The final shortlist includes a diverse mix of market-leading brands and innovative up and coming organisations in the sports broadcast space. Click on the company logos to read a short summary of each shortlisted entry across our 14 categories.
Platform of the Year (2019)
ATP Media – Tennis TV
Submission title: Tennis TV
Tennis TV is a one-of-a-kind digital streaming platform that combines a high-quality user experience, comprehensive live and replay coverage across multiple devices and consistent revenue and subscriber growth.
Tennis TV delivers in excess of 2,000 live matches annually from all 63 ATP Tour tournaments to fans worldwide. The service delivers more tennis action than any other platform; it consolidates rights for all ATP Masters 1000, 500s and 250s tournaments – plus the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals and Next Gen ATP Finals.
Tennis TV started life as ATP Masters Series TV in 2006 and became Tennis TV in 2009. The platform was completely overhauled and refreshed in 2017. Working with Deltatre, ATP Media brought together a variety of best-in-class third-party tools, partners and services to deliver a cutting-edge product, developing a cross-platform service that delights tennis fans around the world with comprehensive streaming and a wealth of compelling features.
DAZN
Submission title: DAZN
DAZN is the largest, fastest growing global sports streaming service and this year will stream a record 400m hours. The business is now live in nine of the world’s biggest economies that also over index with sports fans. Using cutting-edge technology, DAZN is leading the charge to give fans around the world affordable access to sport anytime, anywhere. Available on 96% of all devices, DAZN has more subscribers in more countries with more rights and more production capabilities than anybody else.
Endeavor Streaming, UEFA and UI Centric – UEFA.tv
Submission title: UEFA.tv
UEFA.tv is a globally accessible OTT football platform enabling viewers to access live and on-demand content from across UEFA’s competitions. UEFA.tv is uniquely positioned as a premium, free-to-view experience with all video content accessible on registration. The platform is fully integrated with UEFA’s all-in-one registration solution, offering existing UEFA platform users a seamless single sign-on (SSO) experience, while also enabling new users to sign up easily.
UEFA has partnered with Endeavor Streaming and UI Centric to deliver UEFA.tv.
WRC+ for the World Rally Championship by Sportradar
Submission title: WRC+ for the World Rally Championship by Sportradar
WRC+ is the streaming solution of the World Rally Championship and a direct ticket to one of the world’s toughest motorsport competitions. Sportradar has helped relaunch the FIA World Rally Championship’s digital platforms, which now offer 100% live coverage of all WRC events for online subscribers.
WRC+ supplements the previous standard linear coverage with up to 25 hours more content, while the data-driven Sportradar OTT solution allows users to supplement their viewing experience with GPS data functionalities and driver comparison via on-board cameras.
Both the back-end logistics and the monetisation technology, via subscriptions, are managed by Sportradar, ensuring a holistic OTT strategy and the live broadcast system has revolutionised how WRC events are watched by fans, organised by officials and covered by the media.
The WRC is now able to distribute video content further than ever before and the digital platforms offer new opportunities for partner integration and activation as part of its commercial strategy.
WWE Network.
Submission title: WWE Network
WWE Network, the first-ever 24/7 direct-to-consumer network, launched live in the United States in February 2014 and continues to super-serve the WWE Universe. The award-winning WWE Network features all WWE live pay-per-view events, original programming and more than 10,000 hours of video-on-demand content for $9.99 per month. The U.S. English language version of WWE Network is currently available, on an over-the-top basis, in more than 180 countries.
WWE Network is available on desktops and laptops via WWE.com and through the WWE App on: Amazon Fire TV and Kindle Fire devices; Android devices such as Samsung Galaxy; iOS devices such as Apple iPad and iPhone; Apple TV; Roku streaming devices; Sony PlayStation® 3 and Sony PlayStation® 4; Xbox One and Xbox 360; LG Smart TVs; Panasonic Life+Screen Smart TVs; Sony internet connected TVs, Blu-ray Disc players and Blu-ray Home Theater systems; Samsung Smart TV devices, Blu-ray Players and Home Theater systems, TiVo and Windows 10.
