The one-day conference held in Dublin on Wednesday - which was hosted by Servecast, suppliers of streaming media solutions - saw leading experts from the sports industry discuss the delivery of sport over broadband and 3G.
Among the keynote speakers were representatives of LiverpoolFC.TV, Setanta Sports North America, leading online sports advertising agency, Aura Sports, Google Video, The Rugby Football League and Vodafone.
The delegation also heard that the best way to minimise subscriber churn from broadband sports subscription services is to incentivise customers towards annual rather than monthly subscription.
Simon Green, managing director of Setanta US, emphasised the 'Placeshifiting' phenonmenon: "This means having content anytime any place. In the US, this is reflected in the Slingbox which enables users to watch their TV programming from wherever they are by turning virtually any Internet-connected PC into a personal TV. In the US it is selling three times as fast as TIVO did."
According to Green, one potential problem for broadcasters is that national territorial rights deals could get eroded.
He did add, however, that broadband subscription services and mobile alerts complement traditional TV broadcasting in many ways to satisfy sports fans' hunger for frequent and comprehensive news and features.
