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Grabyo helps Eurosport scale digital presence

Eurosport has teamed up with Grabyo to amplify its distribution of live streams and real-time highlights across social platforms.  Eurosport, Discovery’s leading sports brand and the number one sports destination in Europe, offers premium sport content to fans on all screens and across all platforms.

The partnership included the use of Grabyo throughout February’s Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang 2018. With Grabyo, Eurosport brought audiences key moments, highlights, storylines and reaction from across the Games, in real-time across a broad range of platforms and devices including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Eurosport.com and the Eurosport app.

Eurosport had a 70-strong Digital production team in PyeongChang complemented by an additional 80 staff working in local market digital editorial teams in Europe, plus 20 of the biggest digital influencers from across Europe who were embedded into international and local editorial teams.

Following the conclusion of the Games, Discovery reported 4.5 billion video views, 1.7 billion hours of video watched, and 386 million viewers during the Games with 8.1 million engagements around the Olympics, including likes and shares, across its social accounts, including Eurosport. Discovery and Eurosport’s digital & social platforms reached a record 76 million – more than doubling the average number of users and reaching new and younger audiences.

Eurosport simulcast the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony on a number of its local Facebook pages with the support of Grabyo’s Live Producer product. With full integration of regional branding and graphics for each territory, the live social broadcasts generated more than two million views in Germany, Norway and Sweden.

Grabyo is now being used by Eurosport’s content teams across key European markets, including the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway and Sweden. The platform enables digital teams to distribute highlights from live broadcasts straight to audiences on Facebook, Twitter, Eurosport.com and the Eurosport app. So far it has been used to post over 18k clips and livestreams.

Eurosport is using Grabyo to promote its video service available on Eurosport.com and the integrated Eurosport app using branded video shared to social platforms, driving tune-in and promotion for its OTT service. Eurosport has used Grabyo to amplify its social content around its key sports events since 2017, including the Tour de France, US Open and Australian Open Tennis and the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 finals.

In addition to accelerated video editing and publishing, Grabyo also provides Eurosport with a simplified workflow to monetize social video on Twitter and Facebook. Clips cut from live broadcast feeds can be shared directly to Twitter and monetized through sponsorship and in-stream advertising. Grabyo’s Facebook Branded Content features enables Eurosport to activate advertising and sponsorship deals with brand partners – such as the social video campaigns during Le Mans 2017.

In support of this growing partnership, Grabyo has added new features to its platform bringing the best possible experience to its audience. Recent updates include the addition of GIFs, image capture and graphic authoring for live digital broadcasts.

If you are looking for strategic support and ideas to enhance your social video production output and maximize engagement – please get in touch with our team.

Grabyo launches brand assets for square and vertical video


Grabyo is delighted to announce its latest product update to Grabyo Studio – the addition of brand assets to square and vertical video, ensuring content is optimized for cross-platform distribution and mobile consumption.

Grabyo partners can now create and upload ‘creative sets’ for horizontal (16:9 / 2:1), square (1:1) and vertical (9:16) video clips. A creative set comprises pre/post bumpers and graphic overlays that are automatically added to a video before sharing through Grabyo Studio.

This provides users with a quick and simple workflow to publish and share branded clips to multiple social and digital platforms without the need to export clips to a third-party application.

Creative sets are a much used Grabyo feature and a fantastic way of integrating branded and sponsored content into video. With mobile video now responsible for over 85% of all web traffic this update ensures partner and sponsor content can be integrated across square and vertical video, increasingly popular viewing formats for mobile audiences.

These assets are uploaded once and can then be used by any member of your team to quickly add approved end slates and graphic overlays, ensuring a centralized and moderated approach to busy team workflows.

As audiences watch more video content on Instagram than before, this update also increases the speed at which branded content can be shared through Grabyo Mobile. Creating assets optimized for vertical consumption on Instagram is the best way to stand out and engage audiences at scale, especially through Instagram Stories.

This update also allows users to create multiple creative assets across different regions and territories, providing users with a quick way to repurpose content across markets.

Creative sets are a great way to not only work with sponsor partners and brands but also promote your own products, services and OTT platforms, including relevant CTAs and links.

Now with multi-aspect ratio graphic support, GIFs and image capture, Grabyo continues to innovate digital video production for a live, mobile and social audience. Get in touch now to find out more

Grabyo partners with BAFTA to enhance the Academy’s social media offering

Grabyo has partnered with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to share BAFTA’s real-time video clips, highlights and GIFs to its social pages during the 71st EE British Academy Film Awards.

The partnership enabled BAFTA to deliver key moments from the event directly to Twitter and Facebook, including content from the red carpet, award announcements, acceptance speeches and backstage reactions.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Grabyo to increase the distribution of our video content across social media, allowing more fans to access the event if they can’t watch it on TV,” commented Jess Lenten, Social Media & Content Officer at BAFTA. “We want to share everything that makes the EE British Academy Film Awards special and use our social accounts to celebrate the wonderful achievements of all our winners and nominees.”

BAFTA used Grabyo Studio to share highlights from the night, which included the emotional moment Gary Oldman shared his award for Leading Actor with his family, Supporting Actress nominee Lesley Manville arriving on the red carpet straight from her matinee performance in the West End and the GIF that encapsulated the joy from the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri team which won five Awards.

