advance that we do so responsibly, and we make sure that technology can certainly aid in our storytelling or engagement and doesn't displace this creative sector. -I think there are two things that worry me or that I think about a lot. One is something we think about with all of our tech businesses, which is data privacy. In sports, organizations are going to be gatekeepers, some of the most valuable data in the w

orld over the next 10 to 15 years, and with that comes a great responsibility. I think the sports industry has to catch up to some of the standards of data protection, data privacy, data regulation that we take for granted, for example, in financial services. That's one thing. The second, which we haven't really talked about, is the role of the governing bodies. We have to recognize that sport, certainly the biggest sports and cricket is the second most popular sport in the world, the governing

bodies are still the gatekeepers of an awful lot of what's possible for players, what's possible for fans, and what's possible for teams. Until the governing bodies embrace technology change that we talked about today, at the rate that they need to, until they understand what's possible, and bake that into their rules, bake that into their presentation, bake that into their production, bake that into their fan experience, actually, we're somewhat constrained in terms of what we can do as outside

investors and outside team owners. -Donn, the final thought for you. -I think most people hear the entrepreneurial spirit in our builders. For us, technology and innovation is the only opportunity. It's the only opportunity. -I'm going to draw the first panel to a close. Obviously, we've not had a great deal of time, so I would encourage you to come and introduce yourselves and have a private conversation. Most of our panel have come an awfully long way, so please take advantage of that. Otherw

ise, thank you very much. -Thank you. -Thank you. [applause] -We will be going straight into panel two. If I could ask the members of the second panel to come up. Thank you very much. I'll say a few words quickly, as they're coming up. Our next theme is the future of mega sporting events. Obviously, interest in signature and sports mega-events has emerged as an increasingly important component of local and national development agendas. As emerging nations have increased their investments in prod

uctive infrastructure and human capital, attention has focused on the role of large-scale sporting events can play in advancing social and economic outcomes. I would like to welcome our second batch of panelists. Thank you very much for coming. [applause] -Let me introduce from left to right. I suspect you need no introduction, but anyway, Nasser Al-Khater is of course- [applause] -[laughs] - among many, many roles. I suspect you know him best as the CEO of the FIFA World Cup, Qatar 2022. You wi

ll have seen some of the legacy is unavoidable. He was, of course, responsible for leading all aspects of the planning and delivery of what was the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East. Quite an achievement. Next to him, 14 hours journey, I believe. -That's right. -Eric Johnson, previously served in the Texas House of Representatives, and is currently the 60th mayor of Dallas, Texas. He's one of the youngest mayors of a major American city. Then finally, again, an awfully long journey f

or you. Thank you very much for coming. Jane Castor, was the first woman to serve as chief of police of the Tampa Police Department and is currently serving as the 59th mayor of that wonderful city in Florida. -Thank you. [applause] -I'm going to open up with a question that I suspect you will have a view on, I hope from different perspectives, but given that we are now post-pandemic officially, what should we expect from in-person sports events this year and as we go in the years ahead? I know

you've all had very different experiences, but perhaps I could start with you on this. -Well, I think what we're going to and have been seeing is the growth of these mega-events, and the stadiums are getting bigger and bigger. Our football stadium handles about 74,000 individuals. Our hockey, just over 26,000. You can only fit so many people in there, so how are we going to provide that experience to the growing fans and to ensure that our sports grow in our community? I really do think that tha

t is the future of these mega sport, is to make sure that we're connecting with the fans in the experiences that they want, and those all differ. It's not just that in-person experience at the stadium. -Well, first of all, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be here, and thank you so much for having me here today. I represent a city that I would say is sports-crazy. We're sports-mad. We love our sports in Dallas. I think that's actually true of our country. The United States is pretty spo

rts-obsessed country. I don't just think that the future of mega sporting events is bright, I think the future of sports, period, is pretty bright from the perspective of the United States, and really, for three main reasons. The first I think is something that we learned coming out of the pandemic, which is, we are social creatures. Human beings, we like being around each other. When we couldn't, during the pandemic, that was hard. We struggled. Our city was no exception to that. When we were a

