ESSMA Fan Entertainment Workshop: Media rights case in Polish Ekstraklasa
Some sixty members of the European Stadium & Safety Management Association (ESSMA) assembled for the sold-out Fan Entertainment Workshop in Turin, Italy, on 3-4 October. The venue for the two-day event was Allianz Stadium, home of Juventus FC.
Michel Siara, Marketing Manager at the Polish Ekstraklasa focused his presentation on media rights in Ekstraklasa. In 2014, Ekstraklasa signed a six-year deal with MP & Silva for a media rights tender. MP & Silva’s role is both as advisor to the League on domestic rights and the re-seller for international rights.
Ekstraklasa.tv
Ekstraklasa designed its own app, Ekstraklasa.tv, which is available on desktop and mobile. The app consists of several features including goals, highlights of each match, magazines, etc and has over 220,000 downloads.
The app provides clubs the opportunity to highlight their most important messages from their own environment. Ekstraklasa also benefits from having its own digital company that produces all the games and other sports content, giving them total control over the content.
"It was very important to have such an app because the world was in a state of change, with everyone now either permanently on their mobile phones or with constant access to them. Ekstraklasa.tv now boasted some 1.4-million users and averaged 5-million page-views per month. The objective was to continue growing the app and therefore their reach and audience, which they were doing through unique and engaging content, including weekly expert guest interviews."
Michal Siara, Marketing Manager Ekstraklasa
The Challenges & the Future
Moving forward, Ekstraklasa needs to look at how to monetise the service and the app more effectively. They are observing at updating the app, and are currently working together with a telecoms partner to realise more revenue. The main challenge however is to provide the right content, with the right message, aimed at the right target groups.