For more than three decades, Sportel Monaco has served as the definitive marketplace where the global sports media business convenes to negotiate deals, establish partnerships, and evaluate competitors. Each October, rights holders, broadcasters, streaming platforms, and the technology firms that bridge the gap between them descend upon the Grimaldi Forum in the heart of the principality to buy, sell, and size each other up against the backdrop of the Mediterranean.
That foundational identity is not changing. With the exhibition floor already 80 per cent sold out months in advance and more than 80 exhibitors officially confirmed, the 2026 edition of the summit is shaping up to be as bustling and commercially vital as ever. Industry heavyweights representing every tier of the ecosystem—including Relevent, Two Circles, Infront, LaLiga, the National Football League (NFL), Fifa, ESPN, Sportradar, and Deltatre—are already locked in to attend. They will be joined by familiar tech and media giants such as YouTube, JioStar, Warner Bros Discovery, AWS, and IMG, ensuring that the traditional power players of sports broadcasting will maintain a heavy presence across the venue.
What is fundamentally changing, however, is who else is walking through the doors of the Grimaldi Forum, and more importantly, what those newcomers want to talk about.
Enter the CMOs
The most significant structural addition to the agenda this year is the introduction of the CMO Brand Programme. Designed as a full day of high-level, closed-door panels and curated networking opportunities, the initiative takes place on Monday, 19th October, and is run in close collaboration with Qualcomm as the programme’s main sponsor.
The rationale behind the new track is straightforward, addressing a dynamic that many industry insiders view as long overdue. Historically, Sportel has operated primarily as a media rights, content distribution, and production event. Global brands and their chief marketing officers have traditionally arrived late to the commercial party, entering the picture only after major media rights deals are already signed, sealed, and delivered, leaving them to simply buy advertising inventory or negotiate traditional sponsorships at the tail end of the cycle.
This year, however, the organisers are deliberately shifting the timeline by inviting brands into the conversation much earlier. The goal is to integrate major corporate marketers directly into high-level discussions concerning content creation, audience behavior, data utilization, and the fundamental ways in which a modern sports property’s overall value is built from the ground up.
The timing of this pivot is far from accidental. With the traditional media rights inflation model facing varying degrees of pressure and market correction in certain territories, sponsorship and brand partnerships are increasingly being called upon to carry a much heavier load of the commercial revenue cycle. Sportel’s central pitch to the market is that these vital revenue streams should no longer be developed in entirely separate rooms, but rather engineered together from the inception of a property’s commercial strategy.
The calibre of the line-up assembled for the debut programme gives the concept immediate weight and credibility. Ashish Babu, chief marketing officer at Tata Consultancy Services—whose extensive sports portfolio ranges from sponsoring major global marathons to backing Jaguar TCS Racing in Formula E—leads a diverse roster of corporate heavyweights. He is joined on the panels by Revolut’s Rory Miller Cheevers, Diageo’s Paddy Carberry, who heads up sports marketing for Guinness and oversees its high-profile partnerships with the Premier League and the Six Nations, and Qualcomm’s Garret Ponder, who leads brand partnerships for a Snapdragon portfolio that prominently includes English soccer giant Manchester United.
This quartet represents four vastly different commercial sectors—fintech, IT services, consumer beverages, and microprocessors—all of which are currently betting heavily on sport as a primary engine for global growth. Elsewhere in the programme, another dedicated session will explore sport and brands as a mutual two-way growth engine, while RTL AdAlliance chief executive Stéphane Corbule will lead an expansive discussion on how to fundamentally rethink sponsorship for a modern media age shaped by advanced technology, shifting consumer habits, and digital content proliferation.
The organisers are candid in acknowledging that this inaugural edition of the CMO Brand Programme represents a foundational starting point rather than a fully mature, finished product. Nevertheless, if the initiative resonates with attendees, it has the potential to fundamentally reshape the overarching purpose and scope of what Sportel is designed to achieve.
Tebas Takes the Stage
On the main Speakers Stage, the undisputed headline act of the conference will be LaLiga president Javier Tebas, who is scheduled to sit down for a high-profile keynote interview focusing on the Spanish professional soccer league’s next strategic moves in broadcasting, digital distribution, and global audience acquisition.
Attendees can naturally expect a frank discussion concerning emerging distribution models, innovative commercial partnerships, and new format experiments designed to capture younger demographics. In addition, the conversation is certain to touch upon the persistent threats of digital piracy and audience fragmentation—two critical subjects upon which Tebas has consistently demonstrated he is never shy about sharing his unfiltered perspective in a public forum.
Few executive figures in European soccer generate as many daily headlines, and fewer still possess his willingness to challenge conventional industry wisdom out in the open. His keynote address is expected to set a combative and forward-looking tone for the broader operational debates playing out across the conference floors.
Four Masterclasses, Four Big Questions
The core educational and intellectual anchor of the conference is structured around four intensive masterclasses, each directly targeting a major pressure point currently confronting the global sports media industry.
