when saturday comes
I was speaking for the Australian interactive media industry body, AIMIA, this week and last week.
The events were their annual 'Future of Digital' seminars in Sydney and also Melbourne.
I did my usual controversy, which seemed to go down reasonably well.
One of the other speakers was Laurie Patton, the Media and Entertainment Exec Director from Telstra.
We chatted before and after and he was a very nice and smart fella.
He nonchalantly dropped this anecdote in his talk but it struck me as being something of an insight that I had not considered before.
Amongst his duties at Telstra Laurie is working with a number of sports stadia in Australia to integrate digital technology into live sporting events, to enhance them in situ.
The remarkable point Laurie made was that stadia owners and operators are cognisant of the sports viewing experience at home becoming more of an 'experience' than attending in real-life.
In an unexpected flip (to these ears at least) viewing at home on TV with connected devices etc offering in running stats, multiple camera angles and replays (and close proximity to the fridge) is potentially more attractive than the schlep to the stadium and is therefore increasingly a challenge to both the stadia and sporting associations.
Good luck to Laurie and his people in solving this conundrum.
On the one hand it's further fuel to the 'TV is not dead and nor is it likely to be dead anytime soon' lobby and also my own pet thought that the media channel that stands to benefit more from the introduction of digital-ness is the humble out-of-home.