Innovation of the Year (2019)
Discovery – GOLFTV
Submission title: GOLFTV: The New Digital Home of Golf
GOLFTV is the new global destination for golf fans around the world. Established with innovation at its core, GOLFTV aspires to offer fans a new way to consume, watch, play and engage with the game every day.
Available in more than 200 markets and territories, GOLFTV powered by PGA TOUR was launched in January 2019 and is part of Discovery, the global leader in real-life entertainment. GOLFTV presents every moment of the PGA TOUR, as well as featuring the European Tour, Ladies European Tour and the Masters in multiple territories.
It has already streamed more than 2,000 live hours, including producing the first-of-its-kind MGM Resorts The Challenge: Japan Skins which saw Tiger Woods go head to head with Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and Hideki Matsuyama in a globally streamed skins game. Building on an exclusive global content partnership with Woods, GOLFTV launched its first original series – My Game: Tiger Woods – this summer. The ground-breaking 12-part series takes fans inside the mind of one of the game’s greatest ever players and sees Woods share an up-close look at his game for the first time.
GOLFTV powered by PGA TOUR was launched as part of a landmark 12-year strategic alliance between Discovery and the PGA TOUR that is set to grow the game of golf around the world.
Genius Sports – GeniusLive
Submission title: GeniusLive by Genius Sports – Powering streaming for all levels of sport
Amidst the constant race to be the “Netflix of Sport”, streaming live sports content has become a prerequisite for every major sports league and federation.
But for rights holders beyond the top tier, the costs of expensive hardware, production and dedicated directors have, for years, been immovable barriers to entry for launching an OTT platform.
Enter GeniusLive. As an end-to-end solution that automates every step of streaming, production and OTT, GeniusLive is transforming the sports video landscape. Relaunched in August 2019 as a Genius Sports product, GeniusLive has already enabled over 15 leagues and federations across basketball and volleyball to launch their first coordinated streaming and OTT solutions.
Powered by unique AI algorithms to automatically pan, track and zoom with every play, GeniusLive can be applied to any indoor sport, democratising how live video content is captured, managed and distributed, at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
Onefootball
Submission title: Onefootball: with just three clicks to world’s first in-app pay-per-view live football offer
In partnership with established rights holders, Onefootball introduced the world’s first in-app pay-per-view live football offer. With this new feature, fans get access to single matches of their favourite clubs directly in the Onefootball app – and all of this at a reasonable price and without the burden of a contractual obligation. The live stream is easily accessible in 20 seconds, with just three clicks. The successful integration of live content in the app reinforces Onefootball’s commitment to offering a response to the evolution of user behaviour and the ever-changing media landscape characterised by rights fragmentation and overpriced subscription models. By entering the direct-to-consumer business for the first time, Onefootball has taken the next step in their company evolution and is convinced that this innovative approach to live content consumption will continue to disrupt the industry and establish PPV as a model of the future.
Red Bee Media
Submission title: 3.5 Second Latency for Live OTT feeds
Red Bee has demonstrated record low latency on their live OTT feed – reaching as low as 3,5 seconds, glass to glass which is faster than traditional broadcasting feeds. This accomplishment is achieved using commoditized cloud-based, open source standard technology, utilizing open internet connectivity only. This record was first demonstrated at NAB Show 2019 with a live camera transmitting from the trade show floor to their European cloud via the open internet, exploiting the open standard SRT transport protocol. The Red Bee Media Channel Store then processes the live signal for distribution and pushes back to origin and across the Content Delivery Network (CDN) back to Las Vegas utilizing the open standard Chunked CMAF. Red Bee can now offer a commercially viable way for OTT to improve on the television viewing delay experience, with half the latency of linear broadcast, using open standards and public internet – and ultimately driving commercial competitiveness.