ble to get back together again, we did so with a lot of fervor. We realized how much we miss our sports. I think the increasing social isolization, isolation and the lack of opportunities to get together generally. The pandemic was a really glaring example of that, but so is remote work, and so is all the prevalence of online shopping, that we're losing opportunities to get together, which actually interestingly enough, I think is driving an interest in, and only going to help sports and in-pers

on sporting events going forward. I think as the world, and certainly, countries become wealthier as disposable incomes go up. I think Sandrine, in the last panel, talked about this a little bit. As people have more disposable income, and they have more leisure time, they're going to need things to fill that leisure time with, and they're going to have the money to spend on sports and entertainment. I think sports stands to benefit from that. Then I think the last thing that I think about, in te

rms of what's driving sports and what's going to continue to drive it, actually might be bigger than the sports themselves. That is the increasing legalization of gambling in the United States, and more jurisdictions allowing that is actually going to drive the need for content and for products for people to actually be able to wager on. I think we're only going to see an already sports-crazy country get sports-crazier. I see all the winds blowing in the direction of increasing popularity of all

types of sports. You had a representative on the last panel who has a cricket team. We're building a cricket stadium. It's going to be the largest in the United States, in the Dallas area. Pretty much every sport I see has a lot of growth potential in the United States. -Good. Eric used the phrase sports-crazy. I think that could be applied to Qatar. I think that's a fair assumption. What's your view? I mean, you've organized one of the world's biggest events. How'd you see it going forward? -F

irst of all, I'd like to start by saying thank you very much for inviting me to be part of this panel. It gives me great pleasure to be here with you, and to be able to share some insight with our friends and colleagues from the United States. They'll be hosting the 2026 World Cup. I have to say that in my opinion, the Middle East is specifically a football, soccer, sports-crazy region. I know that it's the fastest-growing sport in the United States right now. Well, I think now it's competing wi

th paddle. I don't know if paddle's growing in the US, but definitely, in this part of the world it is. I know that football, soccer, in terms of Little League is the biggest sport. Something needs to happen between Little League and university, to see why it doesn't continue. What's interesting is, that's happening here in the context of COVID, we were the first major global sporting event to take place in a post-pandemic world. We were glad to see and have it behind us by that time, but we saw

that people were hungry for sports. We saw that people really, there's something innate in people that just makes them gravitate towards sports. The future of sport is very challenging. I mean, the panelists before us spoke about creating content, becoming more engaging. What's happening with sports is similar to what's happening with how people consume news. There's so much competition between sports. It's becoming more global, it's becoming more accessible. Sports, news, entertainment, are al

l competing for people's attention right now. The other thing that's happening with sports is sports are becoming bigger and bigger. If we look at the World Cup, they've increased from 32 teams to 48 teams. It makes it very challenging for countries to host these mega-events. Now only bigger countries, like the US, can host 48 teams because they can spread them amongst many cities, and smaller countries where the sport is big, it becomes a lot more challenging for them further. I think these are

some of the challenges for major sporting events going forward, but what we see also is interest is growing in the NBA. Interest is growing in the NFL in different parts of the world. They're also thinking about how to globalize a sport that was traditionally a one-country sport. There's interest in football in Argentina and England and so forth, but now it's becoming global. This is how I see the future of sport. -I did want to touch on something because a lot of the focus is always on the eco

nomic side of sport, but I'm also interested in the, I suppose, the cultural, the social, the political ramification of these things. Eric, perhaps we could start with you and your thoughts on that, and how you think about it in terms of your current position. -I think that sports has an ability to bring communities together, obviously. That was referenced in the previous panel. It's true. Such an important part of sports is communities coming together to have something in common to cheer for. A

gain, we're running out of, we're-- I feel like we're not gaining more opportunities to come together as a society, and we're losing them. In the name of convenience and with all the technological advances, which are so great. Everyone has got an iPad or a tablet, everyone's got a smartphone and they can do all their shopping from home and they can work from home. We need more. From the perspective of a mayor, when you're trying to mobilize the community to do great things, you're trying to grow

