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Sport

K LEAGUE 1 to deliver season opener live to social media using Grabyo

K League 1, the top-tier Korean football league, will begin its postponed season this Friday with a global match broadcast live to social media using Grabyo. 

K League will use Grabyo’s cloud video platform to produce and deliver the season opener between Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Suwon Samsung Bluewings to its YouTube and Twitter channels on Friday at 7pm (KST).K League will be the first major football league to resume action after postponements and cancellations due to the COVID-19 health pandemic. 

With current restrictions on public gatherings, only essential personnel will be present at the match. Grabyo’s cloud-native live production platform will enable K League’s team to work remotely and safely from anywhere in the world, collaborating in real-time to deliver the match broadcast. 

Renowned commentator Simon Hill will be calling the match completely remotely, using Grabyo’s remote contribution capabilities. Hill is based in Australia and will be able to appear on the broadcast using a laptop/PC with a microphone. 

K League’s production set up may act as a blueprint for other sporting events across the world to resume during the current health pandemic. 

Elliot Renton, Senior Director and Head of APAC at Grabyo, commented: “This is a significant step forward for football and it’s fantastic to see sport begin to resume in Asia. Many football fans will be delighted to see this happening and Grabyo is very proud to play a key part in making this happen and delivering the live game to a worldwide audience. We have been helping sports organizations and broadcasters to engage fans in a time of no sport, and with new developments to our live and remote production capabilities the K-League are well placed to win new audiences keen to see live football via social media.”

Doojin Sa, Head of New Media, K League, added: “We are excited to be able to again deliver live sport to football fans across Asia and the world. We are doing so with safety as our main priority, using all of the technology at our disposal to ensure only essential personnel need to be in the stadium. Grabyo’s platform and technology will enable us to reach football fans all over the world who we know have been waiting a long time to see live football. Without this type of remote production, it would not be possible.”

K League will use Grabyo Producer, Grabyo’s advanced live production platform, to deliver the match broadcast. Using Grabyo, K League’s digital team is able to deliver the broadcast directly to its social channels, using only a laptop and internet connection anywhere in the world.

2020 NFL draft: virtual fan engagement soars with remote draft parties

As the virtual NFL draft gets underway, franchises are getting creative with remote fan engagement.

The 2020 NFL draft got underway last night, but not like it ever has done before. With social distancing measures in place across the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything was done remotely.

For the first time, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell presented the event in a studio by himself. Franchise war rooms were online video conferences, and every player was at home, undoubtedly with their eyes glued to their phone, willing for it to ring.

However, the draft isn’t just about the players. The league, and several of its franchises, needed to craft creative ways to promote virtual fan engagement during the draft.

The challenge is to take the usual draft party experience and host it online. It needs to be focused on the community, it needs to be highly interactive, and most importantly it needs to be live.
 

Watch-a-long parties from home

Individual franchisees took remote steps to engage fans across digital platforms during the draft.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals hosted host remote draft watch parties on social media.

Broadcasting from their own homes, these teams were able to add value for their fans watching the draft while creating a more specific forum for fans to discuss their side.

The 49ers delivered its live party in partnership with Levis, featuring a live DJ set, player interviews and immediate reaction as they drafted Defensive Tackle Javon Kinlaw.

The whole broadcast was optimized for fans across digital platforms, bringing in fan content from Instagram and running live polls to give fans a chance to participate. The 49ers also used branded graphics to promote season ticket sales. The most successful live social content is created with fans at its heart, and let them drive the conversation as much as possible.

Across all three franchises, fans flocked to the comments sections to give their opinions and discuss the draft with each other. While most of the world is staying at home, NFL teams have been able to bring fans together to celebrate football.
 

NFL draft-a-thon goes virtual

The NFL recognized the opportunity to drive virtual fan engagement by supplementing its coverage with live analysis and reaction from celebrity fans and NFL personalities.

The league is hosting a live draft-a-thon every day for the duration of the draft. The draft-a-thon is broadcast to YouTube and the NFL website in conjunction with the draft, aiming to drive donations for COVID-19 relief efforts in the US.

Guests appear remotely via a Zoom call, and discuss their opinions on picks and hopes for their team during the draft. The broadcast is hosted by Rich Eisen and Deion Sanders, and day one guests included Tom Brady, Kevin Hart and DJ Khaled.

Much like a live NFL game, fans will take to social media want to share their opinion and discuss the action with the wider community in real time. By providing a platform that also includes famous faces and trusted analysis, the NFL was able to deliver a broadcast that added real value to the draft experience for its fans. The league ensured the broadcast was highly accessible, and included a level of interactivity that kept fans watching.

As the NFL and its teams find their feet in this new draft format, we’re likely to see more quality content for fans to enjoy over the next two days. The opportunities for virtual fan engagement have never been higher, while its importance has never been greater.