Sportradar
Best Tech Company (2019)
Deltatre
Submission title: Deltatre
Over its thirty-plus year history, Deltatre has helped deliver some of the most viewed sporting events in history into the homes of millions of consumers around the world. 2019 has been a year of unprecedented growth and exciting change for the company. Following its penetration into the entertainment sector, the company is now reaching over 750 million customers through owned and operated digital solutions. Deltatre has helped its customer to increase minutes streamed by over 50% through strategic investment into user experience, and has powered billions of minutes of streamed video content to date.
With 19 offices spread across the globe, Deltatre has worked throughout 2019 on strengthening its workforce. The company has recently announced the appointment of its first global Head of Inclusion and Diversity and it continues to be viewed as the employer of choice for the industry’s most expert technologists, developers, designers and thought leaders.
Endeavor Streaming
Submission title: Endeavor Streaming
As a global leader in the OTT space, Endeavor Streaming operates a portfolio of live and on-demand video management and distribution platforms and offers a complete feature stack for optimum consumer engagement and monetization. Endeavor Streaming offers content creators, global brands, TV broadcasters and sports federations the opportunity to partner with a business that fundamentally understands both the value of their content and the platform development process to fully leverage it. As a trusted streaming partner, Endeavor Streaming powers services for leading brands including the NBA, NFL, WWE, EFL, UEFA, Univision, and others, as well as delivering services for Endeavor-owned properties including UFC FIGHT PASS, Strive Sport, PBR RidePass and NYFW: All Access. With reliability, flexibility and scalability at the core of our technology, Endeavor Streaming enables fast, cost-effective means of adding various features, functionalities and product offerings OTT solutions continue to evolve.
Grabyo
Submission title: Grabyo
Harmonic
Submission title: Harmonic
The nature of live sports streaming is changing. Video service providers, content owners and broadcasters have an unprecedented opportunity to monetize sports content with the delivery of live UHD HDR video. But first, service providers must be able to reliably deliver content to every screen, fast and with latency comparable to broadcast.
StreamAMG
Submission title: StreamAMG
StreamAMG is a disruptive market leader in live and on demand video services, providing technology, operations services and expertise to some of the biggest players in sport and beyond.
StreamAMG’s productised solutions allow for lightning-fast builds that deliver end to end OTT solutions in weeks, not months, using headless frameworks, feed-driven platforms, and a personalised, simplified front end experience.
The last 12 months have seen StreamAMG grow its client base and advance its technical ability to truly disrupt the sports OTT space. Acting as a trusted partner rather than simply a technology provider, it enables clubs and rights holders of all sizes to provide premium OTT services, empowering them with innovative solutions to create content efficiencies, secure the maximum return from their rights and better engage their fan bases.
Best Lockdown Solution (2020)
beIN Sports – beONE
beONE Campaign from beIN SPORTS to motivate people to Stay Healthy at Home
Filmily
CrowdAmp the complete fan-engagement platform.
CrowdAmp doesn’t just make the viewing experience significantly better. It directly addresses fan engagement by creating global communities where sports fans can share experiences. It brings real-life sound and video reaction into stadiums so players can see the real-time reactions of their supporters. Finally, by engaging viewers, fans and the players it delivers back into sport the value that sponsors expect.
CrowdAmp isn’t just a solution for Covid. It is built to sustain a long-term engagement with fans from all over the world and the sports they love.
IMG & FIA World Rallycross Championship – Esport Series
FIA World Rallycross Championship Esports Series.
