Shaping the agenda

Matt has over 25 years’ experience in mobile media and entertainment and Sport. He has been voted in the top 50 most influential people in online TV for four years running and in 2017 he was awarded the TV Connect People’s Choice award for the ‘Person who made the biggest impact on the connected entertainment industry within BT Sport he is responsible for developing the broadcaster’s mobile capabilities and long-term mobile strategy recently leading the team that delivered the award-winning worlds 1st remotely produced live sporting over 5G. He is also currently developing the strategy and roadmap for Augmented and Mixed Reality.

As part of the wider BT Group Matt is also developing the technology strategy for the Broadcast, Media & Entertainment over 4/5G. This encompasses an end-to-end approach incorporating both contribution and distribution of media.

A senior digital marketing executive with over 20 years of digital media and technology experience across both B2C and B2B. Craig has an extensive and deep knowledge in developing and executing digital transformation and marketing engagement strategies that have a proven record in improving business performance. Craig is a focused and passionate change agent who strives to build world class teams that transform, innovate and disrupt legacy marketing models. Craig has broad & detailed knowledge of the digital technology landscape, media & brand planning, online consumer behaviour, mobile marketing, content development, OTT and consumer experiences and has been responsible for developing brand marketing strategies and digital transformation programs for some of the world’s largest brands including Rentokil Initial, STA Travel, Nokia, Microsoft, Tata and now Leading the digital transformation strategy at UEFA to enhance fan engagement across all areas of football.

Elizabeth is a Canadian expat who relocated to the UK earlier this year to join Twitter’s Global Content Partnerships team, managing sport partnerships. She works with some of the UK’s largest broadcasters, leagues, teams, federations and sporting events, including Sky, Eurosport, BBC, Wimbledon and the European Tour, to bring great sports video content to the platform. Prior to her move across the pond, she was a Client Account Manager with Twitter’s advertising sales team in Toronto for 3+ years. She started her professional career in Sponsorship with the Canadian Olympic Committee, where she funneled her passion for sports and marketing and “ice” hockey into her day job. You can follow her at @estranges on Twitter.

Michael Sutherland is the Chief Transformation Officer at Real Madrid, which is consistently ranked as the highest earning european football club and is one of the most valuable sports brands in the world. Prior to Real Madrid, Michael was the Director of Virtual Reality and Director of Product and Design for Emerging Technologies at HP Inc in Silicon Valley. He has been an active angel investor, founder and advisor in early stage companies and has led the growth and commercialization of technology startups in Silicon Valley. He is a global technology leader and expert in corporate innovation and commercialization of new technology products.

Michael was appointed as the CTO for the PGA European Tour in November 2017, with the responsibilities extending across Digital Systems, Scoring Systems, Technology Infrastructure and Data Management including Official World Golf Rankings.

Formerly, Michael was CEO And Co-founder for TrueGold Communications, a sports marketing agency specialising in technology-based global sport sponsorship, supporting the number of Olympic Games and sponsors for Rio2016, Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo2020, as well as the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru.

Alexandra has achieved industry-wide recognition in her use of technology to transform the perceptions of a traditional brand in her role at Wimbledon, building an award-winning digital and communications strategy that is at the heart of the long-term future of the brand.

Through the combination of a content-first, platform second approach, a data-led audience strategy, and placing value on consistent innovation as well as continuous evolution, Alexandra has led Wimbledon to become one of the most well-respected digital brands in sport.

Lu Bolden has more than 10 years of experience in executive management, as well as an extensive career as an active duty serviceman and government contractor. In 2006, he co-founded CSO Digital, a next-generation systems integration company and long-standing Verimatrix partner, and as President, led the company to a successful acquisition in 2014. Prior to CSI Digital, Lu was the EVP of Technical Sales for Sherpaq Mobile Products where he was responsible for the design and sale of mobile voice, video and data systems to various government agencies. He attended the Air Force Academy, flew on the E-3 AWACS out of Tinker AFB, Oklahoma and Geilenkirchen NATO Air Base.

Victoria Cotton is BBC Sport’s Executive Editor for live streaming. She is responsible for the commissioning of content and for further developing the live digital strategy that delivered over 3000 extra hours of live sport to BBC platforms last year. She is also their BBC women’s sport lead and oversees Get Inspired, the BBC Sport’s participation strand.

Rhys Beer is Facebook’s Global Sports Programming Lead. He leads a team responsible for developing and implementing the sports content strategy that supports growth for both Facebook and its partners’ video businesses. This spans live, in-game, catch-up, short-form and shoulder content across Facebook’s family of apps and covers both established and emerging sports rights holders and broadcasters.

Rhys previously held leadership positions at NBCUniversal, DAZN, the English Football Association and Setanta Sports. He recently received the prestigious honor of being named to the Leaders Under 40 Class of 2019.

Digital Marketing, Product Development and Data Expert focused on growth of audiences strategies. Love helping companies engage with their audiences in exciting new ways across Mobile, Web, Email and Social Media. Currently leading the FIVB’s digital unit. Some of my previous work included projects with a number of brands such as FIBA, NBA, Reebok, P&G and Heinz.

As Vice President of Edge Strategy and Solution Architecture at Limelight Networks, Steve is responsible for Limelight’s Edge strategy and innovating to deliver the highest quality online experiences. This includes providing the best platform for delivering digital content and the highest quality user experience through a network edge that positions content and applications next to end users for dynamic and real-time interactions.Steve has extensive experience in the CDN and media distribution industries spanning video workflows from field encoding to global CDN operations, solution engineering for Broadcast, Media & Entertainment and Enterprise markets and running Product Management for Limelight’s portfolio. Steve has overseen thesuccessful growth of Limelight’s products and services, defining new offerings including Realtime Streaming and EdgeFunctions as well as improving the scopeand performance of Limelight’s CDN and Video workflow services.Steve holds an MBA from Henley Management College and resides in Brighton, England.

Robert Erickson is the Strategic Account Manager for Sports and Venues for Grass Valley. A member of the Grass Valley team since 2008, he has more than 21 years of experience in the broadcast and IT markets with previous roles covering systems engineering, television station management, broadcast network design and RF transmission systems. Throughout his career, his focus has been on designing and maintaining live production and playout systems based on new and emerging technologies for both existing and greenfield broadcast facilities

Leading Sports Marketing for Oracle, identifying high value technology focused partnerships to enable world-class storytelling.