So what about the other panels and speeches at the SportBusiness New Media Conference? Here are some of my thoughts about some of the morning sessions that featured Ben Gallop, Head of Interactive and F1 for the BBC and Andrew Croker of Perform.

The thing about the BBC is that it has resources. Not just the resources to pay ‘proper’ journalists but also the brand name that technology innovators want to work with. But the BBC’s resources come from the British public, and as such the organisation has responsibilities to a wider audience than the early adopting digerati on Twitter.

The BBC also has challenges. Trying to support multiple platforms on a day with England play Slovenia at 3pm when everyone is still in the office and combine it with the 3rd day at Wimbledon and traffic will become an issue.

The BBC also has the rights to the 2012 London Olympics. Often the Olympic Games are events where there is a step change in technology. Ben Gallop believes that 2012 is a sweet spot for the broadcast of sport, with Analog having been replaced completely by digital.

Of the 5000 or so hours of sport available, the BBC will broadcast 5000 hours in some form. This is great news for the sports that the long-tail like to watch. Once every four years, sports that are ignored by the media get some coverage, but in days gone past, the producers have chosen which events to show when.

It’s not just about television, whether it be HD, 3D or IPTV. Radio, live text and other delivery mechanisms are important to provide the best live sport experience short of being there – or in the case of Formula 1 – better than being there.

All this is very well for a publicly funded national broadcaster, but how does anyone else make any money from this brave new world?

For Andrew Croker of Perform, formerly Premium TV, the answer is partly subscription payment but also betting. Just as the tobacco industry propped up sport for decades and still contributes to sports like F1, the gambling industry fuels the demand for live sport to be delivered to punters around the world.

The world of gaming has changed. Gone are the days when you put on an each-way bet before the start of a horse race and waited until the end, these days in Europe 20% of the bets are taken ‘in running’ – after the event has started. In Asia that figure is 80%.

On business models though, Croker summarises – Live should not be given away. Pay-per-view is complicated. Subscription is the way to go.

From my point of view, the panellists for the topic ‘What does the future hold for the consumption of live sport?’ missed the multiplatform element of the issues. Television is their business, so for them, multiplatform delivery of live sport means television on different devices including mobile.

Perhaps the topic was limiting. Consumption is a very old fashioned word that assumes content only flows in one direction. A more open topic might have been ‘What does the future hold for the experience of live sport?’

Take Formula 1 for example. My experience of F1 involves 3 screens. I watch the television coverage from the BBC, I have my laptop open at f1.com logged into the live timing and scoring screen and I interact with commentators, teams and other fans via Twitter on my Blackberry. Part of that experience is consumption, but part of that experience is community based interactivity.

I could just as easily add radio into that experience. Mute the TV and listen to Radio 5 Live.

None of the panellists mentioned live animation. Sports like NASCAR, Cricket and sailing have all modelled real time events using telemetry data and delivered it without cameras.

There was also no mention of creating a better experience of being at the event – surely part of live consumption. Perhaps the use of services like Foursquare to interact with people who have bought a ticket and are sitting in the stadium? Augmented reality applications, like those developed by IBM and Android for Wimbledon will also effect the experience of live sport.

Just as football is not the only sport in the UK, television is not the only media. Delivering television on other devices is still just television. Only when we start thinking about the experience of live sport and not the limiting one-way broadcast mentality of consumption will we innovate the best product for fans and justify charging for it.