In the midst of worldwide lockdown, the FIA World Rallycross Championship, in partnership with Codemasters and Motorsport Games, was able to organise and produce six live eSports events crowning a Champion at the end of it. A world-class field including Formula 1’s Charles Leclerc, Shane van Gisbergen and Hayden Paddon as well as regular World RX drivers took part. Events were held on weekends where actual World RX events had been scheduled to take place and mirrored a full rallycross race weekend in just two and a half hours. Engagement online was incredibly strong and it was fantastic to give fans live sports and entertainment to watch during a time where there was so little available. There were over 1.24 million live viewers across all events streamed on Facebook and YouTube whilst they were also broadcasted on some linear TV channels including BT Sport, Ziggo, Supersport and Match TV with coverage provided by the official broadcast team of Andrew Coley and Neil Cole.
Kiswe
How the Tour of Flanders Created Its First Virtual Race.
Flanders Classic kept their annual cycling race alive with a virtual version of the Tour of Flanders by combining elements from esports and training bikes and broadcasting the event across television and social media through Kiswe. Using Kiswe’s platform, the Tour of Flanders event brought in live feeds from 16 different cameras: three virtual and 13 smartphone cameras of each cyclist from different locations around the world. The set-up for cyclists was as simple as a smartphone or webcam connected via WiFi which then sent an RTMP feed to Kiswe. Audiences were able to view a dynamic event with different point-of-views, scenes and real-time stats. Sporza, along with major broadcasters like ESPN Latin America, RTBF, NOS, TVE, Eurosport, Flosports and Fubo took part in showcasing the event to their audiences. Millions of viewers around the world tuned in to the first virtual edition of the Tour of Flanders–and perhaps the first-ever global sports event of this capacity.
R&A
In April 2020, following the difficult decision to cancel The Open for the first time since World War II, The R&A embarked on an ambitious project to mark 2020 Open week with a highly entertaining and innovative golf broadcast.
The Open For The Ages mixed footage and audio from five decades of archives, with the winner decided by combining over 10,000 fan votes with player career statistics.
The project was highly complex: hundreds of research hours, a thousand hour’s editing, digital enhancements – including changing branding and removing players from key scenes – and all done remotely.
The result was a three-hour final round “live” broadcast, shown in more than 50 countries and available on TheOpen.com, YouTube and Facebook. The programme was watched by two million people and complemented with an extensive second-screen experience that included a bespoke branded app, ‘in-play clips’ on social media, live leaderboards, and highlights shows.
Sportainment
Dynamic Live Atmosphere Generator.
The DLA Generator is a fully automated and clever solution to create real stadium atmosphere at live football matches for TV channels, OTT services, sports leagues, clubs and federations. Based on live tracking data of the current live game, the automated audio engine always generates the appropriate sound atmosphere for any game scene in real time. The audio engine takes into account the size of the stadium in which the game takes place and the number of home and away fans potentially in the stadium. From a selection of hundreds of individual sound files, the right atmosphere sequence is automatically assigned to any live playing situation. In addition, the audio engine can be individualized for each football stadium and club so the fans feel at home as if they were directly in their stadium.
Best User Experience (2019)
Applicaster – Copa America
Submission title: Applicaster – Here’s how the official Copa America app engaged sports fans
The official 2019 Copa America mobile app engaged fans in numerous ways – offering users a personalized experience to follow their favorite teams, delivering real time stats through a customized stats plugin along with near- live or real time content and exclusive, behind-the-scenes digital content.
The app served to complement live match viewing, where fans could participate in initiatives like live MVP voting and follow up-to-the-minute social media posts.
Working together with Conmebol, Applicaster’s quick time-to-market technology both met the targeted launch date and facilitated innovation throughout the tournament to ultimately reach key objectives.
Kayo Sports
Submission title: Kayo Sports
Kayo Sports is a ground-breaking new multi-sports streaming service for Australians that is transforming the way people experience the sports they love. Providing over 30,000 hours of premium sport, Kayo delivers a world leading streaming experience in quality and performance.
At the core of Kayo’s offering is over 50 sports from Australia and overseas, live and instantly streamed from more than 180 competitions. Kayo features the best Australian sports including AFL, NRL, Cricket, A-League and Supercars as well as international favourites such as NBA, NFL, NHL, Formula 1, MLB, European football and plenty more.