a city, you're looking for opportunities for folks to come together. Mayor Castor is a perfect person to have on this panel with me, because for example, it's not for no reason that every time one of our professional sports teams is in a championship game or a conference final, that we do these mayoral wagers. We actually will bet something with each other, and the media picks up on it every time, and it gets widely reported because what we're trying to do is we're trying to give our residents

something to come together around, and to be excited about, and take pride in being from Dallas or take pride in being from Tampa. It really does contribute to a sense of belonging to a community and taking pride in it. These efforts to attract these large events like a World Cup, it brings our whole community together because we have to sell our city, and we have to sell our region, our part of the world. You really can't even buy the kind of civic pride that comes from an effort to attract a W

orld Cup final, which is what we're trying to do. We know we're going to get a game, and as you mentioned, there is an economic benefit to that. I think they're estimating that every game brings $400 million of economic impact per game. That's pretty significant, but really, the real lasting benefit of the effort is it brings our community together. It shows us that we can come together for a World Cup, which means we can come together for a bunch of other things, too, that have lasting signific

ance for our community. It's bigger than just the game itself, for sure. -I couldn't agree with that more. Especially when you look not only in our country but around the world with the political divisiveness. There is nothing that brings people together like a sporting event. It doesn't matter who you are. You are going to cheer for your home team. We won recently, Super Bowl and two Stanley Cups, and those are just-- -One against us. -I know. I didn't want to bring that up, but we did. -You di

d. -We did win the bet. Even then you talk about culturally, and just keeping it within the United States right now, but also to talk about it globally in just a second. If you look culturally to Texas and Florida, the two hottest states in the United States, there is no snow-- Sometimes in Texas. There is no ice, but we are rabid hockey fans. I've never been on ice skates in my life. Just the way that that brings you in, and to be able to share that culture that comes with that, and also when y

ou look at it globally, when you talk about soccer, that we refer to as, others refer to as football. That too, comes with a different type of culture and a different type of fan base that we can learn about other countries, and again, just shortens that distance between cultures, between nations, between political parties, to bring everyone together to cheer for their hometown team. -You've done this on a scale that I think is almost unimaginable. In terms of the soft power piece of this, how d

o you think about it? -I think depending on the country that's hosting this mega event, and depending on its objectives, and where this country is in its history, they can use mega sporting events to drive political agendas, to drive social change, to drive economic change, and I think Qatar was positioned in a way, back in 2009 when it won, first of all, Qatar was known for our country for its oil and gas. I think there's a lot more that it can deliver. A part of the national vision, which was

put in place in 2008. A 30-year vision was put in place in 2008, and in 2009, Qatar won the rights to host the World Cup. Obviously, the first thing that we looked at was, how do we drive and accelerate progress to be able to achieve this vision. A lot of it had to do with infrastructure development, a lot of it had to do with the diversification of the economy. A lot of it also was driving towards a more sustainable future, whether that's environmental, whether that's social. We said, "How can

this World Cup contribute to this vision?" It became more than a sporting event. It took another dimension of becoming this massive event that people in Qatar rallied around. On the soft power, we saw that it worked against Qatar because, for one reason or the other, which many people in this room were witness to, Qatar was attacked over 10 years on issues such as migrant welfare, workers' welfare. These are issues that many countries deal with, but Qatar being a small country, Qatar being a cou

ntry that many people considered was not a traditional footballing country, felt that there was a need to highlight these points. We saw that it accelerated a lot of social change. It accelerated a lot of economic diversification. This gave this World Cup this opportunity to become a point of dialogue, a point of issues that can be raised. For us, I think this took a very, very strange dimension, and it helped people of the region, not only Qatar, rally around this World Cup because people felt

that this was speaking and reflecting the region and speaking on behalf of the region. It was at a global stage, a global size in terms of the sporting event, but also in terms of the dialogue, and a lot of the issues that were discussed around the Middle East that came to the forefront and really brought it towards an audience that doesn't really discuss political issues because they focus on sports, traditionally. -I should ask. Since we're all here, Dallas, as we know, is going to be a host c

