The Olympic movement needs to learn from the likes of YouTube or risk losing young viewers for life, IOC members were told Monday. Communications guru Martin Sorrell advised global sports leaders to release their grip on exclusive broadcast rights and hand them over to a new generation of technology-savvy fans. “If they are going online, you go online,” Sorrell said in a keynote speech on digital media at the International Olympic Committee's Congress. “You have to let them play - with your content, your assets - in their own way.” Sorrell, chief executive of London-based agency WPP Group, the world's largest advertising company by revenue, said sports federations had to learn from how the entertainment industry engaged with viewers. He urged sports to let passionate fans buy access to archive footage, and held up Major League Baseball as an example of how to make money online. IOC President Jacques Rogge described Sorrell, a Harvard-educated Englishman, as the world's most influential man in advertising and communications. Sorrell said 1.4 billion people had Internet access and 4 billion used mobile phones. People with mobile wireless devices were “no longer satisfied” with just consuming content created by television networks. They wanted to make their own images and communicate through social networking sites, he said. “Give content to youth in formats they want - short and fast, customizable and easy to share. Don't deny it or file it in the ‘too difficult' folder.”