With game-changing features and a personalised experience, Kayo targets the streaming generation of sports fans who are looking for more from their favourite sport and the ability to watch on their terms.
NEP Finland – WRC
Submission title: WRC All Live
WRC All Live was launched at the opening round of the 2018 FIA World Rally Championship in Monte-Carlo as the next development of its hugely successful WRC+ interactive digital platform.
For the first time in WRC history, every special stage from each round is shown as it happens, using stunning bird’s eye helicopter footage, dramatic in-car and onboard cameras and spectacular roadside action shots.
Live interviews seconds after flashing across the finish line of a special stage convey the full range of emotions experienced by the crew, adding insight into the action fans enjoyed in the preceding minutes.
Expert analysis from WRC All Live’s purpose-built studio in the rally’s service park hub is allied with breaking news, interviews and reaction from key team personnel.
Fans can enjoy the action as it happens or on demand from the WRC+ platform. An interactive programme guide provides information to steer them easily through each day. WRC All Live Is accessible via computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone or smart TV.
Red Bull Media House – Red Bull TV Platform
Submission title: Red Bull TV Platform
Red Bull TV continues to lead the way in beyond the ordinary entertainment by creating experiences that place the user front and center. The app’s main goal is to give users the freedom to lean back and discover new content, or take control of their viewing experience and immerse themselves in whatever playground they choose. Red Bull TV has something for everybody – giving users access to live events, the very best in action sports, the hottest dance competitions and thrilling videos from world adventurers. Red Bull TV takes you beyond the ordinary with high-quality on-demand and live streams.
Tållbeard – Magenta Sport
Submission title: Magenta Sport – A user centered multidevice OTT platform
As a strategic and operating partner of Deutsche Telekom, we have been supporting sports marketing for the last 4 years. Our task is to iteratively convert the live sports video experience into an OTT product MagentaSport – live and VOD. We sharpen our spotlight on an optimal user experience, which we achieve through ongoing testing in our biometric cognitive lab. We closely involve fans in the design process of the product.
Emerging Tech Company of the Year (2020)
Blackbird
Revenues have increased 49% year on year as the company has signed up a host of new clients over the past 12 months including:
SPORTS
– NHL
– Eleven Sports
– Arsenal FC
– Whisper
ESPORTS
– Riot Games
– VENN
NEWS
– The largest financial news service in the world (we are not allowed to name them)
– Sky News Arabia
ENTERTAINMENT
– A+E Networks have doubled the volume of video editing with Blackbird
GOVERNMENT
– US Department of State
OEM PARTNERS
– Tata Communications
– Zixi
– Live X
More and more organisations are gravitating towards Blackbird due to its unique benefits – namely enabling them to edit and publish video content faster and at a significantly lower cost than traditional on-premise video editing systems
Phenix
Scalable, synchronized real-time streaming.
Phenix is the leader in real-time video solutions allowing for high quality, synchronous viewing at broadcast scale with less than a half-second of latency. Phenix end-to-end workflows capture signals at the source and provide real-time encoding, ingest, transcoding, composition and content delivery to any device including mobile, browsers, connected TVs, set-top boxes and consoles with < 500 milliseconds of latency to millions of concurrent viewers.
Simplestream
Simplestream App Platform.
How can smaller sports rights holders, federations and leagues stay relevant in the market and compete with the deep pockets of organisations that provide market-leading OTT services? This is what we do at Simplestream – raise the bar in terms of features and functionality and offer a wide range of cost-effective OTT services across the world-levelling the playing field allowing the little guys to have a seat the table with the big guys.
Our submission showcases some of the amazing work our UK team have done and demonstrates how our OTT back end and front end service offering could be used by any size business, to help them monetise their content and understand their customers better.
