The following are 10 nuggets I’ve gathered from this week’s event to share with you, it was fascinating…

First, some background on the event and participants.

RTS Early Evening Event:

Sport on TV: We’ve Never Had it So Good?

Chair: Owen Gibson, Sports Correspondent, The Guardian

Barbara Slater, Director of Sport, BBC

Barney Francis, Managing Director, Sky Sports

Andrew Wildblood, Senior Vice President, IMG/IMG Media

Bill Bush, Director of Public Policy, Premier League

10 Nuggets to share:

1. Sky Sports is now nearly 18 years old and has recently wrapped up a number of contracts it is proud of including the extended Champs League deal. Its daily mantra is to make today better than yesterday, HD is the norm and 3D is next.
2. BBC continues its ambition to extend its output and the next showcase opportunities are the Winter Olympic 2010, World Cup 2010 and, of course, London 2012
3. IMG observed the trend of alignment between media owners and sports rights holders, with broadcaster moving towards owning, not just renting rights
4. Premier League highlighted that its main focus is maintaining quality as it competes for what it describes as a ‘finite number of eyeballs’ out there globally
5. As part of a ‘debate around ‘listed’ sports, the BBC expressed the view that sport is part of the national conversation with a real social value to be protected and made available to the widest audience where appropriate
6. Sky Sports gives 50% of its airtime to its six leading sports, the other 50% to a further 94 sports
7. BBC plans to continue a focus on flagship events for niche sports, citing the World Gymnastics Championship 2009 as a recent example
8. The Premier League highlighted concerns about piracy, saying that this is not a Napster scenario (yet), but is essential to address, for example to protect quality of product and the 3 o’clock window in the UK as a must-attend for fans
9. IMG said that fast-growing sports are either reliant on patronage or need a national team to win a global competition to punch-through in the competitive sports market
10. The BBC expressed the view that the IOC sees it as an exemplary broadcaster, because it doesn’t warehouse rights but shares the rights as broadly as possible.  It is planning 5,000 hours of coverage for London 2012

Please do drop me a line if there is anything here you’d like to discuss in more detail.