Some big numbers were bandied about on transfer deadline day, but one number that you might have missed comes from digital football start-up Ball Street.

Ball Street’s ‘Transfer Deadline Live’ had 186,000 unique users and a peak of 15,000 concurrent viewers for its free, four-hour ‘over the top’ digital alternative for deadline day. Ball Street teamed up with leading football sites and blogs and the show, with Arsenal legend Ian Wright and Radio One’s Nihal, was also a hit on Twitter and with the in-studio audience of fans, journalists and football talent.

Live statistical analysis on the night was provided by Squawka and the show featured contributions from sports writer Barry Glendenning, author Jonathan Wilson and footballing talent like Clinton Morrison, Adebayo “The Beast” Akinfenwa and Leon McKenzie.   FA Cup lead partner Budweiser provided beers for the fans in the audience.

“We proved that you don’t need lavish studios, satellite trucks and big budgets to generate and entertain a live audience”, explains Matt Wilson, co founder.  “The ‘over the top’ space is about ideas and collaboration.  Together with like-minded brands and publishers we will continue to break new ground and challenge what the traditional industry leaders do.” 

Co-founder Stuart McDonald: “We had to turn down sites and publishers who wanted to stream our content due to the high demand and we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible for publishers and advertisers”.