Streaming Global
Streaming Global has invented the way to deliver near-zero delay live streams at World Cup scale using standard infrastructure and existing workflow while lowering conventional cost. Streaming Global’s delivery technology simplifies today’s workflow by streaming directly to cloud storage servers and avoiding the costly steps of server-side media processing. This results in a best-of-breed media delivery solution, and the only technology that can solve all three of the biggest pain points in the industry.
Best in Fan Engagement (2019)
ATP Media – Tennis TV
Submission title: Tennis TV
Tennis TV is a one-of-a-kind digital streaming platform that combines a high-quality user experience, comprehensive live and replay coverage across multiple devices and consistent revenue and subscriber growth.
Tennis TV delivers in excess of 2,000 live matches annually from all 63 ATP Tour tournaments to fans worldwide. The service delivers more tennis action than any other platform; it consolidates rights for all ATP Masters 1000, 500s and 250s tournaments – plus the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals and Next Gen ATP Finals.
Tennis TV started life as ATP Masters Series TV in 2006 and became Tennis TV in 2009. The platform was completely overhauled and refreshed in 2017. Working with Deltatre, ATP Media brought together a variety of best-in-class third-party tools, partners and services to deliver a cutting-edge product, developing a cross-platform service that delights tennis fans around the world with comprehensive streaming and a wealth of compelling features.
Blackbird – R&A and IMG
Submission title: The R&A and IMG use Blackbird to deliver rapid and engaging content at The 148th Open
In July 2019 at The 148th Open, The R&A and IMG used cloud video editing platform, Blackbird, to deliver rapid and engaging content around the spectacular events that unfolded at Royal Portrush.
With multiple live feeds into Blackbird, IMG’s team on location was able to clip, edit and publish highlights to Twitter within seconds. Blackbird’s ability to provide professional video editing in the cloud on just 2Mbs was key to the fast-paced environment in Northern Ireland. Over 300 individual pieces of great content were created across Championship week – including Emiliano Grillo’s hole-in-one and the Champion Golfer of the Year, Shane Lowry’s taking the acclaim of an adoring Irish fan as he made the greatest walk in golf on his 72nd hole.
Tournament highlights were viewed millions of times by fans globally on Twitter – delivering further levels of reach and engagement for what was one of the greatest Open Championships in living memory.
Formula One – F1TV & F1 Fan Voice
Submission title: F1TV & F1 Fan Voice – an engaged and energetic community
F1TV was launched in 2018 as an innovative way for fans to enhance and enjoy their experience of racing. F1TV provides fans live streams of each race session with multi-language commentary, exclusive access to 20 driver on-board cameras and unedited team radio across 60+ markets. Post launch, it was essential to ensure that F1TV met the needs of F1 fans, so ‘F1 Fan Voice’ (a research community) was launched to provide open channels of communication between Formula 1 and its fans, allowing them to input to help shape the newly launched OTT product and make it as consumer friendly as possible to ensure it is a ‘must subscribe’ product for F1 fans. Consulting fans on F1 Fan Voice has played a key role in the development of F1TV and has helped drive to a number of successes including an increase in awareness, improved App Store ratings and increased satisfaction with F1TV.
Best New Platform (2020)
ELEVEN SPORTS BELGIUM
ELEVEN SPORTS BELGIUM’s ‘2.0’ OTT platform launched in summer 2020, to coincide with ELEVEN’s Home of Belgian Football offering. The new platform, powered by Endeavor Streaming, offers live and on-demand access to world-class sporting entertainment in a more user-friendly and visual way than ever before.
LiveScore TV
LiveScore TV: The new home of free-to-air football.
In less than four months, LiveScore successfully launched and established a free-to-air live streaming platform that is already forcing the sports industry to sit up and take notice.
Capitalising on its standing as one of the world’s leading real-time sports updates and results providers, LiveScore identified a gap in the market to provide safe, trusted, reliable and legal live streaming for football fans in the UK and Ireland.
After just two months, more than 600,000 unique users (60% of LiveScore’s UK mobile app users) visited the LiveScore app to view a match, with individual audiences peaking at 147,000 unique viewers.
