WWE, UFC and PBR are three major sporting brands across sports and entertainment that are long term partners of Grabyo. Social, digital and marketing teams within these organizations use our platform to create, edit, distribute and monetize live streams and VOD content across social media.
Each brand is known for a dynamic and innovative social media strategy, reaching and engaging fans with localized, tailored mixed-media content across multiple regions and platforms.
At the time of writing, the three brands cumulatively boast over half a billion social media followers and subscribers on official accounts, spanning the entire globe. Here we will explore the specific strategies and Grabyo usage of each organization, highlighting key components and successes of each.
Click on each brand to see more.
WWE: Rapid social highlights with multi-region localization
The WWE is famous for content innovation across all mediums and platforms and regarded as an industry leader in fan engagement initiatives across social and digital.
At the time of writing, across all official WWE accounts, it has over 147 million followers on Facebook and over 103 Million subscribers on YouTube. On TikTok, WWE was the first sports account to gain over 20 million followers, which now currently sits at over 31 million.
The WWE executes a multi-layered social media strategy, with dedicated teams across the business producing various content formats including short and long-form video, photography, imagery and more.
WWE x Grabyo: The workflow
The WWE’s social media team uses our live clipping and publishing platform to create and publish real-time highlights and short-form video to fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook worldwide. WWE has used Grabyo for live clipping for the past five years.
With at least seven hours of live TV programming from WWE events every week, its social media team is tasked with publishing every key moment to these channels, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that fans can keep up to date with each event, even if they aren’t able to watch live on TV.
Seven social media managers from WWE HQ operate Grabyo to create highlights from every WWE show. These operators are located in various locations at various times, often working from home or their office.
The team ingests the main WWE broadcast feed output into Grabyo in SRT format, with multiple commentary tracks. The team is then able to instantly clip, edit and publish video to Facebook and X in real-time, ensuring the WWE’s owned channels are the primary destination for event content.
The SRT ingest feed also includes commentary tracks in Mandarin, French, Arabic, German, Spanish, English and Portuguese languages.
Roman Reigns está en #SmackDown ☝️😤 pic.twitter.com/yhb3cWtFNe
— WWE Español (@wweespanol) August 17, 2024
Roman Reigns sera présent à #SmackDown sur @AB1tv et @ABXplore, ce soir à 20h55 ! ☝️#ABWWE pic.twitter.com/iIwJacGKnt
— WWE France (@WWEFrance) August 17, 2024
Using our multi-track audio clipping functionality, WWE’s regional teams across the world (usually comprising around three people) are able to access the same broadcast feed with Grabyo and clip directly in their chosen language to distribute to WWE’s regional social media channels.
Why WWE uses Grabyo: The benefits and results
The WWE competes with multiple other social accounts in publishing video content from events, and Grabyo enables its official channels to be first to market
Within Grabyo’s platform, WWE’s social team manages its in-stream advertising on X and Facebook Branded Content
Its social team are able to efficiently provide WWE talent with video content to use on their own channels, taken from its Grabyo library
With regional teams across the globe and a distributed team in the US, its social team are able to work collaboratively in real-time to create and distribute video content
The WWE social team have no prior video editing or clipping experience, but mastered Grabyo quickly and without specialist support
UFC: Behind the scenes access and fight night highlights
Over the past few years, UFC has been one of the fastest-growing sports brands globally, now with over 700 million fans across 57 countries and counting. Its bold and agile marketing and social media strategy has led it to become one of the foremost sports media organizations.
At the time of writing, UFC has over 100 million followers on Facebook and over 63 million followers on Instagram across all of its official accounts.
UFC’s social strategy has evolved over the past five years, including live streaming, behind the scenes access, PPV promotion and sponsor activation. The agility of its strategy has allowed it to capitalize on its rapid growth to capture and monetize fans globally.
UFC x Grabyo: The workflow
UFC’s social and digital team uses Grabyo Producer to stream pre-recorded live shows to Facebook and our live clipping and publishing platform to distribute highlights and clips to X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, including YouTube Shorts.
The team shoots and edits the show, then uploads it as a VOD asset to Grabyo Producer to live stream the show to Facebook. UFC monetizes the show with sponsorship, overlay branded graphics for current sponsors during the show.
For live clipping, UFC ingests an SRT stream of the broadcast output to Grabyo to rapidly clip, edit and publish highlights in real-time.
UFC’s team operating Grabyo consists of around nine people each fight night. Between four and six people are always actively monitoring the streams to create clips instantly, with some team members also capturing video and photo content around the arena.
UFC’s pre-recorded ‘Quick Hits’ live shows are produced by on-site staff and its strategy for producing this content is agile and reactive to the stories unfolding each fight night. Quick Hits segments include interviews with talent behind the scenes, in the locker rooms and around the arena, giving fans more immersive access.
The clipping team is located on-site if UFC is hosting an event at its arena in Las Vegas, if events are elsewhere the team creates content in Grabyo remotely from UFC’s Vegas office.
The team serves every social platform with real-time video using Grabyo – including vertical optimized clips for TikTok and Instagram.
UFC’s social and digital team comprises around 45 people globally, with smaller in-market teams collaborating with the Vegas team to share content and publish localized video for their regions.