The FA uses Grabyo to deliver on innovative remote digital strategy


The English Football Association (FA) is broadcasting classic matches and hosting a FIFA20 tournament to keep fan engagement high in the absence of football.

Using a combination of former English football stars, classic England matches and a FIFA20 tournament, the FA has crafted an alternative remote digital strategy to engage football fans with the English national teams in the absence of live football.

The FA’s Football’s Staying Home initiative is encouraging people to stay at home during the current COVID-19 pandemic whilst learning, having fun and playing football.

16 England players from the men’s and women’s senior teams and the men’s U21 team are participating in a knockout FIFA20 tournament, the Football’s Staying Home Cup. Players include Lucy Bronze, Marcus Rashford and Todd Cantwell. Whilst playing, each match has live commentary by leading eSports commentators Brandon Smith and Richard Buckley.

The FA’s multi-platform approach has increased its reach and allows fans to engage with content across all of the FA’s digital channels, with the aim of raising awareness for the National Emergencies Trust.

Each match is broadcast to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with live clips and highlights distributed in real-time and after each game. Using Grabyo, The FA was able to keep each production on-brand, activating sponsors and driving donations to the National Emergencies Trust.

Another initiative launched by The FA in recent weeks is #ReLions. An innovative way of keeping in touch with fans over the coming months, the FA are re-creating the live experience for fans by broadcasting classic matches to YouTube.

Further enhancing the experience, The FA is using our remote production tools to bring in remote guests to commentate on the match and watch along. England’s famous victory over Germany in the 2002 World Cup qualifiers was historic for many reasons, as England beat Germany in Munich for their first qualifier defeat in the city. Who better to do a watch back than the hattrick scorer Micheal Owen, and fellow teammate who was also on the scoresheet from that night, Emile Heskey.

The pair, appearing from their own homes via webcam, discussed everything, from the match to goal celebrations, with remote host Adam Smith as they re-lived a great night for England.

Our long-standing partnership with The FA has enabled it to deliver a truly fan-first remote digital strategy in a challenging time for content production. Enabling fans to stay in touch with football from the safety of their homes while having the ability to work remotely ensures continuity across The FA channels, with several campaigns being produced as part of the Football’s Staying Home initiative.

DAZN drives global growth through Grabyo

DAZN, the online sports streaming service owned by DAZN Group, has enjoyed an impressive 2018 leveraging the power of social video to bolster its brand awareness and drive subscription growth using Grabyo.

DAZN has used Grabyo’s platform to deploy a targeted video distribution strategy across its social channels on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Modern sports fans want more than just live events. They’re looking for relevant, real-time video clips across a variety of social platforms, as well as live streams of shoulder content and match footage. DAZN registered almost 200 million video views distributed through Grabyo in 2018, building significant brand value for the world’s largest sports OTT platform.

DAZN’s global video strategy is built on maximizing the media rights it holds to elite sporting competitions in various markets around the world. Key sports properties include football, boxing, fight sports, baseball, hockey, basketball, athletics, darts and many more.

DAZN’s approach to content distribution varies by market including short, real-time highlight clips of premium content such as UEFA Champions League & Italian Serie A matches on Twitter and Facebook, as well as live streams of undercard fights from Golden Boy Promotions, Matchroom Boxing & Bellator events on social media for free. The OTT service, dubbed the “Netflix of Sports” has leveraged the huge popularity of social video viewing to advertise the new service and drive uptake of its paid services from social media users.

Gareth Capon, Grabyo CEO commented: “We’re proud to partner with such an exciting brand like DAZN, helping the team build their global audience and communicate the value of this innovative OTT service for sports fans. The success of DAZN’s digital strategy lies in its customer-centric approach, servicing the needs of consumers who are looking for content across multiple platforms and devices, whilst capitalizing on the growing appetite for social video, to drive brand growth and awareness. As a cloud-based service we have scaled our partnership rapidly across DAZN’s global markets and it’s exciting to be involved with such a dynamic, fast-growing partner.”

Reda Maher, VP Social at DAZN said: “It’s important that we deliver as much value as possible to our customers while growing the DAZN brand. Our partnership with Grabyo has allowed us to do this by enabling all our global content teams to access the platform to share relevant live and near-live content across all our social media properties. Grabyo makes it easy to distribute content across multiple platforms, where we can grow our audience and retain loyalty with our customers on their terms. The flexibility Grabyo’s platform offers – particularly through real-time graphics editing – has been key in achieving this across our markets.”

Grabyo Studio enables DAZN to quickly and easily create, edit and publish video clips to social media moments after they happen – helping to unlock the value of being first to market with video content to reach the vast social audiences who are engaging with video.

