All That Matters Online 2020 kicked off with a bang. Today marked day one of the five day long fully virtual event and it started off with a pre-agenda networking encompassing of Managing Director of Agenda Consulting Asia, Alex Gibbs followed by President of Event Safety Alliance, Jim Digby and Branded CEO, Jasper Donat.
The event followed with Jasper officially opening the All That Matters 2020. He was joined by six special guests – Lynette Pang, Assistant Chief Executive Marketing Group for Singapore Tourism Board, Teck Yin Lim, CEO of Sports Singapore, Sunitha Kaur, SVP APAC of Twitch, Calvin Wong, CEO South East Asia & EVP Asia of Universal Music Group, Sonali Khan, Managing Director at Sesame Street Workshop India and everyone’s favourite, the Cookie Monster.
The conversation touched on the impact of the pandemic on their industries, the future of the industries they’re in as well as how the pandemic has shifted their everyday life. Lynette Pang shared “There has been a shift due to the pandemic in the area of brand. One of the key things we’ve had to communicate is all the work around safety. Communicating all the effort the destination has been putting in place has been paramount. Things change by the second. We have to be more fluid, be more of a team player, and more borderless.”
Diving into the sports tech industry, Lim Teck Yin mentioned that “ONE Championship has looked at itself as a media company. The Internet Of Things has made companies like that more interesting. Sports tech is going to be a large focus for tech companies. There needs to be some fundamental shift in mindset from everybody. Turning it on its head and saying what can tech do that sports can adapt to?.”
When asked by Jasper on how the gaming and music industry has faired since last year, Sunitha Kaur expressed that “It has grown tremendously in the last years let alone the last month. You’re going to hear a lot about growth, numbers.” Calvin, on the other hand, said “We have grown slightly from the year before, not as dramatic from the year before but it is growing.”
Cookie Monster had valuable advice to share with the audience as well. When asked what advice he would give to his younger self, he answered, “To be kinder, more loving, and spread more joy around the world. Never leave a cookie unattended no matter where you are around the world.”
The event then continued with a live and online with Ole Obermann, ByteDance Global Head of Music and CLOT Co-Founder and Creative Director, Edison Chen. Speaking with Chen was Billboard Producer Rob Schwartz. The two spoke about Chen’s movie and music career and how his past experiences motivated him to question who he was and what he was doing with his life – which led him into the fashion industry. Chen threw in a piece of inspirational advice, “Believing in your vision and believing in your dream is the most important thing.”
Another special guest that joined today’s virtual event was Jamie Reigle, CEO of Formula E. The first time CEO touched on how he has evolved as CEO, fan engagements and partnerships. An interesting question Jamie was asked was, when is Tesla going to be sending a team to Formula E, to which he responded “There’s a technical reason as opposed to a commercial or brand reason as to why Tesla is not part of our company at the moment. What we said is, we have to have a viable sport, we have to have a business model that makes sense and what we’re going to try and do is minimize the cost for putting a car on the track. About 90-95% of a Formula E car is standard.”
“What is differentiated is the power, so a Mercedes is not the same as a Porsche underneath the hood. What is the same though, is the battery and everyone uses the same battery. And the idea there is to get the economy to scale on the development cost of the battery and therefore a much more cost-effective and also legalitarian in terms of differentiating the power trains of where it pushes the car forward. Tesla differentiates specifically by their investment in battery platform and so there’s a bit of a difficult difference there which is the main reason they’re not part of the championship”, Reigle adds.
Day one of the event came to a close with a discussion on the rebirth of the live sports and entertainment industry, featuring AIA Group Head of Sponsorship, Catherine Gibbs, ESL Gaming CEO Ralf Reichert and CEO of Singapore Sports Hub, Lionel Yeo. Moderating the session was Jasper Donat.
