Eli Velázquez de NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises
So far in 2022, Telemundo Deportes has already presented several important sports events, including the NFL Super Bowl and the Mexican Liga MX Super Clásico, Guadalajara’s Chivas and Las Águilas de América; and now its programming the last qualifying round Qatar 2022 World Cup that kicks off next Thursday the 24th.
“It kicks off on the 24th with three dates, including a match between Mexico and Honduras on March 27 and Costa Rica vs. the United States on March 30. These are the matches with the greatest focus, but in general we will be broadcasting several games because we own the rights to the vast majority of the Concacaf qualifiers,” explained Eli Velázquez, Executive VP of Sports Content for Telemundo Deportes.
This year the production team will be divided to give coverage in parallel to both the qualifiers and the final FIFA draw that will be on April 1st. “It is the first time that we are going to have coverage in the draw, just during the last qualifying date (the 30th) and on April 1 is the final draw. We had to find a way to split the production group and ensure the broadcasts of the qualifying rounds and the draw, which are so important to us,” he points out.
Velázquez noted that for the middle of the year –summer- they’ve have prepared a “very robust strategy” of content about the history of the World Cup, “We are going to create programming around the history of this great event, and for the end of July and the beginning of August, we will once again have Guadalajara’s Chivas; the Premier League (UK) and we will be closing with the Qatar 2022 World Cup in November,” he pointed out.
He “has seen a massive shift in content consumption” over the years and throughout his career. He referred to the development of social platforms and the public’s desire to have alternative experiences to the traditional sports broadcast.
“What we have done is look for ways to amplify our content around the event on the different platforms and where the public consumes and entertains with sports content. The match is the king of the transmission. But we have seen that the surrounding content is extremely important, that it helps to attract different audiences, not only the super sports fan, but also the casual fanatic or those interested in being involved in the conversation of a great event such as the World Cup. We detected this during the Super Bowl, where the content around the game helped us distinguish ourselves in the space where we manage our audience. We are sorting out how to use the different feeds that FIFA is going to grant us to create different experiences, not only during broadcasts on Telemundo and Universo, but also on our platforms and app, and of course on Peacock, where for the first time we are going to be streaming the World Cup,” he explained.
In terms of technology, Velázquez predicts greater use of integrated smartphone technology for live video streaming, which helps to upload a live signal from any point where the camera is equipped with this technology, virtual sets and augmented reality (AR).
