In April 2024, the CAA World of Congress of Sports brought together leaders from across the sports industry to Los Angeles for two days of discussion and networking.
The panel A New Era of Content, Storytelling and Innovation featured notable sports heavy hitters, including our own CEO and Co-founder Daniel Shichman, along with Premier Lacrosse League’s President and Co-founder, Paul Rabil, Netflix’s VP of Nonfiction Sports, Gabe Spitzer, SVP of ESPN’s Creative Studio, Carrie Brzezinski-Hsu, and SMAC Entertainment’s VP of Non-Scripted Development, FredAnthony Smith.
Watch the full 30-minute session here:
All panel members agreed that sports media organizations must extend beyond live game coverage and cater to fans’ diverse content preferences across different lengths, formats, and platforms.
“We can’t dictate, ‘Okay, here’s a three-hour game. Lean back and watch it.’ It doesn’t work anymore. You need to see how you touch every fan in every touch point and make sure you get there.”
“Number one is story is king. Number two is to establish a hook. You got to have believable characters with real arcs. Conflict is the big narrative driver of drama. And you have to appeal to emotions. And the last one, it’s got to have a great ending.”
This also means telling these stories exactly how different audiences want to receive them, including the localization and dubbing of content to audiences’ preferred languages.
With the barriers to content creation lower than ever, all panel members stressed the importance of speed, creativity, and innovation. For ESPN and Carrie Brzezinski-Hsu, this has taken shape in the form of strong intellectual property, thoughtful storytelling, and strategic technological partnerships, while Daniel touched on the impact of generative AI in video content creation.