Interview with Paola Marinone

Hi Paola, this is not your first experience at the Summit, but this will certainly be more special given that you will have the role of presenter of one of the stages. What does an event like the Summit leave you with?

I’m very happy to be back at the Social Football Summit and especially to have an active role as a presenter.

I appreciate its evolution in the topics discussed as well as being more and more international, with speakers from three continents. Lots of talks will be about global reach, technology and this is going to be interesting for the sport industry.

Your BuzzMyVideos company creates a close link between video content and those who create this content. How have you seen video storytelling linked to the world of football evolve in recent years?

Clubs and federations are already media companies. The ones who already mastered social media and developed a wider audience, are now starting a monetization path that becomes interesting from a business point of view. It’s an evolving ecosystem. With BuzzMyVideos, and before that at Google/YouTube, I’ve seen the communication and usage of the platform changing dramatically from a one direction drop of content to a real interaction and community building strategy. This is starting to show its ROI for sport.

How do you explain the leading role that creators have had in the last 2 years and their connection with the world of football? Many clubs today collaborate with creators who do not strictly belong to this sport.

The sport industry is trying to figure out how to interact with the new generation. The content consumption of sport is changing fast, it needs new approaches in order to leverage the opportunities. Reaching the new generations means adopting new formats and also including creators, who are native of the platforms, to increase reach and get to new more casual audiences. What really matters is to have a strategy and the right tools to manage this processes, in order to get the best outcomes.

What do you think will be the topics that will monopolize most of the discussions on the football industry in the coming years?

Undoubtedly the key topics will be about new business models, new revenues from platforms and new geographies.