Grabyo, the global leader in real-time video, today announced raising $2m in funding from an array of major sports stars on the back of accelerating customer demand, ongoing momentum in social video and the rapid growth of mobile video advertising. The investors and global ambassadors include Premier League Football stars Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie, New York Red Bulls star Thierry Henry and current NBA champion Tony Parker.

Grabyo’s real-time video platform allows broadcasters and content rights holders to drive and monetise social media engagement around TV. Fully scalable and cloud-based, it enables them to instantly create and distribute real-time video clips, with integrated sponsorship and advertising assets, across the web, social mobile apps and third party video platforms. Grabyo has strong reach across the social and video ecosystem including partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, giving Grabyo’s customers a digital audience of billions.

Exciting news at @Grabyo HQ: see what @ThierryHenry, @cesc4official, @Persie_Official and @tonyparker have to say. https://t.co/LEnqJEuXvO

— Grabyo (@Grabyo) November 25, 2014

Since launching last year, the company has worked with over 30 major broadcasters and rights holders – bringing consumers near-live highlights from some of the world’s biggest events in sport and music. These include FIFA World Cup, La Liga, Wimbledon, ATP World Tour, The Ryder Cup, UFC, UEFA Champions League and the BRIT Awards. Grabyo is also now building partnerships with a number of football clubs in addition to partnering with innovative global brands.

The involvement of star talent will further support Grabyo’s growth across Europe and North America as well as enable Grabyo’s partners to capitalise on the changing dynamics within the global media industry.

“From global sports stars and musicians, to Hollywood actors and supermodels, the number of famous faces with millions of highly engaged fans on social media is staggering,” continues Gareth Capon. “As more people are able to enjoy video across social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, the involvement of star talent will open up new distribution opportunities for broadcasters, rights holders and brands.”

“Being away from London makes it harder to keep up with what’s happening in European football,” comments Thierry Henry, “Grabyo makes it easy for fans to follow the action by making the best moments available in an instant. I am looking forward to helping the company grow.” 

Grabyo’s customers include some of the largest commercial broadcasters in Europe, including BSkyB, ITV and Channel 5 in the UK. Grabyo has seen a significant increase in reach, engagement and video views since moving premium partners to native formats – auto expanded video with one click playout on Twitter and autoplay video in the newsfeed on Facebook.

“Having leading stars in global sport backing us is testament to the momentum we’re now enjoying as demand for real-time video accelerates,” comments Gareth Capon, CEO, “Premium rights holders now recognise the value of making content available wherever their customers spend their time, which is increasingly on social platforms via a mobile device. Meanwhile, brands increasingly want to align with premium video content and engage consumers at scale. As a result, video, mobile and social are the most important growth sectors of the global advertising industry – and Grabyo sits across all three.”

Key Trends In Media Consumption and Advertising

The majority of our digital media consumption is now taking place in apps. It accounts 52% of the time consumers now spend with digital media in the U.S. and 51% in the U.K. Facebook takes up more media consumption time than any other app.

Analysis by Credit Suisse puts the average cost per impression (CPM) for a premium digital video advertisement at $32.80 (those with interactive ad units or mobile formats can be significantly higher).That is more than 10 times the average cost of a traditional display ad.

Mobile ad spending worldwide is forecast to increase 84.7% in 2014 to reach $32.71 billion this year, representing nearly one-quarter of all digital advertising spending.

Mobile video has experienced surging growth since the introduction of 4G network services. Each day, 20 per cent of mobile subscribers worldwide access video. In the UK, mobile video advertising is up 196% in the last year to £63.9 million and is now the fastest growing digital ad format.

Facebook recently announced that it is doing a billion video views every day.