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Why Russia 2018 will be the most connected, engaged World Cup ever – both on and off the field.

Once every four years, football/soccer fans worldwide gather in union to watch the FIFA World Cup. With the tournament now just a few days away, fans can look forward to accessing more content than ever before as we head towards the first truly connected, digital World Cup.

Since Brazil in 2014, there has been a rapid shift in the way sports content, particularly football, is discovered, watched and shared. Linear TV continues to struggle to attract new, younger fans and advancements in technology and production has dramatically increased the speed at which premium content can be shared across a variety of platforms – resulting in a far more connected fan and a different level of engagement.

The World Cup drives conversation at a global scale. Twitter reported over 700 million tweets during the 2014 World Cup, and over 280 million people watch a game on a mobile or connected device. The Final was watched by over one billion fans worldwide, and while record viewing numbers for live games are expected – China alone is expected to break the one billion viewer mark for the 2018 final – we can expect those engagement numbers to significantly raise, as each federation, broadcaster, brands, teams and players turns to digital and social platforms to provide more content, more access and a more authentic fan experience.

For fans, this means an explosion of World Cup-related content on every platform, and device whenever and wherever they are. At any point during the World Cup fans will be able to pick up their mobile phone and see goals, highlights and reactions in real time. Twitter is looking to cement its place as the go-to destination for World Cup content with partnerships for live shows and clips across: Australia, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the US. This includes new monetisation opportunities for broadcasters leveraging digital clip rights for Twitter’s sponsored video advertising programme (previously known as Amplify).

However, the most significant change will be the amount of content produced outside of the 90 minutes, with individual federations and broadcasters looking to create viewing experiences that go far beyond on-field highlights. Expect to see plenty of behind-the-scenes training content, fan-driven interviews, analysis, GIFs and memes, as well as player syndicated content and sponsor activations.

The shift in content strategy comes from the growing understanding amongst publishers that the modern football fan consumes sports in a much different way. Outside of live coverage, modern fans spend 44% of their time watching ancillary content such as football documentaries or challenge videos on digital platforms (Source: Copa 90 – 2018). This represents a considerable opportunity for federations, broadcasters and brand partners involved in the World Cup to generate their own engagement, to control the narrative and to bring fans closer to the game than ever before.

Many formats and brand activations will focus on video storytelling away from the live games. The content will sit outside the existing media rights agreements which is why it’s attractive to brands, teams and digital publishers. This content, which is made for digital platforms provides fans with an opportunity to create the most engaged and accessible World Cup in history.

The English FA has started to explore using direct to social distribution as a way to bring fans closer to the England team during World Cup 2018. Ahead of preparation fixtures against Nigeria and Costa Rica, the FA has been using YouTube to deliver exclusive content centered around the England camp. Hosted by YouTube star Craig Mitch, the FA is aiming to bring authentic and unfettered access to players, the manager and coaching staff – as well as regular prompts for fans to interact with the team and Mitch, primarily through live streaming, a format that will continue on a daily basis heading into Russia.

As social platforms continue to become the latest place for ‘appointment to view’ television, this type of live daily recap show is expected to be widely available across territories and platforms. In the United States, FOX Sports holds the broadcast rights to the World Cup and has struck a deal with Twitter to bring real-time highlights to the platform and original live content. The new live streaming format is a daily, episodic (27 shows) live show called “FIFA World Cup Now.” The exclusive social broadcast will feature match previews, recaps, guest appearances and, reactions from the world of Twitter. The platform has also penned a similar deal with Australian broadcaster SBS for 23 live shows and with British broadcaster ITV to distribute real-time highlights with Twitter in-stream advertising.

This is going to be a record-breaking World Cup on Twitter and across social and digital platforms; fans will be delivered a first-class experience, accessible anywhere at anytime with more access and interaction than ever before, as we all experience the first truly, connected, digital World Cup. A billion live videos streamed on mobile? That’s something worth tweeting about.

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Enhanced social interaction and community participation on live broadcasts

With increasing emphasis on live social interactivity and engagement and “meaningful human interactions“,

Grabyo is delighted to release an update to enable users to moderate and display social comments directly from Grabyo Producer.

This latest release extends the functionality launched within the Grabyo “social wall” allowing partners to moderate and insert Facebook and Periscope comments into live broadcasts. Previously comments were moderated through a separate web console, with this update digital producers can now view comments coming in from a specific Facebook or Periscope/Twitter live stream, queue and approve from the same console, before being added to the live output.

Social video drives audience engagement and since its release in 2016, Facebook Live broadcasts have generated 10x more comments on average than non-live video posts. This update to Grabyo Producer enables partners to capitalize on this increased engagement by enhancing live broadcasts with real-time comments and polls adding a new level of interactivity and encouraging feedback and audience participation.

This functionality provides an easy, flexible workflow to enhance social live broadcasts. It also opens up numerous new audience first streaming formats. Social wall has already been used by the AELTC Wimbledon to run a live Q&A with Roger Federer, FC Barcelona during its legends game with Manchester United as well as broadcasts from Formula E, US PGA Tour, Southampton FC, Red Bull Media House and many others.

By promoting and displaying real-time audience interaction, our partners have seen a significant lift in user engagements on live broadcasts – a key metric for content discovery after recent updates to Facebook’s news feed algorithms. Facebook has indicated that live streams will be a beneficiary of this change, because live broadcasts generate higher levels of user engagement, in addition to a more prominent position for content developed for Facebook Watch.

Grabyo delivered more than 200,000 clips and 17,000 live events across the Facebook platform 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.

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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.

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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

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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

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