The Business Opportunity for a Digital-First Caribbean Sports Media Brand

Tokyo Olympics & Diamond League as Social Proof

There is a huge untapped business opportunity for a Digital-First Caribbean Sports Media Brand and the social proof showed itself in the millions of Jamaican, Diaspora, and Global eyes that were focused on the Tokyo Olympics, the Diamond League season opener in Eugene, Oregon, and the U20 World Championships.

You only needed to track the many Twitter hashtags that were created and that trended; the Instagram stories and memes generated by individuals deeply engaged with Jamaican Sprint icons and emerging Sprint Factory talent as well as that American female Track & Field agitator now unlovingly called Sha’CantRun.

Thing is, Sports, with a forecasted global industry value set to reach US$599.9 billion by 2025(ResearchAndMarkets.com) has always been social…whether we were watching football, cricket, basketball, or in this case…track & field in real life or now mainly online. We all have our favourite people and teams, know some of their histories, and are already admiring followers defending them all with fan energy tantamount to religion. 

The pandemic has brought about many challenges for sports organizations and events, with the main one being how to connect to, and engage with fans remotely and online, at a time when venues and arenas are closed to the public. The situation has been difficult, but it has also created an abundance of opportunities for content creators and new media companies to innovate and develop new ways of engaging with sports fans and building digital-first businesses.

The fact is most of the venues, communities and the abundance of user-generated content are online. In other words, fandom is more social than ever before. This trend is global but of course also the Caribbean.

The Caribbean Sports Media Landscape Right Now.

So the question I’ve asked myself is, are we going to see one or a few big Caribbean Sports media brands emerge from this fast-growing hyper-digital space?

Because right now what we have is

• the usual traditional mainstream sports news;
• SportsMax is the Caribbean sports tv channel committed to providing primarily international sporting content to the Caribbean that also has SportsMaz Zone a 90 Minutes of Sports Talk, Highlights & Analysis from a Caribbean Perspective on Regional & Global Sport;
• a single radio station focused on Sports which is KLAS Sports Radio based in Jamaica;
• a Caribbean Cricket podcast and now The Drive Phase another podcast based in Jamaica reporting on both Caribbean and Posting news and issues.
• And very recently Sports Chat an Instagram sports interview show, was again created in Jamaica.

But there are no outstanding Caribbean Sports media brands equivalent to say America’s BarStool Sports or The Bleacher Report that have massive regional mind and market share. And therein lie the big business opportunity. And just in time too.

Innovation and the future of Caribbean Sports. So What Could It Look Like?

The sports media landscape is significantly changing globally and digitally-native GenZ and Millennials seem to be driving the following trends:

• Attention moving away fast from apppointment TV is losing share, to OTT /Streamers.
• More user-generateed sports content- videos and memes leading the charge with Tiktok ahead of Instagram.
• Sports fans are devouring content on social media and mobile devices like never before, unleashing stunning potential for sports teams, clubs, personal brands to harvest fresh revenue and for brands to connect with consumers.
• Twitter is fast becoming in the Caribbean the go to place in the moment commentary while viewing streamed sporting events.
• 65% of sports fans turn to their smartphones most often to watch video, with nearly one in four watching video on social media more often than pay-TV (Grabyo Sports Video Trends Report 2019).
• Athletes and sports clubs are also expected to become more active in content production and aggregating this content on new platforms.

Those are the general trends, add to that, the fact that the average age of the majority of the Jamaican and Caribbean population is 30 ( Millennials). So where are the Caribbean Sports Media Brands that are seeking to understand and cater to this large, lucrative consumer market?  

What the Caribbean needs is a Digital-First Caribean Sports Media Brand that thinks Mobile-first, facilitates and amplifies user-generated content and community, social commerce, curates and aggregates sports news, scores, podcasts and maybe even provides a gamification element.

I am very bullish on the business opportunity that is wide open to digital-first Caribbean Sports Media brands. I am Jamaican and so I am biased, but I think that it/they are likely to come from us because we are the one country that has a Track & Field Ecosystem and Culture that dominates attention and conversations globally, even more so than cricket. And having the fastest man and woman alive and in the history books with an influential and global fan base, kinda gives us an advantage too.

The Global Sports Media Industry is already being disrupted big time, everything will be very different in 5-10 years’ time, I expect the same for us here in the Caribbean too.

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