ITV to share near-live video highlights of the World Cup

ITV will be sharing near-live highlights of the FIFA World Cup to ITV.com and social platforms following a deal with Grabyo, the real-time video company. ITV will be using the Grabyo platform to share match highlights and post-match commentary clips from its live TV coverage across ITV.com, Facebook and Twitter within seconds.

There has been a rapid acceleration of social media usage as well as mainstream adoption of smartphones and tablets since the last FIFA World Cup. There are now 30 million mobile social media users in the UK[1] while smartphone penetration is expected to reach 75 per cent of the UK population this year[2].  Furthermore, UK consumers now spend an average of 96 minutes a day on social media.[3]

ITV recently launched its new mobile first web experience, ITV.com. The site adopts a clean and simple design offering users a rolling timeline of news around its portfolio of programmes, allowing for content to be shared seamlessly on social media platforms.

Using this new design and working with Grabyo, the broadcaster aims to deliver an exceptional multiscreen World Cup experience to viewers this summer. Live coverage will be complemented with real-time video highlights, which can be discovered on Twitter and Facebook and viewed immediately in a real-time video gallery on ITV.com. The video highlights will cover key moments from 34 matches as well as post-match commentary, culminating with the World Cup final. Brands will have the opportunity to sponsor the clips and extend distribution through promotional and campaign tools.

Ollie Irish, Executive Producer for ITV Sport, said:

“We are very excited to be working with Grabyo to deliver real-time video highlights of ITV games across social media channels and itv.com. The partnership will allow us to enhance the viewer experience and drive conversation around this major TV event as well as offer compelling opportunities for our clients to connect with consumers as all the action unfolds.”

“We’ve been working with sports formats for the last six months but we always knew that the World Cup would be the ultimate real-time format,” comments Grabyo CEO Gareth Capon. “As a real-time, bite-size format that is optimised for viewing on mobile devices, short-form live video is highly appealing to social media users. We see huge and immediate spikes in traffic as premium sports content is shared on social media – and not just the obvious clips such as goals but from all kinds of irreverent clips too. We’re expecting World Cup clips to drive very significant organic reach on their own but it will be fascinating to see how this is extended using promotional tools such as Twitter Amplify.”

Grabyo recently revealed that 72% of its video traffic is mobile, illustrating how effective real-time social video is at reaching mobile social media users, and its platform regularly scales to hundreds of thousands of users within seconds as clips are shared.

 

[2] IAB – http://www.iabuk.net/blog/2014-the-end-of-the-beginning

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Daniel McLaren
Daniel McLaren 820 posts

Dan is the Founder & CEO of Digital Sport. Can be found at sports industry events and heard every week on the Digital Sport Insider podcast. @DanielMcLaren

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