On Wednesday, Grabyo hosted our first ever event at The All England Lawn Tennis Club bringing together experts within the sports and digital industry to discuss the trends and latest developments in the social video market and give social video marketing tips to clients and friends.

Whilst other events have touched upon the topic, we wanted to create an event that was centred on the most important trend in social media – video. With a host of our industry friends and partners, we built a programme to educate, share best practices, discuss industry challenges and explore upcoming developments in social video.

After lunch in the Player’s Lounge at The All England Lawn Tennis Club, the event started with a 40-minute session from Facebook and Instagram on their recent product updates and future plans in the video space. The Facebook team shared case studies such as Chelsea FC using Facebook Live to broadcast their kit launch.

FOX Sports to clip real-time highlights whilst live streaming to Facebook with both events powered by Grabyo. The audience gained an exclusive insight into the world’s biggest social media platform with practical advice on how to use Facebook and Instagram to build audience, engage fans and grow new revenue streams through social video.

Next up, Greg Davies, Head of Business Development at Grabyo welcomed Alex Willis (Head of Communications, Content and Digital, The All England Lawn Tennis Club), Nacho Trujillo (Managing Director of Innovation and Global Development, LaLiga) and Mike Norrish (Senior Digital Producer, BT Sport) to discuss using social video to build audience and engagement.

Alex Willis outlined how social video and archive content allows Wimbledon to engage with fans beyond the two weeks of the Championship and Mike Norrish explained how BT Sport uses social video content across multiple platform to complement its subscription Pay-TV offering. Nacho Trujillo highlighted the importance of digital and mobile video consumption to the growth of the LaLiga audience globally, yet cautioned that until digital pennies compete with broadcast TV dollars that the shift may be slower than some people may want.

Next up was Grabyo CEO Gareth Capon with an overview of the social video market,  Grabyo’s latest platform updates and an outline of our future roadmap. Key discussions points included the dominance of mobile as the primary device for video consumption and the extension of Grabyo’s live streaming capability in the coming weeks.

Richard Ayers, CEO and Founder of Seven League, led an important panel exploring monetisation and the value of social video for sponsorship and advertising.

Richard kicked off with a softball question…”Is social video killing TV?” Steve Olechowski, Founder and CEO of Blinkfire responded with “Did video kill the radio star? No, but yes!”. The panel, which included Jonathan Lenson, Business Development Director, WPP, Oli Slipper, current Board Member and previous co-Founder of Perform Group, David Pugh-Jones, Commercial and Brand Strategy Director, The Smalls, then went on to discuss how social video is currently being packaged and whether this is the correct way to approach monetisation, managing a holistic approach to the monetisation opportunities within social video, how TV and social media can compliment each other to create new revenues and the key challenges facing the industry in terms of advertising.

The final session of the day was a discussion on the opportunities for talent and influencer marketing in social media –  Steve Bartlett, CEO of Social Chain, Tracey Keenan, VP and General Manager, WWE UK and Ireland, Gawain Davies, Co-Founder and Director of 77 Sports Management (and Andy Murray’s manager) and Terry Byrne, Chairman of 1966 Entertainment and 10Ten Talent (who represents a number of athletes and entertainers, one of which was David Beckham).

Terry Byrne explained how the F2 Freestylers, who are signed to 10Ten Talent, have a significant influence over the content that they produce both for themselves but also for brand campaigns. Their knowledge of what works with their fans on social platforms allows them to collaborate with brands to create incredible video content. Last month, F2 generated more than 100 million social video views. The panellists explored how brands and rights holders can best work with influencers, how influencers do not necessarily have to be the biggest profile stars and the importance of authenticity when working with high profile sporting athletes and brands.

Attendees and panellists then got the exclusive opportunity to enjoy drinks in the Players Lounge at The All England Lawn Tennis Club, where the discussions continued and the Grabyo team shared demos of some of our latest features: including Facebook Live, mobile editing, data integration and event production support for streaming live to social platforms.

Thank you to all of those that attended the event and all those that featured in our excellent panel sessions. The afternoon certainly proved entertaining and thought provoking. On to the next one!