ity for the 2026 World Cup. What advice would you have for Eric? [laughter] -Given your experience, what advice would you have for Eric? -To both the honorable mayors that are with me here on the panel, I think you really need to define what your city or your state wants to achieve. I think Qatar really wanted to become a hub for tourism, and saw that this is an amazing opportunity. The advertising value that the World Cup brought and the communication value that the World Cup brought was $2 bil

lion. You need to spend $2 billion to be able to get the kind of exposure that Qatar got during the World Cup. For us, the objectives were clear. In 2009, was to accelerate all the infrastructure development. In 10 years, we saw brand-new airport, brand-new port, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of highways that were put in place, metro system. Really, these are all tools of communication and tools of improving trade. Tourism was a big part of it. If Dallas wants to improve its tourism offeri

ngs, or if it wants to really be known not just as a state that has a lot of Exxons and oil and so forth. Dallas is a beautiful city, and Dallas really wants to improve on its tourism. How do you utilize the World Cup and really work on making sure that they can attract people from not only the United States, but internationally. Which means that, is there a way that Dallas or Texas or the other host countries, host cities, can they influence easing the visa approval process for people who have

tickets to come to the World Cup? If a state wants to really improve on its infrastructure and wants to-- They need to think about where they stand. For us, we drove the environmental agenda here. We said that this needs to be the most sustainable World Cup ever. We generate 800 megawatts of solar energy right now. Did the World Cup have anything to do to accelerate this? Yes, it did, because it was a commitment that we made in 2009. These are just some examples of what we achieved outside the r

ealm of sports. -That's interesting. That brings me on to the next question, which is back to the economic aspect, I suppose. When you're thinking about these events, it's a question for all of you, what strategies are you thinking about to get the maximum leverage economically in terms of development? How do you think about it? -You can think about the event itself, or as was stated, you have to decide what that overarching goal is. For us on a much, much smaller scale, with hosting Super Bowl

or Stanley Cup playoffs, for us, it was to put our community up on the world stage and show what we had to offer. We don't have any issues with tourism. We have a lot of tourist in the Central Florida area, with Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg beaches, entertainment locations, but also to show that what an incredible city we have in Tampa. With the NFL, we hosted a Super Bowl 55 in 2021, right during the pandemic, coming off of that. There were a lot of issues associated with that. We were able t

o have all of the events associated with the NFL, the NFL experience, the entertainment, the cuisine. We were able to have that along our Hillsborough River, which winds right through the middle of our town. We had the opportunity to show what an incredibly gorgeous city that we live in, but then we were also able to attract businesses to our diverse economic portfolio. We literally had businesses and individuals that moved to our city, just because they went to the Super Bowl. They said, "We ha

d no idea." Show off our port, one of the largest in the nation and geographically import and export, our incredible airport. All of the things that we had that we could share with the world. You have to be incredibly intentional about it. You can't assume that everybody is going to see that when they get to your city. You have to think about how many different ways you can deliver that message. Through social media experiences, through the news coverage, through sports, through individuals that

come to visit and take that word back. There's a great deal of effort that goes into putting on these large-scale events that don't just associate with the ground level. Making sure that it's safe for the patrons, the fans, to go to making sure that it runs on time. All of that. There are so many other aspects that you have to take advantage of because it's one-time opportunity. -Eric, similar theme. How do you sustain that momentum? -If you Google this, you'll see that this is a true statement

. There are more hotels rooms, hotels under construction, aggregate number, in Dallas, Texas, right now than any place on planet Earth. That's a fact. I don't think it's coincidental that we're competing for a World Cup final, and that's a true statement. I think that those two things are related in some ways. My point is, is that the process, the actual competition itself, for these large sporting events, if you really think about it from the perspective of a mayor, a leader of a municipality,

a leader of a metro area or a region, it's not really about sports at all, at the end of the day. These are check-ups on the health and vitality of your community, because in the process of competing, not only do you find out what you're really great at, and what you're marketing yourself as, you find out what you're not so great at and where you're losing the competition. You find out how short you are on hotel rooms compared to other major cities. You find out how lacking you might be in certa

