Talking a good game
FT Live shares the secrets of staging its Business of Football Summit in a hybrid format
The Financial Times ’ events arm ,
FT Live staged its first hybrid conference at the start of March . FT Live ’ s director of event delivery , Daniel Greenwood took to the stage at International Confex to share his experiences of moving The Business of Football Summit from virtual-only to a hybrid format .
The Business of Football Summit took place from 2-3 March . More than 1,000 viewers from over 100 countries registered to watch the virtual elements and as a result , the event generated media coverage of over 900 articles in less than 24-hours .
“ We would never have had that level of reach and media interest without maintaining the virtual elements as journalists from around the world were able to tune-in and report on our content ,” Greenwood told the Confex audience . “ Going virtualonly during the pandemic showed us that a different level of speaker – from former presidents and premiers to Bill Gates and Elon Musk - were suddenly available to the FT brand . Despite now saying that ideally , if you want to come and speak at one of our events , you need to be in the room , our audience ’ s expectations and appetite for big-name keynotes means we can ’ t now close the door on being able to dial-in true A-listers .”
FT Live ’ s hybrid proposition for the Business of Football Summit was to make the first day onlineonly , via the Bizzabo platform and to stage the second day in-person , with sessions streamed live , courtesy of Silverstream TV . Content from both days was then made available to view on-demand via the conference website .
The online-only content featured keynote interviews with former Manchester United defender Gary Neville and vice- president of FIFA , Victor Montagliani , along with panel discussions on subjects such as racism in football , fan engagement and player performance data .
The second day was held at the Biltmore Mayfair hotel in London ’ s Grosvenor Square . In-person panels discussed the future of football , private equity ’ s role in football and investing in talent , while high-level keynotes , including the president of UEFA , Aleksander Čeferin , dialled in .
“ One of our biggest concerns with blending in-person and virtual speakers was around camera angles and eye-lines - where would people be looking when they were on-stage interviewing someone on a screen ? We solved this by fixing monitors next to the camera lens so the interviewer would keep the same eye-line as the interviewee when talking to them on-screen ,” Greenwood said .
Another concern for the FT Live team was keeping the virtual audience engaged at the start and close of each on-stage session .
Greenwood said : “ Our virtualonly events had run strictly to time to ensure we didn ’ t lose any of our online audience but we all know that in-person events don ’ t always work that way . We resolved it by having a ‘ ring-side ’ commentator sitting on the production desk at the back of the room who topped and tailed each session by talking to the virtual audience and ‘ filling ’ by letting them know what was happening and what was coming next . Just having that dedicated person talking to the online viewers removed all of the stress of starting in-room sessions on-time .”
Greenwood concluded his recount of FT Live ’ s debut hybrid conference by saying he was looking forward to analysing both the platform and marketing tech-stack data to understand the audience engagement levels and to see what worked and what didn ’ t .
“ I question how engaged someone sitting at home , watching a conference all day
“ I QUESTION HOW ENGAGED SOMEONE SITTING AT HOME , WATCHING A CONFERENCE ALL DAY WILL BE SO VIDEO-ON- DEMAND IS SURE TO BE REALLY IMPORTANT FOR OUR CONTENT MOVING FORWARD ...”
will be so video-on-demand is sure to be really important for our content moving forward ,” he said . “ As event managers , we ’ re all television producers now and we want our events to look like you ’ re watching FT TV . It raises the game for platforms , while technology providers need to find ways to bring the cost of hybrid down by looking at their pricing models and having cleverer delivery solutions .”