Across the road from the Grimaldi Forum, behind the palm trees, is a McLaren showroom; walk 50 paces to the left and you come to Rolls Royce.

Cross the next side-street and you find the Scuderia Monte Carlo of Ferrari, containing one of the company's trademark red sports cars; another 30 paces and you reach Bentley Monaco, showcasing a white Continental convertible priced at €225,000 (£140,000/$177,000).

This is where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will assemble in December for an Extraordinary Session at which it will be under pressure to demonstrate that it is still in touch with the real world.

That gathering will be a feast for aficionados of global sports politics; this week's big event in the Principality by the Med - the 25th annual Sportel Monaco Convention - was more about global sports business.

Where in two months solemn deliberations will ensue on topics like the Olympic bidding process and the most appropriate age rules for IOC members, much of the space in the Forum was given over this week to a jostling and colourful exhibition in which buyers, sellers and owners of sports rights paraded their wares.

The Grimaldi Forum, currently hosting the Sportel Monaco Convention, will be the setting for big decisions when the International Olympic Committee holds its Extraordinary Session there in December ©Getty Images



Football and combat and adrenalin sports seemed the best represented; the main agencies were out in force, while broadcasters nestled cheek by jowl with start-ups striving to exploit one aspect or another of the digital revolution that has swept the industry.

The drinks brand Red Bull had a large, prominently-positioned patch of real estate at which one could find out about the eye-catchingly eclectic range of content, with high production values, that it now generates.

The International Equestrian Federation had a quaint little stand fronted by jumping poles and a scattering of horse-shoes.

Everywhere - even the calmer recesses of the nightclub where DJ Boy George, resplendent in yellow hat, played Grace Jones and Depeche Mode tracks at a 25th anniversary party - was the low level hum of men, and sometimes women, talking business.

Insofar as it was possible to discern a common theme amid the hubbub and hyperbole, I would say it was a certain tension between property owners who have grown used to pocketing big cheques for exclusive live rights from traditional broadcasters and are understandably wary of undermining that value, and the new media gang, keen to make their content as compelling as possible, who are striving to convince the market that their various activities are complementary to the mainstream broadcasters and not potentially damaging to them.

"The biggest myth in our sphere is that digital rights undermine live rights," opined one panel discussion participant.

That is all very well, but if your sport has grown rich by selling exclusive live rights to broadcasters eager to get their hands on content still capable of drawing a mass audience in an age of increasing fragmentation, you are going to think very, very hard - and make sure your broadcaster is entirely comfortable with what you are planning - before taking liberties with the model.

Digital is posing interesting questions for traditional broadcasters ©Getty Images



It seems fairly clear that the purveyors of new ways of consuming sport and sports-related content are most likely to make quick headway by focusing their creative efforts on rights that are underexploited by mainstream broadcasters and persuading relevant sports bodies that their ideas could help to expand their audience or be good for business in other ways.

"Digital is a very cost-effective way to be present around the world," observed a sports governing body official, pointing the way to one avenue of opportunity.

With the potential audience for digital rights forecast to grow from around two billion to as many as five billion people within five or six years, it should be possible for the most popular innovations to generate enough income for their originators to enable them, in turn, to compete more vigorously for rights with traditional broadcasters.

Indeed sooner or later, I suspect, the distinction between old and new media will start to appear anachronistic.

The IOC is seemingly poised to launch its own new media experiment, in the guise of a media channel that is likely to be mainly internet-based.

The green light from IOC members is expected at this forthcoming Monaco Session.

An Olympic television channel is expected to be given the green light at the Monaco Session in December ©Bongarts/Getty Images



A key concern will inevitably be to make sure that the TV broadcasters and other entities - which are paying over $4 billion (£2.5 billion/€3 billion) in rights fees in the current quadrennium culminating with Rio 2016 - are happy that the new venture is adding to, rather than subtracting from, the value they derive from those expensively-acquired rights.

It is perhaps easier to do this with a property such as the Olympics, which absorbs broadly five weeks over each four-year cycle in terms of live action, than with a league stretching over six to nine months every single year.

If approved by IOC members in December in the Forum beside the luxury car showrooms, the new channel seems sure nonetheless to be a widely-observed experiment.