Eli Velazquez Telemundo Deportes
For Eli Velazquez, EVP of Sports Content at Telemundo Deportes, the Soccer World Cup, “thanks to its singularity, scale and what it means to so many fans, is an unparalleled chance for advertising messages created by marketing specialists to reach the widest variety of audiences and have a lasting impact among them.” Velazquez spoke during the webinar The Changing Face of the World Cup: How to Leverage this Powerful Cultural Connector, organized by the Hispanic Marketing Council (HMC), while also taking part was Andres Cantor, lead soccer & World Cup commentator for Telemundo Deportes, along with Victor Paredes, executive director of Account Planning at Lopez Negrete Communications, as moderator.“Truth to tell, the World Cup is an enormous cultural connector. It’s something that transcends generations,” Paredes said, while Cantor noted that this sports event “is a different kind of animal. The way it connects Latinos in this country is incredible.” For Velazquez, the World Cup “is a really unique event and for that reason it’s probably the most watched of any sports event.” Velazquez said that diversity, equity and inclusion constitute a great strategy on which Telemundo is focused 100 percent. He announced that for this World Cup they are going to present coaches from national teams. “Our range of reporters will also have a great diversity as part of the launch. And we think that’s right, not just because it is, but because there are valuable nuggets of information and ideas to be unearthed everywhere.” He also pointed to the participation of women on the team of commentators and analysts, including Amelia Valverde, technical director of the Costa Rican women’s team, along with Ana Jurka and Carlota Vizmanos, “ whom we recently took on as the chief hosts of Telemundo’s Premier League coverage.” Telemundo will also concentrate on finding human stories that its audiences can readily identify with. “Yes, we can reproduce and air them to our Hispanic audiences – I believe that’s the way you can get people to identify with others. And I believe that this perhaps helps stimulate more discussion and more understanding,” Velazquez said. Telemundo will present a study in September to do with the World Cup. “As an organization, we’re working on some key ideas,” he said. He described the study as an example of intellectual leadership based on quantitative and qualitative research, and which even applies neuroscience. “It will focus on the influence language has on the way people see things, because we obviously had a very competitive stance against Fox with regard to viewership of the 2018 World Cup, during which 80 percent of bilingual people who could choose either channel chose to watch us, which again speaks to the unique opportunity offered by Hispanic media.” “Soccer is the fastest growing sport in the U.S., it’s a multimillionaire business and Latinos are promoting that growth,” Velazquez said.