LiveScore will stream more than 1,000 matches throughout the 2020-21 season, underpinned by rights to 306 matches from Italy’s current Serie A campaign. The next step of development will see the platform acquire new rights and deliver content around the world, unlocking LiveScore’s global active userbase of 56 million users.
NAGRA – Watch.Hockey
NAGRA for WATCH.HOCKEY – FIH (International Hockey Federation) home of hockey digital platform.
With the MyCujoo service shuttering, the International Hockey Federation turned to NAGRA to help create a new platform to be the ‘The Digital Home of Hockey.’ This new platform, called “Watch.Hockey” is underpinned by NAGRA’s ‘Sports as a Service Platform’ delivering on a multi-platform online, app, web, and broadcast strategy that will bring a unified service designed to raise the global status and popularity of hockey. From the first whistle on the 17th September 2020, the new platform features live matches, replays, highlights, videos, archives, news, articles, live scores, results, and statistics. The new platform will be regularly updated with innovative functionalities for all players, fans, officials, and media related to the sport. With such a wide range of features based around the sport, Watch.Hockey will allow field hockey to create a robust, data-driven, analytical approach to enhance their global presence, participation, education, and monetisation capabilities.
PAOK TV – Press Play
PAOK TV, the Sports OTT platform of PAOK FC disrupted the football TV rights in Greece by becoming its exclusive TV broadcaster for the Super League.
PAOK became the only club in Europe managing its own TV rights and broadcasting it through its own OTT platform. After its first successful season with more than 170.000 registered subscribers, PAOK TV was redeveloped and rebranded while becoming AWS Partner before entering Season II adding a lot of new features and engagement tools for the users.
SPORTRECS
A numerous services SPORTRECS provide for free to sports rightholders, the technology stack, the value provided for tier2/3 rightholders and fans globally make SPORTRECS one of the best new streaming platforms on Sport OTT market.
Best Original Content (2020)
Chelsea FC – Frank Lampard: Coming Home
Frank Lampard: Coming Home is a six-part first person narrative digital first series using the head coach’s reflections on his first season back at the Blues. The entire series was produced in-house by Chelsea TV’s production team for The 5th Stand, the club’s official app. Creating premium Netflix and Amazon Prime style boxsets are a key part of the club’s video strategy to retain and grow its app user base. This really was a season like no other and we wanted to create a series that really stood out from the usual – and crowded – end-of-season review market. The series drove strong views across all platforms with over 350k app video views and 4.3m minutes of watch time. At the time of writing the whole series has amassed 1.7m views and 11.8m minutes of watch time on YouTube.
Neo Studios – Take us Home: Leeds United
NEO Studios is a production company specialising in the creation of original sport and lifestyle programming. NEO has executive produced both series of ‘Take us Home: Leeds United’ for Amazon Prime Video, covering the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons.
PAOK TV – Toumba Uncensored
Toumba Uncensored is a four episodes documentary about season 2019-20 demonstrating the importance of crisis management during a difficult and unsuccessful season.
Toumba Uncensored premiered exclusively on PAOK TV and was the key marketing tool for the promotion of the new platform’s launch.
It’s the first-ever Sports Docuseries in Greece produced by a Football Club.
UFC FIGHT PASS ORIGINALS
UFC FIGHT PASS is the world’s leading OTT service for combat sports.
UFC FIGHT PASS, is now available in more than 200 countries and territories. Subscribers of UFC FIGHT PASS have unlimited access to live UFC FIGHT PASS prelims; live mixed martial arts and combat sports from around the world; original series and historical programming; special features; behind-the-scenes content; and in-depth interviews. Additionally, subscribers have 24/7 access to the world’s largest fight library, featuring more than 20,000 bouts from dozens of combat sports organizations, as well as every fight in UFC history.