Why UFC uses Grabyo: The benefits and results
UFC has been a partner of Grabyo for the past five years and in that time its team have created 59,000 clips, which averages out at 32 per day and totals 2,200 hours of content.
Its team have also delivered 2,100 live streams using Grabyo throughout the partnership.
Grabyo is just one piece of UFC’s comprehensive set of social tools and strategies, contributing to its overall growth. Since 2020, UFC’s social followers have grown from 80M to 283M, a 250% increase
The flexibility of Grabyo allows UFC to adapt its strategy continually. The team are currently publishing more clips and highlights from premium PPV events to drive customers towards its OTT service and PPV offerings
UFC is able to restream its Quick Hits segment seamlessly to Facebook, delivering sponsor inventory without dedicating high resource
Using Grabyo, UFC is able to create clips in horizontal, square and vertical, including custom frame tracking, to optimize content for every social platform
UFC uses Grabyo’s geolocation feature to ensure content is only available in regions where there are no rights restrictions
“Grabyo allows UFC to create and distribute high-quality video content across UFC’s social media platforms. Given the fast-paced nature of UFC’s events, our team utilizes Grabyo’s clipping capabilities to deliver highlights and pivotal moments from fights in real time. Grabyo is a key component of UFC’s overall social media strategy, which we use to engage with our growing fan base, which now totals more than 700 million around the world, including approximately 283 million who follow us on social media.”
David Shaw, Executive Vice President, Head of International & Content, UFC
PBR: Scaling social output with a small team
Professional Bull Riders (PBR) is the world’s leading professional bull riding organization, with over 800 registered riders and over 200 events every year across the United States, Brazil, Australia and Canada.
Founded by 20 bull riders in 1992, the league has seen steady and significant expansion from a grass-roots organization to a mainstream multimedia sports company with presence on national TV networks and OTT platforms. In 2022, PBR complemented its individual competition by launching a new Teams league – 10 teams based in cities across the U.S. competing in five-on-five bull riding games that are televised nationally on CBS and Merit Street Media.
PBR continually punches above its weight, with a modest size team organizing and delivering thrilling bull riding events to an ever-growing audience.
At the time of writing, PBR boasts over 16 million social media followers across all platforms, servicing fans with mixed-media content using a variety of video production and social media tools. In 2023 video views of PBR content across social eclipsed 1 billion views, with 871.6 million minutes watched.
PBR x Grabyo: The workflow
PBR has up to four tours taking place simultaneously across the world, and each event is in a new venue every week. PBR’s social media team uses our live clipping and publishing tools to bring the best and most exciting moments from every ride, across every venue, to fans on every social platform.
PBR ingests the main broadcast output in RTMP format to Grabyo from each venue. Ahead of each event, one streaming operator sets up an encoder to send the stream to Grabyo over the internet. Another remote operator configures the ingest point within Grabyo to receive the stream.
Video signals sent to Grabyo come from a range of arenas, from small 2,000 seat venues to the largest and most iconic stadiums including AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas to Madison Square Garden in New York. Connectivity in each arena varies, however the workflow can operate with reduced network bandwidth.
Once the stream reaches Grabyo, a small remote team creates clips in horizontal, square, 4:5, and vertical formats.
The team then downloads each video asset from Grabyo to natively publish to social media and distribute across the organization, including marketing, content teams and storage systems.
@pbr Home crowd heroes with the W! #pbr #pbrteams #bullriding #sportstiktok #newyork ♬ original sound – PBR
PBR’s mission is to continue attracting new fans, engaging all fans and growing its brand. This workflow has enabled its team to scale its social video output and capitalize on the popularity of vertical video, building large audiences on TikTok and Instagram.
Why PBR uses Grabyo: The benefits and results
Since adopting Grabyo in 2019, PBR has created over 23.6K clips, totalling 2,458 hours of video content. Its team has also delivered over 120 live streams.
Grabyo is just one piece of PBR’s comprehensive set of social tools and strategies, contributing to its overall growth. Between 2021 and 2023, PBR gained 4.4M social followers, achieved over 8.1 billion impressions and generated 94.1 million engagements
One of the main benefits of using Grabyo for PBR is the ability to create high volumes of content for multiple endpoints and departments in the organization
PBR is able to clip in 9:16 format, with custom frame tracking, to create quality vertical video for its biggest social accounts
PBR’s content team are able to access live streams of every event from anywhere, even with infrastructure and connectivity limitations
“Implementing Grabyo has had a huge impact on our output, giving our small content team the ability to scale video content creation to engage existing PBR fans and help us reach new audiences to grow our brand. Video content created in Grabyo feeds multiple workflows and departments across PBR, from social highlights to longer-form edits and more. We are able to adapt our strategy based on market trends – such as increasing our vertical video output. As our audience grows, we are still able to meet expectations thanks to the seamless workflows afforded by Grabyo.”
Jen Brown, Senior Director of Content Planning and Strategy, PBR
We’re proud to support such innovative brands in delivering impactful and engaging content to fans worldwide. Each of the three brands use various Grabyo features in different ways, leveraging our versatile platform to fit into their specific workflows and needs.
Our partnerships with these brands have evolved over time as we introduce more functionality and features to Grabyo, including multi-track live clipping, TikTok publishing API, restreaming and much more.
For more information on our live clipping, editing and publishing platform, click here.