DAZN utilises Grabyo’s Producer platform to live stream content directly to social media, making use of Grabyo’s integration partnerships with all major social platforms. The live content creating a community-based, shared viewing experience for the online audience. Live commenting and discussion on live video posts increases engagement and creates more memorable moments for fans, increasing viewer loyalty and encouraging customer conversion.

How will digital production and marketing shape up in 2019?

2019 promises to be an exciting year for the digital media industry. Shifting consumption habits present both challenges and opportunities for broadcasters, rights holders and content creators competing to capture digital audiences in a crowded media landscape.

Consumer-driven innovation by new players in the OTT streaming and media rights market, coupled with advances in technology and emerging commercial opportunities in digital media, signal a big year ahead.

Innovation is key

The potential of AI to revolutionize content management and digital media production is well-documented, but this year we expect to see moves towards more holistic technology solutions.

Video production workflows are one of the key areas that will benefit from AI, as long as technology supports, rather than replaces, human editors and creatives. Using machine learning, editors will be able to take better control of their content libraries, using computer vision to index and extract metadata to make the most of their archives. Video quality control can also become autonomous, once machines are able to recognize and react to human-defined control parameters. The same is true for encoding – Netflix and YouTube are already using deep learning technology to ensure machines do the heavy lifting and react in real-time to various media inputs – we expect this to become common practice over time.

It is hard to envision fully automated content creation coming to the fore in 2019. Automated video clipping is well established in sports broadcasting, where definable triggers, such as goals, can be captured. But AI still lacks a deeper contextual understanding, which means it will fail to recognize the moments that give meaning and insight to stories across most types of video. The best content evokes an emotive response, whether news, sports, entertainment or music. Without this, content is not likely to cut through the noise.

Every cloud…

Media organizations are now embracing cloud solutions as a robust backbone for scaling and innovating their offerings. Cloud-based video production is helping businesses to maximize their resources by reducing the limitations of traditional broadcast infrastructures and replacing legacy systems.

Coupled with the upcoming network upgrades for 5G, remote production and collaborative working will free content creators from these restraints. EE and BT Sport’s 5G-based production of the Wembley Cup in 2018 highlighted what’s possible – the footage was shot using mobile camera units in backpacks and carried by 5G to be remotely produced from across the city in London.

We will see many major events adopt this process once 5G is widely available. The challenges of bringing together multiple events or stories from various locations will be reduced and producers will have the freedom to be more creative and ambitious with content.

Video content is still king

As consumers gain access to 5G networks, latency and buffering will become less of a concern and video content consumption will continue its sharp increase across devices, both at home and on-the-go.

Live streaming will reach new heights of popularity in 2019 and more publishers will react by adopting it into their strategies. 80% of consumers already prefer to watch a live video stream than read a blog – this rises to 82% who prefer live over social posts. Video is also 79% more effective than photos and images for engaging consumers on social media. Video is not just a content proposition but a highly impactful medium for marketing and storytelling.

The community-based nature of live social video drives higher engagement which results in longer watch times and audience loyalty – content creators are already tapping into this trend by producing interactive live video with polls, displaying real-time comments and Q&As. Social audiences are looking for more choice and more participative experiences, which live video must offer in 2019.

We are able to reach engaged digital audiences on a number of devices and platforms with greater ease than ever before. Consumers are watching video on more devices and with an increase in connected TVs, tablets and larger smartphones on the market, this shows no sign of slowing through 2019 and beyond.

Where is the market going?

The direct-to-consumer OTT market will be interesting to watch this year as Disney enters the fore with a brand-new service (Disney+) to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, both of whom have planned sizeable content budgets for the year ahead. The new Disney+ service is in addition to ESPN+ which launched in 2018 and already has more than 1m US-based subscribers paying $4.99 a month for live sports.

Social media platforms are expanding long-form content offerings too. Facebook’s new streaming platform, Facebook Watch, has begun licensing content from 21st Century Fox and is encouraging publishers to publish a broader range content to the platform. The capture of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer back catalogue is redolent of this shift in focus and the move towards content formats that are better suited to an older, 30yrs+ user demographic. Snap is also striking partnerships to bring long-form shows to its app.

As the competition for OTT subscribers heats up, we will see these platforms bolster their marketing strategies using social video – one of the most effective tactics in converting viewers to paying customers. By offering premium content on social media for free, organizations are able to raise awareness of their services while driving traffic to their own channels and platforms and driving key intent-to-purchase and conversion metrics.

Social media will be a key battleground on which audiences will be won and lost – expect to see much more short-form content published to these platforms. Quality should not make way for quantity, but it remains to be seen if digital teams have the right tools to compete in a such a fast-paced, consumer-centric media market.

2019 will be a year of efficiencies and focus. Producers will change processes and technologies to ensure workflows are optimized for digital production, and distribution teams can create and manage content efficiently. Modern consumers demand relevant content at the right time, so the winners will have to consistently innovate products and offerings to stand out from the crowd.