in types of infrastructure. How wired is your city? How connected is your city? You find out about the mobility challenges of your area. You find out in a metro area like the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area where there are gaps in transportation needs and how hard it might be to get from Arlington, Texas, to Dallas, Texas, to Frisco, Texas, and around the metropolitan, and you have to address those or you don't win. The net benefit of the process is you had to build it and do it to compete. Whether

you win the game or not, that infrastructure is there. It's in the ground once you've built it. That mobility has improved. Those hotel rooms exist. So, you win even when you lose, when you do it the right way, which is when you are responsive to the competitive process, and you do all the things that you need to do to compete well. Again, I've been playing sports, and been a sports fan my whole life. I love sports, and I think like I said, it's got all the wind at its back right now. I think t

hat sports are only going to continue to get more and more popular in the United States for all the reasons I said before. From the perspective of civic leaders, folks who run cities, who are trying to grow economies and create quality of life for real people, the people who live here in Doha, and people who live here in Qatar, benefit still from having had that game, and for having had those games. That's what we're really trying to accomplish here. Yes, we love our teams, and yes, we're all ex

cited about the Dallas Cowboys, and about the Dallas Mavericks, and all these great sports franchises and their storied histories and what it does for civic pride, but there are real lasting benefits. Our residents drive on those roads, and then benefit from that connectivity. Those hotel rooms continue to generate hotel occupancy taxes that help us offset our need to tax our own residents. You can charge visitors a tax that's less that you have to charge the people who live in your town to deli

ver the real goods and services we have to deliver every day. That's police protection, fire protection, water service, in some cases electrical, electricity services, trash pickup, all those things that make a city great, we have to pay for it somehow, and winning these types of events helps us do that. It's a real win-win for us. -I'd like to add to that. I agree wholeheartedly. The things that were left behind in our community continue to pay value each and every day, but I think as leaders,

and Nasser, you probably have a great answer to this. You also have to think about, how do you continue to monetize that into the future. Have you overbuilt the hotel rooms and they're not going to be occupied? Those are considerations when you go for these larger events, too, is that you do want to improve on the levels, with the infrastructure, with the connectivity, with the hotel rooms and so forth, but where is that sweet spot where you haven't gone too far, and now it's going to be a littl

e more of a detriment to your community? -Agree. Nasser, I want to give you the final word on this. Again, you have the experience here. -Sure. I think one of the biggest challenges that we have, being such a small country and expecting between 1.2 and 1.5 million fans is, how are we going to accommodate these many fans? Also, there was the challenge that this World Cup took place in November and December, we were also concerned with, is it the right time of year for the traditional World Cup fa

ns to be coming to Qatar. We had 1.28 million fans, so it was within the target that we've set, and we knew that we needed close to 98,000 rooms to be able to cater to all those fans. We had 50-- At the time of winning the rights to host the World Cup, we had 36,000 rooms. You could see the gap was huge, and it was tremendous. Then we had a whole issue with legacy. What do we do if we build so many hotel rooms? What happens to them then? We tried to find a sweet spot between hotel rooms, existin

g apartments and accommodation, and temporary. I think looking at the hotel rooms that have been built with the plans of tourism, if we capitalize on this World Cup correctly, we should be able to utilize these hotel rooms for tourism six months out of the year. One last thing, and one word of advice, which I think we did here very, very well, FIFA attract their own accredited media. These are media that are really focused on the sport. They go into the stadiums, they go into the media centers,

they report on the sport. We would be wrong to assume that they care about reporting on the city, so we took an active approach of inviting media, creating all the facilities that exceeded the facilities that were provided to them by FIFA. We created tours. We created all sorts of activities around that. We created an extensive program for them just to make sure that the host country was reported on as much as the World Cup. I think this was one of the main elements, and this was one of the main

projects that we really worked on, and we recognized. -Good. -I love that. -Yes. -I'm afraid we're out of time. Thank you all very much. Thank you- -Thank you. --to our panel. [applause] [music]