The first masterclass tackles the rapidly evolving global sports ecosystem, examining how content consumption habits are shifting internationally, how modern businesses are successfully transitioning away from rigid direct-to-consumer (DTC) models toward more interconnected B2B2C frameworks, and how institutional investors evaluate emerging opportunities across the entire value chain. Deltatre chief revenue officer Peter Bellamy, IMG senior vice president Hillary Mandel, and Bruin Capital founding partner Jeff Roth will pool their considerable perspectives to deliver a comprehensive analysis of how technology, media rights, and private capital are rapidly converging.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) commands its own dedicated session, with the industry-wide emphasis shifting firmly away from speculative technological experiments and toward practical, full-scale operational implementation. Sport Video Group’s (SVG) Ken Kerschbaumer leads an expert panel featuring JioStar’s Prashant Khanna, BuzzMyVideos chief executive Paola Marinone, Ekstraklasa’s Marcin Serafin, and SURJ Sports Investment chief executive Danny Townsend. Together, they will place critical issues such as regulatory governance, intellectual property protection, rights management, and audience trust squarely on the table.
Production technology forms the focus of the third masterclass. Following a recent cycle of major global events, including an Olympic Games and a Fifa World Cup, which demonstrated conclusively that top-tier sports coverage no longer requires hundreds of technical personnel deployed on-site, SVG Europe’s Will Strauss will ask what operational model comes next. Weighing in on the future of remote and cloud-based production are Bundesliga Media executive Dominik Scholler, TNA Wrestling president Carlos Silva, LiveU’s Sarah Jakob, and Protocol Sports Marketing chief executive Lowell Conn.
The final masterclass turns its attention to the lucrative and complex world of live sports betting. Bolt6 chief executive Steve Carter, AWS media strategist Paul Devlin, and Sportradar managing director of sports media Patrick Mostboeck will dive deep into the underlying technology powering in-play wagering, alongside the thorny, ongoing challenges of broadcast latency, integrity monitoring, and regulatory compliance that accompany real-time betting products.
YouTube’s Big Push in Monaco
If any single company is making an unmistakable strategic statement in Monaco this year, it is undeniably YouTube.
The video platform has claimed three dedicated sessions on the agenda to outline its expanding ambitions in professional sports. Jonny Keogh, head of UK sports for YouTube, will use his platform to make a persuasive case for placing YouTube directly at the center of rights holders’ broader global distribution strategies. Meanwhile, Pedro Pina, YouTube’s vice president for EMEA, will join LiveMode partner Thiago Tourinho and prominent media analyst Evan Shapiro to unpack the mechanics behind how LiveMode successfully shattered previous World Cup broadcast records, exploring what creator communities and brand partnerships ultimately mean for the future distribution of live sport. A third session featuring sports executive Jason Wachs rounds out the platform’s heavy presence, with specific details still to be announced.
For an industry that is still actively navigating the financial and strategic boundaries of how far to lean into free, creator-led digital platforms, these sessions promise to deliver some of the most practical and actionable insights of the entire week.
Elsewhere across the extensive schedule, specialized case studies presented by industry leaders—including Deltatre working with World Athletics, Pixotope partnering with BBC Sport, ViewLift collaborating with Fisu, and the Esports Foundation joining forces with Warner Bros Discovery—will run alongside collaborative panels featuring Mediapro, Dolby OptiView, Wurl, Epic Clips, Grey Matter Entertainment, and the XR Sports Alliance. The schedule is further rounded out by the return of the popular Pitch Perfect Innovation Contest, highlighting emerging startup technology within the sports ecosystem.
Why It Matters
When one strips away the conference panels, the high-level networking receptions, and the sweeping views of the Monaco harbor, the overarching programme for Sportel Monaco reads almost like a precise cartographic map of where sports media revenue is currently experiencing commercial strain, and where the next waves of sustainable growth are most likely to emerge.
The themes on display tell a cohesive story: traditional brands are stepping up their involvement much earlier in the commercial lifecycle; private capital is actively seeking strategic entry points; artificial intelligence and advanced remote production workflows are successfully cutting operational costs; live betting is deepening consumer engagement; and massive platforms like YouTube are aggressively reshaping global reach.
Reflecting on the enduring appeal and strategic evolution of the gathering, Marine Picoulet, Sportel Monaco’s executive director, notes that the unique value proposition of the event has always rested on its proven capacity to assemble the right decision-makers together, at the exact right time, in the right physical environment.
While the organisation is concurrently looking beyond the Riviera—highlighted by the upcoming debut of Sportel Canada in Toronto, scheduled for 23rd and 24th March 2027 as part of a wider strategic expansion into North America—Monaco remains the undisputed epicentre of the industry. For three days this October, the principality will serve as the focal point where the global conversation about the future of sports media takes place, with the added distinction that major global brands will finally be sitting directly at the table.
