Three key takeaways from IBC 2019
Last week, Jargon PR attended the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, which was host to 56,000 professionals and 1,700 exhibitors from the media, entertainment & technology industry.
Taking place between the 11th-15th September at RAI Amsterdam, here are our three key takeaways from this year’s show:
- Esports will dominate in 2020
There was lots of discussion around Esports at this year’s event, with talks from leading experts in the industry around various topics such as the new opportunities it has to offer.
We also saw the first-ever IBC Esports Showcase live tournament taking place. Two professional teams from ESL’s network of National Championships across Europe went head-to-head in FPS multiplayer Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The demonstration showed us just why Esports is a popular industry, and with revenues set to exceed $1 billion in 2019, and forecast to reach $3 billion by 2022, the Esport industry shows no sign of slowing down.
- 4k and 8k adoption could hinder
Despite the market penetration of 4k products on the rise, Mark Zink, VP of Technology at Warner Bros, commented that having seen the popularity of 8k TVs at IFA earlier this month, there is not enough 8k content available to justify the spend on it.
This is similar to 4k TVs, in which there is not a huge amount of content for them. It will be interesting to see if the amount of 4k content will soon increase and hopefully result in a rise in the purchase of 4k televisions. If not, where will the technology go from here?
- Interactivity is on the rise
In his talk, Peter Cassidy, Director of global entertainment at Monterosa, explained how interactive entertainment through the likes of apps, has welcomed a new level of consumer engagement.
Having worked on popular TV shows such as Love Island, Cassidy discussed how its podcast, sneak previews, and voting, all available through the app, reached similar viewing figures to that of the actual show.
With other big names such as Netflix recently implementing interactivity on their platform through allowing consumers to choose the outcome of shows such as Bandersnatch and Bear Grylls You vs Wild, we can expect many others brands to start implementing interactivity in their products and services.
We look forward to seeing what the next 12 months for the media and entertainment industry will be. Roll on IBC 2020!
