Over the past year, we’ve seen the entire video distribution model flipped on it’s head, from YouTube paid channels to live network TV streamed through a dedicated Apple TV app and even a Spielberg-produced “Halo” series for Xbox. So considering all the recent shifts, we can’t say we were all that surprised to see Sports Illustrated come out with their own live web video series…but it still is a first for a Time Inc company. The live half-hour show will be a bit more laid back then Sportcenter and is aimed at engaging sports in need of a midday fix. So far, Ford is the premier sponsor so we will stay tuned to see if SI’s video push gains some traction.
Tag: Sports
Motain Secures $13 Million In Venture Capital
Motain, the company behind The Football App, is looking to get out ahead of the World Cup and seize the global – and growing American – football (or soccer) app and advertising market. Today, they announced that they received $13 million in venture capital to promote it’s flagship product, The Football App, in advance of the World Cup in 2014. For followers of the beautiful game, the app has standings, results, and videos from over 100 leagues across the world, and has racked up over 6.5 million downloads across all mobile platforms, with a sizable portion of that download data coming from the U.S. The service generates more than one billion page impressions per month, and is growing at over 100,000 downloads per day. The free version comes with ads, so any expansion with this new capital injection means that advertisers looking to target a global audience may have themselves a new, sports-based, mobile solution.
Exponential Interactive Focuses on Baseball Fans
Ad intelligence group Exponential Interactive released the details of a study conducted in the month leading up to Major League Baseball’s opening day, revealing peculiarities of the fans of various teams in the process. As it turns out: Yankees fans prefer rap; Mets fans prefer metal. The details revealed stretched far and wide: Cleveland Indians fans are most likely to own a cat, Cubs fans are the most likely to own motorcycles, the Mets have the most female fans. Internet activity was combined with outside data sets from Datalogix and others. The title of “fan” was bestowed only on dedicated users who checked a specific team multiple times, and who lived in that team’s city or state. The result was an interesting look at baseball fans and their respective locales which could prove useful for marketers in a number of fields as baseball season progresses through the summer.
HBO Go To Stream Live Sports By Year End
One of the major downsides to advanced TV platforms has been the lack of live programming, specifically around sports games and other tentpole events like the Oscars. The real-time nature of these programs is paramount and is often not available from players like Roku or Xbox. Yet, recent news indicates that this may no longer be the case.
HBO Go has announced that they will offer live sports streaming by the year end. HBO Go has already been a colossal success and this new feature would likely make it an even more attractive offer. Currently, live streaming has been offered by cable networks for large events like NBC Olympic coverage, but HBO and others providers are expanding this online model to more regular programming as well.
49ers Wi-Fi Stadium
The San Francisco 49ers are equipping their new stadium with a speedy Wi-Fi network that will provide a solid data connection for the possible 68,000 fans who can attend a game. The network will not only improve fan satisfaction, but will likely generate a lot of social media activity in the process. Other venues can do the same and also use wi-fi as a means of collecting audience data to better understand who visits their location.
Super Bowl Tweets 30% Ads
Last night there were precisely 20.9 million Super-Bowl related Tweets, and nearly 30% of those weren’t about the game – they were about the action between the snaps. In total, for every seven tweets about the game there were two about the ads, and the winner for most twitter action of the game was GoDaddy.com, who clocked in at 290,000 tweets – nearly six times as many as Audi, who came in last at about 50,000. However, just because they got more action on the social network doesn’t mean they were necessarily viewed positively: 80% of tweets that mentioned Audi were positive, while just 14% of GoDaddy.com’s mentions were similarly supportive. So although Audi pumped about $150 dollars into every mention on twitter – as compared to GoDaddy.com’s $25, Audi only paid about $1,500 per new follower, as compared to GoDaddy’s $6,500; indeed, Audi netted over 6,500 new followers last night while GoDaddy.com attracted just over 1,000.
So, it doesn’t necessarily pay to be the most mentioned Ad on Twitter. In the end, Taco Bell’s hashtag #livemas was the most mentioned, and they got the highest ROI from a twitter perspective. Success in terms of followers and positive social response ultimately won the night, not controversial advertising.
ESPN To Embed Instant Replays On Twitter
ESPN in partnership with Twitter will be embedding instant replays from football games in Twitter posts. The tweets will incorporate preroll from Ford Fusion and will be promoted to reach new users. The initiative is a smart call for ESPN as Twitter offers a viable platform to deliver easily digestible content on mobile.