In April 2020, the platform launched a series of new original programs including Fightlore, UFC Year of the Fighter, UFC Watch Party, UFC Fight Physics, Knockouts Only, and UFC Chronicles.
These six new shows are exclusive to UFC FIGHT PASS and include documentaries, animated shorts, and behind-the-scenes content designed to take fans deeper in the world of UFC, the world’s premier mixed martial arts organisation.
Wimbledon & Rebel Ventures – Pursuits
Wimbledon partnered with Rebel Ventures (a full-service digital strategy and content agency specializing in sports) to create a series of films that showcase an intimate view of the Championships by focusing on fans, told from their unique perspectives. These films were created with the goal of showing new fans why Wimbledon is different and reaching an extended pool of potential followers and subscribers to the MyWimbledon platform.
Best Use of Social Media (2020)
IMG & FIM Speedway Grand Prix – Talking Dirt
FIM Speedway Grand Prix (SGP) launched the magazine show “Talking Dirt” for the 2020 season, streamed live on their Facebook and YouTube platforms.
This concept was developed alongside Monster Energy to create unique content for a sponsor due to the loss of activations onsite as a result of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not just talking about the racing. It talks about the sport, the challenges and how we move the sport forward.
It’s a 30-minute show providing behind the scenes content like never before in the sport. Features include the best of Friday night’s racing, a look ahead to Saturday’s event, insight from four-time world champion Greg Hancock and Aussie icon Darcy Ward and interviews with the current SGP drivers.
There is also technical insight from SGP commentator Kelvin Tatum, as well as speedway news from around the globe and exclusive SGP and Monster Energy prizes available for fans to win by engaging with the show on social media.
Intel Sports – Another View
Intel Sports: “Another View” Featuring True View on Bleacher Report.
With the regular NBA season postponed, Intel Sports collaborated with Turner and Bleacher Report to develop a content series featuring star NBA athletes in True View. Intel True View is Intel Sports’ volumetric video technology for data capture, processing, and production. This new media format enables infinite storytelling from one capture.
The 3 part series featured NBA athletes Coby White (Chicago Bulls), Luka Dončić (Dallas Mavericks), and Bradley Beal (Washington Wizards) across B/R’s platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Speci_cally, Dončić’s feature received over 1 million views within the first 24 hours, while White’s feature performed 85% above B/R’s branded content benchmark.
(Source: “Bleacher Report x Latitude Study”)
Olympic Channel – Olympic Day Workout
Olympic Day Workout.
Every year on June 23rd, Olympic Day is celebrated to promote fans and people across the globe to stay active. The Olympic Channel’s social media campaign, “Olympic Day Workout” is an athlete-led 24-hour live workout challenge, hitting 20 time zones of the globe. Engaging fans with a deeper and immersive digital experience is a key area of growth for us, and Olympic Day Workout is a great example of this: our goal to connect fans with Olympians through non-stop online workouts resulted in an overwhelming response across social media: with 20 Instagram live broadcasts, plus 62 posts across Instagram and Facebook, the campaign generated 19 million impressions, 3 million video views and 120,000 interactions in a single day.
UFC FIGHT PASS
UFC FIGHT PASS Best Comebacks in MMA History Bracket.
In March of 2020, UFC FIGHT PASS launched the “Best Comebacks in MMA History” bracket on Twitter. The 16-fight bracket featured some of the most thrilling events in mixed martial arts history across multiple promotions including UFC, PRIDE, Invicta FC, Strikeforce, and Cage Warriors.
UFC FIGHT PASS tapped into Twitter’s “poll” feature, which opened each day at the same time and gave fans eight hours to cast their votes. The bracket took place over the course of four days, beginning with the quarter-finals.
Each of the 16-fights featured in the bracket are exclusively on UFC FIGHT PASS, who created a separate playlist for subscribers to easily access this content in order to cast an informed vote. Portions of these fights were then cut down and edited for social media and shared across all of UFC FIGHT PASS’ accounts.