“Grabyo is proud to continue to support BAFTA to reach its audience across social media” said Gareth Capon, CEO Grabyo “The EE British Academy Film Awards is a prestigious event and our data shows that distributing clips in real-time is the most effective way of reaching fans and the highest levels of engagement happen when the event is live.”

Social media has become an increasingly important distribution channel for BAFTA as it looks to grow the awareness of the Awards ceremony and the broader work the Academy does. The team at BAFTA will be using Grabyo to distribute content from several events during 2018, including the British Academy Games Awards, the Virgin TV British Academy Television Awards and the British Academy Children’s Awards.

Grabyo partners with the world’s leading rights holders, broadcasters and publishers to publish live and on-demand content to multiple social and digital platforms. Grabyo delivered more than 500,000 clips,17,000 live events and six billion video views in 2017.

If you are looking for strategic support and ideas to enhance your social video production output and maximize engagement – please get in touch with our team at hello@grabyo.com

The rise of vertical video in mobile, social feeds

Mobile video consumption continues to rise at a staggering rate. Now responsible for over 85% of all web traffic, mobile video is the most effective way to reach and engage audiences at scale.

Time spent on mobile devices has now surpassed TV viewing in the US, with 50% of time spent in social, messaging, media and entertainment applications. Driving this change is vertical video viewing, a format which reflects our user behavior – we hold our phones in an upright position.

As consumers spend an increasing proportion of their waking hours on mobile devices and social platforms, vertical videos are aligned with this trend. Social news feeds are vertical too, we scroll down and not across, accentuating the trend towards square and vertical video formats.

Facebook reported this month that vertical videos are generating higher watch times and more engagements than traditional 16:9 (horizontal) formats. With more than 1bn users logging into Facebook every day on mobile devices people want to watch videos without having to turn their phones around.

This trend has forced publishers to rethink content production, creating engaging and effective video that is optimized for vertical viewing and makes the most of the available screen real estate on mobile phones.

Facebook made a number of changes to the user experience in its News Feed to ensure the success of vertical video – sound now fades in and out as users scroll through video, and autoplay starts and finishes depending on where the video is within the screen. Ultimately, by removing the need to rotate devices, Facebook has increased watch time and user engagement – a key metric for every social media platform. Key stats from 2017 include:

  • Facebook garnered 8 billion video views per day and started supporting native vertical video
  • Periscope live broadcasts are measured in years watched – with 110 years worth of video watched per day, mainly in the vertical format
  • Instagram has 300 million daily active users and was an early adopter of vertical video

Filming in vertical format straight from a mobile phone is natural for content creators. This has contributed to Snapchat’s rapid growth and the even faster adoption of Stories and live streaming on Instagram. For broadcasters and federations looking to distribute live or near-live premium content, vertical video presents some challenges. Typical broadcast workflows are designed to create content in 16:9 and repurposing this in real time for digital platforms is not an efficient process.

Despite the production challenges for vertical video, the accelerating growth of mobile devices and benefits of vertical viewing means this format cannot be ignored. Grabyo provides tools that enable rights holders and publishers to quickly change the aspect ratio of live content to share in real-time across digital platforms. This means that content shot for horizontal viewing can be quickly converted to vertical format – whilst focusing on the key action within the shot. Content is not wasted and digital production teams can dramatically reduce the time spent repurposing content for mobile feeds.

Facebook found the optimum length of a vertical video to be around 15 seconds; these clips can quickly be created, optimized and distributed through Grabyo to capitalize on peak engagement around a live event or TV broadcast.

With multi-aspect ratios, GIFs and image capture, Grabyo continues to innovate digital video production for a live, mobile and social audience. Get in touch now to find out more.

Grabyo launches automated clip creation with Opta Sports

Grabyo is delighted to announce our latest product update, the creation, management and distribution of automated clips for broadcasters, rights holders and publishers. This first iteration of data-driven automation is a partnership between Grabyo and Opta Sports, allowing partners to create and distribute automated soccer highlights.

Grabyo partners can now create automated video clips that are triggered by “events” such as a goal, save, penalty decision or red card. Grabyo uses Opta Sports data to find these moments and then automatically clips the content, in real-time, ready for distribution moments after the event to digital and social platforms.

The rise of social video and mobile viewing has increased the focus on the speed of production for clips, highlights and video content. To meet this challenge for digital publishers, Opta Sports and Grabyo have partnered to deliver automated clip creation for live soccer matches.

Across the media industry, data manipulation, computer vision, machine learning and automated processes are becoming more prevalent in content production workflows. For digital and social content teams, automated technology gives them the ability to publish content from multiple events, locations and streams and share with fans across digital platforms in real-time.

For broadcasters, this provides the digital teams with autonomy from their TV counterparts, ensuring clips from all properties can be created and distributed instantly – allowing fans to experience content in the moment; regardless of on-site production support or geographical location. Automation enhances the experience for fans, giving producers more time to optimise videos for social and mobile viewing, or craft messages to tell the stories behind the game.

Automated workflows have begun to emerge for professional sports production. IBM’s Watson cognitive computer technology has dramatically altered content production and discovery for tennis tournaments including The Championships at Wimbledon and the US Open. The technology was used to automatically identify the best moments in key matches and auto-generate highlights from both events this year.

Using Grabyo’s existing cloud-based video tools, these clips and highlights can be reformatted for social and digital distribution – such as square or vertical orientation, or with additional graphics and captions – and shared to multiple platforms. For more information on Grabyo, data-driven workflows and automated clip creation please contact hello@grabyo.com or try Grabyo for a product demo.